Barney & Clyde - Installment 3

It's here! This fortnight's installment of Barney & Clyde! Welcome back to the bar! Pull up a chair and join your favorite small-l libertarian and small-c conservative for a look at AOC’s reaction to McConnell holding a Senate vote on the Green New Deal, the San Antonio and Buffalo airports banning Chick-fil-A, and the Illinois legislature attempting to tell corporations how their boards must be composed. We also look at the evolution of the term “liberal” from the time of Bastiat to the present. It’s meant various things throughout that time, for sure.

By the way, you look thirsty. May I pour you a libation?

Avail yourself of this lively exchange here.  

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

As if Illinois didn't already have enough self-erected barriers to economic recovery:

After a heated debate, calls of racism, and shouting, the Illinois state House of Representatives voted to require all publicly held companies in the state to have at least one woman and one African-American on the company's corporate board.

State Rep. Chris Welch’s bill, which passed Friday, would require any publicly-traded company headquartered in the state to have at least one woman and at least one African-American on its corporate boards starting in 2021.

“No later than the close of the 2020 calendar year, a publicly held domestic or foreign corporation whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation's SEC 10-K form, are located in Illinois shall have a minimum of one female director and one African American director on its board of directors,” according to the text of the bill. It would allow boards to expand to meet the requirements.

It would require the Secretary of State to keep an online list of corporations that would show if a company is in compliance with the law.

The bill would also impose fines up to $300,000 for failure to comply.

Obviously, the primary layer of wrongness here is that of government telling private organizations how to conduct their affairs (something made possible by government having already gotten its foot in the door with measures like the minimum wage and the gathering momentum for paid family leave).

Then there's the plain fact that Leftists have no interest in a color-blind society or treating people as qualified or not for particular functions without regard to gender.

Most sewers of Leftism in post-America are found on the coasts. How did the Midwest wind up with such a fetid repository of all that is rotten?

 

Saturday roundup

Jeh Johnson, who was Department of Homeland Security secretary under Obama, says that there is definitely a crisis at our southern border.

He told the [MSNBC Morning Joe] panel that during his tenure as Homeland Security Secretary, he would arrive at work each morning at 6:30 and would immediately read the intelligence report.

There would be my Intelligence Book, the PDB, sitting on my desk. And also the apprehension numbers from the day before and I’d look at them every morning…my staff will tell you if it was under 1,000 apprehensions the day before, that was a relatively good number and if it was over 1,000, it was a relatively bad number and I was going to be in a bad mood for the whole day.

On Tuesday, there were 4,000 apprehensions. I know that a thousand overwhelms the system. I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 a day looks like. So, we are truly in a crisis.

I want to see this exhibit! Brian T. Allen, writing at National Review, has a review of a show that is a collaborative effort between the Toledo Museum of Art and Belgium's Royal Museums of Fine Art. It showcases the work of Frans Hals, a Dutch painter who did most of his work in the 1620s and 30s. You have to look at the examples that accompany Allen's piece. Seriously, Hals was able to capture human moments among family members with photographic accuracy and  relaxed conveyance of their multidimensionality that doesn't much show up again for centuries.

Allahpundit at Hot Air on that truly goofy NYT column by a guy who's "brown" who admits that pressure from his woke peers is forcing him to quit dating white women:

The author’s Latino, he’s been reading Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, he’s tired of the petty asides he gets about dating white women — from nonwhites, let me stress — he’s positively aching to be properly woke. What’s a righteous free-thinking uncolonized brown-skinned man to do if he wants to move America forward after centuries of racism?

Allahpundit contextualizes the guy's "predicament" by pointing out not only its regressiveness, but placing it alongside a couple of other identity-politics occurrences from this past week:

He ends by observing that “something just doesn’t feel right” about his determination that interracial relationships are wrong or at least that enough other people think they’re wrong that he probably should too. Maybe he’ll do some more thinking and see if he can figure out why internalizing one of the most notorious pillars of America’s pre-civil-rights racist legal architecture might itself be “problematic.” Until then, may I interest you in a charming story out of the deep south about reporters of a certain race being barred from a political event while reporters of another race were allowed in? How about a hyper-woke take from Slate about how Pete Buttigieg, running to become the first openly gay president of the United States, isn’t remotely gay enough?

Your absolute must-read for the weekend: Marc Giller's "I Pledge Allegiance To the Tribe" at The Resurgent in its entirety. That's an order.  He quotes from the WSJ Peggy Noonan column from which I excerpted yesterday, in my post about the VSG's Grand Rapids rally. I knew Noonan's piece would show up elsewhere.

What the hell is Larry Kudlow doing calling for a shoring up of the Ex-Im Bank? 

