Tag Archives: freedom

Doesn’t Matter

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Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) doesn’t recognize the Juan Guaidó administration now attempting to govern Venezuela despite Thug-in-Charge Nicolás Maduro’s refusal to cede power.

But we are threatening, we are threatening intervention. We’re sending humanitarian aid that is in the guise of, you know, eventually invading this country and the people of the country don’t want us there[.]

The words of the Representative from the 5th District of Minnesota are breathtakingly arrogant, but they are unimportant, and I do not hear them.

Kamala Harris Wants to Confront Dark History

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate wannabe and Senator Kamala Harris (D, CA) wants us to take our dark history seriously.

We must confront the dark history of slavery and government-sanctioned discrimination in this country that has had many consequences, including undermining the ability of black families to build wealth in America for generations.  We need systemic, structural changes to address that.

Absolutely.  The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of slavery and government-sanctioned discrimination.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of its Democrat, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, who ruled that Dred Scott, a free (because escaped) black man in the north, must be returned to the southern ownership of his owner—and who further ruled that blacks could not be citizens of the United States because blacks were not fully men.

It must confront its demand for the States Right of holding slaves, slavery over which the nation had to fight a bloody civil war to end because of Party intransigence.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of its creation, the Ku Klux Klan, which it used to terrorize newly freed blacks—and any who supported them—in the aftermath of the Party’s lost overt slavery policy.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of its Jim Crow Laws, designed explicitly to keep blacks from voting.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of segregation, resumed in full under President Woodrow Wilson (D), who actively resegregated the Federal government after it had been steadily integrated following the Civil War, a policy for which Wilson insisted blacks should be grateful for the “protection,” and which continued apace in schools under the fiction of “separate but equal,” which included all public spaces, and which extended even to sections of buses, drinking fountains, and rest rooms.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of destroying black families by enacting “welfare” laws that paid single mothers but not intact families, making it fiscally useful, if not wholly immoral, for fathers to absent themselves.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of deliberate, overt racial (and gender) discrimination in its “affirmative action” policies that give special treatment based, ultimately, on skin color and/or gender.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of undermining the ability of black families (such as they’re allowed to exist) to build wealth by keeping them trapped in Party’s welfare cage with the designed-in welfare cliff that prevents welfare recipients—most of whom are minority recipients, with most of those black—from getting a new job or a pay raise that would put them above an income threshold because that would cut welfare payments by more than the pay raise.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark present of identity politics that seeks to give special treatment to particular groups of Americans—which is nothing more than segregation modernized.

The Progressive-Democratic Party does, most definitely, need systemic, structural changes to address that.

Religious Freedom

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Germany doesn’t appear to have the same strong belief in it that Americans (or most of us, anyway) do.  The Federal Labor Court has objected to a Catholic clinic terminating a doctor because he violated Church teachings, specifically, he both divorced and then remarried.

The doctor insisted—successfully, it turns out—that he was fired for being Catholic; colleagues of different faiths could divorce and remarry without consequence.

Never mind that the clinic was Catholic and the Catholic doctor violated the clinic’s Catholic requirements, requirements it could not impose on its non-Catholic employees without imposing on their religious freedom.  The situation illustrates the complexities of religious freedom in the work place, but if this ruling is allowed to stand, it will have serious implications for the employability of persons whose religious faith—or agnosticism or atheism—is different from the employer’s religious tenets—or agnosticism or atheism.

Putin Threatens

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking during his state-of-the-nation address Wednesday, warned that Russia will aim new hypersonic missiles at the US should it deploy new intermediate-range missiles in Europe.

Russia and its predecessor USSR have aimed weapons, including nuclear weapons—ICBMs, SLBMS, nuclear-armed bombers—at the US since they first acquired the weapons.  Does anyone really believe Putin doesn’t already have nuclear weapons aimed at the US today?  Is anyone interested in some beachfront property north of Santa Fe?

No, Putin’s threat just puts a premium on our deploying anti-missile systems at home, in Europe, around Asia, and in orbit as well as on developing heavily upgraded such systems and then deploying them, too.  Putin’s threat also puts a premium on developing upgraded offensive systems, including nuclear, and deploying them at home, in Europe, around Asia, and in orbit.

This is an arms race that Russia can no more afford to sustain technologically or fiscally than could the USSR a prior arms race.  It’s an arms race we should strongly encourage and actively pursue.

False and Dangerous

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The New York Times published a hit piece on President Donald Trump, a piece in which the news outlet’s authors—Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Fandos, and Michael  Schmidt—cited only “several American officials” and other such, but not a single on-the-record source to underlie their central thesis or otherwise corroborate claims of their carefully hidden “sources.”  Indeed, here is their methodology, proudly proclaimed in the middle of their piece,

How The Times Reported This Story
To write this story, New York Times reporters reviewed documents and conducted several dozen interviews with current and former government officials, members of Congress, legal experts and more[]

but even here, they identified no one and nothing—not even the “reporters” who did the claimed reviews and interviews, much less any of the persons or documents the authors claimed were consulted.  We’re just supposed to meekly take the authors’ word for this.

Of course, Trump demurred, and in his usual blunt, seemingly inflammatory way.  As do I; the NYT‘s bit is a long one, and it cites “sources” that, for all we know, are only made-up.

Now to the heart of my post.  Quoting Howard Kurtz’ citing of NYT Publisher AG Sulzberger from Kurtz’ own piece on Trump’s objection, Sulzberger (see that? An actual on-the-record source) said

in demonizing the free press as the enemy, simply for performing its role of asking difficult questions and bringing uncomfortable information to light, President Trump is retreating from a distinctly American principle…The phrase “enemy of the people” is not just false, it’s dangerous.

No.  What’s false and dangerous is Sulzberger’s blatant, deliberate lie about what Trump said.  Here’s Trump’s actual claim:

Notice that.  As Sulzberger knows full well—both with words and grammar being his stock in trade, and from what he learned in his third grade grammar lessons—words that modify nouns limit the class of nouns to a clear subset of that class.  Trump has never called the media, or the news media, an enemy of the American people.  He has said only that that subset of the news media that is fake news is that enemy.

It’s true enough that Trump has made no bones about his contention that many, if not most, journalists are purveyors of fake news, nor has he hidden his view that many, if not most, news outlets are such purveyors.  He’s used no euphemisms in expressing his views of CNN as a routine such purveyor.  He also called the NYT a true enemy of the people.

Notice that, though: even in the latter two instances, he’s addressed particular outlets, not “the news.”

On the other hand, Trump has, often, commented favorably on other journalists and news outlets as being quality reporters, “fair” journalists and outlets, including journalists at outlets Trump otherwise disdains.  Plainly, not all news media, or individuals within it, are enemies of the people in Trump’s view or commentary.

This is the false and dangerous lie that Sulzberger—one of the influential MFWICs of one of the influential printers of what it’s pleased to call “fit news”—is spreading.  Sulzberger deliberately and carefully censored the key part of what Trump said—that modifying phrase, which Trump even emphasized in his tweet—and thereby changed utterly what Sulzberger claims Trump said to fit Sulzberger’s own narrative.

And guys like Howard Kurtz, who claims to know better as a critic of the news media, uncritically repeat the lie.