It's pointless to try to placate the jackboots

These people are absolute totalitarians. Kim Jong-un would be impressed with their chops.

We have four instances today. In three of them, we have attempts to self-immolate and earn the good graces of the overlords.

Forget it. You can't genuflect sufficiently for these goons.

There's the latest development in the Philly Starbucks situation:

Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson immediately pulled out all the stops for damage control. He visited the two men to apologize personally and instituted a rule that all Starbucks employees must be trained to deal with their own racial biases.

Of course, none of this has the social justice crowd satiated. They don’t just want an apology and a solution, they want Starbucks’ soul.

The Omega Psi Phi fraternity whose fraternity brother, Rashon Nelson, was one of the persons arrested in Starbucks, held a rally attended by some 100 protesters demonstrating against “racial injustice” at the same Starbucks on Sunday. It was there that a city councilman gave a speech demanding more from Starbucks.
According to Yahoo News,

“The actions of the Starbucks corporation are totally unacceptable,” Philadelphia Councilman Kenyatta Johnson told protesters Sunday. “We know they said they’re going to move forward and specifically focus on a training that deals with unconscious bias, but that’s a one-day training.

“We want to see how they’re going to change their culture as it relates to racial insensitivity and also diversity and inclusion as it relates to making sure that everyone who comes to a Starbucks store that lives in the city of Philadelphia should feel welcome,” he added. 

Then there's the Twitter photo of Jay Feely, who is a sports commentator for CBS and was a placekicker for several NFL teams, making the rounds. It shows his daughter and her prom date, a guy she's been dating for a year and who is warmly regarded by the Feely family, with Feely standing in between them, holding a handgun. Everybody's smiling. The prom-goers, very nice-looking kids, are clearly in on the joke. The tweet says, "wishing my beautiful daughter and her date a great time at prom." It's Feely's take on the age-old understanding that dads like to make it clear that anybody who dates their daughters better understand that respect is a requirement of doing so.

He wound up having to subsequently post this:

The prom picture I posted was obviously intended to be a joke. My Daughter has dated her boyfriend for over a year and they knew I was joking. I take gun safety seriously (the gun was not loaded and had no clip in) and I did not intend to be insensitive to that important issue

I say "having to" because the howls were incessant.

What I find particularly vomit-inducing here is the number of "mainstream" outlets that felt the need to put "a joke" in quotes in their headlines.

Then there's country music star Shania Twain, who opined in an interview with the UK Guardian that, had she been a US citizen, she might well have voted for Donald Trump for president in the 2016 election. (She's Canadian.) Not because she aligns with him across the board on matters of policy (that would be hard to do, given his utter lack of any policy consistency), but because she found his unfiltered style of expression bracing.

The goose-steppers got to her:

"I would have voted for him because, even though he was offensive, he seemed honest," the newspaper quoted her as saying. "Do you want straight or polite? Not that you shouldn't be able to have both. If I were voting, I just don't want bulls**t. I would have voted for a feeling that it was transparent. And politics has a reputation of not being that, right?" Twain said.

But late Sunday the country star tweeted a four-part apology.

"I would like to apologise to anybody I have offended in a recent interview with the Guardian relating to the American President. The question caught me off guard. As a Canadian, I regret answering this unexpected question without giving my response more context ," Twain said.

Okay, these three examples of people who rolled over and exposed their underbellies and basically told the overlords, "Claw out my entrails if you must. I'm so ashamed for even existing." are dismaying in the extreme.

So far, Kanye West is holding his own against the firestorm that has erupted in the aftermath of his daring to have an independent viewpoint on something:

---

Superstar rapper Kanye West praised conservative commentator Candace Owens on Saturday after she shut down a Black Lives Matter protest during an event at UCLA.

Owens, the communications director for Turning Point USA, said she believes an "ideological civil war" is happening with African-American people.

She said some African-Americans "are focused on their past and shouting about slavery" and that others are "focused on their futures."

"Victim mentality is not cool. I don't know why people like being oppressed," she added. "'We're oppressed! Four-hundred years of slavery! Jim Crow!' By the way, none of you guys lived through [that]," she said to protesters. "Your grandparents did and it's embarrassing that you utilize their history. You're not living through anything right now."

West tweeted his support for Owens, saying "I love the way Candace Owens thinks."

Owens said Sunday on "Fox & Friends" that after West's tweet, she received a great amount of backlash.

"In about 10 seconds I became the KKK member, anti-LGBT, you name it," she said. "Just because I think differently and I refuse to accept this narrative that I'm a victim. I'm not a victim."

Owens said she told the Black Lives Matter protesters that they were welcome at the Turning Point USA event and could get in line to ask any questions. She said, though, they refused to do that and instead heckled her.

"I took them on because I believe that their ideas are poisonous. I also believe that they are intellectually dishonest," she said.

Owens also said that the left wants African-American people to be focused on their past and not their futures.

"They like black people to be government-dependent," she said.

Owens said that she wanted to thank West for his words, and that they were an "affirmation" that she needed "to go forward." 

Sense a pattern here, people?

Of course you do. It's been going on for at least fifty years, at least since the brats of the spring of 1968 took over the administrative offices at Columbia University and demanded all kinds of curriculum changes and other dog vomit.

Lately, because I have been earnestly trying to see if there wasn't some subatomic particle of common humanity left in post-America, I'd been backing off of "cultural civil war" type rhetoric. But it's useless. That's exactly where we are.

I know I have to proceed with a Christian heart. But make no mistake. The Left is the enemy of all that is decent, dignified, sensible, true, good and right. They will not stop until we are ground under the heels of their jackboots.

