Questions and Observations

How much in your business is California’s lawmakers?  We mentioned their desire to claw back federal tax cuts for corporations by increasing them to California corporations.  Because?  Because the proles just wouldn’t spend it right (and they have a high-speed, over budget train to nowhere to pay for).  And what is right?  Well, enforcing efforts like this:

Ian Calderon, the Democratic majority leader in California’s lower house, has introduced a bill to stop sit-down restaurants from offering customers straws with their beverages unless they specifically request one. Under Calderon’s law, a waiter who serves a drink with an unrequested straw in it would face up to 6 months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.

“We need to create awareness around the issue of one-time use plastic straws and its detrimental effects on our landfills, waterways, and oceans,” Calderon explained in a press release.

This isn’t just Calderon’s crusade. The California cities of San Luis Obispo and Davis both passed straws-on-request laws last year, and Manhattan Beach maintains a prohibition on all disposable plastics.

In California, government will decide what you can and can’t use with your dinner. Not you.

Typical of a politician, Calderon intends to use his office and the force of law to make you live according to his arbitrary rules.  This has nothing to do with preventing force, fraud or contract violation -the only real reason to have government- this is about making Californians abide by the Calderon agenda whether they agree or not. And this isn’t atypical of the state at all.

No wonder people are fleeing the People’s Republic of CA in droves.

More fun for everyone:

The Department of Justice has recovered missing text messages between anti-Trump FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the DOJ’s inspector general said Thursday.

In a letter sent to congressional committees, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said his office “succeeded in using forensic tools to recover text messages from FBI devices, including text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page that were sent or received between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017.”

“Forensic tools” or just tired of looking like fools?  Funny how quickly they were “found”. The snowball is rolling down hill anyway and the rest is pretty much out of the FBI’s control, why not turn them over and reclaim some level of competence?  Or, maybe the rank and file FBI agents are tired of being tarred with the same brush the top leadership has earned.

Ronald Regan said of any deal with the Soviet government: “Trust but verify”.  I’m sorry but I’ve come to not trust and to insist on verification about anything that both the government and the media say these days.  Both have been caught in so many lies, distortions and half-truths that they’ve earned nothing more.

Very interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by a Notre Dame professor named Christian Smith.  Professor Smith is of the opinion, after years and years in academia that higher education, to use his colorful phrase, “is drowning in BS”.

Of course he’s right.  It’s been drowning for decades and the BS is just piling higher and higher.  Some excerpts that resounded with me:

BS is the university’s loss of capacity to grapple with life’s Big Questions, because of our crisis of faith in truth, reality, reason, evidence, argument, civility, and our common humanity.

BS is the farce of what are actually “fragmentversities” claiming to be universities, of hyperspecialization and academic disciplines unable to talk with each other about obvious shared concerns.

As we’ve chronicled over the years, especially in the humanities, the “Big Questions” have become prohibited topics because of political correctness and the newly created”right not to be offended.” Since the Big Question require “truth, reality, reason, evidence, argument” they’ve been outlawed because “civility” has been redefined as has our “common humanity.”  And never the twain shall meet.  At least not in today’s academic environment.

BS is the ideologically infused jargon deployed by various fields to stake out in-group self-importance and insulate them from accountability to those not fluent in such solipsistic language games.

Thinks of the useless degrees in useless fields that produce snowflakes and social justice warriors aimed at things that simply don’t exist as they’ve been taught.

BS is the grossly lopsided political ideology of the faculty of many disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences, creating a homogeneity of worldview to which those faculties are themselves oblivious, despite claiming to champion difference, diversity, and tolerance.

“Diversity” – the watch-word of every university admissions department – is a scam.  It is only diversity of skin color and sexual orientation they concern themselves with.  There is no diversity of though allowed however and that is reflected in the “grossly lopsided” political ideologies allowed to flourish on campus not only in the faculty but among students as well.

BS is the ascendant “culture of offense” that shuts down the open exchange of ideas and mutual accountability to reason and argument. It is university leaders’ confused and fearful capitulation to that secular neo-fundamentalist speech-policing.

BS is the invisible self-censorship that results among some students and faculty, and the subtle corrective training aimed at those who occasionally do not self-censor.

BS is the only semi-intelligible outbursts of antagonism from enraged outsiders incited by academe’s suppressions of open argument, which primarily work to validate and reinforce the self-assured superiority of the suppressors, and sometimes to silence other legitimate voices.

So, as you can see, Smith has his finger on the pulse of the BS problem in academia. Oh there are many more things he calls BS (read the whole thing) on but his points above validate what we’ve been observing for quite some time.  Smith’s big question, of course, is what is going to be done to return academia to its former glory?

He, nor anyone else, is sure of the answer, but he’s mostly sure that whatever it is and whatever the process by which that happens, it’s going to be ugly.

I tend to agree.

~McQ

Yes I know the “Untouchables” were Prohibition Agents for the US Treasury Department.  But that’s also been the reputation of the FBI, at least until now.

