Liberty's Torch

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Hostile Technology: A Vent

I am a retired engineer: a technologist by trade. Thus, I expect to find the technology I confront comprehensible. Sadly, that isn’t always the case. These days, now that there’s software in everything, the software artisan in me is often close to apoplexy.

Many have been the times when a badly designed website has made me want to ferret out the designer and throttle him to within an inch of his life. This impulse becomes especially strong when the website in question is one that offers something for sale that I’d like to purchase. Worse still is when the website is operated by some vendor with whom I must do business – e.g., a local utility company – and I can get assistance from that vendor in no other way. Such companies have little idea what they’re doing to themselves with their websites’ poor human engineering.

But today’s adventure isn’t about a website. Oh no. It’s about something even more diabolical. Yet it’s a device you probably already have, and have learned to cope with.

Yes, that’s right, Gentle Reader: The Last American Without A Smartphone has just acquired a smartphone. I didn’t want one. The proliferation of Internet two-factor security systems that require one has forced my hand.

“They’re really simple and convenient,” said my beloved wife Beth, whose uses her phone mostly for playing variations on Bejeweled. “It’s like having the world in your hand. You’ll fall in love with it.” I forbore to comment.

The lovely young lady who assisted me in this purchase advised me not to get a bottom-tier model. (She assured me she wouldn’t get a commission on the sale.) She steered me up the pyramid to what she called a middle-of-the-road device. I walked out of the store $560 poorer, with a device I had no idea how to use even to make or take a phone call. I sit here today fulminating over this purchase, and I shall tell you why.

First, the phone doesn’t come with a User’s Guide. Oh no. That’s so last year. It comes with a “Quick Reference Guide”...which doesn’t tell you how to turn the thing on, much less how to make or accept a call. So I went to the vendor’s website to search for a downloadable User’s Guide. Believe it or not, Gentle Reader, I had to compel the website’s Help system to connect me to a human assistant to find the damned thing and download it...and it still didn’t tell me how to turn the phone on.

I figured it out by experimentation, after nearly twenty minutes’ frustration. But that was just the start of my agonies. Now I had to figure out how to make a call.

The phone’s home screen tells you nothing. It’s covered with icons, but there’s no help available for what they do. Hie thee to the User’s Guide, Fran! Which I did. But would you like to guess how far into that document I had to read to find out how to make a call? I was fifty pages deep into the thing before I threw up my hands. Then I asked Beth, who has a similar model. The procedure is relatively simple, though I wouldn’t call it intuitive. But there’s worse.

The key to making the mastery of a new device pleasant is consistency of approach. Fundamental operations should be uniform. That makes them easy to master: the application of a common vocabulary of basic actions to a range of operations. How was I to know that phone calls are no longer considered fundamental operations on a phone?

You’d think that a touch-screen device festooned with tap-and-go icons would use a tap-and-go approach to invoke the operations they govern. And that is indeed the case...with one exception that’s impossible to intuit. The exception: Accepting an incoming call.

The ring tone sounds, the screen illuminates, and the number of the caller is prominently displayed. Below it are two icons: a green handset and a red handset. Green means “go,” right? So I tapped the green handset...and the ring tone continued uninterrupted. I tapped it again. I tapped it twice in rapid succession. I tried holding it down. No dice: the call went to voice mail.

I couldn’t decline the call by tapping the Red handset, as I discovered soon afterward. The call still went to voice mail.

The Quick Reference Guide was no help. Apparently, as with turning the device on, the knowledge of how to accept an incoming call must be transmitted genetically from father to son.

Where’s that damned User’s Guide again? Read, read, scratch head, read further...did I buy a camera by mistake? Or perhaps a handheld PlayStation? Ah, here we go: Answering a call. I only had to read 77 pages to find it. So what’s the secret handshake?

What? I have to swipe the green handset icon to the right? Swipe? Everything else this damnable device can do is accessed by tap-icon-and-go, but this, the most important thing anyone has ever done with a phone, has to be different?!

This is evil. This is a mortal sin against good design principles. This is worthy of a life sentence programming a PDP-8 with nothing but an ASR-33 teletype.

I hate this thing. I want to return it. But I can’t. I need it now. The world around me has decreed that Thou Shalt Have A Smartphone. I’d settle for slowly torturing the designer to death, but I suppose the satisfaction from that would be fleeting.

I’m told the top-tier units are even less oriented toward making and taking phone calls. I suppose I should take comfort from that.

Excuse me? You want to know the make and model? It’s a Samsung Galaxy A50. With this execrable device Samsung has guaranteed that I will never again buy any of its products. But this one, I’m stuck with. And please, don’t regale me with the improved ease of use and incredible new features the coming models will offer. I’d rather use a Dixie Cup on a thread...if it could send and receive text messages, anyway.

"Welcoming" the Incoming Leftist Refugees

I was reading an article from City Journal, regarding the out-migration of CA residents to Red States.

The states that are experiencing the influx of CA refugees have concerns about their own state becoming a CA echo. That concern is not totally unjustified.

New Dimensions In Terrorism

I wish I could honestly say I was surprised by this story:

     Jacksonville police said a van crashed into a Republican party tent where volunteers were registering voters Saturday afternoon.
     Jacksonville police say a driver intentionally crashed a van through a tent where Duval County GOP volunteers were registering voters Saturday afternoon.
     Nobody was injured in the 3:45 p.m. incident at the Walmart Supercenter, 11900 Atlantic Boulevard, near Kernan Boulevard in the Sandalwood neighborhood, Lt. Larry Gayle of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office told reporters at the scene.
     Several Duval County GOP volunteers were working at the registration tent when a white man in his early 20s driving an older — possibly 1980s — brown van pulled up toward the tent.
     He then drove through the tent, endangering the lives of the workers and damaging the tent and tables, Gayle said.
     The driver then stopped, got out of the van and took a video of the scene before he “flipped off” the victims and fled, Gayle said.

