Denying how sick our nation is is as harmful as administering the poison

We're at a point at which the question before us is whether there is any good news that outweighs the grimly obvious fact that it is late in the day.

We're all familiar with the arguments that there is indeed such a decisive counterweight to that fact.

There's the one that enumerates all the benefits of the last two centuries of human advancement: the phones we hold in our hands that hold within them more information than anyone in even 1990 had access to, laser surgery, cars that avoid collisions on their own, drastic reduction in global poverty.

There's the one that appeals to conservatives. It's usually put forth by someone who harbors some degree of enthusiasm for the Trump phenomenon. Judicial appointments are going the right direction. Deregulation and tax cuts have catalyzed a marked boost in economic growth. Official federal policy is no longer tainted with adherence to the fiction of a global climate in crisis. The US once again has Israel's back, and once again understands the threat from Iran. Indeed, the US once again, generally speaking, has a foreign policy based on a clear delineation between allies, adversaries and enemies (with some instances of ambiguity that can hopefully be straightened out).

They're both undeniably compelling, but they don't make the grade as scale-tippers.

In fact, they'll matter little if Western civilization doesn't quit giving the middle finger to God.

Exhibit A for that, of course, is what has happened in Virginia, which, of course, follows closely on the heels of what happened in New York state. Ben Sasse is exactly right, Governor Northam needs to get the hell out of public office.  As does state legislator Kathy Tran.

Both of this horrifying developments, of course, follow on the heels of the attempt to vilify Karen Pence for teaching art at a school the curriculum - and standards of conduct for students, staff and faculty - of which is based on sound Christian doctrine. Also the attempt by Kamala Harris to vilify the Knights of Columbus.   Also the lies told about Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

There is the ethos within the Democrat party, present in increasing degree since the days of Woodrow Wilson, but gathering momentum daily since the dawn of 2019, that posits that money is fungible and that all of it belongs to government, which then doles out parcels of it to individual inhabitants of post-America - citizens, if you will - based on government criteria of worthiness.

Speaking of lies, some others have insinuated themselves into the national understanding of what is so. One is that gender is fluid and, following from that, that the individual can invent himself / herself/ itself without regard to the obvious design of our species and those that predate it. Another is that the above-mentioned advancement must come to a halt if mere survival is going to be a possibility for humankind.

Let's add one more it's-not-really-so-late-in-the-day argument to those listed above. It is that withdrawing our preoccupation from the overarching national level - from the Washington Beltway, to employ a concrete symbol - and turning our focus to our neighborhoods, churches, civic organizations, schools and municipal governments is the key to civilizational renewal.

Here's the problem with that: The rot is now so complete that the local level offers no respite. I know preachers, political candidates and educators who dare not voice their convictions for fear of professional and social ruination. Hence, advocates of "implicit bias" workshops, "stop the hate" panel discussions, coerced recycling, and rainbow flags draped over church fences seizes the reins of community conversation unimpeded. Their premises inform policy everywhere one looks.

The solution?

Each of us has to decide how forthright we can be without harming is or her ability to speak up at all.

Banding together prayerfully is key. Strength in numbers.

Ultimately, it comes down to exercising rigorous stewardship over the inside of one's noggin. That piece of real estate is still yours.

Concede nothing to the devil.

The darkness has not overcome the light entirely, but your part in seeing that we don't experience such a fate is indispensable.

Tuesday roundup

A WSJ editorial on how the leftist media is trying to give the person who will probably take Brett Kavanaugh's old seat on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals the Kavanaugh treatment:

Ms. Rao cleared the Senate for that post with bipartisan support—unusual in the Trump era—after an uneventful confirmation process. She’s certainly qualified for a judgeship. Ms. Rao clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, taught for a decade at George Mason University’s law school, and worked in George W. Bush’s White House counsel’s office. She’s an expert on administrative law, which is valuable for a court that hears many challenges to federal regulation.

But here comes BuzzFeed with the scoop of the year that Ms. Rao “wrote inflammatory op-eds in college.” Yes, apparently this is why some people get into journalism. The story is clearly an oppo-research dump, probably from the left-wing Alliance for Justice, which is trying to torpedo Ms. Rao.

Not long ago, before everyone’s entire life was politicized, college was a period of intellectual development. Students are young and often write with more passion than wisdom. If writing or remarks at age 22 are disqualifying for public life, then every Member of Congress might as well resign now.

Ms. Rao’s sins aren’t that she was inflammatory but that she is conservative. Ms. Rao took a dim view of racial preferences in a piece about the great African-American scholar, Thomas Sowell. She also wrote that progressives preach tolerance but too often don’t practice it. Q.E.D. Some of her writing is infelicitous or sophomoric, but none of it is relevant to how she might rule as a 45-year-old judge with adult life experience.

One supposedly damning piece touches on how alcohol complicates student relationships. “It has always seemed self-evident to me that even if I drank a lot, I would still be responsible for my actions,” Ms. Rao wrote in the Yale Herald. “A man who rapes a drunk girl should be prosecuted. At the same time, a good way to avoid a potential date rape is to stay reasonably sober.” We look forward to the same people who assailed Brett Kavanaugh for drinking too much beer finding fault with Ms. Rao’s sobriety.

The real motive for destroying Ms. Rao is maintaining progressive control of the D.C. Circuit to rubber stamp the left’s agenda on climate change, health care and more. Then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid packed the court during the Obama years, but Ms. Rao replacing Justice Kavanaugh won’t alter the composition of the court.