Fabiana Rosales, wife of the legitimate Venezuelan president Juan Guaido, was in the United States as part of her international tour to raise awareness of what's going on in her country. She explained that the current instability is a national security threat for the US.

The Very Stable Genius's gratuitous, vulgar and juvenile victory lap

Last Saturday, I wrote an initial-thoughts post about the Mueller report. I spoke of how the Leftists would launch Congressional investigations to take up where they see the report leaving off. If my powers of prediction had been a little sharper, I might have also mentioned the cascade of punditry devoted to the desperate search for some remaining path to a smoking gun. Hope springs eternal.

But I also predicted, quite accurately, it turns out, how the Trumpists would react:

The throne-sniffers will crow. Their king will be insufferable. 

The VSG's rally in Grand Rapids last night was an orgy of crowing and insufferable bellowing.  

I know it's 2019 and many, probably most, people have the position that the use of expletives is no big deal anymore. (I remember mentioning, in some past post about cultural rot, that the first time I heard the s-word in a Hollywood movie was 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in the scene in which they jump from a cliff to evade a sheriff's posse. I recently, when watching Bullitt on TCM, discovered that such cinematic usage goes back at least to 1968.) Nobody thinks twice about employing profanity on social media, even conservative television personalities. We all know about Rashid Tlaib's "Impeach the mother----r!" exhortation right after getting sworn in to Congress early this year.

In full disclosure, I must own a certain degree of hypocrisy here. When sufficiently startled or angered, my mouth becomes a veritable sewer. I'm not proud of that. And I do pretty successfully keep it contained within the private sphere of my life.

Still, I'd held out feeble hope that someone who holds the planet's most powerful position and is in so many ways the face of America on the world stage would refrain from making it part of his public uttering, even in situations in which he's understandably exuberant.

But not only he, but his namesake son employed the s-word in Grand Rapids last night. (His son often comes in for the "he's more thoughtful and consistently conservative than his dad and could conceivably make a viable candidate for high office someday" treatment. That would be he whose wife divorced him over an affair and who, immediately upon that divorce getting underway, took up with Kimberly Guilfoyle, whose own marital track record includes once being married to Gavin Newsom.)

'The Democrats have to decide whether or not to continue defrauding the public with ridiculous bulls**t,' he said. 

Trump's eldest son Don Jr. warmed up the crowd by deriding Schiff's 'bullschiff,' and claiming he 'really schiffed the bed.'

Then came the high-decibel schadenfreude about leftist media ratings. The VSG can never resist grinding "losers" under the heel of his wing tip:

The president cited 'all of the Democrat politicians, the media bosses – bad people – the crooked journalists, the totally dishonest TV pundits,' as boos rained down from the packed rafters of the Van Andel Arena.

'They know it's not true! They just got great ratings!'

'By the way,' Trump grinned, 'their ratings dropped through the floor last night.' 

I know there are degrees of grace that it is or is not appropriate to extend to the vanquished, and, to be sure, we are talking here about leftists - people who want to grind any and all who resist their agenda under their heel. Still, the VSG could have made some subtle reference to their current despair and moved on to the matter of how we prevent this kind of thing from occurring again. (For instance, one little mention of Rachel Maddow's near-crying jag, crafted with subtle humor, would have covered the whole subject of how delicious the moment is. But subtle humor would be asking too much of the VSG.)

I've recently had ample cause to think about Victor Davis Hanson's CNN piece entitled "What Progressives Should Know About Trump Voters." I was particularly gratified, because I'd found all of Hanson's previous attempts to stake out where he stood regarding Trump to be inadequate in one way or another. Here, he outlines the factors that have led to the Trump phenomenon with clarity and precision:

1. Voters appreciate that the economy is currently experiencing near record-low peacetime unemployment, record-low minority unemployment, and virtual 3% annualized GDP growth. Interest andinflation rates remain low. Workers' wages increasedafter years of stagnation. The US is now the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas. And gasoline prices remain affordable. The President continues to redress asymmetrical trade with China, as well as with former NAFTA partners and Europe. He jawbones companies to curb offshoring and outsourcing. The current economic recovery and low consumer prices have uplifted millions of middle-class Americans who appreciate the upswing.

2. Trump does not exist in a vacuum. Many supporters turned off by some of his antics are still far more appalled by an emerging radical neo-socialist Democratic agenda. If the alternative to Trump is a disturbing tolerance among some Democrats for anti-Semitism, the Green New Deal, reparations, a permissive approach to abortion even very late in pregnancy, a wealth tax, a 70-90% top income tax rate, the abolition of ICE, open borders, and Medicare for all, Trump's record between 2017-20 will seem moderate and preferable. Progressives do not fully appreciate how the hysterics and media coverage of the Kavanaugh hearings, the Covington teenagers and the Jussie Smollett psychodrama turned off half the country. Such incidents and their reportage confirmed suspicions of cultural bias, media distortions, and an absence of fair play and reciprocity.

