Omar and I continued to have infrequent conversations over the next few years. I last saw him at a dinner at his father’s house in January. We talked about the presidential election and debated our views of the candidates that were running – he liked Hillary Clinton and I liked Bernie Sanders.
Last weekend, a 29-year-old Islamist radical slaughtered 49 innocent people at a gay nightclub in central Florida. In response, Congress must immediately strip taxpayer funding from Planned Parenthood. This well-funded special interest group generously finances friendly legislators' campaigns, in exchange for which those politicians obstinately oppose any and all common sense restrictions on abortion -- regardless of strong public support for increased regulations. They are on the wrong side of history. The American people are horrified by Planned Parenthood's business model, which relies on the unregulated killing of unborn humans. This systematic extinguishing of human life fuels a culture of death in which Orlando shooter Omar Mateen marinated for nearly three decades. Planned Parenthood has contributed heavily to this morally-polluted environment, which devalues and dehumanizes innocent life, just like radical Islamism does.There is a word for Planned Parenthood's role in this form of terrorism: complicity. Democrats in Congress must be held to account for their routine legislative defense of this organization, which should be stripped of all taxpayer funding as soon as possible. The pro-death atmosphere Cecile Richards' outfit helps create continues to put Americans at risk. Have we learned nothing from these acts of terrorism? An all-male Supreme Court may have ruled that abortion is a constitutionally-protected right, even though our founding document is silent on the issue, but that supposed "right" is killing us right now. Granted, cutting off public funding for Planned Parenthood may not have prevented what happened at the Pulse nightclub, and it may not stop future atrocities. But it we can save just one life, not to mention the countless lives targeted by abortionists, it will be worth it.
“Omar Mateen shattered the tenuous, hard-fought sense of personal safety that many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have begun to feel as the movement for equality has made significant gains in recent years. His bullets and the blood he left behind that early morning were a reminder that in many corners of the country, gay and transgender people are still regarded as sinners and second-class citizens who should be scorned.While the precise motivation for the rampage remains unclear, it is evident that Mr. Mateen was driven by hatred toward gays and lesbians. Hate crimes don’t happen in a vacuum. They occur where bigotry is allowed to fester, where minorities are vilified and where people are scapegoated for political gain. Tragically, this is the state of American politics, driven too often by Republican politicians who see prejudice as something to exploit, not extinguish.”
Noting that President Obama had officially endorsed Mrs. Clinton on Thursday, Mr. Trump added, “First time ever, by the way, a president of the United States endorsed somebody under criminal investigation.”But that assertion also goes beyond the known facts. The FBI is investigating Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private server, but agents have not yet interviewed her and it is not clear if she herself is a target of a criminal inquiry.
As an immigrant to this country, I have always been amazed at the lack of understanding and cross-pollination that exists between small and big-town America. Few of my urban American-born IT coworkers have ever traveled the country by car as I do, on smaller roads through small towns and farms. The stories and photos I bring back makes them wonder as if they are from some forgotten Asian jungle - and perhaps reinforce their reasoning and resolve never to visit such backward places. But the people who live there are mostly honest folk - simply Americans. And, coming from another culture coming apart under the assault of globalization, it breaks my heart to speak to them and listen to their stories. I am of course, generalizing , but many really feel left behind : it seems in a multicultural America, bent on integrating the latest fashionable minority, and catering through main media channels, fashion, movies, art and politics to larger urban centers and their dwellers - there is little place left for the God-abiding, law-respecting, family-loving, hard-working individual that used to be called the common man and it's now called a bigot, gun-toting, racist, homophobic troglodyte. Who speaks for these guys among today's presidential candidates? You have one guess.
ANDBecause my aim here is to present analysis, I'm going to try and keep my personal feelings out of this. But as a proud former-member of the Working Class who comes from a Working Class family, and still lives among the Working Class (my neighbors are made up of Marines, electricians, and construction workers), I think it is fair to assume that I speak for many when I say that the unforgivable assaults on the decency, integrity, intelligence (and even the right to exist), of Trump's working class supporters only served to further breed an already-exploding resentment against the Republican Establishment, and by extension their preferred candidates.In my 35 years of watching politics, I have never seen a political party's elites attack and demean millions of their own voters....Even Bill Kristol's hand-picked third party savior is guilty of this.Not only is this class supremacism morally illiterate, un-American, and wildly hypocritical (especially when you are accusing others of bigotry), tactically it is a suicide mission.