Kamala Harris tries to pull that with-Medicare-for-all-there-won't-be-any-cumbersome-bureaucracy crap, but Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is having none of it:

TAPPER: Just to follow up on that, correct me if I’m wrong. To reiterate: You support the Medicare for All bill, I think initially co-sponsored by Bernie Sanders, you’re also a co-sponsor.

HARRIS: Yes.

TAPPER: I believe it will totally eliminate private insurance. So for people out there who like their insurance — they don’t get to keep it?

HARRIS: Well, listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care. And you don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require. Who of us has not had that situation where you’ve got to wait for approval, and the doctor says, “Well, I don’t know if your insurance company is going to cover this”? Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.

Spoken like someone who never had to deal with Medicare, which — contrary to Harris’ claims here — requires every single step she claims to detest. The biggest fib here is that switching to Medicare eliminates the approval process. It most certainly does not, a fact easily found with about two seconds’ worth of research on the website for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS):

Medicare coverage is limited to items and services that are reasonable and necessary for the diagnosis or treatment of an illness or injury (and within the scope of a Medicare benefit category). National coverage determinations (NCDs) are made through an evidence-based process, with opportunities for public participation. In some cases, CMS’ own research is supplemented by an outside technology assessment and/or consultation with the Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee (MEDCAC). In the absence of a national coverage policy, an item or service may be covered at the discretion of the Medicare contractors based on a local coverage determination (LCD).

That’s no different than dealing with private insurers, whose coverage is similarly limited by “reasonable and necessary” clauses. Furthermore, Medicare requires plenty of its own paperwork and red tape, with response times that routinely exceed those of private insurers, at least those outside the HMO model. Private insurers also manage care, but at least consumers have some choice for insurers and options for potentially better service and more tailored coverage.

Furthermore, we already know how government-run single-payer systems in the US operate, because we have two of them besides CMS: The Veterans Administration and Indian Health Services. The latter is a disgrace which Congress keeps ignoring, while the former is often a disgrace that Congress can’t quite ignore. Every ill Harris assigns to private insurers is amplified in both systems — delays, red tape, lack of accountability, and arbitrary services. 

There are rumblings in the Freedom-Hater party that perhaps AOC should be primaried.  

Dennis Prager sees in the current spate of disparagement of the institution of NFL cheerleaders the overall war on immutable human nature in microcosm He builds his case by citing some examples of said disparagement:

In The Boston Globe, Margery Eagan, Globe columnist and co-host of NPR's "Boston Public Radio," wrote a column titled "It's time to say goodbye to the NFL cheerleaders." She described NFL cheerleading as "creepy and demeaning."

USA Today sports columnist Nancy Armour came to the same conclusion: "The underlying premise of NFL cheerleaders is degrading. ... NFL cheerleaders need to go."

Chicago Tribune sports reporter Shannon Ryan wrote, "The league has shown only that it regards cheerleaders as pieces of sideline eye candy." To make her point, she asked, "why aren't there scantily dressed male cheerleaders and dance teams?"

Only the well-educated could ask such a stupid question -- because only the highly educated deny that, with few exceptions, the only people who would like to see scantily dressed male cheerleaders are gay men.

In USA Today, Yale Divinity School Director of Communications Tom Krattenmaker added a theological voice to the anti-cheerleader chorus. "It's time," he intoned, "to call this out for what it is: demeaning to women and an anachronism that ought to be beneath the male fans to whom this titillating eye candy is served." This sentence, and his whole piece, is what goes for deep thought on the left today. He doesn't explain how being an NFL cheerleader is "demeaning." He simply declares it so. Did he bother to interview any cheerleaders? I did, and the consensus among cheerleaders is that it is one of their greatest life experiences.

Here's what's really going on:

Why do leftists have contempt for cheerleading and cheerleaders (who, after all, choose to be cheerleaders -- and for virtually no pay)?
A Vanity Fair piece on cheerleaders gave the game away: "The league profits from selling a retrograde notion of masculinity -- big, strong men, unafraid to take a hit, surrounded by enthusiastic, scantily clad women."

Or as a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation article titled "Pro cheerleading 'should be abolished'" reported, former professional basketball player Mariah Burton Nelson said, "Cheerleading implies that women's proper role is to support men, smile at men and fulfill the sexual fantasies of males." 

The left has contempt for masculinity and the male sexual nature that is part of it. The new emasculated man will not look at sexy women. And the new defeminized woman will not want to "support men," let alone appear sexy for them. 

Cathy Young at Reason looks at just how furious the current crop of feminists is.

Modern feminism, with its framework of male privilege and female oppression, takes a simplistic and one-sided view of gender dynamics in modern Western societies. It ignores the possibility that some gender-based biases (such as the expectation that males will perform physically grueling and/or dangerous tasks, paid or not) may benefit women or disadvantage men. It disregards the vast diversity and flexibility of cultural norms. It refuses to recognize that there is no perfect solution to the problem of dispensing justice when someone alleges a crime with no witnesses and both parties tell a credible story.

Rage-driven activism can be particularly destructive when it targets and politicizes interpersonal relationships, an area in which the sexes are probably equal but different in bad behavior. Victoria Bissell Brown's verbal abuse of her husband is hardly a typical example, but even Traister sees nothing wrong with the fact that, at the height of #MeToo, her husband once marveled, "How can you even want to have sex with me at this point?"