This will require courageous choices. Check the resilience of your spine.

 

 

Is post-America finally getting healthier, or is it descending ever further into oblivion?

This is a tale of two Townhall columns, one by Kevin McCullough and one by John Hawkins.

Each enumerates several reasons for its thesis, presenting them in fleshed-out bullet-point style.

McCullough's core assertion is that the positive developments the nation is currently enjoying leave anti-Trump forces of whatever ideological stance - he pretty much lumps left and right together as the "resistance" - without any argument beyond scandal-mongering.

His reasons:

• An economy that is continuing to aggressively grow, even though difficult realities exist.
• A  serious message to the global community that we are no longer a doormat.
• Things are working, that aren’t supposed to.
• Serious national security success. 

Now, this is interesting, considering that McCullough's Townhall bio describes him as being committed to God and in pursuit of "clarity above everything." I don't doubt that he does indeed strive to live these values, but how does he overlook the ills that comprise the gist of Hawkins' column, entitled "7 Forces Driving America Toward Civil War"?

• A Post-Constitutional Era
•  Tribalism
•  Federal Government Too Powerful
• Moral Decline
• The Debt
• Lack Of A Shared Culture
• Gun Grabbing

Once you read each author's substantiation for each of his points, I really don't see how any conclusion other than that we're still plummeting to perilous depths can be reached.

McCullough's list consists of developments that are all subject to reversal, whereas the items Hawkins brings before us do not lend themselves to meaningful about-faces. They are matters of the heart. They require courage, neighborliness, depth, and a cherishing of individual human sovereignty.

That's why it's surprising that McCullough, who makes a point of mentioning God in his bio, doesn't wish to at least address them in his column.

Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan, and that can't be stressed enough, but I have, since the Reagan era, felt that a continuing path of decline, even in the face of a robust economy and the end of the Soviet-bloc threat, was overlooked by those who saw an unmitigated Morning in America. Let us not forget that popular culture grew ever-more debased during the 1980s, and that jihadism's rise got underway then. For all the support from high offices for the defense of people who aren't born yet, dismemberment of such people remained, and remains, perfectly legal. Identity politics became more entrenched; it was the era of Jesse Jackson and women's music festivals.

I realize that such a perspective presents branding challenges to a website that, like all websites, is interested in more visits and sustained interest. Wet blankets have little sex appeal. But, as McCullough says is true of him, LITD pursues clarity.

And the verdict remains as it has been since August 2011 here: It is very late in the day.

It's toxic tweet day

Two outbursts, from markedly different people whose noteworthy common trait is being utterly unfit for the offices they hold, are generating a lot of buzz on social media today.

The Very Stable Genius spewed this forth on his way to the golf course:

The New York Times and a third rate reporter named Maggie Haberman, known as a Crooked H flunkie who I don’t speak to and have nothing to do with, are going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will “flip.” They use....

....non-existent “sources” and a drunk/drugged up loser who hates Michael, a fine person with a wonderful family. Michael is a businessman for his own account/lawyer who I have always liked & respected. Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if....

....it means lying or making up stories. Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media!

Haberman wrote the also-buzz-generating NYT piece about how the VSG has humiliated and berated Cohen for years, a classic alpha male-beta male scenario. The "drunk / drugged-up loser" is Sam Nunberg, who, it can't be denied, did make quite a spectacle of himself a few weeks ago in a series of television appearances in one day.

But it wasn't just Nunberg. Longtime close VSG associate Roger Stone and former VSG attorney Jay Goldberg are also quoted in Haberman's story:

 

Interestingly enough, Trump pal, Roger Stone, was quoted in the piece and it was no less damaging than that of Nunberg’s comments, but it doesn’t appear Trump zeroed in on him.
Oh, wait – All Stone said was that Trump goes out of his way to treat Cohen like garbage. What’s Trump going to say? That’s not true?
And while Nunberg is suggesting that Cohen has leverage over Trump, he’s not the only one.

Other longtime Trump associates have notably made similar comments about the threat Cohen poses to Trump. He recently spoke to Jay Goldberg, his lawyer in the 1990s and early 2000s, for guidance on the recent fallout and criminal investigation involving Cohen, and according to the Wall Street Journal, Goldberg told Trump that Cohen is not be trusted because he “will never stand up” for him if pressured by federal prosecutors. Goldberg also said the prospect of Cohen being compelled to testify in tandem with the documents obtained by the FBI poses a bigger threat to Trump than special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Everybody is talking about Cohen “flipping.” Nobody is saying there’s nothing to flip on.

Classic VSG.  He manages to work "third-rate" and "loser" - applied to two different people into his Twitter puke. All that's missing are "failing" and "fake."

And it's a load of hooey that he never has contact with Haberman:

Actually, Trump has spoken with Haberman quite a bit, often calling her from his personal cell phone.

Hard leftists know how to smear people, too. Kamala Harris said this about federal bench (Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals) nominee Kyle Duncan:

Remember the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case where corporate bosses argued for the ability to block their employees' access to birth control? The lead lawyer was Kyle Duncan.

She wasn't done:

Kyle Duncan also tried to get the Supreme Court to reinstate a racist voter ID law that "targeted African-Americans with almost surgical precision."

And this:

Guess who was one of the attorneys petitioning the Supreme Court to uphold Louisiana’s ban on marriage equality? Kyle Duncan.

And this:

And, who is currently representing the creators of the North Carolina Bathroom Bill targeting transgender students? Kyle Duncan.

