Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
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For those of you who like following my Twitter feed but don’t like Twitter, I’ll leave this pinned to the top of my blog. (For complicated reasons, I can’t put it in the sidebar.)
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Sorry for another blog free day. Two things happened. As some of you noticed, my site went down. This was not a bad thing but a good one: I am on a new server so I should have fewer outages in the future.
The other thing that happened is that I have been helping my daughter move into her new apartment. The apartment’s previous occupants were three boys, and I understand that, before that, there were a bunch of college boys living for several rental generations in this apartment.
The result was the dirtiest apartment I have ever seen. I have spent the last two days alternating between shopping for basic supplies and cleaning at a frenzied level. I am a bit of a germaohobe, but I think even non-germaphobes would’ve had a hard time with this place. [Read more…]
I’m on my iPad at the airport, preparatory to a longish flight, so regular blogging will not happen. However, I thought I’d use the downtime for a few idle thoughts, none of which are related to each other and all of which I share in random order.
I think conservative blacks are amongst the bravest people in America because the Left hates conservative blacks even more than it hates conservative homosexuals. They are also excellent tweeters. I have a theory about this. When people have to fight hard for their values, it makes them think about them in concentrated fashion. This concentrated thought allows them to express themselves well in a limited number of words.
Representative (D-Islam) Rashida Tlaib tweeted out that she’s a Palestinian, which is a nationality not a race, and a Muslim. Significantly, she makes no effort to hyphenate — that is, she’s not Palestinian-American; she’s just “Palestinian.” Tlaib has also tweeted out the old antisemitic slur that American Jews have divided loyalties. Am I the only one who sees the irony in this? [Read more…]
David Webb called Areva Martin out on her mindless assumption about white privilege, but she didn’t rethink it; she just blamed her staff for bad briefing.
Perhaps you’ve already heard about Areva Martin, a CNN legal analyst who happens to be black, tell David Webb, a Sirius XM radio and Fox Nation personality who is also black, that he is the beneficiary of “white privilege.” If you haven’t heard this radio broadcast, you absolutely have to listen to it.
Really: listening is not optional, not just because of the white privilege narrative that plays on an endless loop in Martin’s head, but also because of her response to facts — in this case, the fact being that Webb is black, not white:
For those who can’t get the audio to play, Webb talks about the fact that qualifications, not ethnicity or wealth matter when it comes to finding a place in the media world. To elaborate on this issue, he notes that worked across several different fields in the media and gained qualifications in all. This dialogue then ensued:
MARTIN: Well, David, that’s a whole ‘other long conversation about white privilege, the things that you have the privilege of doing that people of color don’t have the privilege of. . . .
WEBB: How do I have the privilege of white privilege?
MARTIN: David, by virtue of being a white male, you have white privilege.
WEBB: Areva, I hate to break it to you, but you should have been better prepped. I’m black … See, you went to white privilege. This is the falsehood in this. You went immediately with an assumption … You’re talking to a black man who started out in rock radio in Boston, who crossed the paths into hip-hop, rebuilding one of the greatest black stations in America, and went on to work for Fox News, where I’m told apparently blacks aren’t supposed to work, but yet you come with this assumption and you go to white privilege. That’s actually insulting!
Whether the Gillette toxic masculinity ad was marketing genius or a dangerously close market shave, it successfully triggered the internet’s meme machine.
Nike targeted a woke, youthful demographic with its Kaepernick ad. Between the publicity and the fact that its demographic was willing to put money behind its newfound adulation for Nike, that was probably a decent marketing decision. I have my doubt’s about Gillette’s attempt to emulate Nike’s decision. Young “woke” people, both male and female, don’t shave as much as their elders do. By focusing on virtue signaling against approximately 50% of the population, rather than limiting itself to the virtues of its own product, Gillette (and its parent company Procter and Gamble) might have made a major miscalculation. As this screenshot taken at 11 a.m. PST today shows, people really don’t like the video:
Anyway, good idea or not, Gillette’s decision sparked a lot of funny memes, which I’m sharing here, along with a few other memes (including some leftover Schumer/Pelosi and Acosta jokes). I think you’ll enjoy them all!
Women in combat isn’t bad only because of physical stamina and unit cohesion issues. The Three Ps (peeing, periods, and pregnancy) also militate against it.
