Good morning from Austin!
I really woke up in the Austin Marriott feeling pretty well for the first time in over a month. The bad news is that I might just have to stay here forever…
1. Tales of the double standard. The news media almost universally thinks that Nancy Pelosi’s sarcastic applause routine at the State of the Union this week was hilarious. Let’s keep this in mind the next time these people bemoan the deterioration of civic discourse and the toxic partisanship in Washington. It’s such a cliché by now that it is useless to repeat it, but I’ll say it anyway: imagine what the media reaction would have been if John Boehner or Paul Ryan had treated Barack Obama that disrespectfully during one of his speeches. They would have been up in arms in protest, and they would have been right. Or, if you like, imagine the fury from the news media if President Trump had responded in kind to Pelosi’s affront, and raised his middle finger right in her face.
At this point, he might as well.
2. Air Travel Ethics. I usually make sure that I have an aisle seat, but this time I was stuck at a window. When the plane reached the gate, the gentleman on the aside in my row just sat there, refusing to get up and allow me and the woman in the center to begin gathering our belongings from the upper bins. The woman in the center seat did everything short of saying, “Hey, ass, get up and let us out,” but he just sat there, chatting with his friend across the aisle. In actual time, this probably delayed my exit from the plane a minute or two, but the feeling of being trapped is not pleasant. I’ve been on hundreds of flights, and this is the first time anyone deliberately blocked me in.
3. Northam-Fairfax-Herring fiasco updates!
- The Washington Post is calling for Northam to resign, saying,“His shifting and credulity-shredding explanations for the racist photograph on his medical school yearbook page, and the silence into which he then succumbed for days — after initially promising to do ‘the hard work’ of atonement and apology to restore his standing with Virginians — is simply too much.” Oh dear—this is frighteningly close to what I suggested last night…
- Ann Althouse comments…
And I think the real reason the WaPo editors are against Northam is not that they want the wearing of a Michael Jackson costume to deserve the new political death penalty. It’s that so many prominent Democrats put their reputations on the line demanding that Northam resign, and the editors don’t want to leave them exposed. But they are all exposed.
- Let’s use that cliché again, shall we? Conservative blogger Liz Shield writes this morning,
Does anyone think that either one of these jokers, Northam or Herring, would be accorded any courtesy by the media if they were Republicans? No. There would be special theme songs on cable and network news, there would be special graphics, there would be people interviewing every person that ever went to school with these blackfacers. The media would be parked outside their residences, following relatives around, going through trash. There would be confrontations by angry activists captured on video. Think of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing as a paradigm. Why aren’t we seeing this?
Presumably that last is a rhetorical question. And yet my addled Facebook friends in D.C. adamantly refuse to accept that the Washington Post is anything but a paragon of journalistic virtue. It’s not that they can explain why the paper, for example, pilloried the Covington students without checking facts, or pretended that the Obama IRS interference with the 2012 election was a “nothingburger,” they just deny that there’s mainstream media bias, and insist that the problem is in my head, probably from watching too much Sean Hannity. It’s astounding. How did they get like this? It’s like watching a family member start to insist that he is Napoleon.
- Now this: Aides say Virginia Democrat knew about sexual assault allegation against lt. governor. “Virginia Democratic Congressman Bobby Scott was made aware of allegations of sexual assault against now-Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax over a year ago by the alleged victim herself.”
Nice. “The Party of Women.”
4. Buzzfeed endorses online political censorship. The recently disgraced website news and gossip site wants to know why Twitter hasn’t censored this viral meme:
Let’s see: because it’s funny? Because Twitter shouldn’t be looking for reasons to squash political expression? Because the dumb all-white stunt deserves to be mocked, hard?
4.Sexual assault and harassment headline of the month: A Florida politician allegedly made a habit of licking men’s faces. She’s now resigned.
5. Awwwww! (Yecchhh.) HLN is gushing this morning over the story about the 10-year-old cub scout who “took a knee” during the Pledge of Allegiance. Dad says he was so proud! The kid says he was protesting “racial discrimination.” What the child was doing was virtue-signaling, and that’s all it was. The stunt had no effect or possible effect other than to call attention to him.
Somebody please explain to the kid where he’s confused, before yet another self-righteous, useless, professional narcissist is added to society.
Ethics Alarms 
Don’t forget that Rick Perry was forced to drop out of the Republican Presidential primaries (while the frontrunner) because someone said his dad rented a vacation property that had a rock that had a word spray painted on it that some people might think is a racial slur. Imagine if Rick Perry had appeared in blackface or wearing KKK robes?
That was the Washington Post. The rock said “Niggerhead.” Yes, the rock was in blackface….
