The Roaring of the Silence

First Lady Melania Trump speaks with an accent. Which isn’t surprising to most of us, she’s an immigrant from Slovenia, only come to the US as an adult. Never mind, either, that her English is much better than any of our Slovenian.

Bette Midler, though, objected to her accent and her citizenship (gained in 2006) while FLOTUS Trump was making her Republican convention speech on Tuesday evening.

Oh, God. She still can’t speak English.

And

Get that illegal alien off the stage!

Midler has since pretended to apologize for the first—pretended because in the heat of the moment, she tweeted from her heart, but her…apology…came only later after much hoo-raw—although she seems to have done nothing about the second.

More importantly, though, it’s three days later, and the Republican convention is over. It’s three days later, and while lots of folks have decried Midler’s slurs, not a single Progressive-Democrat has objected to, much less repudiated, either of them.

This is a silent bigotry we do not need in the White House or anywhere in Congress.

Portland’s Wheeler Rioters

Here’s another example of the Wheeler Rioters’ execution of Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s (D) Summer of Love.

On night 82 of the riots, police reported a marauding mob of “several hundred” rioters set fire to the Multnomah County Building just across the river from their previous favorite targets in downtown Portland. That’s where the county commission holds its meetings, social services are doled out, and executives with the sheriff’s office and other top executives have their offices.

But wait—there’s more:

It also turns out that it’s where the region’s store of COVID-fighting personal protection equipment (PPE) is stored.

The region’s stockpile, not just Portland’s. And the stockpile was on the ground floor.

It strains credulity to think that these rioters—especially since they’re operating not just with Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s (D) tacit condoning, but with Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt’s active support (he’s announced that he won’t prosecute “petty” crimes)—didn’t know the contents of their arson target.

This also is another example of the rioting and destruction that Progressive-Democrats refused to decry throughout their Party’s nominating convention.

Agitators Agitate

And nominally peaceful protesters condone.

Peaceful demonstrations in downtown Chicago ended in a violent clash between police and protesters Saturday, leaving 17 officers injured and two dozen people arrested.
…
“Multiple agitators hijacked this peaceful protest,” Mr [Chicago Police Superintendent David] Brown said late Saturday. “This group deployed large black umbrellas, changed their appearance and began pushing and eventually assaulting officers.”

It’s not strictly true that agitators hijacked the protest.

If those “peaceful” protesters had truly wanted to stay peaceful, they would have dealt with the agitators in their midst before the latter could convert the protest to violence.

Certainly, that would be hard to do, but hard means possible.

At best, the “peaceful” protestors are shirking their personal responsibility and putting their obligations off on others.

The Doctors Video

Here, through the efforts of One America News Network, is the video of facts and considered medical opinion that the amateur censors of Facebook, Alphabet (through its YouTube and Google subsidiaries) and Twitter don’t want you to see because it runs counter to their pre-written narratives.

It’s 45 minutes long and well worth every moment, whether or not you agree with their opinions, because it’s useful to get all sides of the matter. Especially if Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jack Dorsey don’t want you to see the whole story.

Government and Student Debt

In an article on the possibility of the Federal government extending its current moratorium on student debt repayment, The Wall Street Journal posed a question to its readers.

How should Congress address the backlog of student-loan payments borrowers will owe after Sept 30?

I say, mostly by leaving it alone. The loans are strictly business arrangements between the borrower and the lender.

In a free market economy, government has no role here, other than to allow student debt to be discharged through bankruptcy like most other debt. Such bankruptcies then must flow with all the ramifications they entail for both the lenders and the borrowers.

Government also should stop guaranteeing student loans. If there needs to be a guarantor in order to have a student debt market at all, let the colleges and universities be the guarantors, either individually or via a consortium. It is, after all, the colleges’ and universities’ high prices and non-marketable or low-income-producing majors that drive the difficulties graduates have with their student debts.