...but I wasn’t. And before we get to the “Fran” part of this tirade, add the above to this story:

Tax cuts for the wealthy constitute a “structure of sin,” Pope Francis said Wednesday in a passionate address calling for international wealth redistribution. “Every year hundreds of billions of dollars, which should be paid in taxes to fund health care and education, accumulate in tax haven accounts,” the pontiff told participants in a Vatican seminar, “thus impeding the possibility of the dignified and sustained development of all social agents.”
“Today’s structures of sin include repeated tax cuts for the richest people, often justified in the name of investment and development,” Francis told the meeting organized by the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences. [Emphasis added by FWP.]

My juxtaposition of the two is more than a mere Curmudgeonly caprice, I assure you.

Allow me to ask you a question whose answer you think “should” be “obvious:” What is terrorism? That is: What are its genus — the superset of phenomena to which it belongs – and its differentia — the characteristic that distinguishes it from the other elements in that superset?

There’s disagreement about the genus. Many people would say that terrorism must include violence, or at least a credible threat of violence. Indeed, most well-publicized acts of terrorism do include violence. But others – myself included – argue that terrorism is defined entirely by its object: the inducement of terror in a targeted population. That end need not require violence, or a threat of violence to come.

An act of terrorism is one that is intended to terrorize: to create terror among its targets. Nothing else really matters.

But why would anyone want to terrorize anyone else? Why, to get the people in the targeted group to comply with a particular agenda: i.e., to do, or not do, some particular thing. There may be real-life Jokers out there who just like to terrorize people for its own sake, but for our present purposes we can neglect them.

To terrorize a man, you must target something he values greatly. “Temporal terrorist” Smith would target Jones’s life, his health, and his loved ones. But while such terrorists are relatively well known and understood, they’re not the only variety. “Spiritual terrorist” Davis would target the fate of Jones’s immortal soul.

The unidentified Jacksonville driver mentioned in the first cited story, who employed violence to silence or scatter Republicans, conservatives, and Trump supporters, is a temporal terrorist. Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio, a.k.a. Pope Francis, is a spiritual terrorist: i.e., he has implied that unless you support his political prescriptions, your immortal soul is in danger of damnation. Granted that Bergoglio’s threats require that his targets be Catholics, but that’s an awfully big target group: about 75 million Americans and over a billion persons worldwide.

In both cases, the terrorist is using terror to induce compliance with an agenda. Both are evil, though Gentle Readers may differ on the magnitudes involved.

Bergoglio is not the first of his kind. There have been others, including several previous popes, of whom the same could be said. If you believe in the bifurcated afterlife of the Christian creed, then anything that endangers your prospects in that life is a tremendous threat: a terror. And all too many preachers, aware that their flocks look to them for wisdom and guidance, have used that terror to induce compliance with an agenda for which there is no basis in the Gospels of Jesus Christ.

For a supposed Christian leader – indeed, the highest such in all the world – to resort to terrorism to promote an entirely non-Christian agenda is a crime that beggars my powers with words.

I’m not the first to say this, nor is this the first time I say it: Christianity is the Gospels. All else is commentary by fallible men. Some may have been divinely inspired. Some may have been articulating the principles of the Gospels in a fashion we didn’t grasp before they came along. But only what is entirely consistent with Christ’s teachings in the Gospels may we defensibly call “God’s will for Man.” The root of it all, as I have written many times before, lies in the Two Great Commandments:

But the Pharisees hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, came together: And one of them, a doctor of the law, asking him, tempting him: Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets. [Matthew 22:34-40]

I have resisted the calls to label Jorge Bergoglio an anti-pope...until now. I shall do so no longer.

Saturday, February 8, 2020

Foreseeable Consequences Dept.

Perhaps the most disliked phrase ever to reach anyone’s ears is this one: “I told you so.” No one wants to hear it – ever. Many who’ve heard it have thereafter distanced themselves from him who said it, even if he was a close friend or beloved relative. But what gives “I told you so,” in all its succinctness, its cutting power comes from what the speaker forbore to say:

“I foresaw this.
I tried to warn you.
You wouldn’t listen.”

And whether “I told you so” is delivered somberly, or with a hurt look, or with an air of superior wisdom has no bearing on its accuracy. If it’s true, it’s true.

The most piercing occasions of “I told you so” arise from tautological observations akin to “If it’s true, it’s true.” Here’s a currently relevant example:

If you make everything about race,
Everything will be about race.

Ponder that one for a while, Gentle Reader. Does a refutation occur to you? I can’t come up with one. But we’re not left-wingers. Apparently they think it’s possible to make everything about race without everything being about race. A remarkable achievement, if they can pull it off.

Let’s have a few examples:

Read the stories, please. They border on incredible in the exact sense. Yet they really happened. Moreover, they’re not exceptional; they’re representative of the prevailing trend.

I’ve been there occupationally. That is, I’ve been peripherally involved in episodes in which an employee being told that his performance was unsatisfactory – in one case, that he was being fired for it – tried to allege racism on the part of his supervisor. The consequences are always ugly and destructive. No one profits, not even the racism-shouter. Yet it’s to be expected now that everything is about race.

Is there a Gentle Reader who could not have foreseen this?

     The Left has done its damnedest to make everything about race.
     The consequences were foreseeable.
     Many of us told them so.
     They chose not to listen.

