Good morning.
Grrrrr…
1. The TIME “Welcome to America” cover. This is probably worthy of a full post, but I’m really sick of this topic, and losing respect for so many previously sane and reasonable people who have become blathering “Think of the children!” zombies that I want to spit.
TIME, that dying, irrelevant, completely left-biased news magazine, grabbed one last moment in the sun with this cover:
It nicely symbolizes the media dishonesty and public manipulation regarding the border mob of children, with or without parents. I assumed that the cover was symbolic art: obviously this stand-off never occurred. But TIME used a photo of a real Honduran girl who we were told in other media reports and viral social media rants was crying because she had been separated from her mother when mom was arrested for trying to enter the country illegally. As CBS reported today, though, the little girl was really crying because her mother was apprehended at eleven o’clock at night crossing illegally into the US, the tot was tired and thirsty. She was never separated from her mother at all. Here’s the original photo:
Perfect. Fake news, through and through. If TIME wanted to make a symbolic image, the magazine was obligated to either make it clear that it was art only. Using a photo that had already been falsely represented in the news media to represent exactly what it had been falsely claimed to represent advanced a lie. Here is the original photo:
The Daily Mail got this part of the story from the girl’s father:
Denis Javier Varela Hernandez, 32, said that he had not heard from his wife Sandra, 32, who was with his two-year-old daughter Yanela Denise, for nearly three weeks until he saw the image of them being apprehended in Texas.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Hernandez, who lives in Puerto Cortes, Honduras, says that he was told yesterday that his wife and child are being detained at a family residential center in Texas but are together and are doing ‘fine.’ …
He revealed that his wife had previously mentioned her wish to go to the United States for a ‘better future’ but did not tell him nor any of their family members that she was planning to make the trek.
“I didn’t support it. I asked her, why? Why would she want to put our little girl through that? But it was her decision at the end of the day….‘I don’t have any resentment for my wife, but I do think it was irresponsible of her to take the baby with her in her arms because we don’t know what could happen.”
2. Charles Krauthammer. Unfortunately, this is what I will most remember about the conservative columnist and commentator who died yesterday. After the first Republican candidates debate, the one in which Megyn Kelly called out Donald Trump on his habitual misogyny, Krauthammer, today being lauded for his brilliance and perception, stated unequivocally that Trump had proved himself “not ready for prime time,” and that hos poor performance in the debate had effectively ended his candidacy.
And I agreed with him.
3. I truly am in a rotten mood this morning, and this is probably part of the reason why: From the New York Post:
In the nearly four years since Eric Garner was killed in a struggle with an NYPD officer across the street from the park, locals claim the area has gone to the wolves, with cops hesitant to lay down the law at the risk of igniting another firestorm.
“Guys are not going to risk their jobs anymore,” said one high-ranking law enforcement source familiar with the precinct. “We’ll just let you have that area.”
The same phenomenon is underway in Baltimore, after the city’s attorney tried to convict six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray without evidence, and in many other communities as well. Garner, you recall, died in an accident after excessive force was used on him by several officers when he resisted arrest. Nonetheless, his demise has been termed a murder by Black Lives Matter and others. Police, quite reasonably, have determined that pro-active police work isn’t worth the risk, and law-breakers are taking advantage. This sequence—a serious societal problem, government efforts to address it, negative focus on the entire effort based on individual examples where enforcement has been mishandled, biased and emotional reporting by the news media, public backlash and ultimate capitulation to the conduct by politicians, is becoming a primary engine of societal rot.We will end up with nationally legalized pot, and eventually other recreational and more addictive drugs, along with the inevitable ruination of lives, family and business that adding more destructive legal drugs to the scourges of nicotine and alcohol, because of the same process. We will have unrestrained illegal immigration because, as with drugs, the law-breakers are in the process of being romanticized as victims, and those attempting to enforce the law demonized as villains. The device aims at the inattentive, the emotional, the sentimental and the ideological and the ignorant, and that is apparently a sufficient majority to destroy societal values, common sense, and the rule of law.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is why I’m in a rotten mood…
4. Meanwhile, back in my home town, erasing Tom Yawkey wasn’t enough…Now some activists are agitating to change the name of Boston’s famous Faneuil Hall, one of the most important landmarks in the city. Why? Oh, come on, guess. Faneuil, whatever his first name was, was a slave=trader, among other things. I lived in Boston until I was 25, and spent many hours in and around Faneuil Hall, and never thought about or cared who the landmark was named after, because after a couple of centuries it doesn’t matter. Faneuil is now the name of a place. What matters is that this place was a cradle of the American revolution and the abolitionist movement. Built and named in 1742, the Hall was a meeting place for colonists before and during the Revolution, and later was a gathering place for others seeking societal change, including abolitionists and women’s rights activist. To this day it is a site for political and civic events.