Heather MacDonald, undoubtedly one of the most brilliant conservative writers and thinkers around, has written about the military’s decision, based upon Obama administration dictates, to water down physical standards to allow women to serve in combat units. The article is behind a pay wall at the Wall Street Journal, but you might be able to access it through Outline.*
MacDonald begins by reminding readers that the Marine Corps did a lengthy study in 2015 that eventually revealed what any sentient being already knows: women do not have the same abilities as men and, most specifically, they lack those physical abilities that serve best in combat situations:
The all-male teams greatly outperformed the integrated teams, whether on shooting, surmounting obstacles or evacuating casualties. Female Marines were injured at more than six times the rate of men during preliminary training—unsurprising, since men’s higher testosterone levels produce stronger bones and muscles. Even the fittest women (which the study participants were) must work at maximal physical capacity when carrying a 100-pound pack or repeatedly loading heavy shells into a cannon.
Leftists, of course, never allow facts to interfere with or, God forbid, override theory. That’s why Ash Carter, who was Obama’s Secretary of Defense (and who was a lifelong desk jockey who never served in the military), nevertheless went ahead and ordered that the U.S. military open combat roles to women.
Carter further mandated that the military create “gender neutral” standards for admission to combat units. The only way to do this, of course, was for the military to lower standards to ensure that some visible percentage of women could qualify for combat units.** For the Marines, that meant doing away with the requirement that combatants be able to carry their own equipment. MacDonald notes that “The weapons-company hike during the IOC is now ‘gender neutral,’ meaning that officers can hand their pack to a buddy if they get tired, rather than carrying it for the course’s full 10 miles.”
Trying to force women into combat units hasn’t just downgraded combat troops’ physical military readiness. Adding women to the mix has also interfered with discipline and morale:
A Marine commander who served in Afghanistan described to me how the arrival of an all-female team tasked with reaching out to local women affected discipline on his forward operating base. Until that point, rigorous discipline had been the norm. But when four women—three service members and a translator—arrived, the post’s atmosphere changed overnight from a “stern, businesslike place to that of an eighth-grade dance.” The officer walked into a common room one day to find the women clustered in the center. They were surrounded by eager male Marines, one of whom was doing a handstand.
Another Marine officer, who was stationed on a Navy ship after 9/11, told me that a female officer had regular trysts with an enlisted sailor in the engine room. Marine Cpl. Remedios Cruz, one of the first women to join the infantry, was discharged late last year after admitting to a sexual relationship with a male subordinate. Army Sgt. First Class Chase Usher was relieved of his leadership position for a consensual relationship with a female soldier that began almost immediately after she arrived at his newly gender-integrated unit in Fort Bragg, N.C.
After describing problems so obvious that any fifth grader could have predicted them, but that still managed to elude the best social justice warrior minds both in and out of the military, MacDonald chastises the Trump administration for not withdrawing from this misguided policy. She points out that, while Trump challenged the effort to put transgender individuals (who have a 40% suicide rate, both before and after medical intervention) into the military, he did so on the narrow ground that taxpayers shouldn’t be stuck with the cost of their sex mutilation surgeries. MacDonald argues that “those costs are minute compared with the future medical bills for women’s combat-battered bodies. And women pose a far greater challenge to combat-unit cohesion than do transgender troops, because of their numbers and the nature of sexual attraction.”
There’s more in MacDonald’s excellent article, but I have a few points of my own to make. These are points refine on a post I wrote six years ago, when Leon Panetta greenlighted lifting the ban on women in combat. [Read more…]
I’d meant to cover more topics, but between illegal immigration, Russiagate, and pedophilia, I’ve think I’ve written enough.
I don’t know why, but it took forever for me to get a sharp focus on what’s wrong with the Leftist arguments claiming it’s immoral to house illegal immigrants, especially children, in large, not-cozy facilities. I know, of course, the purpose behind this housing, such as the requirement (already applicable under Obama) that children being held for longer times must be separated from adults (aka potential pedophiles).
Somehow, though, it was this video that highlighted for me just how stupid the Leftist argument is:
@ScottAdamsSays, @ChrisCoons is in full spin mode. He was mind reading @SpeakerPelosi to avoid being called out as a liar. pic.twitter.com/nFhwmurb4s
— Helios Helium (@heliosiamallfa1) January 13, 2019
What jumped out at me was all that high falutin’ stuff about “immorality” which Coons then immediately paired with “children in cages.” That juxtaposition triggered . . . deep thoughts.
The imagery about “children in cages” is deliberately intended to make us think of what the Nazis did all over Europe, the Japanese did all over Asia, and all totalitarian governments have done at all times and in all places. In all those cases, the government is the aggressor. To further its nefarious purposes, whether to occupy territory, pacify perceived enemies, or exterminate entire peoples, it hunts people down (especially children) and imprisons them in cages. This is indeed immoral.