 

All right, let's take these one by one:

Hobby Lobby had not and has not any intention to block anyone's access to birth control. Go to your local pharmacy and get some. Simple as that. But it should not be covered by health insurance at all, and businesses that for religious reasons don't want to cover it should not be forced by the government to do so.

We all know the instances in which a person is required to show an ID in the course of daily life, including to get on the floor of a DNC convention.

There's no such thing as "marriage equality" because it's impossible by definition for two people of the same sex to be married.

People with gender dysphoria - "transgendered" people - need help, not access to bathrooms for the opposite sex.

I do have to say, Kamala knows how to pack a plethora of identity politics into a few short tweets.

 

 

 

 

Dem grandstanding on Pompeo is pure gotcha politics

The comment thread underneath the post immediately below this one basically consists of a commenter expressing his loathing for Trump due to Trump's very obvious character shortcomings, a view pretty close to my own, and my response that that is all the more reason to see to it that he is surrounded by the most sober-minded, principled and consistent advisors that can be found.

We have that in Mike Pompeo, who has an engineering degree, a law degree, a record of distinguished Army service, and who founded and ran an aerospace machining company. He's been CIA chief for about a year, and now he's the nominee for Secretary of State.

There is no good reason to oppose his nomination, and Dem attempts to offer one ring very hollow:

n the coming months, President Trump will have to deal with the fallout from his strike on Syria, the growing conflict between Israel and Iran, the future of the Iran nuclear agreement, Chinese belligerence toward Taiwan, the planned summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and whatever unexpected international crises that erupt. Even if you accept the critique of Trump as someone who has no fixed worldview, little in the way of principle, and is dangerously enamored of the "madman" theory of strategic ambiguity, you would therefore want him, it seems to me, to be surrounded by personnel who are experienced, knowledgeable, capable, and steadfast—individuals who can serve as ballast, who can tether the president to geopolitical reality.

The slightest glance at Pompeo's official biography is enough to confirm that he is such a man. How many senators, Republican or Democrat, graduated at the top of their class at West Point, served as a cavalry officer, graduated from Harvard Law School and edited the Harvard Law Review, then went on to become a successful businessman? These are precisely the qualities that led the Senate in January 2017 to confirm Pompeo as CIA director in a bipartisan 66-32 vote.

A position in which, by the high standards of administration critics, Pompeo has excelled. "When it came to representing the judgments of the CIA, he was scrupulous," former CIA director Michael Hayden, no friend of Trump's, said recently. "I've seen no indication whatsoever that he's done anything but fairly describe what it is his analysts believe to be true and that includes the hypercharged, politically sensitive third-rail issue of what the Russians did in 2016."

So Pompeo is credentialed, succeeded in a tough position, and represented intelligence straightforwardly to President Trump. And yet none of this is enough for the Democrats, including those who supported Pompeo's nomination for CIA director, for the specious reason that the president shouldn't have a secretary of state who agrees with him. The Senate Democrats are operating under the assumption that it is disqualifying for a nominee to hold views shared by the duly elected president and majorities in both houses of Congress. They say Pompeo is too hawkish, despite his personal meeting with Kim Jong Un. Or they say Pompeo is dishonest for not revealing to them his classified visit to North Korea. Or they attack Pompeo for holding the same position on same-sex marriage as Barack Obama circa 2012. Or they worry that Pompeo is too worried about Islamism, and not worried enough about climate change. Next they'll complain that he's never donated to Planned Parenthood.

Yes, it's true: Mike Pompeo is not a liberal Democrat. Knock me over with a feather.

Of course, the real reason Democrats are circling the wagons against this nomination has nothing to do with Pompeo's politics. It's because the Democrats recognize the political weakness of the Trump administration ahead of the midterm elections and want to cripple it further. But have they paused for a moment to consider what might happen if their wish is granted and Pompeo is not confirmed? Who do they think Trump will nominate then? Lena Dunham?

More likely, Trump, as he has done in other areas of the bureaucracy for the last 16 months, won't nominate anyone at all. He will leave the office of secretary of state unfilled while he and Pompeo manage diplomacy from the Oval Office and Langley, respectively. What this scenario achieves for the Democrats or the country, I do not know.

Now, back to the fact that Trump is objectionable as president, which he is. That's not the issue here. The issue is the power-mad nature of the contemporary Democrat party. They'd be doing this to cabinet nominees if we had any other Republican in the Oval Office.

North Korea: so far, no patty-cake

Well.

It's certainly been an interesting month for North Korea's interactions with the US and the world, hasn't it? South Korean president Moon says that the North assured him that its goal is denuclearization without preconditions. Kim goes on his first visit to a foreign country (China) as leader, takes his wife who joins him for a state banquet and a visit to the Academy of Sciences, meets secretly with Mike Pompeo over Easter weekend, and says it aims to end the official state of war with South Korea that has existed since 1950.

There are two possibilities here, broadly speaking.

Let's dispense with the least likely one, namely, that Kim has figured out that history will view him far more favorably if he brings his nation into the modern world,  drops the threatening posture, and begins to exude reasonability.

Given his, and his regime's, track record from the late 1940s to a few weeks ago, it's far more likely that he and his party leaders and generals are engaged in a giant ruse:

the potential trouble ahead is that this is the meeting that the Kim dynasty has always wanted and has been “gaming out” for many years. Pyongyang’s playbook is now well-known: draw out negotiations for as long as possible while demanding a peace treaty and other concessions, recognition as a nuclear state and the normalization of relations with the United States. Until recently, North Korean’s chastened patrons — the Chinese — went along with the Trump campaign of pressure against Kim, themselves fearing that Trump was capable of anything.