The idea of renaming the iconic building is part of the same historical airbrushing mania that has led to toppling statues of important figures in American history across the country, and even the banishing of the names of some of the nation’s founders and most important leaders, such as Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Woodrow Wilson. Boston, as much as any American city, is a living museum, and the airbrushers and progressive mind-control mob can have a field day if there isn’t a goal-line stand by city leaders soon. I don’t know who Boylston Street, Tremont Street, Newbury Street, and Walden Pond were named after, but I’m sure the statue-topplers will be able to dig up dirt on them too.
_____________
Sources : Ed Morrissey(#1); NBC (#4)
Ethics Alarms 
#4 Can we skip to the part were the leftists realize their ultimate goal and move out of the US and repatriate to wherever they deem to be the ancestral land of “the white people’ (white with a hwa sound) and all the normal people can stay around, since the leftists would not enforce their will on the others with any weapons, because that would be antithetical to their pacifist ways. It’s just such lazy thinking, that we need to “amend” for all the privilege, and so on. The only logical end I can muster for all the compassionate white leftists is to engage in a Jonestown style mass suicide to protest the injustice and unfairness their existence produces in the world. (Disclosure: I am of the Caucasian persuasion)
Dear commentators, I am engaging in jest, so do not take everything to heart. But all this nonsense is dumb, facile, juvenile and tiresome! I hope one day the adults will arrive to reign in.
Sounds like you’re in a bad mood too.
I had a bad morning commute, so I’m a bit sour as well.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for reasonable adults to prevail. Their voices are either drowned out or bullied into submission.
Present company excluded
On the front page of our local paper they reported that an immediate family member of Freddy Gray was given PBJ for attempting to smuggle drugs into the MD Correctional Institute in Hagerstown. I guess this is used for reparations.
PBJ?
As in, the sandwich?
Really do not know
Probation before Judgement
Thanks!
That’s how I read it and figured if that’s how Maryland handles those crimes I’m going to start smuggling drugs immediately.
I would at least hold out for a patty melt.
I just finished a book called “The House By the Lake” about a small village in Germany over a period of about a century. The village ended up part of East Germany and, as such, went through nearly 50 years of Stasi, the Wall (which cut the village off from the aforementioned lake), the political oppression and all that entailed. During that time, a statue of the famous German Communist Ernst Thalmann was put up.
After the Wall fell and Germany reunited, there was talk about removing the monument. The residents of the village decided to keep it up because it was a reminder of their history.
#1. Anyone else think of the Phan Thi Kim Phuc Napalm girl photo in relation to this? Guess some things never change.
Me! Me! I did! I even had written her into the post, but cut that section!
Yup. Speaking of bad moods & drugs, at 2am last night a guy parked by our house playing loud music while on his phone. My wife after 20 min told the guy she was going to call the cops. He said “sorry…I’m really high.”
Legalized pot has its drawbacks. Sadly some psychologists want to legalize mushrooms here for “therapeutic” purposes including “spiritual connectedness”. I think we need a head exploding emoji.
https://www.oregonlive.com/marijuana/index.ssf/2018/05/first_marijuana_are_magic_mush.html
As if that makes it excusable. People with no boundaries or situational awareness are tiresome.
Hope the idiot turned it down so you could get back to sleep.
Psychedelic drugs were developed as alternatives to early antidepressants. Early tests showed extremely promising results. Patient lives were permanently improved after a few doses. However, samples were leaked, and people started using and abusing the drugs recreationally, prompting all further research to be shutdown.
Decriminalization of these drugs would be a grave nightmare – literally, because drugs that cause permanent positive change in controlled situations can easily do the the opposite in the chaotic kinds of situations where drug use is common.
I find it amazing that people are decrying the opiod crisis and also clamoring for recreational drug use.
1. It could be worse. Trump could be pissing on the girl.
4. Pretty sure they won’t re-name it after Kevin McHale.
They are suggesting Crispus Attucks (of course), who, if he had been white, wouldn’t be remembered at all. Being the first casualty of the Boston Massacre (maybe—the record is mighty murky) is pure moral luck. I have trouble calling him and the other victims “heroes,” as it is clear that they never expected the soldiers to shoot, and were harassing them in part because they felt safe doing so.
I think the thinking on the left at this point is similar to early Catholic thinking regarding sainthood. Just as someone who shed his blood for Christ while not resisting evil was the highest form of moral exemplar then, someone who suffers or loses his life in a progressive cause while not fighting back is the highest form of moral exemplar now. Both were also very useful for propaganda purposes, since martyrs are very hard to discredit and almost impossible to silence. They also can’t sink themselves by later acts.
There seems to be a widespread belief, particularly on the left, that anyone who actually engages in violence or bloodshed loses a huge amount of moral standing, and that the highest moral status is reserved for those who never raise a hand, no matter how justified, especially if they are people of color. The thing is, that doesn’t really fit Crispus Attacks, who may or may not have been armed with a club and prepared to use it against the British soldiers. Never mind, he’s a person of color and he underwent a violent death, renaming the place after him is just reparations for the place being donated by a slaveholder.
TWO keyboards, and special credit for the Kevin McHale reference.