Race, of course, was the entering wedge for the plague of identity politics that has expanded to encompass sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, creed, and lesser characteristics and allegiances. The Left, whose most important aspect is that of a coalition of hate groups, has sought to exploit every way in which Americans can be categorized. And of course they’ve blamed us in the Right for the resulting atmosphere of animosity and division.

As with many other social phenomena, it would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. The urge to laugh is strongest when the biter is bit by his own contrived grievance, as in the case of the Warren for President Campaign cited above.

Imagine this, if you will: imagine the reactions of the racism-shouters had Warren hired only Caucasians to work in her campaign. Imagine further the capital her opponents would make of it. Yet the practice of race-dominant hiring, sometimes called “preferential treatment” or “affirmative action,” is what opened her to the accusations leveled against her and her staff: it made attaining a particular level of cross-racial “diversity” more important than any other consideration, including talent, energy, and staff harmony. Talk about being caught between two fires!

This isn’t exactly new, either. Remember when Al Gore, during his unsuccessful campaign for the presidency in 2000, was accused of having “a low Negro quotient?” Remember who he hired as his campaign director immediately after that? Donna Brazile!

A microcephalic idiot could have foreseen where we’ve arrived after all this.

It will continue. It will probably get worse. The reason is not hard to find:

Leftism is the politics of envy.

The Left has nothing to offer anyone that must not first be taken from someone else. Therefore it must create groups that see persons not in the group as enemies to be defeated, subjugated – and mulcted.

Race was the Left’s opening sally. It worked very well, for a while. It doesn’t work well today. Too many whites have disdained to accept the burden of guilt for things done by others long dead. Too many blacks have participated actively, even gleefully, in the brutalization of other blacks. And more and more American blacks are waking up to the knowledge that they’ve been shamelessly exploited.

The other fomented divisions have had some success as well. Yet present trends continuing, they too will fail their fomenters. Sooner rather than later, I hope; America has had enough of this and is anxious to get back to business. But time will tell.

Time will also tell us something about good sense and political courage: who is willing to say today that the politics of division will be the Left’s undoing, and who will be willing to say in the aftermath that it was all as foreseeable as tomorrow’s sunrise.

Just don’t expect the division engineers of the Left to admit that we told them so.

Friday, February 7, 2020

New Immigration Bill - It's Bad, REALLY Bad

Fortunately, at this point, only the Usual Suspects have signed up for it. But, I think we have to nip it in the bud. A quick reading of it brought up the following points in the bill:

New Way Forward Act

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5383/text

Downloaded as BILLS-116hr 5383.pdf

Outlaws use of private prisons/detention centers. Mandates facilities operated by DHS (this must indicate that they know DHS is Deep State in toto).
They are going to try to squeeze in some gov'ment money for the NGOs operated by their buddies:

“Beginning on the date that is 3 years after the date of the enactment of this Act, any such program or facility shall be owned and operated by a nonprofit organization or by the Department of Homeland Security. “

They are going to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1226

What this affects is something called Conditional Parole, which enables release of an alien upon posting a bond. What it does NOT do is enable that alien to adjust their status, for example, by marrying a citizen. That, by this bill, will completely change.
All unaccompanied “children” will be dealt with as though they were a victim of Trafficking. And, we know that their definition of "child" is flexible - VERY flexible.
What also happens as a result of this bill is put ridiculous time restrictions on our judicial system, with the result that MOST, if not ALL, of those detained will have to - by law - be released in the “least restrictive” manner. Lotsa luck getting them back after release.

“The fact that an alien has a prior conviction or a criminal charge pending against the alien may not be the sole factor to justify the continued detention of the alien.”
“the immigration judge shall consider, for purposes of setting the amount of the bond, the alien’s financial resources and ability to pay the bond without imposing financial hardship on the alien.” God forbid we might not worry about the alien’s ability to enjoy the Good Life!

Who is considered a “vulnerable person” for the purposes of getting a pass on detention?

the term ‘vulnerable person’ means an individual who—
‘‘(A) is under 21 years of age or over 60 years of age;
‘‘(B) is pregnant;
‘‘(C) identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, 14 transgender, or intersex; Leftists - now outsourcing gender victimhood to aliens
‘‘(D) is victim or witness of a crime;
‘‘(E) has filed a nonfrivolous civil rights claim in Federal or State court;
‘‘(F) has a serious mental or physical illness or disability; Oh, great! Like we don't have enough wackos here already.
‘‘(G) has been determined by an asylum officer in an interview conducted under section 235(b)(1)(B) to have a credible fear of persecution or a reasonable fear of persecution.
“(H) has limited English language proficiency and is not provided access to appropriate and meaningful language services in a timely fashion; or
‘‘(I) has been determined by an immigration judge or the Secretary of Homeland Security to be experiencing severe trauma or to be a survivor of torture or gender-based violence, based on information obtained during intake, from the alien’s attorney or legal service provider, or through credible self-reporting. Because all those reporters are completely reliable.
In short, if you want to be here, we can’t stop you.

This part should be titled the “NGO Full Employment Section”

—The Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish programs that provide alternatives to detaining aliens, which shall offer a continuum of supervision mechanisms and options, including community-based supervision programs and community support. The Secretary may contract with nongovernmental community-based organizations to provide programs, which may include case management services, appearance assistance services, and screenings of aliens who have been detained.

Many of the changes mandated in the bill relate to time between hearings, such as this:

“not later than 48 hours after being taken into custody, the arrested alien is provided with a hearing before an immigration judge to determine whether there is probable cause as required by this section”
That’s ridiculous - you can barely search, process, de-louse, and medically examine a person in 48 hours, if they are coming in fast enough - as they have in recent invasions. To force agents to also run them through criminal searches, put together the paperwork, ready them for court, and - oh, yeah - allow the agent to put in 4-5 hours for sleep before court convenes, is just not possible. And, that IS the point of these changes.

