Scattershots – 24jun19 (updated 27jun19)

George Rebane

The Left wants nothing measured the public reporting of which it cannot control, or that goes against their established narrative.

Our intrepid progressive pundit and Union columnist George Boardman is all exercised in his ‘Double dipping at the public trough, in the spotlight, and just the facts’ published in the newspaper’s 24jun19 edition.  There he leaps off the rails to rail those double dipping Dahles, while totally missing the definition of double dipping as it pertains to government payees.  Megan Dahle plans to run for her husband Brian Dahle’s recently vacated California Assembly seat since winning his seat in the state’s Senate.  If Mrs Dahle wins, she will become the elected representative from her district, doing the work of an assemblyman, and on her own merits and efforts earning that position’s pay.  That having a second member of the family also performing an independent job in government is in no way double dipping, save it serve a distinctly progressive political narrative.  Apparently Mr Boardman misses that significant nuance that spouses of elected politicians are also individuals with a duplicate set of rights to independently seek employment and recompense as they see fit.  Ah, the bespoke blinders of the Left.  (On the same op-ed page see also Manny Montes’ commentary that helps explain Mr Boardman’s values.)

In the 24jun19 update to my ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ commentary, I posited the following observation about cultures.

Peace and prosperity were generally maintained as long as such a governed society’s culture was allowed to evolve without obvious interdictions by government.  It is easy to see why this approach to organizing societies worked as long as the dominant culture was sufficiently cohesive.  A little reflection reveals that culture is able to inculcate and control the most complex sets of human behaviors, and allow their natural expressions in new environments/situations without having to write down a single law or regulation.  Behaviors (acceptable and unacceptable) are learned in the family and in the village square, and ‘enforced’ by the culture’s collective – i.e. everyone.

In searching for exceptions to the above, the Talmud of the Jewish diaspora occurred to me.  The Talmud is an extensive collection (or collections if you consider separately its Babylonian and Jerusalem parts) of Jewish civil and ceremonial law along with its ethnic legends.  It comprises quite a collection of volumes that painstakingly detail a comprehensive body of behaviors and processes permitted and proscribed to practicing Jews everywhere.  And ‘everywhere’ here is the key idea.  After the Romans destroyed their Jerusalem temple in 70AD, the Jews were driven from their traditional homelands, and found themselves spread all over Europe and northern Africa.

While always seeking to stick together wherever they found themselves, they were necessarily separated and for centuries mostly out of touch with other Jewish communities.  So how to retain, practice, and promulgate the culture that defined them and their very Jewishness when so dispersed?  The answer was through the formalization of their culture in written form, which, as I have often argued, requires many volumes to record, study, and teach.  The Talmud is thus the exception that highlights and supports my dissertations on the function and efficiency of cultures in prescribing normative behaviors within coherent populations.

[25jun19 update]  The lamestream outlets are exorcising President Trump for his new sanctions against individuals in the Iranian leadership.  Specifically, vindictive opprobrium is dished out at Trump’s sanctioning Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and leading negotiator who has been our main point of contact in the sub-rosa diplomatic efforts between the two countries.  Their common wisdom is that now we have lost someone with whom we have been able to communicate.  What these pinheads and pundits miss is that the president has to include Zarif in the sanctions if he is to remain as our point of future contact.  Omitting Zarif’s obviously needed inclusion would have made him suspect among the raghead mullahs, and cost him his job or worse.

[26jun19 update] "Remarkably, a recent study cited in The Atlantic (gasp!) found that “the most politically intolerant Americans” tend be white, highly educated urban progressives. ... Long ago, religious zealots embraced feudal ideals, but increasingly it’s the ultra-secular progressives who reprise the role of Medieval Inquisitors."  Whoulda thought?  (H/T to reader)

[27jun19 update] Photo journalism at its worst as far as providing information to impact public policy - that is conveyed by the photo of the drowned father and his toddler daughter floating face down at the water’s edge (here).  This emotional picture drives all reason and logic from viewers’ uncritical minds; whatever narrative you want to connect with that image will now be taken as God’s truth about illegal border crossings, immigration, President Trump’s border security policies, … .  No one will consider factors such as the abnormally low death rate that is connected with illegal border crossings per se – illegal aliens die before getting to the border, and a few die after successfully entering the US, but given the circumstances, the death rate is mercifully low.  How do we know?  Had there been any previous border crossing deaths, crack photo journalists would have had such pictures posted and published in every imaginable outlet all over the globe.  Fortunately, that is not the case.  I do note that the father did a very foolish and deadly thing by stuffing his daughter into his t-shirt, thus guaranteeing the toddler’s death should he not be able to stay afloat with that ungainly load in the roiling waters.  In any event, now we are guaranteed another spate of public policies based on emotion and the absence of reason.

Democrats continue to dramatically disrespect and discount the intellect of their base and those voters they desire to attract.  A particularly specious attractant their presidential candidates are using is their promise to forgive student debt.  They are betting that their supporters will be like the now-infamous video clip of an Obama voter who believed that all the promised goodies she received would be paid for out “the President’s stash”.  OPM continues to be the salve Democrat elites will use to fix everything that ails us if you just give them your vote.  Michael Solon in the 27jun19 WSJ adds to the obvious when he writes - Debt forgiveness punishes those who did the right thing, made sacrifices, and acted wisely and frugally, as well as those who simply didn’t have the opportunity to go to college. Isn’t this the sort of private gain at public expense that people on the left claim to abhor? … Such forgiveness would also eliminate a quality-control device that drives students to ensure their investment can be monetized to cover their costs. A student who borrows must make sure his future earnings will be enough to pay off the loans. If that incentive disappears, with free debt or free college, the graduate and the nation would suffer economically.  (Also see my ‘Student Loan Scam Solution’)

Comments

[Bill Tozer]

(25jun19 update] The lamestream outlets are exorcising President Trump for....for....for..