But now the Chinese will support any negotiations that may break the United States’ alliance with South Korea. Kim and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, find themselves in alignment once again in seeking to remove U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula and gradually “de-couple” Seoul and Washington. As it does this, North Korea and China will aim to isolate Japan as the last remaining place in the Asia-Pacific where U.S. troops are permanently stationed. Kim and Xi know exactly what they want and will use these negotiations as a platform to achieve these goals.

What th US has to do is take the North Korean posture at its face value and hold them to what they're saying:

Team USA is going up against a regime that has been on a roll in outwitting the United States across many administrations, and that is supported by a China that wants the United States out of Asia. The key to success is to push for immediate denuclearization while preparing for a long-term parallel strategy of coercive diplomacy against North Korea and continued pushback against Chinese moves to break U.S. alliances in Asia.

However, if the North succeeds in drawing out the talks with promises of future denuclearization, engaging Washington in endless fights about verification or demands for concessions without any immediate actions in return, Washington will have lost important time that otherwise could have been spent strengthening the coalition of pressure.

Now, consider the state of limbo in which Pompeo is currently operating. He is exactly the kind of guy to have the meeting with Kim that he had at the beginning of this month, but North Korea will be keep a close eye on whether his situation is solid or precarious - that is, whether the US Congress grants him its imprimatur for becoming Secretary of State:

Frankly, the cause of the Trump-Tillerson friction makes no difference. All that matters is that it was there, and everyone knew about it. By sending Pompeo to North Korea to negotiate on his behalf, Trump has sent exactly the opposite message about Pompeo to the world. Pompeo is the president’s guy, the man he sent to negotiate with the Hermit Kingdom. Don’t mess with him, unless you’re willing to mess with Trump.

Fifteen Senate Democrats voted to confirm Pompeo to his current job as CIA director. Clearly, they thought he had the temperament, character, experience and smarts to do that job. Some, clearly under pressure from their left-wing bases, have backed off those votes, using weasel words to explain why they are now planning to flip flop and cast votes against his confirmation as secretary of State. That was before the news of Pompeo’s visit to North Korea. This changes the calculus.

Will Claire McCaskill cater to her liberal base in Missouri and leave herself forced to defend an action that can reasonably be said to have led to the collapse of talks with North Korea? What about Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Tim Kaine in Virginia, Angus King in Maine, Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota and Joe Manchin in West Virginia, each of whom voted to confirm Pompeo to his current position, and all of whom are on the ballot in November? The campaign ads write themselves. I, for one, cannot wait.

We know of one Senate Dem, Heidi Heidtkamp of North Dakota, who sees the stakes here.

There are some oddball thumbs-down positions being taken on the Pub side.

All in all, though, it looks like he has the votes.

This spring is going to call for steely resolve on the part of the US like it hasn't mustered for some time. North Korea (and China) are going to look for any and all signs of blinking.

An Orwellian bill in the California legislature

The Left's war on normalcy and Christianity just got even uglier:

. . . the California State Assembly is set to vote on a bill that would actually — among other things — ban the sale of books expressing orthodox Christian beliefs about sexual morality.

Yes, ban the sale of books.

Assembly Bill 2943 would make it an “unlawful business practice” to engage in “a transaction intended to result or that results in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer” that advertise, offer to engage in, or do engage in “sexual orientation change efforts with an individual.”

The bill then defines “sexual orientations change efforts” as “any practices that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” (Emphasis added.)

This is extraordinarily radical. Christian orthodoxy is simple — regardless of a person’s desires (their “orientation”), the standard of right conduct is crystal clear. Sex is reserved for marriage between a man and a woman. When it comes to “gender expression,” there is no difference between “sex” and “gender,” and the Christian response to gender dysphoria is compassion and treatment, not indulgence and surgical mutilation.

Put another way, there is a fundamental difference between temptation and sin.

California law would intrude directly on this teaching by prohibiting even the argument that regardless of sexual desire, a person’s sexual behavior should conform to Biblical standards.

Christians find their identity in Christ, not in their gender and not in their sexual orientation. The state of California says no. Your gender and your orientation are your identity, and you should engage in actions that celebrate and ratify your alleged essence. The state is creating a new religion of sexual libertinism, declaring that religions opposing it aren’t just false but harmful, and then prohibiting contrary religious exercise.

No one doubts that Christian orthodoxy is contentious. No one doubts that its teachings on sexual morality are increasingly unpopular. But they remain constitutionally protected, and no state legislature should be permitted to ban a “good” (such as a book) or a “service” (like counseling) that makes these arguments and provides them to willing, consenting consumers. In fact, state law would lock in a sexual-revolution orthodoxy that all too often hurts the very people the state seeks to protect. 

To take just one example, large numbers of childrenwho exhibit gender dysphoria eventually “desist.” Their dysphoria resolves itself as they grow older. Indeed, there is serious research indicating that this is the “most likely outcome” for a child with gender dysphoria. Under AB 2943, the very act of communicating this truthful and indeed hopeful message could very well lead to legal jeopardy. This is extraordinary.

Despite the obvious constitutional problems and despite its obvious intolerance for the Christian ethics of millions of its citizens, the bill is presently sailing through — passing two committee votes by 8–2 and 8–1 margins. It may come up for an Assembly vote as soon as this Thursday. 

Between its obscenely high tax rate, its sanctuary cities, its pipe dream of government-funded high-speed rail, and this kind of evil,  the Golden State is surely set to continue to see net population loss.