In the Section titled Statute of Limitations:

Five years will be the outside limit. So, all the released aliens have to do is to evade capture for 5 years, and they are home free.

Redefining Criminal-System-to-Removal Pipeline

Reclassifies crimes so that conviction cannot be used to justify removal.
“only an alien who has been convicted of an aggravated felony for which a term of imprisonment of not less than five years was imposed shall be considered to have been convicted of a particularly serious crime.’’
These changes will apply to crimes committed BEFORE the act.

“—The amendments made by this section shall apply to—

(1) admissions and conduct occurring before, on, or after the date of the enactment of this Act; and
(2) convictions and sentences entered before, on, or after the date of the enactment of this Act.

Like I said, a Get-out-of-jail-free card, for aliens only.

I have no words:

‘‘Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an immigration judge may grant any relief or deferral from removal, including withholding of removal, to any individual who is otherwise eligible for such relief but for a prior criminal conviction, or the commission of or a finding of the commission of other conduct described in section 212(a)(2), 237(a)(2), or 237(a)(3), if the immigration judge finds such an exercise of discretion appropriate in pursuit of humanitarian purposes, to assure family unity, or when it is otherwise in the public interest.’’
Translation: those chuckleheaded Leftists judges may override US law and common sense without worry about being overruled.

Title V - Prohibition Against Performance of Immigration Officer Functions by State and Local Officers and Employees

This is a definite worsening of the current situation, which would - nationwide - forbid local and state employees from enforcing national law. It’s an end-run around established custom and practice.

Title VI - Decriminalize Migration - the title speaks for itself.
Title VII - Right to Come Home (“home” being the USA)

Also requires DHS to foot the bill for returning the aliens to the USA to pursue their claims. We have to PAY for their illegal entry.

This proposed bill is beyond bad. Anyone who in ANY way is associated with it should be targeted for removal by election. Please, contact your House representatives, and find out where they stand. Any response other than "HELL, no!" should be taken as support for the bill.

If you want to participate in the data collection, here's the link. If you want to pass on info, but don't want your email known, you can add it to the comments.

Quickies: What You Need To Know

Back when Glenn Beck had a program on the Headline News cable channel, he would include in each of his shows a segment on “what you need to know.” Those segments were often exactly as described: important information likely to have been downplayed – if not completely concealed – by the mainstream media. I was a regular viewer back then, and I often made notes of the items thus tagged.

It isn’t often I feel a need to tell anyone “what you need to know,” but such an occasion is upon us:

The bill is about 4400 words long, and horrifying from first to last. If you’d like a professional’s explication de texte, here’s Tucker Carlson’s analysis:

I have read the bill. It’s as bad as Tucker makes it sound; possibly worse, given the huge amount of discretion it awards to unelected officials whose identities are likely to be concealed from us.

Yes, the video is 13-plus minutes long. Please watch it. Then ask yourself Tucker’s question:

Why have we heard nothing about this from the mainstream news media?

I’d like an answer, wouldn’t you?

Normalities Are Not Permanencies

In a recent article on the Trump Administration’s foreign policy strokes, Victor Davis Hanson comments as follows:

     NATO will now only survive if its members keep their word and meet their spending promises. An economically stagnant, oil-hungry, and top-heavy EU will have to make radical changes, or it will sink into irrelevance and eventually break apart.
     Trump got little credit for these revolutionary changes because he is, after all, Trump — a wheeler-dealer, an ostentatious outsider, unpredictable in action, and not shy about rude talk.
     But his paradoxical and successful policies — the product of conservative, anti-war, and pro-worker agendas — are gradually winning supporters and uniting disparate groups....
     For Trump the ex-television star, wars translate into bad ratings and worse optics. As a businessman, he believes needless conflicts get in the way of money-making and win-win deals.

All right, there’s a small dig at President Trump for his dabbling in reality television. I suppose a “serious” opinion-monger has to work at least one into a column about the Trump Administration. But note the conclusion Hanson draws: The Trump approach is working to America’s benefit. Contrast the gains of the Trump years with the steady loss of influence and concessions to the Eurocratic world view of previous administrations. For most Americans, the choice is a simple one.

Hanson’s theme in the above is that success is a powerful solvent for the prevailing orthodoxy – and President Trump has racked up success after success. He’s left his critics without any objective ammunition. All they have left is supercilious carping of his style.

Among the reasons for the intensifying animosity of the politicians and media figures of the Establishment, this one stands out sharply: Their orthodoxy has collapsed. They have no argument for their demand that America return to their hegemony. By putting America first, President Trump has defeated all their premises and policy prescriptions, not just their notions about how a president “should” behave.

I’ve told the following story before. It isn’t mine, of course. Indeed, it might be the oldest story ever told, as it originates in Imperial China, possibly long before the birth of Christ. Yet, as is the case with all great stories, it tells us a mighty truth: one that makes life comprehensible...and livable.

