It’s embarrassing, but amazingly few of those responsible seem to be embarrassed.
Robert E. Crimo III, 21, the “alleged” shooter in the homicidal attack in Highland Park, was as unstable as its possible to be without being locked up. But that’s the problem: he was never arrested, despite officers seizing 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from his home in 2019. Crimo also posted music videos online that seemed to refer to mass shootings, some including cartoon images of victims spurting blood. In one video, a gunman lies in a pool of blood near police cars. But are the gun-phobics going to assert that social media posts, songs and videos are sufficient to justify psychiatric observation and the elimination of Constitutional rights? Hip-hop artists who rap about rape and cop-killing will be easy targets for that movement.
Many years ago, I was charged with running a U.S. Chamber of Commerce study on rising Hispanic business in the U.S. I worked with many Hispanic scholars and organizations, including the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. One of the recommendations in the draft report, written by a Cuban-American diplomat and scholar, was that Hispanic-Americans needed to purge their culture of toxic habits and traditions that undermined business success, and the primary example was tardiness and a lack of concern with meeting deadlines and appointment times.
The point was especially vibrant because the meetings of the group were almost always delayed while we waited for several key members who wandered in anywhere from 30 minutes to more than an hour after the designated time.
There was some animated debate over this, because some members—not just the habitually tardy ones—tried to argue that impugning the “manyana” attitude tradition would be an insult, allowing “white” values to erase “brown” ones, and declaring non-Hispanic culture “superior.” Continue reading →
I’m pretty sure that’s a setting rather than a rising sun, but as you recall, Ben Franklin mused that where the U.S. was involved, the two were nearly indistinguishable.
I don’t get the acceptance of what is happening to our nation and how so many people can be so utterly clueless. Right now, though, I am not writing about the fascists on the right — and that is what they are, folks. I am writing about people who will for the most part agree with this article and yet do nothing to prevent the end of our great experiment. Many have no idea that these few weeks in June launched the end…
Let’s do a quick run through the past five years: A stolen Supreme Court seat; Trump’s presidency; COVID is just the common cold/anti-vaxxers; the Big lie/January 6th; two impeachments; Republican silence in the face of Trump’s crimes; Republican continued obstructionism; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine thanks to Trump presidency; SCOTUS June coup; and, let’s add for good measure another five years lost in the battle to slow the effects of climate change…. Embedded in all of the points above is the right-wing hatred of everyone not aligned with Trump and his racist views. Embedded also is the hatred and fear the right expresses about queer and transgender America. Embedded is how Colin Kaepernick was declared an America-hating terrorist by the right for his peaceful protests…
[T]oo many of our fellow citizens now believe that America can only be great if it is aligned with Jesus, “their savior.” .These “other Americans,” the ones I tell you probably failed American history in high school, also believe that corporations have the same rights, if not more, than humans. They believe that a zygote has more rights than a child living in abject poverty. They believe that it’s okay kids get slaughtered in schools by armed teens…
This hard-wired ideologue actually has the gall (or lack of self-awareness) to write in his or her profile, “Be curious, not judgmental at least until you have all the facts.”
Such people are almost certainly beyond help, reasoning, persuasion, education and reality. And the relentless, barely-countered propaganda from mainstream media is producing more of them every day.
I know, I know, I could write a 10,000 word debunking of just that section (who called Colin Kaepernick a “terrorist”?), and so could you, I suspect. But Sock Drawers Matter….
1. Here’s a fun game: find the bias in the New Yorker cover!
There is actually a lot to celebrate and remember on July 4th. It was on this date in 1776, of course, that the delegates began signing the final version of Mr. Jefferson’s document. Also, perhaps the two most crucial Founders, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Both men were desperately ill, and clearly held on with the intention of passing on the day that means to much to them. The fifth President, James Monroe, also died on the Fourth, in 1831.
On July 4,1827, New York officially banned slavery. The same day Monroe died, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” was first performed at an Independence Day celebration in Boston. In my elementary school (Parmenter School, in Arlington, Mass.) that was the patriotic song we learned first and sang most often. I was shocked to learn, years later, that it was really “God Save the Queen” with different lyrics.
In 1863 on the Fourth, the Siege of Vicksburg ended with a Confederate surrender. Combined with the Union victory at Gettysburg the day before, the news of Grant’s triumph rescued the North from despair, and probably saved Lincoln’s presidency.
1919’s Independence Day saw Congress approve the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote. The amendment was sent to the states for ratification, and ratify it they did.
Less than two weeks ago, President Biden made a speech in which he commanded oil companies to lower their gas prices.
“To the companies running gas stations and setting those prices at the pump, this is a time of war, global peril, Ukraine. These are not normal times. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump. Do it now,” he said.
Then, on Fourth of July weekend, he repeated the order.
I wanted to keep all of today’s posts positive and appropriately celebratory of the official birthday of the greatest country on earth. It’s impossible, unless I just pretend “it isn’t what it is” out there, and I am distraught.
Let’s start with the shock headline that bannered the Drudge Report last night. Here is what it looked like:
The information is pure clickbait of the worst kind. The headline on the linked Gallup article is “Record-Low 38% Extremely Proud to Be American” (my emphasis). The piece goes on to say that an additional 27% were “very” proud to be Americans, making the “extremely/very proud” number 65%. In fact, only 4% of those surveyed said they were not proud to be Americans.