1. Time has just shot a hole in its credibility and the credibility of the whole movement, but it won’t matter, because emotion doesn’t need to be credible.
2. Just remember that he also said that conservatives think liberals are stupid, but liberals think conservatives are evil.
3. The locals wanted the police to back off, the police did, and now the area has gone to shit. This should come as no surprise. I don’t know what they thought – did they really think that “community organizers” and other do-gooders would turn the place into some kind of garden spot with fully staffed shifts of volunteers to water the flower beds daily, a food bank, and Barefoot Boogie every Friday? The organizers have moved on to where the trouble is, their role is to stir the trouble more and get money, concessions, etc., not do local good deeds.
4. For the record, his name was Peter Faneuil (actually of Huguenot descent), an uber-wealthy trader in all things including slaves, who made a number of charitable gifts and bequests, including the building that now bears his name. The idea of renaming it has been around since Charlottesville, when a local group pushed the idea of renaming it after Crispus Attucks, a black man who was first to be killed in the Boston Massacre. This isn’t about anything other than the ongoing attempts by the left to glom a monopoly on honor.
Steve-O-in-NJ Re #2, proof of your claim: I have a Facebook “friend” who thinks that between being of mixed race, not sure what mix of what races, and a degree in art makes him the supreme arbiter of right and wrong and more woke than anyone else in the whole world just posted that anyone who does not donate money to remove Trump (who he cannot refer to by name but only by epithet) by whatever means necessary and reunite these children with their parents immediately is so evil that they should be killed, except for himself, of course, as he does not have the money to do so since “no one has the integrity to hire him for a decent job [since he is so superior in a variety of ways is to be plainly understood from his context]”. He doesn’t believe in Hell, but is reconsidering the idea for anyone who treats Trump with even a modicum of respect. I, as a fairly far right conservative, do think that he is a screaming idiot who shouldn’t contaminate the gene pool, even in the shallow end and am rather grateful that most women find him to be a creeper. He, as stated above, feels that my respect for the office, if not the official, of president (I hate Donald Trump, but I grant President Donald Trump as much respect as I granted Barak Obama, a man I detest more than Trump if it is possible, when he had the office) is worthy of shame, public ridicule, and even perhaps death.
I’m wearing out the ‘Snooze for 30 days’ function on Facebook this week.
Why is this guy still on your fb friends list?
1. Maybe the word news needs a new f word descriptor instead of fake.
3. Ignorance combined with fear can do horrible things to society and elected governments. Baltimore, New York, Chicago and more are stuck with the fruit of that chemistry. No (real) justice, no peace…got that right.
I’m ready for “Escape from New York” justice!
Careful what you wish for…
Can we ever realize that these places and people are a product of their time, and then use these names as a chance to discuss our past cultural mistakes. If we take erase history we are doomed to forget, and repeat.
Here in the USA they recently renamed my Asperger’s syndrome as Dr. Aspergerwas a eugenics proponent, who worked with Nazis. Of course what is not mentioned is he was using his research to limit the autistic subjects they wanted to euthanize. Ok eugenics not good. But the man did discover the syndrome, not person in our past has a perfect record. Should we erase their better achievements to satisfy our guilt over their past guilt. Fortunately the uk and commonwealth countries have kept the past.
(4.) Here is one example for dealing with changes in social norms which does not involve re-naming things.
At the Little Bighorn National Battlefield, there is a monument known as Fort Keogh Memorial Monument of 1881 (also referred to as the Bear Paw Monument). It was originally erected at Fort Keogh and subsequently was moved.
The inscription on the monument reads:
To the officers and soldiers killed or who died of wounds received in action in the territory of Montana while clearing the district of the Yellowstone of hostile Indians.
And, on a sign in front of the monument:
PLEASE NOTE: “Hostile Indians” is in historical context with a term used for Native American enemies of the United States during the 19th century. The historic structure is protected by the 1966 Historic Preservation Act and cannot be changed to reflect modern social norms.
Just finished a book about Custer and the Last Stand today. Myles Keogh was an Irishman who fought in Europe for the papal states, then came to the U.S. and fought in the Battle of Gettysburg on the Union side. He was killed at Little Bighorn.
I approve of signs putting persons and verbiage in historical context like you describe.
Anyone want to start a pool on when a mainstream news source will cover a serious proposal to rename Columbus, OH; Columbia, SC; or the District of Columbia? Or has that story already happened?
I should’ve started one on Faneuil Hall. I recently finished a book about the Revolution. I learned about Peter Faneuil being a slave trader and thought, “Ooh, how long will the building have that name?”
We should force Colombia to change their name as well. Using force, if necessary.
A child brought to the U.S. through no fault of her own.
The unasked question: whose fault is it?
The answer: her mother is the cause of this anguish.
-Jut
Not when it can be one more way to demonize President Trump.
A lot of what is happening in the USA looks to me like the work of anarchists and I just cannot decide whether it is a huge conspiracy or a natural consequence of libertine thinking.