     The Emperor was troubled. His realm’s difficulties seemed to multiply and ramify with each passing day. His subjects automatically looked to him for succor. Yet there was seldom anything he could do to lighten their burdens. Worse still, knowledge of the misery and suffering that pervaded his nation was with him always, denying him any interval of peace.
     He became desperate for relief of some kind. Yet what form might it take? He could not hide from his people’s difficulties. He could not forget them, even for a little while. Nor could he pretend that he possessed even a fraction of the power he would need to lessen them, much less to banish them.
     He called to his throne the four greatest philosophers of his realm and pleaded for their aid. He described his anguish, laid bare its effects on him, and asked if any bit of wisdom they had unearthed in their lives of study and thought that might help him to meet his responsibilities. They agreed to confer over the matter, and to report back to him when they had reached a conclusion.
     Weeks passed, and the Emperor’s agonies continued. Strive as he might, he could not make significant headway against the ailments his subjects laid before him. His anguish often threatened to cost him his life. He struggled on by sheer force of will.
     But then there came to his palace a messenger with a hopeful message: The philosophers had reached the hoped-for conclusion. They had found the eternal truth in which the Emperor could find rest and peace. More, they had prepared from it an analgesic for his agonies of soul, and were transporting it to the palace at that very moment.
     The Emperor’s heart leaped at the news. Had the wise men succeeded at last? Was there a bit of wisdom knowledge of which would renew his energies and refresh his soul? He could hardly wait for the philosophers to present him with their discovery.
     On the next day the philosophers arrived with their gift to the Emperor: an obelisk of carved granite. They wheeled it into his throne room under a heavy cloth, and positioned it so that he could gaze upon it whenever he felt a need. When it was positioned just so, they pulled away the cloth, and the Emperor saw carved into the stone four ideograms that expressed the truth they had found:
And this, too, shall pass away.
     And the Emperor, reminded of what he had always known yet had somehow forgotten, smiled, thanked the four thinkers, and resumed his labors for his people once more.

While we enjoy this new normality, it is vital that we remember that of which the Emperor above needed to be reminded: Nothing is permanent. Indeed, there are already forces at work striving to undermine America’s renewed strength, prosperity, and security. They hate those things and want to see them destroyed. Many of them walk among us.

Can we resist them? I certainly hope so, and for many years to come. Yet it is certain that at some future time that we cannot predict, they or their ideological and emotional descendants will succeed. Their ascendancy will wreck what we enjoy today. And it is quite possible that the only salve for the suffering of their subjects will be the one the philosophers presented to the Emperor: “This, too, shall pass away.”

Nothing is permanent. All we can do is to protect what we love as fiercely and resolutely as possible, and to impress the importance of that effort upon our inheritors as indelibly as possible. But what we have, strictly speaking, is today. We are not guaranteed tomorrow. No one is.

Ask the Establishmentarians who’ve been so vituperatively certain that Donald Trump, with all his bombast, would never make significant inroads into The Way Things Are And Must Be. I’m sure they’ll give you an earful. After all, it’s what they do. Happily, for today it’s all they can do. But no one can be certain who will prevail tomorrow.

Have a nice day.

Thursday, February 6, 2020

That Day I Could Never Get The Hang Of

Seriously, Gentle Reader: Aren’t there days of the week that you find more difficult than the others? For most it might be Monday. For me, it’s...well, any day I feel too shagged out to produce a “regular” essay and must make do with an “assorted” column.

Like today.

1. New York’s “No Bail” Law.

The state government of New York has done some very stupid things in recent years – having Andrew Cuomo at the wheel guaranteed that from the start – but this might be the current capper: There is now a state law that forbids a trial judge to impose bail on a detainee charged with a misdemeanor or a “nonviolent” felony. As it happens, there are some trial judges who disagree:

     COHOES, N.Y.—An upstate judge defied New York’s controversial pretrial rules on Wednesday when he set $100 bail for a man charged with a low-level misdemeanor, setting up a larger court fight on a simmering political issue.
     City Court Judge Thomas Marcelle said in an order issued on Monday that he believed setting cash bail was the least restrictive means of ensuring the defendant, Jonathan Johnston, returned to face a charge of aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle, which his attorney says carries up to a six-month jail term.
     During a hearing on Wednesday, Judge Marcelle ordered Mr. Johnston be held pending payment of $100 cash or up to a $500 bond. Mr. Johnston’s public defender, Angela Kelley, opposed the judge’s ruling and said she would appeal....
     Judge Marcelle said in his Monday order that “by stripping judges of necessary discretion to control the appearance of a defendant, the legislature improperly interfered with the judiciary’s capacity to fulfill its constitutional mandate.”

Indeed. Bail required of a criminal defendant who wants to avoid being jailed to await trial does constrain his movement, at least if his bailor is adequately vigilant. But it has another purpose as well: It guarantees that, should the defendant vanish forever, there will be a fund with which the victim of the charged offense can be compensated. That’s the reason for the “Excessive bail” clause in the Eighth Amendment:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

The Founders had a clearer vision of how a justice system ought to operate than most who came after them – including most jurists.

2. The Party of Slander and Contempt.

A severe disappointment can make a political movement show us the dark side of its character:

     [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] was quite angry that the President awarded Rush with the Medal of Freedom. She called Rush Limbaugh a “virulent racist.” It’s absolutely untrue....
     CNN’s Jim Acosta spoke slanderously without any evidence. He said that Rush Limbaugh and the President are “divisive” and Rush makes derogatory comments about African-Americans.
     “He was trying to make appeals to the African-American community,” Acosta said. “It can’t be forgotten he was awarding the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, who has a history of making derogatory comments about African-Americans. So I think, you know, overall it’s a wash.”

Ocasio-Cortez and Acosta are the dominant faces of the contemporary Left: the former in elected office; the latter in the media. When they have no substance from which to argue, they revert to slanderous accusations and then insist that their target must prove himself innocent.

One of the reasons “racist” is the go-to denunciation favored by the Left is that it can be asserted without evidence yet still tarnish its target’s good name. Note how seldom objective evidence accompanies such a claim. Yet many who have been calumnized that way have suffered both personally and professionally.

This has been the modus operandi of the Left for some time, so many in the Right will shrug and say “What else is new?” What’s new, in this case, is that Rush Limbaugh, a hero to millions who’ve drawn inspiration from his radio show and charity work, is dying of lung cancer. They’ve chosen to slander a dying man.