Anger can be productive, usually as an impetus for short-term action. But rage feminism is a path of fear and hate. It traps women in victimhood and bitterness. It demonizes men, even turning empathy for a male into a fault, and dismisses dissenting women as man-pleasing collaborators. It short-circuits important conversation on gender issues.

Victoria Bissell Brown penned a particularly silly op-ed a while back:

In October, a few days after Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice, The Washington Post published one woman's account of channeling her rage into half an hour of screaming at her husband. "I announced that I hate all men and wish all men were dead," wrote retired history professor Victoria Bissell Brown, entirely unapologetic despite conceding that her hapless spouse was "one of the good men."

 

Three House members from the Freedom-Hater party are saying incredibly stupid things about the US stance toward the current situation in Venezuela, a stance shared by most South American and European countries. The three are AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Tulsi Gabbard. Omar in particular sounds like a 1980s apologist for the Sandinistas:

“We cannot hand pick leaders for other countries on behalf of multinational corporate interests."

Listen up, toots. Venezuelans are eating zoo animals and selling their breast milk in order not to starve.

Thoughts on how the shutdown ended (and a thought or two about the Roger Stone arrest)

Don't look for a hot take here.

I'm definitely past the point of defending any turf in this cringe-inducing debacle. This is gotcha-level stuff. No immutable principles are involved. That's why you've seen a lot more focus here at LITD on the cultural (Covington kids, New York abortion law) and economic (Dem tax policy intentions) than on any of this.

Where to start? I guess with the range of reaction among the Very Stable Genius's drooling zombie-eyed cult followers. That range spans from Ann Coulter's declaration that the VSG is a wimp (and here I don't want to digress too much, but the tweet in which she did so said he'd surpassed George H.W. Bush as the wimpiest president of all time; I was glad to see it pointed out to her that Bush 41 signed up to be a Navy pilot at age 17 and was shot down over the Pacific, and, as president, very handily defeated Iraq in Desert Storm.) to the take of Bill Mitchell that, now more than ever, we need to stand behind this supremely courageous protector of all that is noble and righteous. Memo to both Ann and Bill: He's neither. He's still the same narcissistic, shallow blowhard with a hot mess for a mind and a reckless tongue that he's always been.

Then there's the fact that Dem Congressional leadership has definite standing to crow. Even the crowd discussed in the paragraph above knows this was a win for the Pelosi-Schumer camp. What in the hell is going to happen in the next three weeks that would get them to agree to wall funding?

Then there's the wall itself. The Right generally has understood that immigration policy in recent decades has been undermining national sovereignty and the primacy of the rule of law - even Marco "Gang of Eight" Rubio. Most understood that barriers in appropriate places along the border were an important part of the array of measures needed to address the matter, although E-Verify, beefing up ICE, and taking on the sanctuary-city movement were at least as important.

But from the get-go, the VSG just had to turn The Wall into a symbol and put the focus entirely on the percentage of illegal aliens who smuggle drugs and rape people. This juncture was inevitable because the VSG made it his hill to die on.

Now, the latest position that the author of The Art of the Deal had taken on this was quite reasonable. Some wall funding - of the kind and the amount that Schumer and other key Dems are on record as supporting in recent times - for letting DACA people stay (with some reasonable conditions attached). Alas, it got the big thumbs down, for the glaringly obvious reason. Democrats hate Trump.

And because he is who he is, the VSG has had no interest in even appearing any less hatable. That's what his slavishly devoted base loves about him. He doesn't give a f---.

The timing of this Roger Stone arrest is interesting, is it not? And that sure was a lot of guns to bring out a guy being busted for process crimes.

The thing is, folks can point out that the charges have nothing to do with any supposed Russian collusion all they want, but the post-American public takes in its information in images and short soundbites. Close confidant of president frog-marched out of his home is the message that sticks.

Bottom line: Dems are emboldened, Pubs are reeling, and meanwhile, state legislatures are, to cheers and applause, legalizing the murder of the most innocent among us, yet another identity-politics hustler whose who public persona is a flat-out lie (I'm speaking of Nathan Phillips) is granted legitimacy while those he harassed have to fight mightily to un-damage their reputations, and millennials lose all understanding of why handing over their money to government is succumbing to tyranny.

We're tussling over a shiny object while Western civilization's flatlining continues apace.

AOC and Ro Khanna take the worst possible position one could on the latest Venezuela developments

She retweeted fellow House member Ro Khanna's (D-CA) tweet about how the US should "support Uruguay, Mexico, and the Vatican's efforts for a negotiated settlement & end sanctions that are making the hyperinflation worse."

I'll let John Sexton at Hot Air have the floor at this point:

This statement doesn’t mention that neighboring Colombia, which has taken the brunt of the Venezuelan refugee crisis, has called for Maduro to step aside or that Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, and Peru have all sided with the U.S. As for the countries supporting Maduro, that’s Cuba, Bolivia and maybe Mexico. And not surprisingly Maduro’s regime has the support of Russia which is shocked, shocked that any country would interfere in someone else’s dictatorship:

Russia, the source of billions of dollars in loans to Venezuela, insisted that Maduro remains the legitimate president and slammed the U.S. approach. Russian officials and pro-Kremlin lawmakers said that Venezuela — after Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and Syria — was becoming the latest victim of global U.S. efforts to foment regime change in violation of international norms.

U.S. recognition of Guaidó was aimed at “deepening the split in Venezuelan society, increasing conflict in the streets, and fundamentally destabilizing the domestic political situation and further escalating the conflict,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said that “attempts to usurp the power in Venezuela are illegitimate and contradict international law.”

