Tag Archives: responsibilities

A Hack

Posted on by
2

The Russians are alleged to be behind the hacks into the Democrats’ IT systems, and they’re alleged to have so engaged in order to sow distrust in our election system and procedures and especially to influence our just concluded election in favor of the ultimate winner, President-Elect Donald Trump.  Indeed, the CIA and other of our intelligence agencies have said that the hacks have all the earmarks of Russian hackers.

A couple things about that.  The NLMSM’s bold, declarative statements based on those intelligence agency statements that the Russians did it notwithstanding, “have all the earmarks” does not mean the Russians did it, only that it looks like they did it.  Of course getting actual proof in the intelligence or the hacking world is more difficult even than getting “proof”—sufficient reduction of reasonable doubt—in a criminal trial.  Nor does that difficulty, or the limitation of a statement of “all the earmarks,” mean the Russians didn’t do it, especially in the face of their history.

The other thing centers on the assumption that the Russians really did do the hacks and for the reasons named.  Now the NLMSM, whose favored Democrats were losers in the last election at all levels from the Presidential level on down, is pushing at the top of its collective lungs the idea that the Russians did it, and to favor Trump, as though these were facts.

So: assume the Russians really did do the hacks for the reasons named.  The NLMSM, in its temper tantrums over their loss and their having been ignored by American voters, is playing along with that Russian goal and with that serving, wittingly or not, to discredit Trump and the elections, and to sow doubt about the legitimacy of both.

Congress is pressing for bipartisan investigations into the matter, and it’s pushing for President Barack Obama to release all of the report that will result from the investigation he’s ordered into the matter.  He should, and so should President Trump if the Obama investigation isn’t complete before Trump takes office.

The question is valid, and it should be investigated and answered, but press hysteria contributes nothing to an objective resolution while sowing the doubts the press alleges the Russians want sown.

Sexism in a Court

Posted on by
Reply

The singer Kesha, in a Manhattan court, is suing Sony and ex-producer “Dr Luke” over allegations of having been drugged and raped.  There are (unsubstantiated) reports that the presiding judge, Shirley Kornreich, should be removed from the case because she’s married to Proskauer Rose law firm partner Edward Kornreich, and Proskauer Rose represents Sony.

Kornreich says the move is sexist.

If it’s an issue at all, it’s an issue because women are now part of the professional work force[.]

Kornreich reveals her own sexism with that claim.  The move, if it existed beyond press reports (Kesha’s lawyers say they weren’t going to file any recusal motion), was about conflicts of interest from family ties connecting a judge to one of the litigants; it had nothing to do with the genders of the individuals who are—or might be—tied.

Veterans Administration Strikes Again

Posted on by
Reply

And once again, its blow contributes to a death. This time, it’s the VA’s Talihina, Oklahoma, facility, and this place allowed maggots to breed in the injury of a veteran.

Executive Director Myles Deering said the maggots were discovered while the patient was alive but were not the cause of his death. He said the man came into the center with an infection.

Deering tried to play down the incident:

He did not succumb as a result of the parasites.  He succumbed as a result of the sepsis.

This is the level of attention, much less actual medical care, our veterans get from the VA.  Never mind that if this facility’s imitation medical personnel had taken the infection seriously, they would have noticed the maggots and maybe done something about them.  And maybe cleaned up the flies and the flies’ eggs whence the maggots came.  And maybe cleaned up the whole facility a little bit.

Four persons, a physician’s assistant and the Talihina facility’s Director of Nursing and two other nurses, have been allowed to resign over the matter.  Never mind any accountability for these.  Never mind the allegedly attending physician responsible for this veteran’s care receiving being held accountable, so far, at least.

It’s long past time to get rid of the VA and to use its budget and what would have been its budgets in succeeding years to provide vouchers for our veterans so they can get the care they need from the doctors and hospitals they choose.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Does Trump Want a War with the Press?

Posted on by
Reply

That’s the thrust of a Howard Kurtz piece on FoxNews Monday morning.  Then he asked

[D]oes Trump want both sides on a permanently hostile footing?

Kurtz needs to come out of his press bubble and poke around in the world some.  The press has been hostile to anything non-Left for years.  The press has been openly hostile and deliberately biased against President-Elect Donald Trump ever since Trump announced his candidacy.

Kurtz has even acknowledged the press’ war against Trump—and this is post-election.

Donald Trump, they say, should not be normalized.

There is, also, this bit of Kurtz’ own disingenuousity:

Trump has shown he has numerous ways to circumvent the media. He hasn’t held a news conference since July (after all those months of castigating Hillary Clinton for avoiding such encounters).

What’s the purpose of a news conference, though?  During all that time since July, Hillary Clinton not only wasn’t talking to the press, she wasn’t talking to the American people, either, except through a very occasional rally or the debates.  Trump, while not talking to the press, held innumerable rallies—with people numbering in the thousands attending—and was very active on social media.  In all of this, Trump was talking directly to the citizens of the United States.  Even in the frequent interviews he had with individual…journalists…he wasn’t so much talking to the interviewer as he was talking to the viewers of and listeners to the interviews; he was talking to us Americans.

Us voters have said in so many ballots that we no longer want, no longer need, no longer are interested in the press filtering (or censoring) our communications with those we’re considering representing us in government, and Trump has demonstrated that he doesn’t need the press to hold up his end of those communications.  Of course Kurtz knows all of this.

Plainly, it’s not that Trump wants a war with the press.  It’s that the press demands war with Trump.

It Wasn’t Political

Posted on by
Reply

Recall that the Hampshire College President, Jonathan Lash, pulled the US flag down from all campus flagpoles, along with “all other flags.”  Recall further that he took this action after he

had lowered the US flag to half-staff after Election Day[]

followed by the US flag being burned on Veterans Day.

Lash, though, as he finally was forced by the public’s hue and cry to restore our nation’s flag to its proper place atop flagpoles, is still denying that he did it for politics.

We did not lower the flag to make a political statement. … We acted solely to facilitate much-needed dialogue on our campus about how to dismantle the bigotry that is prevalent in our society.

As an aside, what you mean “we,” Paleface?  You’re the President; it was done at your order. Full stop.

More importantly, how are lowering the flag to half-staff and then taking it down altogether under the circumstances in which you ordered these things done not political statements?  Anything done with the flag beyond its normal handling is political.

And then: Lash thoroughly contradicted himself within his own statement: the free speech that is the “dialog” engendered by his actions is at the center of what is political.