Tag Archives: morality

The New Jim Crow?

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve written about racism and religious bigotry here, here, and here.

Now I want to take a broader view.  We’ve had, in quick succession in the last very few years, the following.

President Obama’s Health and Human Services mandates that businesses and insurers to provide, at no cost to the insurees, health insurance coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients, without regard for the religious beliefs of the businesses or insurers.  This mandate also requires Americans to buy such health insurance coverage (even though these added items are to be provided at no additional cost), regardless of the religious beliefs of these individual Americans—or to accept the coverage from their employers.  There is an “exemption” that allows businesses to put this off onto their insurers, but this cynically ignores, among others, those entities who self-insure.

Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas (D), says that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is appealing to racists who do not want a black man in the White House.

I absolutely believe it’s all about race, and for the first time in my life I’ve been able to convince my children, finally, that racism is alive and well[.]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) suggesting that Republicans are simply manipulating American Jews for political gain.

HUNT: That’s why some of the Republican Jewish supporters are really active.

PELOSI: Well, that’s how they’re being exploited. And they’re smart people. They follow these issues.

Unions, in one overt case, are attempting to keep black children down on the plantation, at least in Louisiana.

[L]awyers for the Louisiana Association of Educators, one of the state’s two major teachers unions, threatened private and parochial schools with lawsuits if the schools accept students participating in a new school choice initiative that starts this year.

The Maryland State Board of Education has established a policy of race-based discipline, regardless of the nature of the misbehavior.

President Obama’s Department of Justice, shortly after Obama took office, dismissed a civil case against New Black Panther members, accused of voter intimidation against white voters, after the case had been won by default through the non-appearance of the defendants.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is threatening Steubenville, OH, with civil suit if the city doesn’t remove a cross from the city’s logo—a logo that

includes several local landmarks, including the Franciscan University’s Christ the King Chapel

which, oh by the way, has a cross on it.

The ACLU has been attacking America’s fallen soldiers and their families for years, using, for instance, the Mt Soledad Veterans Memorial Cross as a vehicle.  The ACLU wants the military decoration—the cross—removed.  Worse, the Obama administration now is attempting to “negotiate” a settlement with the ACLU without including the central party to the controversy, the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, in the talks.

US District Judge Fred Biery, in response to a complaint from a single family, blocked a Texas school district’s “invocation” and “benediction” and banned any prayer at the ceremony altogether, even threatening the valedictorian with jail if she mentioned God in her speech.

The Obama administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs  demanded that the pastor presiding over a private funeral at the Houston National Cemetery not make religious references in his prayers at the soldier’s burial.

Progressive leaders also attack conservative women.  Bill Maher said this of Governor Sarah Palin:

Did you hear this—Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she’s demanding that we invade ‘Tsunami,’” Maher said. “I mean she said, ‘These ‘Tsunamians’ will not get away with this.’ Oh speaking of dumb twats, did you—

And we get this about Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R, MN):

Michele Bachmann says certain things that sound crazy to the general public.  But to anybody raised in the environment of the evangelical right wing, what she says makes perfect sense.

The list goes on.  Are we seeing, now, a resurgence of the attitudes of Jim Crow, but with a different, broader, more unfocused set of bigotries?

Apparently Some Don’t Actually Work for a Living

Posted on by
Reply

A beef about lawyers’ fees in a bankruptcy exposes some attitudes about actual work.  In the Washington Mutual bankruptcy case, finally wrapping up the last details—like allocating the legal fees—generated this argument: some of WaMu’s creditors didn’t like the size of the fees awarded, since those would cut into the creditors’ recovery.

The core of the beef was that the billing included 24-hour days and working through weekends, resulting in weeks’ worth of work without breaks.

Hmm….

Any graduate student would be familiar with that.

And the bankruptcy judge on the case, Mary Walrath, an ex-bankruptcy lawyer herself, was having none of it, either.

The day I started at my firm they filed a huge Chapter 11 case and I did not take a day off for six months.  I am not surprised that there were many days of even 24 hours because I spent those times in the office as well.

Are Harry Reid and Joe Biden Bigots?

Posted on by
Reply

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this the other day on the Senate floor—and it’s the second time he’s made this particular accusation:

The word’s out that [Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney] hasn’t paid any taxes for 10 years.  Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t.

What’s with this religious bigotry?  What does Reid have against Mormons?

And this, according to Mark Halperin and John Heilemann:

He [Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama—a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one[.]”

Reid did apologize for these racist remarks, but still.  Would he have made either set of remarks (he refuses to apologize for his religious assault) in the first place were he not prejudiced?

Next, there’s then-Senator Joe Biden about then-candidate Barack Obama:

I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking buy.  I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

Biden did issue a caveated statement that he masqueraded as an apology, but again—would he have made these remarks in the first place were he not prejudiced, just a little?

By Reid’s own logic, it’s not on the questioner to provide any proof at all (although I have offered their own words in support of my questions, which is more than they have done).  It’s entirely on the target to provide the proof of their innocence.

I ask, again: are Harry Reid and Joe Biden racists?  They have a lot to answer for.  Where’s their proof?

Democrats Do Axelrod

Posted on by
Reply

As Fox News reported last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid—again—went onto the Senate floor and accused Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney of not having paid any taxes for a decade.

The word’s out that he hasn’t paid any taxes for 10 years.  Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t.

Never mind that the “word is out” because it’s Reid putting it out.  And that Reid refuses to identify his “source.”  But I have to wonder: is Reid’s source President Obama?

And then there’s this:

House Democrats’ campaign arm is retracting claims it made that Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, a prominent Republican donor, was financially tied to prostitution—claims it now says “were untrue and unfair.”

The retraction comes after Adelson’s lawyer sent a letter last month to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee asking it to “retract and apologize for” what it called defamatory and libelous claims that Adelson, who heads Las Vegas Sands Corp, encouraged and profited from prostitution in Macau and donated “Chinese prostitution money” to Republican leaders.

Of course, it’s an easy retraction to make, now that they’ve done the smear and caused the damage.  It’s of a piece, too, with the smears the Democrats do, generally, on those who support people and causes of which they disapprove.

But it’s all part of the tactic President Obama’s campaign mouthpiece David Axelrod so dishonestly first put into play in the 2010 election campaign, when he asked why the US Chamber of Commerce was using foreign funding for campaign matters—which would have been a felony, if true—and then refused to cite any evidence.  He just asks questions, he said; it’s on his targets to prove their innocence.

Evidently, this is the level of integrity to which we can look forward from the Democrats this campaign season.

Culture and Badminton

Posted on by
1

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that four(!) doubles teams of badminton players were thrown out of the Olympics for deliberately attempting to throw their first-round round robin matches in order to gain a better seeding in the next, elimination round.

Cheating in the Olympics—or in any sport or any sport’s tournament—isn’t new, and it’s no less reprehensible for that.  But what are the players saying about this?  Many—most?—favor the disqualifications.  But the People’s Republic of China’s Lin Dan, one of their top male badminton players, said he didn’t think the players were at fault, saying the sporting body

should have thought ahead and seen that this kind of situation might happen and thought what they could have done to avoid this situation.

What kind of culture teaches its people that it’s OK to cheat unless some external authority tells them not to?  What kind of culture teaches that if an individual fails of his honor, it’s not his fault—it’s some external authority’s fault?  What kind of culture takes away individual responsibility, individual honor, and usurps them to some external authority to see to?