As for a negotiated settlement, Maduro has been involved in negotiations with various parties for nearly 3 years. More than a year ago the latest round of negotiations came to an end. The result? Absolutely nothing changed:

Members of Venezuela’s leftist government and opposition leaders concluded a round of talks in the Dominican Republic on Saturday, failing to reach a deal to address the country’s political and economic crisis…

The result prolongs the standoff between the government and the opposition, who have tried and failed for years to strike a pact. The two sides last met for talks in December.

As Foreign Affairs pointed out, these negotiations have been going on since May of 2016:

Since May 2016, the Union of South American Republics (UNASUR), an intergovernmental organization comprising 12 South American states, has attempted to mediate between the government and the opposition, in the hope of averting a meltdown. In October, after the Venezuelan government-controlled electoral commission (CNE) waved off a constitutional referendum and indefinitely suspended local elections—blocking an electoral resolution until the 2018 presidential elections—the Vatican stepped in.

Those mediation efforts have predictably failed, thanks to an inability on the part of the mediators and other outside parties to impose real costs on the government. Since March, the Maduro government has violently repressed street demonstrations, resulting in over 70 deaths, and it continues to imprison at least 120 of its political opponents. The government has resisted calls to hold elections before 2018, refused to recognize the right to a constitutional recall referendum, and, most recently, called for an illegal constituent assembly to revise the constitution. However, it has faced no consequences from the mediators.

Negotiations aren’t a fresh solution, they’re the status quo. And ending sanctions would just make it easier for Maduro to drag things out even longer while his people starve.

Sexton appropriately mentions the fact that AOC recently let loose with a projectile of dog vomit about how her own nation, the United States, is in a "dystopian" state of affairs requiring the "fierce urgency of now." Compared to Venezuela?

Her silliness may play well at Sundance but I don't think the capitals of the above-mentioned nations that have already recognized Juan Guaido as interim Venezuelan president are going to be too impressed.

A couple of world-stage hot spots that merit our close attention

There's this, which really has been coming for some time. How long could anyone expect Israel and Iran to not directly confront each other?

Israel carried out a series of airstrikes early Monday against Iranian targets in Syria, the Israeli military said, in response to an Iranian missile fired at the Golan Heights, capping off a volatile 24 hours between the two regional enemies with the possibility of more fighting ahead.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck Iranian targets in and around Damascus, including the city's international airport, IDF Spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said. The overnight strikes targeted munitions depots, intelligence sites, a training camp and more, Conricus said. 

The IDF also struck Iranian warehouses at the Damascus International Airport, Conricus said, noting that Israel observed secondary explosions, indicating that weapons had been hit.

Israel also attacked Syrian anti-aircraft batteries when those batteries fired dozens of missiles at Israeli aircraft carrying out the strikes, Conricus said. Israel relayed a message to Syria that the military was only targeting Iranian forces and warned Syria not to fire at Israeli jets.

Then there's this:

President Nicolás Maduro on Wednesday faced the gravest challenge to his authority since assuming power in 2013, as the leader of the U.S.-backed opposition claimed the legitimate mantle of leadership and President Donald Trump and other world leaders promptly recognized him as Venezuela's interim and rightful head of state.

A defiant Maduro responded by announcing a break in "diplomatic and political relations" with the United States, ordering American diplomats to leave the country within 72 hours.

The high stakes move set up a looming diplomatic crisis. Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader now recognized by Washington as Venezuela's interim president, called on diplomats to remain. In a statement late Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested the Trump administration would not heed Maduro's demand and called on the Venezuelan armed forces to refrain from endangering American personnel or face "appropriate actions."

"The United States does not recognize the Maduro regime as the government of Venezuela," the statement said. "Accordingly the United States does not consider former president Nicolas Maduro to have the legal authority to break diplomatic relations with the United States or to declare our diplomats persona non grata."

It's easy to see what the desirable outcomes would be in each case, but those would require a world devoid of messiness and non-linear ways of events developing. Alas, that is not the nature of the world we live in.

 

The Diocese of Covington finally gets around to an at least tepid move away from condemning the high school students

It calls for an investigation of last weekend's confrontation after the March for Life.

Megan Fox at PJ Media stresses that a Catholic education is supposed to be a safe alternative to the garbage one finds in government schools:

As the mother of a Catholic son who I thought would be going to Catholic school, this situation sickens and disgusts me. The men who are supposed to be the spiritual fathers of our kids wasted no time and no thought before coming out to condemn them. The actions of the bishop of Covington and the imprudent statement of condemnation is a shameful stain on Catholic leadership. It shows, yet again, a drastic lack of empathy for children. It's not enough that they have been caught repeatedly forgiving child molesters and hiding them from us, but they are continuing to offer up their understanding to those who would harm our children instead of showing mercy to minors in their care. The very people in charge of teaching our kids the tenets of the faith which include self-control, restraint, and mercy are the very ones throwing that all out the window in order to virtue signal to heathens that they are politically correct. I would like to give them a lesson on what the Catechism says about their rush to judgement and condemnation of fellow Christians.

"2478 To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way: Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it." Shame on the diocese. Shame on these priests.

Catholic schooling was the last option available to parents who could not homeschool but wanted their children protected from the anti-Christian, pagan atmosphere of the public schools. We pay thousands of dollars for it and the men taking the money are offering our kids up to be sacrificed on the altar of Moloch and the very pagans they are supposed to be shielding them against! If the parents supporting these schools don't rein in the bishops, there will be no further use for Catholic schools at all and we should all withdraw immediately. 