3.Trump can be uncouth and crass. But he has shown an empathy for the hollowed-out interior, lacking from prior Republican and Democratic candidates. His populist agenda explains why millions of once traditional Democratic voters defected in 2016 to him -- and may well again in 2020. Some polls counterintuitively suggest that Trump may well win more minority voters than prior Republican presidential candidates. 

4. Trump may come across as callous to some, but to others at least genuine. He does not modulate his accent to fit regional crowds, as did Barack Obama,Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. He does not adopt particular outfits at state fairs or visit bowling allies to seek authenticity. Like him or not, his Queens accent, formal attire, odd tan, and wild hair remain the same wherever he goes and speaks. Voters respect that he is at least unadulterated in a way untrue of most politicians. Big Macs convey earthiness in a way arugula does not.

5. Even when Trump has hit an impasse, his supporters mostly continue to believe that he at least keeps trying to meet his promises on taxes, the economy, energy, foreign policy, strict-constructionist judges, and the border. So far his supporters feel Trump has not suffered a "Read my lips" or "You can keep your doctor" moment. 

6. Voters are angry over the sustained effort to remove or delegitimize a sitting president. Many of the controversies over Trump result from the inability of Hillary Clinton supporters to accept his shocking victory. Instead they try any means possible to abort his presidency in a way not seen in recent history. Trump voters cringe at such serial but so far unsuccessful efforts to delegitimize the President: the immediate law suits challenging voting machines, the effort to warp the Electoral College voting, initial impeachment efforts, appeals to the Emoluments Clause, the 25th Amendment, and the calcified Logan Act, the Mueller investigation that far exceeded and yet may have not met its original mandate to find Russian "collusion," and the strange Andrew McCabe-Ron Rosenstein failed palace coup. All this comes in addition to a disturbing assassination "chic," as Madonna, Johnny Depp, Kathy Griffin, Robert DeNiro and dozens of others express openly thoughts of killing, blowing up, or beating up an elected president. The Shorenstein Center at Harvard University has found that mainstream media coverage of Trump's first 100 days in office ranged from 70-90% negative of Trump, depending on the week, an asymmetry never quite seen before seen but one that erodes confidence in the media. Voters are developing a grudging respect for the 72-year-old, less-than-fit Trump who each day weathers unprecedented vitriol and yet does not give up, in the Nietzschean sense of whatever does not kill him, seems to make him stronger.

7. Progressives seemingly do not appreciate historical contexts. By past presidential standards, Trump's behavior while in the White House has not been characterized by the personal indiscretions of a John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton. His language has been blunt, but then so was Harry Truman's. He can be gross, but perhaps not so much as was Lyndon Johnson. The point is not to use such comparisons to excuse Trump's rough speech and tweets, but to remind that the present media climate and the electronic age of the Internet and social media, along with general historical ignorance about prior presidencies, have warped objective analysis of Trump, the first president without either prior political office or military service.

8. Globalization enriched the two coasts, while America's interior was hollowed out. Anywhere abroad muscular labor could be duplicated at cheaper rates, it often was -- especially in heavy industry and manufacturing. Trump alone sensed that and appealed to constituencies that heretofore had been libeled by presidents and presidential candidates as "crazies," "clingers," "deplorables" and "irredeemables." Fairly or not, half the country feels that elites, a deep state, or just "they" (call them whatever you will) are both condemnatory and yet ignorant of so-called fly-over country. Trump is seen as their payback.

9. For a thrice-married former raconteur, the Trump first family appears remarkably stable, and loyal. The first lady is winsome and gracious. Despite the negative publicity, daughter Ivanka remains poised and conciliatory. The appearance of stability suggests that if Trump may have often been a poor husband, he was nonetheless a good father.

10. Trump is a masterful impromptu speaker. Increasingly he can be self-deprecatory, and his performances are improving. Even his marathon rallies stay entertaining to about half the country. He handles crowds in the fashion of JFK, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama rather than of a flat Bob Dole, Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney. 

There's still more than a faint scent of excuse-making in this list, but for the most part, it's an objective analysis that even a leftist wouldn't be able to effectively refute.

And it was that "hollowed out interior" that turned out last night in Grand Rapids.

My concern is what it has been all along - that actual conservatism does not get the kind of airing it will have to have in order to truly prevail over the nightmarish leftist vision.