Limbaugh will probably shrug it off. The rest of us must not. These vermin must be destroyed professionally: driven into a disgrace so deep that no decent person anywhere will ever again treat with them for any reason. Pour encourager les autres, don’t y’know.

3. Irony So Thick You Could Swim In It.

Among deceivers and hypocrites in elected office, Elizabeth Warren is highly ranked. Few will be unaware of her use of fictitious Amerind heritage for professional and political advantage. Beyond that, she’s often allowed herself privileges she claims to oppose...when others make them, of course. But her recent comments about the acquittal of President Trump on the House’s indictment charges may set a new record for irony:

Tyler O’Neill adds this:

As Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) explained in his remarks on Tuesday, Trump's actions involving Ukraine do not demonstrate that the president is "ignorant or indifferent to the Constitution." Furthermore, former President Barack Obama did what Trump is accused of having done — held up foreign aid to Ukraine and investigated his political opponent — and at a far worse scale.
Trump temporarily delayed lethal aid to Ukraine, but Obama never sent Ukraine weapons to defend itself against Russia. Trump asked Ukraine to investigate potential corruption, but Obama's administration launched an investigation into Trump's campaign on the pretext that Russians were attempting to infiltrate it — without notifying Donald Trump!

And I shall add this: If an openly corrupt politician can immunize himself against investigation simply by running for office – in Joe Biden’s case, running for a nomination to run for office – then we’d better watch out. There are over 500,000 elective offices in these United States: enough to protect a whole lot of Corrupt-O-Crats.

4. Female Action Heroes And Other Modern Myths.

Commentator and Christian apologist Denise McAllister has a book coming out that I think I’ll purchase in physical format. Among the matters she addresses is Hollywood’s role in promoting falsehoods about women’s physical abilities:

     Dubrow: In the book you focus on not just communication between the sexes, but how men and women are portrayed in popular entertainment. At one point you mention “the preponderance of female action heroes.” What’s wrong with female action heroes?
     McAllister: Nothing is inherently wrong with female action heroes in fiction. The problem is that we allow fiction to be “proofs” of reality. I can’t tell you how many times when I’ve talked about women being physically weaker than men and that this is why they shouldn’t be in combat, I get the response, “But just look at Brianne of Tarth” (from “Game of Thrones”) or even the fictionalized accounts of Joan of Arc, whose combat role has been highly exaggerated.
     Fiction can be a great vehicle to change how we think, and this has happened when it comes to equalizing men and women through the preponderance of female superheroes and “strong” women in film. We have been brainwashed into actually believing women can be just like men in the physical arena. This is simply not the case, and it’s dangerous to think otherwise.

Well said – and it’s high time that it be said, openly and fearlessly. While fiction must “make sense” to the reader at the motivational level, speculative fiction – and I include my own two female action heroes in this – is not intended to portray reality at that detail level. Yet the female action hero – which John Ringo has memorably termed “a guy with tits” – is now dominant in all combat-oriented fiction, whether printed or filmed. And that’s giving a lot of young girls and women some very dangerous ideas. Dangerous to them, that is.

5. The Candidate Who Couldn’t Win And Won’t Forgive.

We all have aspirations. The late George W. Romney, from 1963 through 1968 the governor of Michigan, wanted to be president. He was encouraged to bid for the post by many who knew him. He fell short...but it seems he bequeathed his ambition to his son Mitt.

Mitt Romney’s political career is largely one of failure. He’s contended in five separate elections: at the state level in Massachusetts and Utah, and at the federal level for the presidency. He won twice – one term as governor of Massachusetts and currently as U.S. Senator from Utah – and lost the other three, including his bid for president in 2012 against incumbent Barack Hussein Obama. It seems he remains desperate for political elevation, having appealed to President Donald Trump to appoint him as Secretary of State. Trump chose otherwise, and it seems to have embittered Romney deeply.

Romney has been a Republican throughout his political career, but never a conservative:

     For starters, Romney’s track record on religious freedom has been poor. Catholic leaders in Massachusetts, the state in which Romney formerly served as governor, have emphasized Romney’s role in forcing Catholic hospitals to administer the abortifacient Plan B, even if doing so violated the consciences of the employee required to administer the deadly drugs. “The injury to the conscience rights of Catholic hospitals was not done so much so much by the church’s ideological enemies on the Left but by the Romney administration,” C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League, explained to LifeSiteNews.com back in 2012.
     Furthermore, as Rolling Stone points out, Romney has flipped on everything from abortion to health care, making it hard to determine whether he means what he espouses at any given moment.
     In a 1994 debate with Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, he proudly announced, “I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years, that we should sustain and support it. I sustain and support that law and the right of a woman to make that choice.” He “evolved” to eventually arrive at the pro-life position in 2011, at the convenient moment he decided to run on the Republican ticket
     The playbook is the same for health care, where he went from supporting an insurance mandate – arguing that he would love to export the Massachusetts Romneycare model to the nation at large – to accusing Bret Baier of being “wrong” when the Fox host attempted to remind him of this. The Baier interaction occurred in 2011, as Romney geared up for yet another presidential bid.

Please read the whole article. You’re likely to be appalled by such behavior from a Republican who asked us to accept him as a conservative and elect him president. But more to the point, Romney’s behavior suggests that he has no fixed moral convictions, his attachment to the LDS Church notwithstanding. Political advancement is more important to him than anything else – and revenging himself on the man who not only succeeded where he failed but also denied him further elevation would entirely account for his vote to convict President Trump for “abuse of power.”

Concerning that charge, please refer to Section 3 above. And concerning any regrets we may harbor about Romney’s failure to unseat Obama in 2012, it’s time to dismiss them. Had he succeeded, Donald Trump would probably not be president today.