Here, however, our government is not the aggressor. It is entirely passive. It is the illegal aliens who are storming our borders. The government is simply doing the best it can to deal with the onslaught – including putting children in areas that, while lacking in charm, theoretically protect them from predators. Moreover, these predators are not US government agents. Instead, they are the people with whom they are traveling, many of whom are not their parents but are criminals taking advantage of our laxness in handling “families” with “their” children. [Read more…]
Jim Acosta wants to be the burr under Trump’s saddle, but instead, as these memes show, Jim Acosta is the gift that keeps on giving, at least meme-wise.
CNN’s Jim Acosta went to the border to prove Trump wrong on the border wall, but he ended up doing the opposite!@realDonaldTrump just couldn’t pass on the chance to thank him personally! 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/7vmwBHq9V4
— BlazeTV (@BlazeTV) January 11, 2019
TRUMP: Good job yesterday, I appreciate your sales pitch
ACOSTA: I didn’t see any danger on the border Mr. President.
TRUMP: That’s because we had a wall.
The debate about the border wall provides an excellent way to contrast two incoming freshman congress critters: Dan Crenshaw and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
I’m with those conservatives who believe that we need to take Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seriously. It’s true that, thanks to her years at an American college, she went from a happy, laughing, dancing middle class girl to an angry Leftist harridan. And it’s true that her ideology is the same one that was responsible for over 100 million deaths in the 20th century, not to mention the fear and unhappiness that plagued easily another billion people in the same time. And it’s also true that her grasp of facts is, to say the least, weak if not out-and-out dishonest.
All the above is true, but what’s also true is that Ocasio-Cortez is excellent at social media, she’s pretty (if you like crazy-eyed angry women who hide behind kittenish cuteness), and the media adores her . . . just as they adored Barack Obama. The media has been a kingmaker before, and it plans simultaneously to protect Ocasio-Cortez from her idiocies while promoting her mediagenic charisma.
Ocasio-Cortez isn’t ready to be President any time soon (for no other reason than that she’s too young), but she can be a power broker. After all, we’ve learned never to underestimate a young, photogenic, telegenic Leftist media darling. As it is, it will take decades before America – indeed, the world — recovers from Obama’s ideologically-driven presidency.
Despite the small pocket of voters that elected her to Congress, Ocasio-Cortez is still a presence. With that in mind, please consider what she has to say about a wall securing our southern border – a wall, not to entrap people in the way of the Berlin Wall, but a wall intended to created an orderly way for genuine asylum seekers to present themselves at the US border, and a wall, moreover, that will protect Americans from people who break into our country, steal low-paying jobs almost solely for the benefit of rich white people, and who periodically commit violent crimes, the but-for cause of which is their unauthorized entry into the US: [Read more…]
The Schumer and Pelosi meme is alive and well at the Bookworm Room, along with lots of immigration posters and other cool and interesting political posters.
On the border wall, a surprisingly uncharismatic Trump showed he loved America and Americans, while Democrats succeeded only in showing they despise Trump.
Having had some time to think about Trump’s address, as well as the official and unofficial rebuttals, I have a few thoughts, none particularly deep or meaningful. I therefore offer them for what they’re worth:
Trump spoke about the American people. He made it plain that he is working to benefit them, especially those in the front lines of dealing with the harm wrought by people who ought never to have been here in the first place.
Pelosi and Schumer spoke about Trump. Their hatred was manifest and should cause people to wonder whether their working for the good of Americans or simply to import voters, along with attendant drugs and violence.
Ocasio-Cortez spoke about garble-gooble fizwitz aliens blumpf Americans karpoffez deelywhop clum Marx shcniszzsle open borders. It continues to behoove us to take her seriously and to make sure that Americans understand that she represents the up-and-coming generation of young Democrats.
Trump did not say a single word about race. Nevertheless, he was instantly attacked for being racist. There is nothing racist about insisting that people who enter the country do so after knocking on the front door and asking for permission, rather than by leaping over the back fence, breaking through the kitchen window and, in some cases, poisoning the food, raping the women and children, and killing a family member or two. This is about behavior, not race.
CBS was so busy “fact checking” Trump that it inadvertently and absolutely proved that he understated the horrific attacks on Latin American women inveigled into making the march to the American border. CBS then did the only thing a modern mainstream media outlet could do, which was to delete its inadvertently pro-Trump, anti-illegal immigration fact-check. [Read more…]
I’ve come to two conclusions about ads within my posts: (a) I earn almost nothing from them and (b) they’re visual clutter that slows loading.
I’m therefore about to embark on an experiment with a new way of (possibly) generating revenue from my blog: a donation button that, in theory, gives those inclined to do so an easy way to leave me tips, whether through PayPal or a credit card.