Update on the Philly Starbucks situation

Observations from a caller to Ben Shapiro's radio show:

On Tuesday, Starbucks announced a national day of retraining for all of its employees in the wake of a supposedly racist incident: a Philadelphia store manager named Holly calling the police on two black men for allegedly loitering, after refusing them access to the restroom since they had not bought anything. Holly, the media claimed, was obviously acting out of racial intent.

The same day as Starbucks’ announcement, a listener to my show emailed me from Philadelphia to talk about Holly. According to the listener, who regularly frequents the now-infamous Philadelphia Starbucks in question, “I don’t know what happened last week with the two guys. I wasn’t there. But I highly doubt that she saw the two men and decided to call the police based solely on the fact that they are black.”

Why not? According to this patron, “From my observations and interactions with her, I was actually under the impression that Holly is an SJW feminist of the highest order. Once I even overheard her scorn a male barista for not using the proper neutral pronouns with somebody. That's why this whole situation is so shocking to me! Even though I did not agree with her and all the SJW pins that adorn her beanie, I think calling her a racist all over the news and doxing her name, address, phone, family, etc. is disgusting.”

This patron explained that Holly “is not racist and doesn’t deserve what is happening to her here in Philly.” The patrons of the Starbucks are “both black and white, and I’ve personally seen Holly give the oh-so-coveted restroom code to both black and white people, patrons and non-patrons. I’ve seen her train both black and white staff members and she has been nothing but nice to everyone, and I’ve never witnessed any racist behavior.” 

As I said yesterday, someone may think he / she / it has his / her / its leftist creds in order, but it's all relative. There's always someone who has out-jackbooted you.

Aaaaaand here comes the sensitivity training

An awkward situation happened at a particular Starbucks franchise and so

Starbucks announced Tuesday it will be closing 8,000 of its stores nationwide to send its 175,000 employees to “racial bias training” boot camp following an incident last week in which two black men were arrested in one of its stores for loitering.

In a statement from Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, the company announced the closure would happen on May 29. Johnson prostrated himself and his company further for the mishandling of the situation:

“I’ve spent the last few days in Philadelphia with my leadership team listening to the community, learning what we did wrong and the steps we need to take to fix it,” Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson said in a statement.

“While this is not limited to Starbucks, we’re committed to being a part of the solution,” he said. “Closing our stores for racial bias training is just one step in a journey that requires dedication from every level of our company and partnerships in our local communities.”

Surely, the thousands upon thousands of dollars the coffeeshops will lose in this exercise in gratuitous self-flagellation will be enough to settle the mobs, right? Right?!

Not likely. As we know, even if you are a full-fledged white-guilt adherent, you can never be sorry or abnegate enough to make up for things you probably didn’t do as a white person. And as former Attorney General Eric Holder will be one of the people guiding the instruction, you can bet this will be made clear in one way or another.

This is clear from the fact that a company that has had a left-wing, progressive culture since its beginnings in Seattle, and held it firmly, is putting its employees through further training on how to treat customers of color.

The gentlemen who were arrested deserved to have what happened to them addressed and the apology they received from Starbucks was warranted, but honestly, as one person on Twitter astutely pointed out:

“A few years ago Starbucks employees were told to randomly talk about race with customers. Now they have to sit through a day long “how to not be racist” seminar.” 

No one can be pure enough to satisfy the jackboots.

Letting people and businesses keep more of their own money has widespread positive effects

Look out onto the bay. Do you see the tide rising and the boats lifting?

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now projects 156.8 million jobs in America by year-end 2027—2.6 million more jobs than in its June 2017 Budget and Economic Outlook. CBO attributes an average of 1.1 million additional jobs over the next 10 years to the recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Between the across-the-board tax cuts benefiting the massive majority of US taxpayers and this good news from CBO, it would appear that the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" was aptly named.  And as a reminder, the job creation side of the reform package is largely thanks to the corporate tax cuts -- which liberals have demagogued, despite their economic wisdom.  Recall that Democrats, all of whom joined in lockstep opposition to the bill, are vowing to repeal this tangible progress.  More than 500 US companies have rolled out new benefits, bonuses and wage increases as a direct result of tax reform, helping more than four million US workers.  Here's the latest example of good news that Democrats are eager to cancel:

Kroger announced Monday new investments in employee benefits, education and wages as retailers across the board are spending more on their employees to keep pace in a tighter labor market. Last week, Kroger said it planned to hire for 11,000 new positions, including 2,000 management roles. At that time, it said would invest $500 million in associate wages and training and development over the next three years. The grocer has attributed the investments to more funds as result of recent tax law changes. Among the new initiatives, Kroger is introducing a Feed Your Future program to support continuing education for all part-time and full-time associates following six months of employment.

As part of the program, Kroger will offer up to $3,500 annually ($21,000 over the course of employment) to support educational advancements like high school equivalency exams, professional certifications and advanced degrees...It is also increasing the company match for its 401(k) program to 5 percent, up from 4 percent previously. It is expanding its employee discount program for associate shopping in its stores. It is investing $5 million more into its Helping Hands program, an internal fund to aid associates during hardship.

The current Republican Congress hasn't been able to get a whole lot done, but this accomplishment was a dandy.

 

The greatest of these

In a recent LITD comment thread, the question of whether there is something ostentatious about the fact that Chick-fil-A closes on Sundays came up.

My view, as a Christian, is that it is a perfectly natural thing to do. There is encouragement among a considerable swath of society for businesses to close on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and Chick-fil-A's practice seems like a natural extension of the idea. We are to rest on the seventh day, give it fully to reflection, prayer and the delight of our loved ones' company.