That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. As my cover artist has just revealed her latest elegant creation, I must put my nose to the fictional grindstone so there will be something between the covers. I’ll probably return tomorrow with more of the usual crap. Until then, be well.

Some Correction to Those Misunderstanding Pelosi's Actions

It was a calculated insult. Many have written about its childish appearance - particularly following the grimacing, eye-rolling performance that preceded it.

But, there is a correction I want to make sure that men understand.

This is a uniquely Womanly form of disrespect. I know. I've seen women - even those that generally get along with men - do this all my life.

Step 1: Lose to a man. Fair? Unfair? Doesn't matter. You have outraged the Woman.

Step 2: This is the most important step - you wait until his back is turned.

Step 3: You engage in a series of disrespectful facial and body actions:

You roll your eyes.
You pretend-talk along with him, with downturned mouth, and head gestures indicating that what he is saying is crap.
If in the kitchen, you AGGRESSIVELY clean, with much banging and cupboard slamming, and exaggerated motions. For example, if you put down a dishtowel, you FLING in on the table, with a BIG follow-through. If he is watching the game, make sure that the dishwasher and/or laundry is turned on - the noisier, the better. It's a great time to clean all of those sports shoes, and dry them by machine.
If at work, you first look around, to make sure that other women have been observing this humiliation. You start low-key, with pretend this-doesn't-bother-me-in-the-least ignoring him. In order to make sure that he understands you are ignoring him, you may hum, talk (softly enough to pretend that you are not interrupting him), or pointedly NOT participate in the meeting - file your nails, clean your purse, obviously and with exaggerated motion mark up the agenda or handouts with furious cross-outs that may even tear the paper, crumple pages and toss them to the floor, shake your head, snort to show your contempt for the speaker. Whatever it takes to get across your point that YOU WON, NOT HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BTW, do NOT ask a woman who is doing all of this what the problem is - she will reply, "Problem? I don't have a problem. Why would I have a problem? Nothing is bothering me. Absolutely nothing."
She is lying.

If that fails, discard the meeting handouts in an obvious display of contempt. The contempt is the most important part of this. You cannot just leave them behind. You have to make sure that your rebellion is noticed by the PERSON (man) that offended you.

Women understand this. It's the Power Move of Women (which, unfortunately, is misunderstood by most men). If a woman does any of the above - she is Royally Pi$$ed! I emphasize the word Royal, as the women who engage in the above regularly truly believe themselves to be Queen (in a world in which there are no Kings).

Best move for Trump? Let others point all of this out. Refrain from commenting on Twitter. By engaging in this display, she is also acknowledging that she lost.

Bigly.

Coffee Straight Up the Nose Department.

I followed a link from a choice article^[1] by Toni Williams in which she takes apart Mitt Romney impersonator, Bill Kristol. It took me to The Bulwark, the new perch from which Kristol will be instructing the unwashed. This is from the "About Us" tab of that site:

The Bulwark is a project of the Defending Democracy Together Institute. DDTI is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to preserving America’s democratic norms, values, and institutions, and educating the public on conservative principles like rule of law, free trade, and expanding legal immigration.^[2]

This would be the usual from The Conservatism that Conserves Nothing on immigration, the holiest of sacred sancrotitties, as though America cannot have one minute of existence on the planet where some squishy "conservative" doesn't wets his or her pants in delight at the prospect of bringing more bleeping foreigners to "enrich," so help me God, us with their presence, genius, boundless good will and productive energy, and creative ways of transforming and subverting the Republic for which it stands.

These kind of "conservatives" remind me of that wholly gratuitous episode of cowardice and betrayal that that toad Spielberg just had to insert in "Saving Private Ryan," where the contemptible GI with a loaded rifle can't bring himself to walk up five steps in the stairway to save his buddy in the process of having a bayonet shoved into his chest. It's that Buckley conservativism and Conservative, Inc.-conservatism that never fails – never – to miss the point of what a nation is about. No balls. No fire. Just well-crafted snark and flaccid readings of our recent history and its feeble struggles against communist infiltration and subversion.

It's not about worshipping foreigners and stroking one's chin respectfully in the face of each new lunatic liberal-progressive-socialist-communist-McCainiacal attack on common sense and decency. And free trade? Legal immigration? On what planet are these cardinal conservative values? What good is free trade to the nation if the suits can't figure out that we're being taken to the cleaners by wage and currency manipulators, thieves, and Corporate America sellouts and scum suckers?

Rule of law? The last 80 years or so, if not the last 107 years, have been an exercise in standing the Constitution on its head to turn the federal government into the tax-eating, liberty-destroying, war-besotted behemoth that it is now. But these squishes prattle about stuff that sends normal people to sleep instead of getting their blood to boil. "Charge, boys! Maybe."

A bulwark against what exactly? The globalist, diversity-worshipping, mega-surveillance state? Don't make me laugh. Just don't.

Notes
^[1] "Bill Kristol Never Trumper Goes Full Drama Queen." By Toni Williams, Victory Girls, 2/2/20. A great site let it be said.
^[2] The Bulwark.

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Coronavirus Update - Feb. 5, 2020

Haven't posted more on this in a few days.

I added in the most recently reported numbers (keep in mind, this comes from a notoriously secretive society).

The rate of REPORTED cases is still increasing, although the trend in percentage of deaths (REPORTED) seems to be holding steady. So, not bad news, just not completely reassuring, given the past history of the Chinese government in releasing the truth to the public.

From what I can see, as long as the quarantine holds, this may not become a worldwide epidemic. We really do have to thank the Chinese government for their draconian imposition of containment in the most affected province. By doing so, they may have stopped the disease, other than sporadic (and easily manageable) outbreaks in other countries.