Case in point: I have a conservative friend who is truly conservative and not a Trumpist, although he is far more inclined to actually support Donald Trump due to the policy achievements of these first two years. He's far more impressed than I am. But he has not gone the full throne-sniffer measure. I don't think the Grand Rapids crowd is his people. But he runs into sticky situations in Facebook tangles because some leftist will bring up the federal debt and deficit which continue to worsen under Trump, and there's really no good retort. Trump is on record saying he thinks the economy could grow sufficiently to remedy that. Trump also still refuses to discuss changes to Social Security and Medicare that are going to have to happen.

So a person in my friend's position is left trying to defend Trump "policies" instead of conservative principles.

I realize there are gradations of conservative objection to Trump, and I want to once again distinguish myself from those such as Jennifer Rubin, George Will, Bill Kristol and Max Boot. They seem to have swallowed some kind of weird pill. They've jettisoned all embrace of the actual conservatism they just a few short years ago spoke of wanting to preserve. But they're a different breed from Erick Erickson, Susan Wright, Jonah Goldberg, Ben Shapiro, David French, Brad Thor, Joe Walsh, Peter Heck et al. These are the adults in the room. I consider myself in their camp.

And these gradations are real despite the efforts of the likes of Brian C. Joondeph and Kurt Schlichter to obscure them.

It's behind a paywall, so I can't excerpt from it, but, if you are a WSJ subscriber, I recommend Peggy Noonan's column today. It's entitled "The Two Americas Have Grown Much Fiercer." (I read it in soft focus, with the "subscribe now" box floating in the center of the screen as I scrolled along.) I will provide a couple of money lines from it: "People are proud of their bitterness now . . . Current America, with its moderation institutions (churches) and its dividing institutions (the Internet) rising, sees our polarization not as something to be healed, but a reason for being, something to get up for. There's a finality to it, a war-to-the-death quality."

Which brings us back to throne sniffers and Schlichter types (between whom I still make a distinction, at this point mainly on the basis of Schlichter's having once been a Trump opponent, although that line really is blurring). Their response to a piece like Noonan's would be, "Hell, yeah there's a war to the death in this country, and we don't intend to lose it."

The LITD response to that is this: I really get that, and it's an assessment I happen to share. The Democrat party, the media, the education world, the arts-and-entertainment world and even way too much of the corporate world and even institutional Christianity are the enemy. But your victory is going to be incomplete and susceptible to rollback if you view this blowhard with the blowdried hair as your general.

He's not what you really want him to be. You're better off arming yourself with actual conservatism.

The San Antonio airport Chick-fil-A episode may not be over

Good on ya, First Liberty Institute:

After the San Antonio City Council effectively banned Chick-fil-A from opening up a restaurant in the city’s airport for the next seven years, a law firm that specializes in religious rights cases is calling for an investigation.

The USA Today reports:

On Thursday, the First Liberty Institute sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao alleging that “religious discrimination” may have been made by members of the City Council of San Antonio during discussions to block the restaurant chain from the revamped Texas airport.

[…]

“San Antonio should welcome the opportunity to add so popular and successful a restaurant as Chick-fil-A to its airport food offerings, not discriminate against it because the City Council disapproves of its charitable choices,” the legal organization wrote in the letter to Chao.

The vote to ban Chick-fil-A from the airport came just days after a report released from the liberal group Think Progress detailed the restaurant’s 2017 charitable contributions to religious organizations.

There is no question that the city voted to exclude Chick-fil-A because of the religious beliefs of the restaurant chain. Some council members said as much the day they took the vote:

The legal institute also challenged Councilman Manny Pelaez‘s statements, saying that he took a significant amount of time to “lambaste, denigrate, and openly mock the otherwise upstanding corporate citizen of Chick-fil-A,” during the debate on the pending agreement.

“He described Chick-fil-A as a ‘symbol of hate’ because it has donated to religious charities that he considered to oppose LGBTQ rights,” the letter said. 

The full letter that First Liberty sent to Secretary Chao and U.S. Attorney Gen. William Barr can be read here. In it, they also say that in discriminating against Chick-fil-A that the city of San Antonio has made themselves ineligible for federal grants:

The San Antonio City Council engaged in unconstitutional religious discrimination making them ineligible for federal grants.

Federal taxpayers should not be required to subsidize religious bigotry. The San Antonio City Council may spend its taxpayer dollars as its citizens will tolerate. However, it cannot do so in a way that brazenly violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Federal law. Here, the City of San Antonio appears to have openly engaged in religious discrimination, likely forfeiting their eligibility for Federal grant money, whether from the Department of Transportation or other Federal agencies.

It doesn’t appear that the law firm is officially representing Chick-fil-A. This is more or less a statement of support for their religious rights. 

First Liberty has handled a number of high-profile cases, including the Sweet Cakes by Melissa case out of Oregon and the case out of Washington state where high school football assistant coach Joe Kennedy was fired by a school district for saying a prayer after football games. President Trump cited the case during his 2016 campaign.