Once #NeverTrump became an official hashtag and movement, all the principled criticisms of Trump (many of which are valid), were lost beneath what was #NeverTrump's oft-stated goal: to game the convention rules in order to disenfranchise The People's Choice.Hey, I've heard all the arguments… The fuzzy math (which I'll get to) of Trump failing to achieve 50% support; the hale and hearty "delegate rules are delegate rules" pronouncements; the argument that we are not a direct democracy…Sorry, no.The Smart People laughing like Thurston Howell III at Trump for failing to grasp at why it was "perfectly valid" that he would win a state's primary and then lose that state's delegates, were also laughing at me and millions of other voters equally infuriated.I've been following presidential politics since I was 14 years old. I'm no dummy. And I had no idea the GOP primary game was rigged in this way.Rationalize all you want, the bottom line is that you cannot as a political party present and promote what looks like a public election for a nominee and then pull the rug out from under your own voters when it doesn't go your way."Ha ha! You didn't read the fine print," is not an argument.It's a con.
Or the conference before the Visegrad 4 one or something like that. Lots of people earnestly talking about cooperation and Europe and stuff. Definitely the B team on display which was why I just scraped into an invite. Frances Coppolla and I did a panel, should Greece leave the euro? Which Frances has already talked about (my answer, Hell Yes, everyone should leave, it’s an idiot way to run a continent).The interesting bit was how scary it was in fact. The groupthink is strong in this arena. There is no questioning of the goal, even if it’s not clearly delineated. That ever closer union is just assumed: how to bring it about being the only difference anyone has. I was the only truly eurosceptic person there and I wasn’t on the panel discussing eurosceptics for example (Frances is reasonable on this subject where I am not).At one stage I pointed out that fiscal union simply was not going to happen. Europeans just are not going to allow 15-20% of GDP to be distributed through Brussels, which is what would be needed for the automatic stabilisers to operate properly so that the eurozone comes even close to being an optimal currency area. To do that really does mean German taxes paying Greek pensions.It. Will. Not. Happen.Not this century at least.Everyone was shocked: how could you say such a thing? And anyway, we need to work out how to make this happen not think of why it cannot.
Hollywood is under high pressure from various left-wing groups to bring its business fully in line with political correctness. After the Southern California ACLU claimed that the movie industry didn’t have enough female directors, no fewer than two federal agencies launched investigations into Tinseltown’s hiring practices. Blacks have threatened to boycott the Academy Awards if the Motion Picture Academy doesn’t start handing out Affirmative Action Oscars. And Twitter pests are pushing studios to make Captain America gay, Princess Elsa lesbian, and James Bond female.In response, one of Hollywood’s top studios has now announced plans for a new tentpole picture scheduled for release next Kwaanza—a superhero extravaganza entitled Social Justice League of America: Age of Imaginary Problems. The blockbuster will be written and directed by Lena Dunham, who will also play the lead role of Cecily Shrillwine.According to a studio press release, Shrillwine is a brilliant nuclear physicist who angrily quits MIT after a sexist professor evicts her from class merely because she doesn’t know any math. Shrillwine retires to her private laboratory hidden on the cliffs of Mount Grievance and there begins a series of secret experiments to determine exactly how little a person can contribute to society while still complaining about being underpaid.
On Thursday, news website SourceFed posted a video showing how results are manipulated. It explained that when users type "Hillary Clinton Ind" into Google, the top recommendations are "India" and "Indiana." When users type the same thing into competitors Bing or Yahoo!, the top result is "indictment," a word that does not appear anywhere in Google's recommendations. The disparity came in spite of the fact that "indictment" is searched on Google eight times more often than "Hillary Clinton India."
The judge may not be a member of "bad" groups, because of ethics and professional, judicial employment reasons. Being a member of a legally distinct group is a technicality that the judge may trot out to explain away membership and still remain in bounds ethically.HOWEVER, since 100% of the population infers that LR Lawyers is de facto LR membership, the desired effect is achieved. He is "one of us" for those who care about such matters.It is extremely duplicitous, and in my book, it ought to be shunned in the highest judicial circles--at least the Senate could use that as a non-confirmation criteria.Being a member of an ethnic affiliation group is not problematic per se. What becomes problematic is when the group "advocates", and even more so if the demographic is a sizable fraction of the population. The likelihood of a built-in conflict of interest increases dramatically with the size of the demographic.