Granted, firefighters, police, hospital emergency teams and the like (think armed forces overseas) have what might be argued as a moral obligation to take shifts on Sundays or the above holidays, but it's always good to hear of instances of the institutions employing them making the effort to imbue their work environments with some measure of the cheer they'd be enjoying at home.

This points up the indispensability of each and all of the Three Pillars  and - excuse the mixing of metaphors here - their being inextricably entwined. A sole focus on the free market might lead one to view a Sundays-off policy as silly, as rendering one's business vulnerable to chicken-sandwich competitors who stay open from early to late seven days a week. Of leaving profits on the table.

It's a similar argument to the one sometimes lobbed at conservatives about trashy entertainment, even pornography. Is there not a market for it? Who is to begrudge the purveyor a prosperous life just because some find his product distasteful?

On the other hand, we encounter the question of choice on the part of someone who opts for an employee role in the web of economic exchange. The mindset that confers primacy on maximized economic advantage is not only going to be inclined to see a Sundays-off policy as self-limiting, but is going to see companies with heavy-handed management practices as merely utilizing the labor of sovereign individuals who have chosen to be where they are.

And one must concede that that is true, at least in isolation from all other considerations. A worker is free to leave an organization and on-board with one more to his or her liking at any time. It is the converse of a company taking a pass on one applicant and going with another during hiring phases. Moreover, the notion of a labor union, again, taken in isolation, fits with the free-market model. Workers, recognizing their strength in numbers, are perfectly within their rights to organize to present their case for higher wages or other work conditions. The results will be a matter of what the market will bear. The employer may not be able to find an entire new workforce with a requisite skill level without interrupting production, and accede to what's being insisted upon. (Where the labor union no longer fits into the free-market model is when it lobbies legislatures for market-distorting measures like a prevailing wage, or in the case of public-sector workers.)

We see an interesting development in the wake of Donald Trump's tweets about Amazon. Those with whom I tend to align (conservatives who have always found, and still find, Trump objectionable in the extreme) took a tack in responding that, in my estimation, left something important out of their consideration. Yes, Amazon has, as they argue, made acquisition of consumer goods exponentially more convenient, and has even, contrary to Trump's bloviating, been a financial boon to the US Post Office.

Joseph Schumpeter's signature concept - creative destruction - seems applicable here. That's another valid point my ideological kin raise.  Trump's noting of the impact on brick-and-mortar retail businesses seems borne of a nostalgia that seems oddly out of place with his boneheaded winners-and-losers worldview.

But tales abound of how Amazon's model comes at a cost. In recent months, I've come across a few articles about various Amazon distribution centers and office complexes in which depression and even suicidal tendencies are pervasive. Such stories are replete with tales of people crying at their desks, of urinating in bottles at their work stations, and of being disciplined for being off sick.

This example allows us to see that a sociocultural and, indeed, human context surrounds the purely economic level on which the they-choose-to-be-there argument rests.

Still, metropolitan areas around the nation are clamoring to be the site of Amazon's second headquarters, usually offering tax breaks and, in some cases, outright subsidies. Such is the continuing lethargy in a sizable swath of our economy (even as it, admittedly, is improving at present) that so many areas chomp at this bit thusly.

Our choices always exist against the backdrop of specific conditions, and sometimes the tradeoffs we face are mean. A whole lot of people, due to their specific situations, including educational levels, are going to have to face, should their city be graced with Amazon HQ2, choosing between a brutal work pace or continuing to make a far lower wage at some place among the rest of what's available in their municipality.

And then there is what the Amazon model of ever-faster delivery is doing to our collective psyche, our character. There was a time when we looked askance at instant gratification. What book, household item, or article of clothing is of such urgency that it must be delivered in the next few hours?

The question arises - or, at least, ought to arise: For what end are we doing this?

Here, we can expect another barb to be tossed our way from the left: Are you endorsing a collectivist solution, perhaps an official policy, a program to be fleshed out with legislation and regulations?

That's exactly what we don't need, and this juncture in the conversation brings us back to the indispensability of each of Three Pillars.

We are indeed designed to live as a community, one that extends from family to neighborhood to nation and, ideally, the species - but based on a common, even if necessarily broad, notion of transcendence. This assertion was at the core of the visions of such great conservative thinkers as Russell Kirk and Richard M. Weaver.

We'd do well to reflect on what Samuel Johnson understood:

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

And he did not mean near-instant delivery of more consumer products.  His sense of happiness is akin to what C.S. Lewis means when he employs the term "joy":

Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure.  It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.

Only a home full of those who love each other can spur its inhabitants to close in on that for which the dwellers long.

Conservatives, then, differ from leftists on the one hand, when it comes to the idea of what makes for the bonds of community, and from libertarians on the other when it comes to a consideration of the proper use of freedom. In fact, a libertarian would likely argue that it's improper to speak of a use for freedom, that freedom is an end unto itself.

But there is one correct use of freedom, and that is to freely give ourselves to Him who granted us our freedom and sovereignty in the first place. And that begins with giving ourselves to each other, starting with the people under our roof. It's there we are to learn the model of being able to maneuver through this world relaxed, with our defenses down, a condition that we know that, due to our fallibility, we can't expect to enjoy perfectly.

But that space behind the front door is where it can come closest to perfection if everyone therein is committed to seeking it.

That's why Chick-fil-A closes on Sundays. As tasty as chicken sandwiches and waffle fries are, and as indispensable as profits are, there must be an agreed-upon sense of the sacred, of us pointing each other toward that which satisfies our inescapable yearning.