Read about the cases they are currently fighting and cases that they’ve won here. 

So heartening to see that Christians are finding ways to counter the attempt to drive us underground.

UPDATE: The Texas Attorney General gets involved:

As the leftists in the media like to say, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton pounced. Paxton notified the mayor and city council Thursday by letter of his decision to open an investigation. He also sent a letter to Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chou, requesting she open her own federal investigation into potential violations of federal law and Transportation Department regulations. Paxton is going after the decision on the grounds of upholding religious freedom.

The linked article also says that the Republican candidate for mayor in the city's upcoming election has apologized to Chick-fil-A for his city's bigotry.

Now, I can unequivocally say that this exacerbates our polarization

In the previous post, I call for holding off on hard and fast conclusions about a controversial situation in Pennsylvania involving Christians and Muslims.

This situation in Georgia, however, involving blacks and, well, anybody and everybody else, is clearly destructive:

Race was front and center on Wednesday night during a meeting coordinated to garner support for just one black candidate in Savannah’s mayoral election.

With signs stating “Black press only” on the doors of the church where the meeting was held, white reporters were barred from entry, while black reporters for at least two television stations were permitted inside.

The event was coordinated by the Rev. Clarence Teddy Williams, owner of the consulting firm, The Trigon Group, who declined to discuss the entry policy.

Former Savannah Mayor Edna Jackson declined to comment before going inside, as did Chatham County Commissioner Chester Ellis.

“This is not my idea,” Ellis said.

Savannah Alderman Estella Shabazz, who also attended, said that she had once owned a newspaper and she was a member of the black press, but she declined to comment on the policy barring white reporters from going inside.

While notes were allowed, photos, video and audio recordings were prohibited during the event, according to Stephen Moody, an African-American reporter with WJCL, who was allowed entry. Another reporter from WSAV who attended the meeting was told she could stay because she was black, Moody said.

Shirley James, the African-American publisher of the black-owned Savannah Tribune, was also seen going into the meeting.

Savannah Alderman Van Johnson, who is one of three African-Americans who have stated their intention to run for mayor, said afterwards that during the meeting he had talked about his vision for an inclusive and progressive Savannah. With regards to the discriminatory policy at the door, Johnson said he believed people have the right to assemble and determine the rules of their assembly.

“It’s not my meeting,” Johnson said. “I was asked to come and give a statement, so I came and I gave a statement. What I said in there, I’ll say out here.”

Louis Wilson, who said he is going to run for mayor again after an unsuccessful run in 2015, also spoke during the meeting about his priorities. Afterwards, Wilson also declined to discuss the press restriction.

“I didn’t plan the meeting so I can’t comment on that part,” he said. “I came to say what I had to say.”

Former state senator and representative Regina Thomas, who has announced her own campaign, did not attend the meeting. In an interview earlier this week, Thomas said she believes she can win, even if there is another black candidate.

“I’m encouraged every day by people of all persuasions,” Thomas said.

Meeting attendees were given a handout reporting the ethnic composition of Savannah’s population, as well as a vote breakdown for the 2015 election, when incumbent Jackson was defeated in a run-off by current Mayor Eddie DeLoach.

Also distributed was an editorial in the black-owned Savannah Herald titled “United We Win, Divided We Lose” that was written by former Mayor Otis Johnson. In the piece, Johnson called on the black population to organize itself to increase its influence over what happens in the community, starting with the mayor and council.

“If we come together and decide what we want and who we believe will work best for us to get it, then we have a chance to advance,” he said.

What has hardened those who instituted such a policy into their position? Are they thinking about the impact of this on such areas as education and economic development?

I rarely use the word "racist" since it is so frequently bastardized these days, but I think an argument can be made that this fits the bill. The black-press-only signs indicate that no other type of journalist or, indeed, attendee, would be able to understand what was going to be discussed at this event. That a white brain or an Asian brain would not be able to comprehend the proceedings. Or that non-blacks can be assumed to view such an event from a perspective of meanness, as if animosity was inherent in their character. Is that what the organizers are saying?

Whooee, is it ever late in the day.

The opening-prayer controversy at the swearing in of the Muslim state representative in Pennsylvania

Was it a gratuitous jab, or an effusive outpouring of adoration for the Lord?

The basic story: Movita Johnson-Harrell was sworn in as the Pennsylvania legislature's first female Muslim member, and Representative Stephanie Borowicz gave the following prayer immediately beforehand:

“Jesus, I thank you for this privilege Lord of letting me pray God. That, I, Jesus am your ambassador today. Standing here representing you – the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Great I Am, the One who is coming back again, the one who came, died and rose again on the third day. I’m so privileged to stand here today. So thank you for this honor, Jesus. 