But now, it appears, they have become not so “untouchable”.  In fact, it actually appears as if they might have been politically weaponized.

Here’s a “must read” that gives one a very probable timeline. (If you want to read how a skeptical establishment media outlet treats this, read here.) It makes the case that this was an orchestrated cover-up directed from the highest levels.  It outlines a massive abuse of power.  And what has caused all of this to come to light is the  supposed “impossible” – Hillary Clinton lost an election the former administration was sure was a lock.  Had she won, a little quid pro quo coverup would have certainly been expected.

And had she won, one has to believe, it would be business as usual with a lot of people now sweating sitting around with smug smiles.

Michel Goodwin of the NY Post says:

Yet each day brings credible reports suggesting there is a massive scandal involving the top ranks of America’s premier law enforcement agency. The reports, which feature talk among agents of a “secret society” and suddenly missing text messages, point to the existence both of a cabal dedicated to defeating Donald Trump in 2016 and of a plan to let Hillary Clinton skate free in the classified email probe.

If either one is true — and I believe both probably are — it would mean FBI leaders betrayed the nation by abusing their powers in a bid to pick the president.

And frankly folks, these are the actions one might find in a typical corrupt banana republic in central or south America.  The “elite” will pick the next ruler but they’ll make you think that you did.  It is not what we expect and certainly not what we should accept from any group of people, but especially from the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.

How badly does this stink?  With only part of the story being known it has a bad enough smell that a near majority think a special prosecutor may be needed to investigate the FBI.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 49% of Likely U.S. Voters believe a special prosecutor should be named to investigate whether senior FBI officials handled the investigation of Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump in a legal and unbiased fashion. Thirty-one percent (31%) disagree, but a sizable 19% are not sure.

And my guess is that “sizable 19%” just haven’t seen enough yet to come down on one side or the other.  Pew tries to make it all about partisan politics, but if you know the size of the independent vote you know that an initial 49% is a huge number.

Investigate the FBI – words I never thought I’d hear in my lifetime.  The FBI, unofficially, used to stand for “Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity”.  Now it seems to stand for political corruption and subversive behavior at its highest levels.  For the leftists out there, you may want to look up the word “collusion” and find out what it really means … then read about this and figure out what collusion really looks like.  This is the stuff spy/political intrigue and corruption novels.

If what is alleged is true a whole bunch of people need to be doing the perp duck walk to prison.  This cannot be tolerated and the penalties for it must be severe and, more importantly, strictly imposed.  It’s time to reestablish the rule of law in this country.

~McQ

Well government shut-down theater is closing after the first act apparently.  It seems things reversed on the Dems who had expected to keep the showdown going . It appears their stand for illegals wasn’t real popular with the folks they’re trying to woo electorally, so Schumer threw in the towel gaining a whole bunch of nothing but bad feelings.

Stay tuned for the next chapter which will open Feb. 8th when this continuing resolution expires.   More of the clown show you’ve all come to hate.

Corporate tax reform?  It’s only for the rich!

Or so the narrative goes.  As you might imagine, it’s just not true:

The largest U.S. bank by assets is planning to open up to 400 branches in new markets across the country, grow its home lending to lower-income consumers and boost wages for some retail-banking employees, among other changes, Chief Executive James Dimon said in an interview.

JPMorgan is one of many large companies passing its employees or clients some of the windfall of billions of dollars in expected additional profit from the tax-code overhaul enacted late last year. The bank’s effective tax rate will be about 19% this year and 20% over the near term, down from 35% previously, finance chief Marianne Lake said during an earnings call earlier in January.

So pay raises, expansion into new markets and jobs in the 400 new branches.

Wow.  Who knew? /sarc

Sweden, which has been at the forefront of the multicultural nonsense that seems to have seized Europe, has apparently had a wake up call.  So much so that they’re calling in the military to help solve the problems the multiculti types have helped create:

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said that Sweden would do whatever it takes, including sending in the army, to end the wave of gang violence situated in the no-go zones around the country. Sweden’s murder rate has been relatively low over the years, but thanks to the migrant crisis, police are powerless in many areas across the country.

Anyone?  Guess the cultural groups that have helped make the “no-go” zones in Sweden.  Has Sweden finally realized that it’s own culture is now in danger?  Is this an “awakening”?  Have they finally decided that perhaps there are differences between cultures and they may have a better one?

We’ll see.

UPDATE: See clarifying comment from DocD.

Here’s an interesting read where a African-American woman – who complains of oppression, racism and privilege in the US – moves to Africa where she essentially practices (at least as she likely defines them) all three and not only enjoys it but brags about it.

The world is a strange place.

~McQ

Make no mistake, this is “theater”.  Government shutdowns have become common and the whole point is for one party to get the public to “blame” the other.  And it’s always one or the other standing on “principle” even if the principle was something they were against a few years ago 0r when they had power.