It is very late in the day.

New York State decides to be an evil place

This:

New York legislators cheered and applauded Tuesday night after the state Senate removed restrictions on late-term abortions, allowing unborn babies to be aborted on the day of birth. 

The Reproductive Health Act passed with a 38-28 vote and was signed into law by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D). 

"Today we are taking a giant step forward in the hard-fought battle to ensure a woman's right to make her own decisions about her own personal health, including the ability to access an abortion," Gov. Cuomo said.

The law erases New York's previous limitations on abortion which restricted the fatal procedure past 24 weeks. 

The Reproductive Health Act states, "every individual who becomes pregnant has the fundamental right to choose to carry the pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child, or to have an abortion."

The law also removes abortion from the definition of homicide and New York's criminal code altogether. Previously, New York law treated the murder of an unborn child in its the third trimester as a felony offense punishable by up to seven years in prison. 

The Reproductive Health Act changes that. Instead, abortion will be regulated under public health law and a variety of medical professionals, not just licensed physicians, will be allowed to perform abortions without penalty.  

Governor Cuomo had the Freedom Tower lit up in pink to "celebrate."

Tuesday roundup

Alan Dershowitz piece at The Hill entitled "Time To Tell the Truth About the Palestinian Issue." It's a refutation of a New York Times Sunday Review column entitled "Time To Break the Silence About Palerstine."

There is no silence to break. What must be broken is the double standard of those who elevate the Palestinian claims over those of the Kurds, the Syrians, the Iranians, the Chechens, the Tibetans, the Ukrainians, and many other more deserving groups who truly suffer from the silence of the academia, the media, and the iternational community. The United Nations devotes more of its time, money, and votes to the Palestinian issue than to the claims of all of these other oppressed groups combined.

The suffering of Palestinians, which does not compare to the suffering of many other groups, has been largely inflicted by themselves. They could have had a state, with no occupation, if they had accepted the Peale Commission Report of 1938, the United Nations Partition of 1947, the Camp David Summit deal of 2000, or the Ehud Olmert offer of 2008. They rejected all these offers, responding with violence and terrorism, because doing so would have required them to accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, something they are unwilling to do even today.

Not just a state, but a vibrant, robust one:

Had the early Palestinian leadership, with the surrounding Arab states, not attacked Israel the moment it declared statehood, it would have a viable state with no refugees. Had Hamas used the resources it received when Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005 to build schools and hospitals instead of using these resources to construct rocket launchers and terror tunnels, it could have become a “Singapore on the Sea” instead of the poverty stricken enclave the Palestinian leadership turned it into.

He dismantles a number of egregious assertions she makes about how Palestinians inside Israel live. A definite red-the-whole-thing piece.

Speaking of refutations, Maria Bartiromo obliterates AOC's 70-percent taxation idea:

Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo, however, isn’t convinced or amused by Ocasio-Cortez’s complete lack of common sense and her economic naivete. Appearing on ox News on Tuesday from the World Economic Forum, Bartiromo began ripping apart Ocasio-Cortez’s frail economic plan like a wolf on a deer carcass.

“What is that going to do to the economy if you make it so economically difficult for the highest earners?” Bartiromo said. “Let me just point out that according to Tax Foundation, the top 10 percent of earners already pay almost 80 percent of all taxes.”

Bartiromoro said it all reminds her of something New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio said recently about all the wealth being in the wrong hands, to which the Fox Business host proceeded to tear apart the idea that the rich are somehow horrific, greedy people who use their money only for evil as people like Ocasio-Cortez like to insinuate.

“What exactly is the wrong hands?” Bartiromo said. “Is the wrong hands Ken Langone — the billionaire that gave $100 billion NYU medical school so that NYU could give out free medical school educations? Or maybe it it’s in Steve Schwarzman‘s hands — who just gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the New York Public Library, so that people can have access to new technology in the library? Or maybe it’s someone like David Koch, or someone who has given so much to medical schools?”

Bartiromo wondered allowed about what would happen to all of this charitable giving by the rich should all of their taxes be raised to such absurd levels.

“You have to wonder what those billionaires would do with their money if the first thing they have to do is give 70 percent of it to the government,” Bartiromo said. “And let’s talk about productivity for a second — a whole ‘nother conversation. Are you going to work incredibly hard with the belief that you can earn great success, and you can get better and more wealth? Are you going to work really hard if you know that, at a point, you’ll have to give it all to the government? I don’t think so. So those comments, to me, seem quite naive.” 

The Supreme Court does the right thing. Our military is no place for experimenting with putting mentally ill people in stressful situations on which our national security hinges:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to go ahead with its plan to restrict military service by transgender people while court challenges continue.
The high court split 5-4 in allowing the plan to take effect, with the court’s five conservatives greenlighting it and its four liberal members saying they would not have.

Have you stopped to wonder who would be filling Brett Kavanaugh's  old position? Hopefully, this lady:

If you are uninitiated about Neomi Rao, chances are you’ll get to hear her name quite often very soon. Rao, the Republican pick to replace the old seat of judge––now Justice––Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is suddenly under scrutiny by “liberal advocacy groups” for her college writings.

The Freedom-Haters' specific gripes?

So, what are Rao’s “appalling views”? USA Today cites some of them. Rao, a fine judicial mind even in her early years, seems to be quite poised and evenhanded for a college kid. She advocates for a single national identity instead of hyphenated Americans, because that is the only way to build up real solidarity, through healthy civic nationalism instead of individualism and appealing to tribal identity.