“God, for those that came before us like George Washington in Valley Forge and Abraham Lincoln who sought after you in Gettysburg and the Founding Fathers in Independence Hall – Jesus – that sought after you and fasted and prayed for this nation to be founded on your principles and your words and your truths. 

“God forgive us. Jesus we’ve lost sight of you. We’ve forgotten you, God, in our country. And we are asking you to forgive us, Jesus. Your promise in your word says if my people who are called by name will humble themselves and pray and seek your face and turn from their wicked ways that you’ll heal our land. Jesus, you are our only hope.

“God , I pray for our leaders – Speaker Turzi, Leader Culter, Governor Wolf, President Trump. Lord, thank you that he stands beside Israel unequivocally Lord. Thank you that – Jesus – that we are blessed because we stand by Israel and we ask for the peace of Jerusalem as your word says God. 

Is this over the top? I'm sincerely asking. In a situation like this, I think it's important not to be reflexive, to be too quick to form a hard and fast conclusion.

The argument can be made, I suppose, that Bortowicz laid it on a little thick with the expression of gratitude for Trump's support of Israel - a sentiment, let the record show, that LITD shares wholeheartedly - in this particular setting. But other than that, it's just a pretty straightforward Christian prayer. After all, Takbir was recited during the swearing-in.  Granted, the last line was conspicuously absent, but just because it wasn't recited doesn't mean it's not part of that prayer:

An Islamic prayer called Takbir was recited before the legislature during Johnson-Harrell’s swearing-in, but ended just before the prayer’s traditional last line, which repudiates the belief that God begat a son, thereby rejecting the Christian understanding of Jesus.

I seriously am still sorting out how I view this. As I say, other than the Israel mention, it was just an impassioned plea for the nation to return to its Lord.

I'd just invite all those engaging in outcries of indignation to ask themselves if the chip-on-the-shoulder approach doesn't exacerbate our already horrible societal brittleness.

The administration is exactly right on this: Russia must get out of Venezuela

Another one that is just now showing up on my radar: Did you know that 100 Russian troops landed in Caracas last Saturday?

Talk about blatantly lining up with the bad guys.

Good on Trump and Pence for stating forthrightly that that is unacceptable:

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump demanded that Russian troops remove themselves from Venezuela.

"Russia has to get out," the president told reporters in the Oval Office. He met with Fabiana Rosales, the wife of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido.

Trump added that "all options are open" to get Russia out of Venezuela.

Two Russian Air Force planes landed outside Caracas on Saturday, carrying nearly 100 Russian troops.

Trump and Vice President Mike Pence again praised Guaido, saying that socialist President Nicolas Maduro's re-election was illegitimate.

"The United States views Russia’s arrival of military planes this weekend as an unwelcome provocation," Pence said. "We call on Russia today to cease all support of the Maduro regime and stand with Juan Guaido and stand with nations across this hemisphere and across the world until freedom is restored."

This is the reality of Russia's agenda on the world stage. Always has been. Further proof of the dangerously silly line that Putin is somehow Trump's puppeteer.

Well, yeah, why didn't you?

Katy Tur at MSNBC ought to be encouraged in her recent dipping of her toe in the waters of actual journalism. She asked Hawaiian Senator Maize Hirono why it was that all those Dems voted present instead of hell yeah when there was a vote on the Green New Deal yesterday.

Allahpundit at Hot Air examines the dynamics of what's going on here:

Words you won’t often read here: Katy Tur is correct. I made the same point yesterday about 2020 Dems trying to have it both ways on the vote, being “half-pregnant” on the GND by endorsing it publicly and then hedging their bets by voting present on the Senate floor. The best Hirono can do to justify it is note that McConnell held the vote to try to divide Democrats. Right — because the legislation itself is divisive. Left-wing panderers like the 2020 field and remake-the-world imbeciles like AOC think it’s just grand, or pretend to for their own electoral purposes; moderates with purpler constituencies back home look at the cost and the goofy excesses about farting cows and run screaming. Nothing aggravates the tension within Team Blue between the progressive sans-culottes and the centrist freshmen who actually knocked off Republicans in last year’s midterms like the GND. (Well, maybe Ilhan Omar riffing on dual loyalty does.) If you don’t like having to take a tough vote on it, don’t promote it incessantly and basically dare McConnell to call your bluff.

For fark’s sake, Hirono even makes a point here of noting that the legislation is “an aspirational document that says we recognize the science behind climate change unlike Trump and the Republicans.” If it’s merely aspirational, all the more reason to cowboy up and vote for it. Defend it on those grounds on the trail: “I voted yes to signal that global warming is an urgent priority and that no proposal, however ambitious, should be ruled out at first blush.” Then, when you’re inevitably confronted about the $93 trillion price tag, you can change the subject to white privilege or whatever.

