Tag Archives: morality

A Navy Veteran

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…refused an “award” from a dishonorable organization.

The New Orleans Saints was going to present Commander John Wells, Military Veterans Advocacy Executive Director, with the Peoples Health Champion award during the Saints’ game against the Chicago Bears last weekend.  What Wells said in his refusal:

Although I am touched and honored to be selected for such an award, the ongoing controversy with NFL players’ disrespect for the national flag forces me to decline to participate in the presentation.  I am unable, in good conscience, to enter an NFL stadium while this discourtesy prevails. Since this award is tainted with the dishonorable actions of the NFL and its players, I cannot accept it.

The Saints’ response, in its attitude, vindicated Wells’ decision.

We will not allow Mr Wells’ decision and subsequent media appearances to distract our players and organization from continuing to honor and support our military and veterans. We, as an organization, have decided to move on from this sad and divisive discourse and focus our attention on supporting our military and veterans.

The Saints’ statement also claimed

[W]e…contend we are leaders when it comes to financial support as well as the thousands of service hours our organization and players gladly contribute….

No, the divisiveness distraction here are in the players’ decision to attack our flag and national anthem and to insult our veterans and their families while masquerading their “protest” as commentary on social injustice and in Saints management’s decision to condone such miscreancy.  This misbehavior has rendered all the claimed support for our veterans into so much self-serving eyewash.  The financial support and service hours turn out to be nothing but indulgences, whether paid in advance or after the fact.

Good on the Commander.

The Democratic National Committee

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Have I mentioned the racist bigotry of the Left and its Progressive-Democratic Party?  Here’s an example of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s openly direct sexist bigotry, via Power Line (click on the image to get a larger version).

The emphasized line (emphasis by Power Line)—the money line—says I personally would prefer that you not forward to cisgender straight white males, since they’re already in the majority.  The line gains yet more significance coming on the heels of the first paragraph of Madeleine Leader’s (DNC Data Services Manager) missive.  After saying the DNC needs to rebuild its Technology Team into a capability for “tackling all elections,” she emphasized [emphasis added]

What’s more important is that we are focused on hiring and maintaining a staff of diverse voices and life experiences….

The Progressive-Democratic Party’s sexism, masqueraded as virtue signaling, is more important than merit—except that they define merit on the basis of gender and racial diversity, not on actual capability.

This is the gang that would rule our nation.  What damage would they do in the name of a diversity that favors Party-chosen groups?

College Entrance Criteria

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In an op-ed nominally centered on the failure of affirmative action in college admissions, John Katzman (o Noodle CEO and Princeton Review and 2U founder) and Steve Cohen (co-author of Getting In! The Zinch Guide to College Admissions & Financial Aid in the Digital Age) wrote this.

But the work of admissions officers is more complicated than finding the highest test scores. …. They want to put together an incoming freshman class that has aspiring journalists for the school newspaper, great athletes for all the teams, debaters, musicians, actors, dancers, legacies, and development prospects.

No, the work of admissions officers isn’t more complicated than finding the highest test scores. The added “goals” are just artificial complexification for the purpose of justifying admissions officers’ jobs and high salaries. Even the the authors’ jibe of “finding the highest test scores” is a cynical distortion. The task for quality schools is to find the the most academically capable entering freshmen and the freshmen with the best academic fit for the school’s expertise.

The school’s admissions goals most assuredly are not to fill a quota for the school paper or marching band or the semi-pro sports team or whatever else makes the deans feel good.

The Bigotry of the Left’s Identity Politics

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…writ large.  Here’s Van Gosse, of Franklin & Marshall College (I hesitate to call him a professor, even though that’s what he’s pleased to profess to do at the school) in his op-ed in Newsweek:

Why has the ascent of a bunch of people who in an earlier period might have been called Micks drawn no notice at all?

Maybe because they’re all Americans, who happen to have Irish ethnicity, and not Irishmen and -women who happen to have American citizenship.  This is the bigotry of the identity politics of ex-President Barack Obama (D), of ex-Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D), of Progressive-Democratic Party Chairman Tom Perez, the Party in general, and the Left exposed.

This is the bigotry of the folks who would run our government and remake our nation made plain.

The silence of the Left, of the Party’s rank and file—of its politicians in Congress—on this rank racism is deafening.

Obamacare Subsidies

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Recall that under Obamacare, health coverage plan providers are required to subsidize low-income Americans (who, under Obamacare, are required to buy the plans regardless of need for the plans on offer or ability to pay the vig for them) for their costs in buying those health coverage plans.  Recall further that the Obama administration paid those plan providers monies to reimburse them for those government-mandated subsidy payouts.  Recall also that Congress never appropriated any funds for the purpose of making those payments to the plan providers.  Finally, recall that a DC District court ruled those payments to the health plan providers illegal—because Congress had not appropriated any funds for the purpose.  Then the Trump administration ceased those payments to the health plan providers.

Oh, the hoo-rah from the Left.  Eighteen Progressive-Democrat-led States sued in Federal court (in San Francisco, California, after judge-shopping to find a suitably malleable court), centering their beef on how stopping the payments would set the Obamacare markets a-roil.  Never mind, now, how cynically irrelevant that plaint is to the actual case before the courts, which is whether the payments are legal, not whether they’re convenient.

Federal judge Vince Chhabria, of the Northern District of California, headquarted in San Fran, wound up ruling against the 18 States.  He also wrote,

And although you wouldn’t know it from reading the states’ papers in this lawsuit, the truth is that most state regulators have devised responses that give millions of lower-income people better health coverage options than they would otherwise have had

And he

cited an October press release by California’s health care marketplace, which said the premiums of nearly four of five consumers will stay the same or decrease after surcharges tied to the lost subsidies are factored in. The judge said dozens of other states also have accounted for the end of the subsidies.

And

One last point on the issue of confusion.  If the states are so concerned that people will be scared away from the exchanges by the thought of higher premiums, perhaps they should stop yelling about higher premiums. With open enrollment just days away, perhaps the states should focus instead on communicating the message that they have devised a response to the CSR payment termination that will prevent harm to the large majority of people while in fact allowing millions of lower-income people to get a better deal on health insurance in 2018.

Oops.  Just another bit of disingenuousity on the part of Progressive-Democrats as they try to keep honest Americans trapped in the Progressive-Democrat welfare cage.

Judge Chhabria’s ruling can be read here.