Rao wrote: “multiculturalists…separate and classify everyone according to race, gender and sexual orientation. Those who reject their assigned categories are called names: So-called conforming blacks are called ‘oreos’ by members of their own community, conservatives become ‘fascists.’ Preaching tolerance, multiculturalists seldom practice it…”

Her strongest words were against egalitarianism, and on advocating prudence. On charges of sexual assault, she wrote: “Unless someone made her drinks undetectably strong or forced them down her throat, a woman, like a man, decides when and how much to drink. And if she drinks to the point where she can no longer choose, well, getting to that point was part of her choice…implying that a drunk woman has no control of her actions, but that a drunk man does strips women of all moral responsibility.” 

Quoting Camille Paglia, Rao wrote something considered poison in the current climate, that there is currently a “dangerous feminist idealism which teaches women that they are equal. Women believe falsely that they should be able to go anywhere with anyone.” Needless to say, the reactions to these have been swift from liberal publications, which are increasingly indistinguishable from activism blogs.

Sociologist and public intellectual Nathan Glazer passed away recently at the age of 95. Here is an essay he wrote for Commentary in 1976 about how the United States is the only country that has tied its national values to its foreign policy.

 In England, France, Germany, Japan, or India, only the Right speaks of national values and insists that they be made significant in the shaping of policy. In America, however, liberals as well as conservatives are given to asserting that national values should affect foreign policy. I think there is one important reason for this: in the United States when we speak of national values, there is no implication of a primordial past, lost to memory, no suggestion that our values arise from race, blood, and soil. To speak of American values is to speak—still, and for most people—of founding documents—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers—known to all, clearly available, existing in the full light of history, and propounding what have by now become universal values, whether or not they are realized in practice. 

 To really become an American is to embrace those principles. It's why this country stands as a symbol to so many around the world in a way that other countries do not.

 

There's nothing figurative about the war characterization anymore

This:

Covington Catholic High School is closed Tuesday over security concerns, according to school officials.

“After meeting with local authorities, we have made the decision to cancel school and be closed on Tuesday, January 22, in order to ensure the safety of our students, faculty and staff,” reads a letter to them from the school’s principal, Robert Rowe.

“All activities on campus will be cancelled for the entire day and evening. Students, parents, faculty and staff are not to be on campus for any reason. Please continue to keep the Covington Catholic Community in your prayers.”

Earlier this morning, it was not clear if the closure was due to security or bitterly cold temperatures.

The school was among many operating on a delay until the closure was announced about 6 a.m. Dixie Heights and all Kenton County Schools also are closed as well.

Extra security was to be in place at Covington Catholic High School when students returned to campus Tuesday after threats were made against the school and its students over the weekend.

The American Indian Movement Chapter of Indiana and Kentucky is holding a protest at 10 a.m. Tuesday outside the Diocese of Covington.

The protest was moved from the school Monday as a precaution. 

Then this from the New York Daily News sports desk:

This won’t help Kentucky student Nick Sandmann’s case.

A photo said to be featuring Covington Catholic High School students clad in blackface during a 2015 basketball game made the rounds on Twitter Monday morning amid last week’s Indigenous Peoples March controversy.

Except that this is the truth:

Number one: The article claims that the photo is from 2015, but it's apparently from 2011. So despite the article's contention that the photo "won’t help Kentucky student Nick Sandmann’s case," it has nothing to do with him or any of the other kids who were in D.C. for the March for Life. They would have been in elementary school at the time.

Number two: It's called a "blackout" game, you dummies. This has been going on at school games since at least 2008, according to this New York Times report:

No team has pulled off the blackout with as much aplomb as baseball’s White Sox last Tuesday night — the same night that Middle Tennessee State’s football team celebrated an appearance on ESPN2 with a blackout of its own. Fans flipping channels might have thought the color had gone out on their flat screens.

With a day’s notice, a crowd of 40,354 arrived in black at U.S. Cellular Field for a tie-breaker game with the Twins. The team handed out 40,000 black towels.

It cast a fresh, eerie and somewhat intimidating backdrop to Chicago’s 1-0 victory.

“When you had all the fans in black, waving their towels, it almost looked like a stadium full of bats,” said Brooks Boyer, the team’s vice president and chief marketing officer.

The fans loved it, and hope that a tradition has been born.

It was a fun new tradition until the Trumpy Covington Catholic High School kids did it, apparently. Then it became a deplorable minstrel show proving once and for all that the high school is full of irredeemable racists.

Number Three: Adam Fatkin, a former Covington Catholic High School student who went on to play basketball for Rockhurst University, said the black guy in the picture wasn't being racially taunted. In fact, he was a good friend. 

Add the above to this list:

• The attacks on Karen Pence for returning to the Christian school in northern Virginia to teach art, and the framing of the school's adherence to sound doctrine as "banning" LGBT people.
• The bogus Buzzfeed story about Trump telling Cohen to lie. 
• Ben Shapiro losing two podcast sponsors because, in his March for Life speech, he said that we - meaning humanity, collectively - wouldn't kill baby Hitler because, at that theoretical point, Hitler would still be innocent.

I saw a piece somewhere this morning that said that the MAGA hat is the problem. The author, while clearly displaying a leftist bent, made sure he had his aware-of-the-latest-developments bona fides in place, even to the point of pointing out the toxic role played by the Black Hebrew Israelites, but then went on to say that the MAGA hat has come to stand for racism. Flimsy, if you can't offer some solid substantiation, right? The best he was able to do was cite Trump's trutherism about where Obama was born, the "good people on both sides" remark about Charlottesville, and the remarks about an abundance of rapists among the illegal immigrants coming from Mexico.