And AOC was at her incoherent best fuming about it. She's so hot when she's p----d.

Education thoughts

I have to give lefties thanks when it's due for bringing things onto my radar that might not otherwise show up.

Today, several rants showed up on my Facebook newsfeed about Betsy DeVos and her views on budget and funding matters for her department. I'd been busy thinking about Kim Foxx and the implosion of the Southern Poverty Law Center and missed coverage of DeVos' appearance before a House committee.

Here's a fairly objective report about it:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday defended deep cuts to programs meant to help students and others, including eliminating $18 million to support Special Olympics, while urging Congress to spend millions more on charter schools.

"We are not doing our children any favors when we borrow from their future in order to invest in systems and policies that are not yielding better results," DeVos said in prepared testimony before a House subcommittee considering the Department of Education's budget request for the next fiscal year.
It was the first time that DeVos, a wealthy former Michigan Republican Party chairwoman and school choice advocate, had been called before a Democratic-led panel in the U.S. House to explain President Donald Trump's spending priorities.

While proposing to add $60 million more to charter school funding and create a tax credit for individual and companies that donate to scholarships for private schools, DeVos' budget proposal would still cut more than $7 billion from the Education Department, about 10 percent of its current budget. President Trump proposed a $4.7 trillion overall budget this month with an annual deficit expected to run about $1 trillion.

It calls for eliminating billions in grants to improve student achievement by reducing class sizes and funding professional development for teachers as well as cutting funds dedicated to increasing the use of technology in schools and improving school conditions. In many cases, DeVos said the purpose of the grants has been found to be redundant or ineffective.

In the case of the $17.6 million cut to help fund the Special Olympics, a program designed to help children and adults with disabilities, DeVos suggested it is better supported by philanthropy and added, "We had to make some difficult decisions with this budget." 

A fair number of the FB rants focused on the Special Olympics cuts.  I did not see any of the ranters address her assertion that that enterprise is better supported by philanthropy. And that leads me to a very basic question: Why should the federal government be in the Special Olympics business at all?

Seriously. What the hell does it have to do with the core functions of government outlined in the Constitution?

Which in turn leads to the larger question I've asked for years: What justification is there for a federal Department of Education?

In my coverage of local government for some radio stations and a website, I am constantly amazed at the number of local things that happen - some in the education area, but also in stuff like bridge construction and community corrections staffing - as a result of federal grants.

I suppose there's a tilting-at-windmills element involved in asking why that money couldn't stay in our city and county in the first place and not be run through the DC filter where various layers of bureaucracy take their cut for - well, indeed, for what? I guess to come up with the acronyms for the programs by which they send it back to us. The whole scheme is so entrenched in our way of operating as a nation that no one seriously proposes looking at dismantling the whole apparatus, even though it would be the sensible way to proceed.

With the table thus set, may I recommend a piece by the American Enterprise Institute's Frederick Hess at Forbes entitled "The Problem With Senator Harris' Proposal to Have Uncle Sam Boost Teacher Pay." He says that teachers, many of whom do indeed deserve more pay, ought to look at what really erodes their chances of getting it: good old administrative bloat:

. . . here’s the bizarre dynamic at the heart of the challenge: Teachers have a legitimate gripe about take-home pay, even though school spending has steadily gone up over time. Nationally, after-inflation teacher pay actually declined by two percent from 1992 to 2014, even as real per-pupil spending grew by 27%. This disparity is mostly a product of two realities. The first is that schools have added staff—particularly support staff—at a rate that far outpaces growth in student enrollment. Nationally, between 1992 and 2014, student enrollment grew by 20%, the number of teachers by 29%—and non-teaching staff by 47%. The second is that the cost of teacher pensions and health care have eroded paychecks. Nationally, between 2003 and 2014, even as teacher salaries declined, the per-teacher cost of benefits rocketed from $14,000 to $21,000. That’s $7,000 a year that would, other things equal, be showing up in teacher paychecks.

And federalizing teacher pay is only going to add more bureaucrats to the mix.

The first step in curing post-America's education problems is for someone somewhere to quit taking for granted that the federal gravy train ought to be ridden, since it's there. It would take guts, but everything about returning post-America to its previous identity as the United States of America is going to take guts.

And I daresay that hopping off the gravy train would go a long way to rectify the damage being done by the social-justice jackboots. They'll get weeded out as local taxpayers insist on some accountability. Teachers aren't going to be as likely to stand at the front of the classroom and prattle on about gender fluidity and the global climate being in some kind of trouble if no one is goading them with federal dollars.

And people who personally know Special Olympic athletes and care about them and cheer them on in competition would feel a greater sense of connection, since there would be no faraway filter between their dollars and the games and meets.