Somebody somewhere must start making time for love.

It's this kind of stuff . . .

The Very Stable Genius foregoes a great national-security resource because the guy wasn't a ring-kisser:

The Washington Post reported Mike Pence wanted to bring Jon Lerner on as his national security adviser. Lerner is Nikki Haley’s deputy at the United Nations and was expected to retain that role while working for Pence so the two teams could coordinate more efficiently. According to the story, Pence and Haley have worked closely together over the last year so having Lerner be the buffer between Pence in DC and Haley in New York, makes sense.

But then along comes Donald Trump to object. Why? Not because Lerner is incompetent or corrupt. No, Trump doesn’t want Lerner around because he dared to work with the Club For Growth. That organization opposed Trump during the Republican primaries in 2016 and ran ads highlighting their opposition.
According to Axios, that’s all it took for Trump to want to block Lerner’s appointment:

Trump was furious when he learned Pence was bringing on Nikki Haley’s deputy Jon Lerner, according to three sources familiar with the events. The President believed Lerner was a card-carrying member of the “Never Trump” movement because Lerner crafted brutal attack ads for Club for Growth’s multimillion-dollar anti-Trump blitz during the Republican primaries.

“Why would Mike do that?” Trump wondered aloud about Pence’s decision, according to two sources briefed on the President’s private conversations.

Everything is personal with Trump.
Lerner decided not to join Pence’s team and who can blame him?

According to a source familiar with the deliberations, Lerner, who currently serves as UN Secretary Nikki Haley’s deputy, sought to avoid drama: “Jon does not want to be a distraction. He’s done incredible work with Nikki Haley and it’s important to our country that this work continues.”

The more likely reason is he didn’t want to deal with the nonsense that would flow his way because of Trump’s blubbering. For some, this goes to mindset Trump has about loyalty. The problem with that outlook is that loyalty is something that is unspoken. People choose to be loyal.

Trump wants fealty.

Lerner chose to stay in New York and that’s probably a smart decision. 

Someday the inside scoop on what Mike Pence really thinks of the VSG is going to see the light of day. That's going to be one interesting read.

Why this website doesn't preoccupy itself with the supposedly hot topics of recent days

The last few weeks have been interesting for LITD. This site is unabashedly absolutist, in the sense that the viewpoint it takes on anything is driven by unwavering adherence to the Three Pillars of conservatism.

Once again, for the sake of anyone wandering into these environs for the first time, they are, as articulated here,

1.) Free-market economics, which begins with the premise that a good or service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it is worth - period. No other party has any business being involved in that agreement - certainly not government.

2.) An understanding that Western civilization has been a unique blessing to humankind. (Judeo-Christian morality, Greco-Roman model of representative democracy, the great scientific and artistic achievements.)

3.) A foreign policy based on what history tells us about human nature. This plays itself out as our allies knowing we have their backs, our adversaries respecting us, and our enemies fearing us.

But those who have been readers for a while may notice some equivocation on certain matters currently on the nation's radar screen, or even scant mention, if any at all.

Is LITD developing a soft spot for relativism?

No, what you see is an understanding that much of the current passing parade doesn't tell us much about whether immutable principles - such as the Three Pillars and any subsidiary principles falling under their rubrics - are being upheld or threatened.  The urge to take an absolutist stance about, say, Robert Mueller, the Syria strike or Facebook's handling of user information is borne out of panicked tribalism, the perceived urgency of defending or attacking people and institutions that are in and of themselves muddles of conflicting motives none of which rise to the status of timeless principle.

Most of the people making news of late are scrambling to defend turf. Some are basically personally admirable, some are pretty distasteful. In any case, few if any seem to be carrying a banner of either of the great forces contending, as they have since the modern era got underway in the 1700s, for the soul of the nation, the West, and indeed the world.

Let's take Syria. We have there a civil war that started during the wider Arab Spring that brought tumult to Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and some other places with varying results. A number of forces opposed to the Baathist regime, now in its second generation, each with its own agenda, took up arms. You had Kurds of various stripes, jihadist groups, some of which collaborated and some of which didn't, and Iranian proxies. Russia pretty quickly gave the conflict - or rather, jumble of conflicts - and international flair by demonstrating support for the Assad regime. The US, under the Obama administration, felt the need to weigh in on atrocities coming from some of the warring factions - particularly the Assad government and ISIS. But ISIS is now marginalized, and the main question remains how to keep Iran from extending its influence to the Mediterranean, something Russia would like to see happen. Other than that, it's merely a complex civil war.

To specifically address last Friday's missile strike, an argument can be made that it was a necessary and effective measure, given the degree of evil involved in a gas attack on a town. But a Constitutional argument can be made that it should have been done through and act of Congress. A good argument can also be made that Assad, with the help of Russia and Iran, will have his chemical-weapons program repaired soon, thus leaving the status quo unchanged.

Or let's take James Comey. In fact, we can examine Robert Mueller in the same paragraph. That's because neither of them are heroes nor "deep-state" scoundrels. The treatment of them by both the Left and the slavish Trump devotees is cartoonishly focused on their recent behavior, with no examination of the overall arcs of their lives and careers. Each man has his longtime professional associates who will vouch for periods in which each served with distinction in the field of professional law enforcement.

That Comey waffled at the last minute at his July 5, 2016 presser, statiing that the FBI would not ask for prosecution of Hillary Clinton, after having just spent fifteen minutes listing reasons why that would be the advisable course does raise eyebrows, as does his current pop-celebrity behavior. LITD maintains what it has all along about this: He just buckled from the pressures of palace intrigue.