Granted, the Trumpist segment of the Right brings such linkage upon itself. The above-cited uttering of the Very Stable Genius are out there for all and any to make of what they will. But unless you're trying to perpetuate a very shaky agenda, you know that the guy just has a very reckless mouth. Bigotry and racism are not among his considerable shortcomings.

In other words, Donald Trump does not make it any easier for actual conservatives to cut through the present nonsense.

But Catholic teenage boys at a pro-life rally should not be set up as symbols of something.

Alas, they are, and now their school is shut down. And now Nick Sandmann's parents are getting death threats and professional threats.

This is now at a level that is way past that of the pussy-hat march days, or the days of the mayhem on campuses such as Berkeley, the University of Missouri and Dartmouth.

They mean to stomp anyone who cherishes ordered liberty and the foundations of Western civilization out of existence.

Do no doubt that.

 

Republicans have a lot of problems - most of them Trump-related - but Democrats's spiritual rot is now complete

Polls these days are tending to show Joe Biden as being among the most viable Democrat candidates in the 2020 presidential race.

Keep that in mind as you take in his remarks at an event where he spoke yesterday - an event hosted by one of post-America's most scurrilous charlatans, Al Sharpton:

Former Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at a breakfast Monday morning in Washington honoring Martin Luther King Jr., said that white Americans need to acknowledge and admit the fact that systemic racism still exists and must be rooted out.

"The bottom line is we have a lot to root out, but most of all the systematic racism that most of us whites don't like to acknowledge even exists," Biden said at an event hosted by the Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network. "We don't even consciously acknowledge it. But it's been built into every aspect of our system."

This slug posing as a human being then cites a number of socioeconomic conditions and, without any substantiation, ascribes them to "systemic racism":

He continued, "Because when your schools are substandard, when your houses are undervalued, when your car insurance costs more for no apparent reason, when poverty rates for black Americans is still twice that of white Americans, ... there's something we have to admit. Not you -- we -- White America has to admit there's a still a systematic racism. And it goes almost unnoticed by so many of us."

This is Freedom-Hater stoking of a victim self-image in its most vulgar form.

Hey, Joe, you want some socioeconomic conditions and statistics? Here you go:

In 1958, 48 percent of white Americans polled by Gallup said that “if colored people came to live next door,” they would be likely to move. By 1978, only 13 percent still said that; by 1997, the proportion had fallen to 1 percent. 

That dramatic metamorphosis in American attitudes shows up as well in the World Values Survey. When researchers in 59 countries asked residents how they would feel about having neighbors of a different race, Americans turned out to be among the least racist people in the world. The United States ranked 47th out of 59 countries surveyed, making it more racially accepting than Japan, Mexico, Germany, South Korea, and the Netherlands, among others.

That’s only one measure of racism’s profound decline. Friendship is another.
In 1964, a mere 18 percent of white Americans claimed to have a friend who was black. Four decades later, Gallup found that the proportion of interracial friendships had more than quadrupled: 82 percent of whites said they had close nonwhite friends (and 88 percent of blacks reported having close friends who were not black). Perhaps some white respondents were fibbing to appear more enlightened. But as commentator Jonah Goldberg observes, “the mere fact that they wanted others to believe they had a black friend is a kind of progress.” 

It isn’t only American friendships that straddle the color line. American families do too.
In King’s day, the vast majority of Americans disapproved of marriages between whites and nonwhites. Today the opposite is true: Nearly 90 percent of the public approves of interracial marriage. In 1967, just 3 percent of couples tying the knot were of different races, according to the Pew Research Center. By 2015, 17 percent of all US newlyweds — one of every six — had married someone of another color. Naturally, the number of multiracial American children has soared in recent years as well.

When King was assassinated, tens of millions of Americans would have put the prospect of a black US president in the realm of sheer fantasy. In fact, the election of the first black president was just a few decades away. And when Barack Obama in 2008 won the White House, it was with a greater share of the white vote than six of the previous seven Democratic nominees. White racism, once such a powerful force in US electoral politics, had shrunk to puny insignificance. 

And while it's easy to dismiss AOC, the Freedom-Haters' new "it" girl, as a pop-culture and social media phenomenon whose buffoonery will preclude her having any long-term consequence, we can see that her MLK Day remarks show that she's quite serious about implementing her ruinous vision:

The world is going to end in 12 years unless the government takes action, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Monday at a Martin Luther King forum in New York City.
Here’s an excerpt from her interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates:

“And I think the part of it that is generational is that millennials and people, in Gen Z, and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we’re like, the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change. You’re biggest issue, your biggest issue is how are going to pay for it? — and like this is the war, this is our World War II. And I think for younger people looking at this are more like, how are we saying let’s take it easy when 3,000 Americans died last year, how are we saying let’s take it easy when the end person died from our cruel and unjust criminal justice system?

How are we saying take it easy, the America that we’re living in today is dystopian with people sleeping in their cars so they can work a second job without healthcare and we’re told to settle down. It’s a fundamental separation between that fierce urgency of now, the why we can’t wait that King spoke of. That at some point this chronic reality do reach a breaking point and I think for our generation it reached that, I wished I didn’t have to be doing every post, but sometimes I just feel like people aren’t being held accountable. Until, we start pitching in and holding people accountable, I’m just gonna let them have it.”