“It is utterly bizarre to hear people who believe Trump is unfit to lead seem disappointed that he isn't taking us to war.”
—-
“Hugh Hewitt called it the “big blink,” inviting Liz Cheney—who is very much her father’s daughter on foreign policy—on his show to warn, “Weakness is provocative.” Hewitt compared it to Barack Obama’s failure to enforce his “red line” in Syria. “Much worse” argued Kori Schake in The Atlantic. Other reporting focused on a “total breakdown in process.”

“It was not a picture perfect approach to national security, to be sure. But it did sharply illustrate the Beltway’s strange priorities. When Trump twice bombed Syria, few of those who fret about his erosion of constitutional norms or authoritarian tendencies protested his failure to seek congressional authorization as required by the Constitution. There was a much larger process-related panic when Trump said late last year he wanted to bring American troops home from Syria.

“A Republican-controlled Senate passed a non-binding resolution rebuking Trump for contemplating the end to a war Congress never authorized. Similarly, war with Iran is Congress’ call under the Constitution, not Trump’s. Still, with the single (but significant) exception of Yemen, Trump has faced more pushback when he has tried to keep his more antiwar campaign promises than when he has escalated the bombing and droning already going on, mostly without congressional authorization, all over the world.”

[Bill Tozer]

Link..

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-night-donald-trump-became-president/

[Don Bessee]

Is team lefty trying to talk us into a recession? -

May’s unemployment rate stayed at 3.6%, a 49-year low. The GDP’s 2.9% growth in 2018 was its best annual performance since the Great Recession; and Q1 GDP growth was 3.1%. Major stock indexes are near all-time highs. Inflation is low.

Bankrate’s survey found that 88% of “experts” say the economy is “good,” and 11% say it’s “excellent.

Nevertheless, McBride highlights the risk of “talking ourselves into a recession.”
“Consumers that feel the economy is weak, they’re going to be more hesitant to spend and that can be a headwind to the economy,” he said. “Business owners that see the economy as weak – they’re not going to hire people, they’re not going to make capital investments and all of that could add up to a collective headwind to economic growth that’s enough to stall out the expansion.”

Political views and household income brackets are also impacting Americans views of the economy. More than three-quarters of Republicans rate the economy as “excellent,” but only 49% of Democrats share that rosy view.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/40-of-americans-say-recession-has-already-begun-120045074.html

;-)

[George Rebane]

DonB 108pm - "Despite the fact that many Americans (39%) say that the economy is “not so good,” only 35% of average consumers actually have the minimum 3-5 months of emergency savings that many experts advocate for as a safety net." These are kind of pilgrims the Democratic Party depends on to get/stay in office and continue buying their votes. The spending game is now getting to the 'intense' level while all liberals decry tax cuts and not enough govt revenues, while none see it as a spending problem that continues to grow.

[Gregory]

The Atlantic article mentioned in today's update is here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/republicans-and-democrats-dont-understand-each-other/592324/

It isn't a study BY The Atlantic. The study was BY
https://perceptiongap.us/

[George Rebane]

Gregory 330pm - Corrected, thanks Gregory.

[Bill Tozer]

Re: 27jun19 update] Photo journalism at its worst

I expected massive fallout from the photo, but it never materialized like I thought. Could it be that the photo runs counter to the media narrative it’s just a fake crisis? They are hundreds of bodies recovered from desert each year.

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jeffrey-lord/2019/06/29/tragic-photo-undermines-media-credibility-manufactured-crisis

Being Progressive mean never having to say, “We were wrong”.

[Bill Tozer]

Re: Photo journalism at its worse.

“But wait, it gets worse: CNN taints our movie memories through an ad campaign that features several of its opinion anchors reenacting movie moments: Don Lemon swaggering like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever (why not Robin Williams in The Birdcage?), Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer prancing on a toy keyboard like Hanks and Robert Loggia in Big (although the stunt-double, trick-editing mostly recalls Cocoon). Anderson Cooper imitates The Blues Brothers (rather than All the President’s Men — an ego-check, I guess) and least offensive of all, John Berman posing as Everyman in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. These spots, produced by Stun, the Los Angeles entertainment marketing agency and content studio, reveal that CNN-bots consider themselves to be iconic. (Remember the period when CNN anchors made cameo appearances as if to certify Hollywood’s commercial narratives? That’s when the corruption began.)

“It’s blatantly a DNC strategy: fool people into thinking you’re big-hearted, open-minded, inclusive, and fun. CNN’s The Movies is not designed to celebrate films that established the art form with moral power — Intolerance to Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia to Nashville — but to win ratings through quasi-populism. Instead, the movies are used for distraction. It’s another way of constructing an ideological bubble. This doc series’ real point reiterates CNN’s political objective: to control the way people think and dictate their taste.”

[Bill Tozer]

Link

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/cnn-documentary-the-movies-fakes-history/

[Walt]

Here you go LIBS,,, This is YOUR Joe Biden.🤦‍♂️
"Biden: Russia Election Interference Wouldn’t Have Happened ‘on My Watch and Barack’s Watch’"
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2019/07/05/biden-russia-election-interference-wouldnt-have-happened-on-my-watch-and-baracks-watch/