It would be the best course of action if Mueller just wrapped up his investigation, announcing that after nearly two years, his team has found no evidence that the Trump campaign team partnered with the Russian government to throw the 2016 presidential election. But, you see, in the course of determining that, said team has come across all kinds of eyebrow-raising occurrences by people with that classic Beltway ambition and nose for power-optimization and therefore feels compelled to keep digging.

The moral here? You can start in digging anywhere, and you're going to find a headache-inducing web of hotel-bar meetings, memos, emails, organizations in arcane lines of business, and debatable testimony before Congressional committees. That's the nature of the beast inside the Beltway. (The other day, I read a piece at Wealth 365 entitled "Facebook Fallout Deals Blow to Mercers' Political Clout." In the space of a 2,088-word article, no fewer than 14 organizations, ranging from businesses to political groups to a think tank, are mentioned. Here they are in order of appearance: Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, Look Ahead America, Gotham Alpha, Palantir, Breitbart News, America First Policies, Making America, Renaissance Technologies, Heritage Foundation, Donors Trust, Emerdata, Frontier Services, and Culturecom. Is your head swimming yet?)

Speaking of Facebook, other than Ted Cruz getting to confront Jeff Zuckerberg about leftist bias (something that nearly all big post-American companies now have), his appearance on Capitol Hill last week didn't tell us much that we didn't already know - namely, that we, Facebook's users, are the product, and the information-gleaners are the true customers. Also, that cool ideas such as Facebook are inherently fraught with dangers to privacy.

How about identity politics, currently the reason why several developments around the nation have been in the news lately? We've cited several of these here at LITD: Corey Booker's questioning of Mike Pompeo, the New Yorker piece on Chick-fil-A, and the small Indiana city getting some national media attention because a high-school student got academic credit for organizing a LBGT "pride festival" and because, since said city is Mike Pence's hometown, everyone from the student to the media gets to poke him in the eye with it.

We could have included the no-whites pool party Scripps College is hosting, or The View's panelists, egged on by their guests Madeleine Albright, to examine the Trump cabinet through the lens of gender and race, and come to a mistaken conclusion in the course of doing so.

This kind of thing comes closest to bringing core principles into sharp relief, but LITD has concluded something lately: post-American society is so polarized that there is no hope of convincing anyone sitting on the fence - and one finds fence-sitters only after an exhaustive search - of one's position on this. For all intents and purposes, everyone is either so immersed in a demographics-colored worldview or so dismayed by it that all those in the second camp (that would include LITD) can really do is report on each new degree of toxicity. And that occasionally gets tiring.

Since it indeed does touch on core principles, we know that the Left sets up straw men ("structural racism," "systemic bigotry," "hate-driven business practices") and that that obliterates the prospects for the prevailing of clear thinking as well as consideration of transcendent implications, it becomes increasingly apparent that our most advisable course of action is to watch our leftist fellow human beings take their folly ever further toward its logical conclusion, even as we interact amiably with actual individuals of whatever classification as we always have. To be sure, if called upon to, say, state without reservation that Ferguson, Missouri was a local law-enforcement matter with no racial implications, or witness that Paul's letter to the Romans makes it clear that homosexuality is a sin, we must do so, but otherwise, we are drifting toward a state of affairs in which we will have ever less to do with those who find our stance abhorrent.

That's saddening in the extreme. It ought to be otherwise.

But a core tenet of conservatism is squarely facing what is before you, and proceeding from there.

No, LITD is getting neither sleepy nor squishy. It's just that a survey of the current landscape doesn't prod us to mount any of the hilltops we see.

The Syria strike - initial thoughts

Looks like we hit a lot of proper (chemical-weapons facility) targets.

Russia is none too pleased.

I realize that some - notably Tucker Carlson - are concerned that we aren't 100 percent positive that the Syrian government conducted the gas attack on Douma, but I don't think the US, Britain and France would coordinate this undertaking unless they were pretty darn sure.

The New Yorker's sense of what to get bothered about is skewed indeed

Like the toxins creating an infection concentrating themselves in a localized area to create, say, a zit or a boil, Dan Peipenbring at the New Yorker has taken it upon himself to embody all the West-Hatred, snobbery and, most to the point, loathing of the Truth presented by holy scripture that characterizes coastal post-America:

Did you know Chick-fil-A is infiltrating New York City with its Christian values? The New Yorker sent the warning to its readers Friday. Beware the restaurant's "pervasive Christian traditionalism," says Dan Piepenbring.

Chick-fil-A was once only known for being the birthplace of the Original Chicken Sandwich. But, when its CEO spoke out against gay marriage, it became a target for progressives, who have since called for boycotts of the Christian company.

Piepenberg sensed an "ulterior motive" in the establishment's decor during his lunch stop. The Cows all over the restaurant are "ultimate evangelists." It's all meant to build to his damning conclusion.

Still, there’s something especially distasteful about Chick-fil-A, which has sought to portray itself as better than other fast food: cleaner, gentler, and more ethical, with its poultry slightly healthier than the mystery meat of burgers. Its politics, its décor, and its commercial-evangelical messaging are inflected with this suburban piety.

What, pray tell, Mr. Peipenbring, is the difference between "suburban piety" and any other kind?

Secular agnostics like this guy cannot see any level of human motivation beyond lifestyle and class. The idea that Jesus is Lord and God's word is inerrant look - well, menacing to him.

Such a state we have come to when a popular chicken-sandwich chain that happens to be owned by Christians strikes a New Yorker writer as creepy.