Wuhan, as the epicenter, may well experience epic deaths from this virus. However, it seems to be the only area experiencing the full effect of the fatalities.

No miracle cure or treatment, just standard sanitation, proper PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), and - the age-old practice of quarantine.

Rage, or Calculated Insult? Updated

I'm going with deliberate insult and demonstration of disrespect.

Nancy's 'rage' is calculated. It is intended to get critics to back off!

She needed to gain points with the AOC-affiliated House members, and stave off any talk of getting rid of her as Speaker. Therefore, she did this planned, theatrical action, in front of cameras, to send a signal to dissidents.

She also did it WHILE his back was turned.

Which was chickenshit. If you're going to insult someone, do it to his face.

No one mentioned that, after being given that folder, she extended her hand in psuedo-reconciliation.

Trump ignored it. And, this is a man that knows what meaningless courtesies are, and generally gives them without respect to his true feelings.

Not this time.

So, after, while the President was speaking, she did NOT show a pretense of attention, instead focusing on the speech, and apparently marking it up with rebuttal remarks.

She could have walked away, content in her 'righteousness'. Instead, she delivered (again, behind his back, the little sneak) a calculated insult.

Which, he ignored.

Lord, she must be pi$$ed. All that work to send a message, only to have the message ignored.

Update: Pelosi may have committed a felony last night.

SOTU 2020-02-04

I haven’t bothered to watch a State of the Union speech in real time in many years. They haven’t served their original purpose for a very long time – possibly since they were first instituted. But now that I’ve viewed yesterday evening’s speech by President Trump, I find myself wishing I’d stayed up to watch it.

For those who have an interest, a historical digression. First, here’s the relevant segment of the Constitution:

He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States. [Article II, Section 3]

Article II, of course, is about the powers and responsibilities of the president. At the time of the Founding, the president was the only federal official whose service was continuous throughout his term in office. The two houses of Congress were intended and expected to be in session only a few weeks out of the year. This was in keeping with the “citizen-legislator” concept that prevailed at that time. Federal legislators were not expected to be professional politicians, but private citizens with significant private-sector responsibilities, from which they could not be absent for long periods. And indeed, that was the case for a few decades after the Constitution was ratified.

Remember that in 1787, travel could proceed no faster than a sailboat or a man on horseback and Al Gore had not yet gotten around to inventing the Internet. Thus, the dissemination of America’s internal news was painfully slow – often conveyed by word-of-mouth in Eighteenth Century village marketplaces. But given the Constitution’s assignment of powers and responsibilities to the federal government, the Founders were largely unconcerned with internal news. Word of developments relevant to the federal government would arrive in the nation’s capital by sailing ship from Europe or the Caribbean. The president being our designated foreign-relations officer, such news would come to him. When Congress was next to convene, he would inform the legislature about what he had dealt with in their absence.

The first State of the Union speech to get nationwide attention occurred long after the Founding: in 1913. Woodrow Wilson, ever eager to have the attention of the masses, delivered it to Congress in person for the first time since the administration of John Adams. (Thomas Jefferson discontinued it as a grandiose and monarchical practice, and instead sent his remarks to Congress in writing.) In 1922 Warren Harding delivered the first SOTU speech relayed by radio to listeners across the United States. Since then it has deteriorated from a message intended to inform Congress to a public celebration of the achievements and priorities of the party that holds the White House. Constitutionally speaking, it is no longer a useful practice.

We who follow current events would not have been greatly surprised at President Trump’s recitation of his administration’s achievements. The vibrant economy, our greatly improved foreign-relations, our rebuilt military, the sharp reduction in illegal alien entries, and the slow but steady construction of the promised border wall are well known to anyone who keeps track of the news. But SOTU speeches also provide the president and opportunity to make mention of people and events of other kinds. Probably the most emotional element in last night’s speech was the awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the ailing Rush Limbaugh, which First Lady Melania Trump put around his neck. Yet there were others, living and dead, whom President Trump took the opportunity to fete.

Yet the most newsworthy aspects of the SOTU arose from the Capitol Hill Democrats. To call their attitudes and behavior sour and spiteful is to give them very faint coloration. Every shot of the assembly shows the Democrats resolutely refusing even to smile at the many excellent developments of which President Trump could boast. The sight of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi ripping up the copy of the speech, which the president is required by courtesy if not by law to give her, was the jewel in their sour-mouthed, sour-faced crown. It was the plainest of demonstrations that Trump’s success -- America’s success -- is anathema to them.

Admitting to error is no one’s favorite pastime. It’s particularly galling to politicians. The Democrats have many errors – if errors they were in truth – to answer for. Having Donald Trump, whom they revile personally as well as ideologically, enumerate them to their faces was the bitterest medicine a politician can be fed.

But it was time the Democrats were compelled to face their own record. Not that they’d ever admit that those failures were actually theirs, of course. It was all “Republican obstructionism” or “lack of cooperation from the private sector.” And the public was entitled to see the refutation of it in living color.

In many ways a State of the Union speech in a year such as this is a campaign event. For the president, it’s an opportunity to speak to those who will vote in November about his achievements and intentions for his second term. For his co-partisans in Congress, it’s a reminder of what they should be talking about to their constituents. Nothing matters quite as much to a legislator standing for re-election as the support of a popular sitting president – and President Trump is more popular than any of his detractors can believe.

While overconfidence would be unwise, I am pleased by the GOP’s prospects in November, especially as the party is now fully mobilized behind the president. Nothing about President Trump’s speech is more important than this: that the achievements he summarized move the nation to return him to office, and to equip him with solid majorities in both Houses of Congress.

Make sure your Congressmen and Senators know it.