(4) This is so much worse than I expected but not surprising given poundmetoo. Oakley apparently licked the city manager’s face and ‘touched him inappropriately’ while intoxicated. The city manager didn’t file a complaint because he was afraid of being fired. He finally did file a complaint against her and it seems his fears were well-founded. He was suspended by Oakley and the mayor for complaining about it.
She might have a political future in Virginia. They are going to be short a few politicians in a few weeks. I hope she updates her resume.
jvb
1. Of course the msm thinks it’s funny, brave, or both when a Democrat sasses a Republican. The other way around, not so much. The msm also thinks the current governor of New Mexico is doing a brave thing by pulling National Guard troops from the border, while they castigated Jan Brewer of Arizona for getting up in Obama’s face and warning him not to presume she was going to learn at his knee. Another day, another double standard.
2. Obnoxious, but the sad fact is you’re stuck. If you tell the guy to move he’ll just say he moves when he decides to, and not before. Then what are you going to do? Yeah, you can bluster about throwing him though the window, but where’s that going to get you?
3. Again, another day, another double standard. Democrats can do anything to women including kill them (Ted Kennedy) as long as they vote for the rest to have unfettered power to kill their kids. I wonder what that says about women.
4. They just haven’t gotten around to squelching it, or they can’t squelch it.
4 (again). Seriously? Revoke her licker license.
5. His dad’s a lib using his kid as a pawn to virtue signal. My old cubmaster and Scoutmaster wouldn’t have put up with that crap. They might have allowed Jehovah’s Witnesses to unobtrusively not participate in the flag salute, but no one would be allowed to grandstand.
Re: No. 5:
Agreed. Our scout leaders would not have put up with such actions. We would have been asked to leave the troop – and my dad was the troop LEADER!!! Sheesh.
jvb
1 Double standards
I suppose we’ll have to adapt the old saying about bad luck — “If the press didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.” Never more true than in the instant case.
2 Air travel ethics
It seems we leave our human being cards at home when we travel by air these days. Oh, for the days when everyone used to dress up in suits and ties rather than unbathed for two days with tattered jeans, bad breath and gas. That was my last experience, but what can one expect traveling to Las Vegas? He didn’t even take the hint of my breath-saver offer.
3 Northam-Fairfax-Herring
The alternative is, to them, unthinkable. I honestly think social media, the very platform you identify as friends with them on, is the problem. What they see there and share among each other to almost universal positive feedback has confirmed to them, in their minds, that they are Napoleon.
We need to invent a new term for confirmation bias driven mostly by social media accolades.
4 Buzzfeed
But of course, and it’s not just Buzzfeed. They are just the leading edge. The Daily Dot, TA Tech, The Verge, and Media Matters have joined right in. Those are just the ones I count so far. You can bet the WaPo, NYT, CNN and ABC will be right behind.
You mean man, you GOPer you. And you’re white and a man to boot!
Seriously, it is funny. It’s not funny because the KKK is funny, it’s funny because virtue-signaling like this is always stupid and deserves the harshest possible mocking. Nothing is harsher than being represented as a member of the KKK.
4 (There are two fours. That’s just wrong, man.) Sexual assault/harassment
Oh, dear God. She needs a stint at Our Lady of Peace.
5 Yechhh
My guess is he was aping his father, who should be ashamed.
If you want to drop down to San Antonio, I’m sure slickwilly and I can accommodate you.
I completely forgot you two were there! If i had remembered would have looked you up a couple of weeks ago when I was there and go eat at Lupe Tortilla. Arrgh!
We’ll get another chance, Z. Life’s too short to pass up meeting friends.
Yup. San Antonio is close enough to run in for dinner
Personal message coming thru Jack soon.
dragin_dragon & slickwilly,
Check your email inboxes for a message from me forwarded thru Jack about an upcoming visit to your area.
Z.
You betcha!
3- If all three (Gov, Lt. Gov, & AG) go down, the 4th in succession would be House Speaker Kirk Cox.
The everlovin’ kicker?
He’s (HEH!) a Conservative Righty!.
After reading through the Green New Deal talking points, I think this whole Virginia thing is a contrived smoke screen to keep people from paying too close attention to their new world order….I mean plan.
https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=5729035-Green-New-Deal-FAQ
The appeal to FDR and the statement that the government will need to step in and direct the private sector are the telling parts of this document. I have suspected for some time that Global Warming was being used as a fake crisis to allow for an unprecedented power grab. This document confirms in my mind that the Democratic party is trying to use the topic as a scare tactic to allow them to institute a fascist government in the US. Giving up power over the private sector and individual rights for the common good is the fundamental principle of fascism.
Yeah, I’ll touch on this in the warm-up. The GND is an embarrassment.
They should call it the Watermelon Deal (green outside, red inside).
Frightening.