I found that part of the poll surprising. Not surprisingly, Democrats lead the not-very-proud group, and since the party’s entire thrust recently has been to try to transform the nation into a European-style socialist nanny state while denigrating the U.S. as racist to its core. I would have expected the un-proud, as in “ashamed,” to be much higher. Continue reading →
Five years ago, California passed a law blocking most taxpayer-funded travel to states “deemed” to have passed laws that discriminate against LGBTQ people. The key word is “deemed.” Assembly Bill 1887 was a response to a North Carolina law that required people to use public bathrooms based on the sex shown on their birth certificate. That’s not discrimination. That’s “a legitimate approach to a difficult issue that a powerful voting bloc in California has strong feelings about.” Twelve states landed on California’s first boycott list, and then, on June 28th, the 52nd anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, gay Attorney General Rob Bonta (above) announced that he was adding Florida and four other states to its official travel ban list, claiming that they passed “anti-LGBTQ” laws that are “directly targeting transgender youth.”
The “new improved” trope was an amusing Madison Ave. tradition when I was a kid. I always wondered if it worked: I suppose it worked on idiots. I remember an “Ice Blue Secret” TV commercial in which “Katy Winters,” the fictional women’s deodorant shill stunned her friends by saying, “Yes, it’s true: I’m through with Ice Blue Secret!” as she tossed a jar of the stuff into a waste basket. After the staged gasps, she then whipped out a newly designed jar and said, “I’ve switched to new improved Ice Blue Secret!”
When Richard Nixon had his big political comeback in 1967 as prelude to winning the Presidency in 1968, wags called him the “new improved Nixon.”
But I digress.
Let’s see if the New Improved Open Forum lives up to its name….
That’s my second favorite musical moment in “1776” (after “The Egg”), when South Carolina delegate Edward Rutledge, the youngest member of the Continental Congress, mocks the hypocrisy of the anti-slavery Massachusetts delegation, seemingly dooming independence over the slavery question. Of course, Rutledge didn’t sing his objections, and his opposition to leaving Great Britain was primarily over the fact that he didn’t think the Colonies could win the inevitable war. On this date, he issued a letter in 1776 explaining his reasoning. But he came around, and signed the Declaration of Independence a few days later. Thank goodness for that.
This is also the date (in 1972) when the Warren Court holdovers on the Burger Court launched Furman v. Georgia, ruling by a 5-4 margin that capital punishment was unconstitutional and in violation of the Eighth Amendment banning “cruel and unusual punishment.”This was the same kind of bootstrapping logic and judicial over-reach that led the same SCOTUS to Roe v. Wade the next year. Obviously the Founders didn’t believe that capital punishment was cruel or unusual, and it was considerably crueler in the 18th Century than in 1971. The liberal justices just didn’t like capital punishment and couldn’t leave the decisions about its use to the public and their elected representatives, so they acted unilaterally, democratically, and dishonestly. This bad decision was reversed just four years later, at a time when public support for the death penalty was soaring.
I can connect “Molasses to Rum to Slaves” to the Roe controversy, because there is a strong connection, but never mind.
1. How does this crap get stopped? Yesterday, while writing a draft of an official court document on Microsoft Word, I used the editor function to catch about 40 typos. The program also flagged what Word called a “Diversity” error. I used the verb “master,” as in “master the material.”
Obviously, I was referencing slavery, according to the robot woke word censors. Word told me I should use “learn,” or “become skilled at.”
I used “master,” and began to search for a document program that isn’t trying to brain-wash the world.
2. Bizarro World logic. At least 51 illegal immigrants—even Fox News is calling them “undocumented migrants” now, which is deceit—were found dead in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas,and more than a dozen were hospitalized. Who is responsible? Well, they are, for trying to break our laws and enter the country illegally, and the smugglers who took their money to aid and abet the crime. Next in line is the Biden administration and open-border advocates, who send the message to such desperate foreigners that the U.S. really welcomes them, once they can get into the country. Biden’s incompetent paid liar, Karine Jean-Pierre, responded to that criticism by saying, “The fact of the matter is the border is closed.” Right. Who believes that? If that’s true, why is a massive caravan of would-be border-jumpers creeping toward the Mexican border? It’s closed! It’s amazing that the 12 million or more illegal immigrants in the U.S. ever got in.
Here’s the libertarian response, from Tim Carney, the editor of the Washington Examiner:
He’s not an “open border person,” but he’s arguing that not having open borders is at fault for the deaths. Ace of Spades responded with typical emphasis, writing in part, Continue reading →
Here is another epic Comment of the Day on the Dobbs freakout, this one by mermaidmary99, whose best comments are nearly always sent to SPAM by WordPress. Yet she persists….
Here it is, and may I say…
Wow.
***
As a woman, what guts me is that the safest place for a baby to be isn’t, and the person who above all others should advocate for that baby’s life and protect it, instead is upset they can’t kill it at will, for any reason whatsoever, including their own irresponsibility and stupidity.
Hearing my fellow “sisters” complaining that they can’t “exercise their RIGHT” (and have others pay for it) is one of the sickest, ANTI-SCIENCE, anti-nature, things I have ever seen.
And, for a party committed to science, Democrats have huge blinders on with this one.
So huge their religion that condemns abortions is IGNORED as well! Continue reading →
Ethics Alarms 