Freedom is always elegantly simple compared to any alternative. It also has a far greater human touch.

This is an example of the end product that all this stuff comes to

And, of course, it went down in Oregon. I've been to some of the Pacific Northwest, but never the great forests, mountains and waterfalls of Oregon. At this point, I'm in no hurry, though. The humans occupying that space keep coming up with this kind of s---:

Oregon State University LGBTQ groups are all about “inclusivity” in the name of tolerance and diversity – until it comes to veterans groups.

Campus Reform‘s Adam Sabes reports:

The Pride Center at Oregon State University called for Veteran Student Association (VSA) members to be barred from moving into an on-campus student lounge, stating that it is concerned about the veteran students’ “patriotism” and the “wellbeing” of students.

In a since-deleted open letter to the OSU community posted on Facebook on March 15, the pride center and the LGBTQ+ Multicultural Support Network said that they oppose moving the VSA into the Student Experience Center Involvement Lounge on campus.

[…]

The Pride Center, which is an entity of the Department of Diversity and Cultural Engagement, stated that their members would be “vulnerable” to the consequences of deciding to let the vet group occupy that space.

The group cited President Trump’s anti-transgender military policies as one reason they opposed the inclusion of the VSA, but there were other reasons as well:

The Pride Center and LGBTQ+ group also explain that they are concerned with the “particular type of American patriotism that would be promoted by centralizing the Veteran Students Association in the [Student Experience Center].” 

Do you snot-nosed, pasty-faced, narrow-shouldered, limp-wristed solipsists understand that it is the willingness of some men among us to undergo great sacrifice and embrace a readiness to harm and kill fellow human beings, if they pose a threat, not so different from a snarling mountain lion in close proximity, so that you can sleep soundly at night and have the luxury of publicly stating your views without getting dragged off to the hoosegow?

And this business about a "particular type of American Patriotism": how many of you putting forth such phraseology knowledge your ass from a hot rock about John Locke, or the conversations among James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, an other Founders?

When narcissists who have exotic sex lives have greater cultural power than fine men who have put everything on the line to defend our freedom, we're in a world of hurt.

Kim Foxx was itching all along to drop charges against Jussie Smollett

Man, what a chunk of dog vomit the Cook County State's Attorney is:

This is the same Kim Foxx, you’ll recall, who “recused” herself from the case.

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx recused herself from the Jussie Smollett investigation after facilitating conversations between Smollett’s family and the Chicago Police Department, the state’s attorney’s office said Wednesday.

“Shortly after the incident occurred in late January, State’s Attorney Foxx had conversations with a family member of Jussie Smollett about the incident and their concerns, and facilitated a connection to the Chicago Police Department who were investigating the incident,” Robert Foley, a senior adviser to Foxx, said in an emailed statement Wednesday.

In other words, Foxx was seeking to squash this from the beginning, trying to broker a deal between Smollett’s family and the Chicago PD, who were furious at what happened.

Now, after she “recused” herself, she’s reportedly stepped back in to decide to drop the charges. That’s a level of blatant corruption that is hard to even fathom. Her excuse? That Smollett has did community service in the past. It’s laughable.

This is the two Americas many people talk about when it comes to our justice system. There is no excuse for these charges to be dropped before they’ve even begun to be adjudicated. None at all. The only explanation is more rampant corruption within the government of Chicago. 

I can’t imagine how angry the rank and file within the Chicago PD must feel today. They wasted millions in resources chasing a fake hate crime. Then they spent weeks doing great work to find the actual perpetrator and uncover a very harmful conspiracy. In response, the State Attorney’s office isn’t even going to pursue it. Worse, they are going to expunge Smollett’s record as another gift to him.

This should not be the end of it though. The DOJ has sat by so far waiting to see what Chicago will do. Now that they’ve punted in incredible fashion, it’s times for federal charges to be filed for his use of the mail system to perpetuate this hoax.

Wonder how Chicago police feel about this chick? Like this:

Chicago's police union is calling for a federal investigation into the Cook County State's Attorney's actions in the Jussie Smollett case.

Three days after Smollett claimed he was attacked, Kim Foxx asked Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson to turn the case over to the FBI.

The request came after Foxx exchanged text messages and emails with relatives and a supporter of Smollett, who said they were worried about leaks in the investigation.

Foxx later recused herself from the case.

The FOP wants federal investigators to determine whether Foxx broke the law.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Toots, you even p----d off Rahm Emanuel:

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel strongly condemned the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office decision to drop all charges against Jussie Smollett, calling it a “whitewash of justice.”

“This is a whitewash of justice,” Emanuel said Tuesday afternoon during a fiery press conference alongside Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson. “A grand jury could not have been clearer.”

This stinks so bad everybody knows it.