“Curiel looks human on the outside, and he has passed as human for decades. But Cooper made it clear in his interviews yesterday that while science understands that 100% of humans are biased about just about everything, this robot judge is not susceptible to being influenced by his life experiences. It sounds deeply implausible, but no one on CNN challenged Cooper’s implication that Judge Curiel is the only bias-free entity in the universe. Ergo, he must be a robot.”
Read the whole thingThirty years ago, most Americans felt they could, to some degree, relate to the people who ruled over them. The politicians did not tool around in armored vehicles or have armed men in mirrored sunglasses guarding them. The so-called “public servants” were not highly compensated, even if they did not work very hard. The members of the commentariat were few in number and they worked hard to present themselves as normal people. There was a gap, for sure, but it did not feel like a huge gap.A lot has changed and today it feels to most people like we have been colonized by pod people from another planet. They sort of look like us and make familiar noises, but they are not us. They are alien. Every day they say things that suggest they are just visiting our planet. President Obama makes the sort of “gaffes” a person makes when they have been trained to sound like a person, but maybe did not pay strict attention in human class. Hillary Clinton often sounds like a stroke victim learning to talk again.
Read the whole thing.Imagine that you can go back in time and have a conversation with your younger self, maybe explaining events of today. Since my audience is getting younger all of a sudden, I’ll keep this bit of make believe relatable for all ages. Imagine you go back to 2005 and meet your 2005 self with all the knowledge and experience of your 2016 self. I’m picking 2005 because that precedes the collapse of the Bush presidency and the beginning of the manic phase of the Great Progressive Awakening that started in the 90’s.Now, 2016 you sits down with the 2005 you and says, “In a decade, our black Muslim president, who may be bisexual (Google Reggie Love), will issue an edict forcing schools to let mentally ill men in dresses into restrooms, so they can watch your daughter pee. The Republican Party will sneak a provision into a mammoth budget bill legalizing this edict. When challenged, the President will claim the Christian Bible requires it.”It is reasonable to assume that your 2005 self would think your 2016 self had gone insane or was pulling some absurd joke. A normal person in 2005 could not imagine that serious people would be talking about trannies at all, much less allowing them a free shot at children in restrooms. Think about it, in 2005, Obama and Hillary Clinton were against homosexual marriage. Now, Clinton is a click away from coming out as a lesbian.How in the hell does this happen?
Over on the legal battleground, the Supreme Court recently decided that marriage, which, we will recall, is a form of institutionalized misogynist sexual exploitation, is also a fundamental human right, and should be available to any two humans who want to get matrimonial. That’s okay with me: I believe our society will benefit from more stable relationships, whomever the participants.But that’s not good enough for sore winners. Now clergy will be forced by law to perform marriages for same-sex couples. While it’s still perfectly legal for a Presbyterian minister to decline to marry a couple of heterosexual Methodists simply because they aren’t members of the congregation, he will be committing a crime if he refuses to perform nuptials for two dudes who are shopping for a ceremonial backdrop. Here’s another loose end: If two women get married, which one is getting sexually exploited?
My point, I promise, and I’ll be done: is it possible that we have lost our way? When those who are said to know better entertain the possibility that a “girls” sign hung on a door is somehow discriminatory – a hate crime; maybe that’s the moment for a reality check.
Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and George Bernard Shaw all claimed to be socialists — yet the only thing these men had in common was a visceral dislike of certain hats. There's an interesting bit of film of newly-appointed Chancellor Adolf Hitler walking to the Reichstag to be officially installed. Protocol required formal attire for the occasion, including a silk hat. However the self-identified socialist (I love that term, don't you? Self-identified, it means instant authenticity even if self-identifier is a total fraud.) knew his fellow socialist hated toppers, so he carried it instead of wearing it.Anybody who isn't fundamentally stupid knows that socialism is a word without meaning. It's just virtue signaling. It's alleged opposite, capitalism, is also a meaningless word invented by socialists (two of them, actually) as a means to define an enemy. And yet a sizable majority of humanities professors self-identify as socialists, which ought to tell you something about the state of higher education in this country. Effectively a socialist is somebody who wants everything you've got — your money, your property, but especially your autonomy. A capitalist just wants your money, and in order to get it, is willing to trade something of his for it, which distinguishes the capitalist from a common thief, but not always. There are lots of different flavors of socialism, however the differences just boil down to at what level the guns come out. Many socialists try to bore you into submission — Surrender your liberty, neo-colonist scum, or dangerous tedium will ensue! — others just start shooting immediately.