And this:

It’s “immoral” how America’s economic system “allows billionaires to exist,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), said Monday at a Martin Luther King forum in New York City.
Here’s an excerpt from her interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates:

COATES: “I hate to personalize this, but do you think it is immoral for individuals to, for instance — do we live in a moral world that allows for billionaires? Is that a moral outcome and and of itself?”

OCASIO-CORTEZ: “No, it’s not. It’s not.

(Cheers and applause)

It’s not, and I think it is important to say that — I don’t think that necessarily means that all billionaires are immoral. It is not to say that someone like Bill Gates,for example, or Warren Buffett are immoral people. I do not believe that.”

COATES: “Like, he kicks his dog, stuff like that.”

OCASIO-CORTEZ: “Yeah, I don’t — I’m not saying that, but I do think a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong.

(Applause)

And I think it’s wrong that — I think that it’s wrong that a vast majority of the country does not make a living great wage. I think it’s wrong that you can work 100 hours and not feed your kids. I think it’s wrong that corporations like Walmart and Amazon can get paid, they can get paid by the Government essentially, experience a wealth transfer from the public for paying people less than a minimum wage.” 

These people are obviously silly on one level, but they'll have to be taken seriously if they convince a sufficient segment of the post-American populace of what they're spewing. They intend to see white straight Christian males drop to their knees and apologize for being who they are. They intend to take everybody's money. They intend to outlaw the use of oil as an energy source. They intend to transform the human species into a docile, sexless horde.

Will we stop them?

Every day I become more embarrassed to be a member of the human species - today's edition

Two more that I've come across this morning:

Ben Shapiro has now lost two podcast sponsors due to his perfectly reasonable assertion during his March for Life speech that we (meaning collectively any and all of us as human beings) wouldn't kill Hitler as a fetus because at that point he was still innocent.

These companies, Calm and Quip, are virtue signaling to a swath of the public they know damn well to be willfully dense, deliberately ignorant of what anybody not trying to be stupid knows Shapiro's point to have been.

Rather than engage their brains, they signed onto a "defense of Hitler" conclusion.

They've chosen to lie to themselves.

Then there is this situation, also from the March for Life:

[A] massive controversy . . . has erupted over the Covington (KY) Catholic school boys and the Native American man, Nathan Phillips, in the aftermath of the March For Life. Several video clips of the confrontation between an elder of the Omaha tribe and a large group of Catholic high school boys wearing MAGA hats have gone viral. Here’s a news story about the video, summing up the basics of the controversy. 

A selected part of the clip shows boys jumping and hooting and acting in a somewhat intimidating way towards the older man, as if to mock him. Some people interpret the boy standing in front of the man, the kid with a rictus grin, as sneering at the old man. Others say that you can’t assume that was a sneer; maybe the kid just didn’t know what to do.

In any case, the Catholic school has apologized for its students’ action, and the mayor of their hometown has denounced them. The boys were in town for the March For Life. The video is being widely cited as an example of the Trumpification of Christianity, and connected to the Karen Pence school controversy as yet another example of why conservative Christianity is an evil that must be driven from the precincts of the decent.

It is possible that the Catholic boys were complete asses. My initial judgment was that they certainly were that. You don’t treat a peaceful elderly person like this. Even if they thought he was wrong, those boys owed him respect. Yes, the old man approached them, but they could and should have handled him with respect. They come off as bullies.

But then I watched more clips, showing the greater context of the incident. It is not as simple as it has been portrayed. Below is a more complete video account of what happened. In it, one of the Catholic boys is overheard asking, “Does anybody know what he’s doing? Does anybody know what’s going on here.”

And, in it, one of the Indians with Phillips shouts: “White people, go back to Europe. This is not your land.” He curses the students with f-bombs (video is NSFW). He goes on: “You’re being a white man about it. That’s all you know how to do.”

You didn’t see that in the news reporting, did you?

In other words, the students were basically confused about what Phillips was trying to convey:

To be clear, it is POSSIBLE that these boys really did make fun of this old Native American man. If that’s what happened, they should apologize.

I don’t think this is what happened at all, though. These boys were already chanting their high school chants. Nathan Phillips confronted them. They don’t appear to understand what point he was making with his own chanting and drum-beating. And now they are held up to the contempt of the country for something they appear not to have done at all. And, the news accounts conveniently ignore the provocative, racist, foul-mouthed attacks on the boys by one of Phillips’s Native American companions.

And Phillips' backstory needs to be part of the discussion:

Here’s something else: in 2015, this same Native American elder, Phillips, confronted college students wearing Indian garb at a college party, and claimed he was treated disrespectfully by them. So he said; no video exists. It appears that he was looking for a confrontation of some sort. If those college boys behaved that way, it was indeed wrong, and offensive. But Nathan Philips seems like a man who seeks out these opportunities for confrontation, and then to go to the media with them. Notice in the clip that went viral, Philips had a man with a camera following him as he approached the MAGA boys.

We must speak plainly about what is going on here:

. . . the white Catholic boys in their MAGA hats appearing to intimidate a Native American elder serves as a useful club with which to beat the entire March For Life, as well as conservative Christianity in general.

 Both of these stories are designed to try to portray anyone attempting to speak for people who aren't born yet as goons and blowhards.

More generally, it's another lifting of the middle finger to Almighty God.

That seems to be a major theme in 2019. This is the year that America takes a sledgehammer to its own foundation.