(This is the point at which I should do the shtick about the price of a cup of coffee or a monthly subscription to a newspaper, but I’ll spare you.)
For a while at least, you’ll see the following at the bottom of my posts. I’d like to know what you think, of course. You don’t have to give anything, but do press buttons and see how it works. I’d like your take on this experiment.
When it comes to confiscatory taxes, up-and-coming Progressive politicians are honest in their desires, but dishonest or misinformed about their facts.
I’m developing quite the soft spot for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It’s not that I think she’s either intelligent or that her ideas are good. To the contrary, I find her somewhat stupid, astonishingly ill-informed, and ideologically dangerous. Still, Ocasio-Cortez she has a singular virtue which we need to recognize, and that is the fact that she speaks honestly about Progressive goals, all of which are imaginary unicorns, and the way in which Progressives believe they can harness those unicorns. So it was that, on 60 Minutes, Ocasio-Cortez spoke freely about her desire to use her government position to enact confiscatory taxes:
‘You look at our tax rates back in the ’60s, and when you have a progressive tax-rate system, your tax rate, let’s say, from $0 to $75,000 may be 10% or 15%, etc. But once you get to the tippy tops, on your 10 millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60% or 70%.’
Perhaps worried about being associated too strongly with Venezuela, which went from one of Latin America’s most profitable countries to one of the poorest countries in the world thanks to socialist policies, Ocasio-Cortez insists that her dreams are limited to having America copy the wonders of socialist Sweden:
Anderson Cooper: When people hear the word socialism, they think Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela. Is that what you have in mind?
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Of course (LAUGH) not. What we have in mind— and what of my— and my policies most closely re— resemble what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden.
Julian Castro, Obama’s House and Urban Development secretary and current Democrat presidential hopeful, thinks a 70% tax rate is for pikers. While he ostensibly supports Ocasio-Cortez’s 70% top marginal rate proposal, he seems to believe that confiscatory taxes can – and should — go even higher:
“There was a time in this country where the top marginal tax rate was over 90 percent, even during Reagan’s era in the 1980s it was around 50 percent” the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, said.
Castro also floated “that we get more serious about making sure the corporations pay their fair share,” so the country can fund policy programs like “Medicare-for-All,” as well as universal pre-kindergarten and higher education.
“During this campaign, if I run, I’m going to be very up front with the American people on how we would do that because I think that they are owed that, but it is worth it. It is worth it in this country for us to do that,” he said, vowing not to be “a single issue candidate.”
Before I get to the facts, as opposed to the fantasies, that drive those two hard-Left, attractive, young Hispanic politicians (be afraid, be very afraid), I want to make just a few points about that whole “fair share” thing:
First, “fair share” is an entirely subjective standard, so the phrase is meaningless political waffle.
Second, in a free country the government should not create a sliding scale determining what is fair for some but not fair for others.
Third, if you want “fair,” a flat tax makes sense. Everyone should pay 10% or, alternatively, there should be a flat 10% tax on all goods except for food. Everyone will pay at least a little, but the rich will pay a lot — and without wiggling out through clever tax dodges.
Fourth, as a subset issue related to that 10% tax idea, I hate the way people conflate percentages with fixed values. I was raised to tip service providers 15%. With inflation, people started saying, “We have to tip them 20%.” It was impossible to explain to the ones advocating this 20% rate that percentages are always proportionately the same. You don’t need to raise them as prices go up, because the 15% amount automatically increases with the inflationary price adjustments. If a 10% tax is a fair rate, it should be fair for everyone.
Fifth, when discussing taxes, we need to discuss those who currently don’t pay, as well as those who pay disproportionately. I believe everyone who votes should have skin in the game. This leads to two proposals: Either everyone pays something (perhaps that 10% flat tax or a 10% flat sales tax) or those Americans who pay nothing (the takers, not the payers), don’t get to vote.
Okay, now back to Castro’s and Ocasio-Cortez’s honestly expressed opinions about taxing the rich. As to those, I have three points to touch upon: [Read more…]
The climate change canard is like the old joke about the Soviet Union where “the future is known; it’s the past that keeps changing.”
The basis for claims of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming rest on the information derived from our historic temperature records — serially adjusted and then fed into computer programs. Those numbers are simply not trustworthy. The latest to weigh in on this travesty is Scott Adams, who finds no indicia of reliability in those numbers. It is well worth a listen. He starts on the topic at the 11:00 minute mark and speaks for about nine minutes on it:
I called this the “Trump wall illustrated edition” but it’s also about Stupid Leftists, the Second Amendment, Gender Madness, and Silly Stuff in our world.