No one goes hungry or without pay.  Leviathan grinds on and in the end it is all much ado about nothing.  Well except the fact that we have no budget and this theater is becoming a regular thing.  We’re now funded by “continuing resolutions” which, in reality, is a vehicle by which they spend whatever they want during it’s duration and are able to try to pin the other party to the mat by playing the false “principle” game.  It’s all about playing to their base and trying to prove they’re not irrelevant.

In the case of voting on a continuing resolution, the Senate requires 60 votes.  So the “party that controls it all shut down the government” narrative is a false one from the gitgo.  With 51 GOP votes in the Senate, there’s a need of at least 9 Democratic votes to pass it.  The resolution got 5 Dem votes.  And yes it’s true that even if it had 9 Dem votes it wouldn’t have passed because the Stupid Party had 5 defections, the point is irrelevant.  It didn’t GET 9 Dem votes.  Had it gotten 9 Dem votes, then the narrative would have some measure of truth to it.

This will be over in days and it remains to be seen who the public will “blame” – not that it matters much because it will be forgotten within a week or so by the public at large.  The most appealing argument seems to be that which casts the Dems as supporters of non-citizens willing to shut down the benefits of their own citizens for aliens.  And, again, for those not paying attention, it is stands like that which put Donald Trump in the White House.

Fake news?  Well, certainly horribly manipulated news to fit some sort of an agenda.  This is how people are so badly or wrongly informed about an issue.  We no longer have real journalism (if we ever did) where the facts are presented and it is left up to you to make up your mind based on the information.  We now have agenda journalism and this is as good an example as you’ll ever find.

We’ve recently seen signs of an economic upsurge.  And one of the reasons for that is the tax cut that was just passed, specifically the corporate tax cut.

But the newly designated poverty capital of America – California- will have none of that:

A pair of California lawmakers want to claw back some of steep tax cuts that corporations will receive under the federal tax overhaul signed last month by President Donald Trump.

Democratic Assemblymen Kevin McCarty of Sacramento and Phil Ting of San Francisco announced Thursday that they will pursue a constitutional amendment to add a surcharge on large companies that do business in California, potentially raising billions of dollars to expand social services for Californians.

“We’ve seen enough billionaire justice from the presidency,” McCarty said in an interview. “It’s time for middle class tax justice.”

And what do they consider “middle class tax justice”?

Proponents estimate it would raise between $15 billion and $17 billion a year, which would be directed toward funding for education, college affordability initiatives, child care and preschool slots, taxpayer rebates and an expansion of California’s Earned Income Tax Credit.

And higher prices for goods which, of course will negate any increase in earnings middle class taxpayers would see from the Federal Tax cuts.  Because – one more time for the short bus people – corporations don’t pay taxes, consumers do.  Well except in California where they have obviously suspended the laws of economics.  You know, just like they did in Seattle with their soda tax.

Gee here’s a thought – if you allow people more of the income they earn – you know, about 15 to 17 billion more – maybe they could afford college, child care etc. and wouldn’t need the state to assume it must step in.  But then it wouldn’t allow the likes of McCarty and Ting to micromanage everyone’s lives, would it?

Oh, and if you’re wondering what the 15 to 17 billion will really be spent on, just peruse the latest revised figures on the cost of California’s high-speed train to nowhere.  That’s why they can’t and won’t let you have more of your own money.

~McQ

Well, at least according to this idiot’s definition:

Cool … then I’m “transphobic”.  And frankly, I don’t care. My sexual preference is for women – real, biological women.  And if that’s a problem – tough nuts.

If you think you’re going to shame me with your “fact”,  you’re wrong.

Like all of us I’m a discriminatory beast.  I discriminate every single day.  I discriminate in what I’ll wear, what I’ll eat, what I’ll read and what I’ll watch and, who I’m attracted too sexually.  Discrimination is a part of everyone’s life.  It’s a vital and necessary part of our decision making process that helps us “choose” what we’re going to do, see, say, eat and read, etc. And those choices and decisions all rest on our preferences – whether innate or developed.  We all do it.  Even LGBTQIA types.

But apparently they’re supposed to be allowed to exercise their preferences without being called names or shamed while straight people aren’t.  On the one hand we’re told that everyone should be free to love who they want and on the other hand we get nonsense like this.

What is a fact here is this person is an idiot, but fairly typical of the non-thinking left.  Of course, he’s a ‘woke’ idiot so you won’t hear anyone on the left pointing out the hypocrisy of this “fact”.  Don’t expect the left to say, “but every person should be able to love whomever they want”.  Solidarity, even with idiots, is what the left does, contradictions and hypocrisy notwithstanding.  How else does one explain feminists and Islam?

One of the most astonishing things about the left is they don’t know when they’ve won.  The culture has changed.  Being gay is no longer a stigma for the vast majority of people.  In fact, most just don’t care.

But the pushing continues.  Why?  Because there’s power in being a “victim” and this is just that lobby’s latest “victim”.  With “victimhood” our culture has unthinkingly and uncritically allowed shaming – not of the victim but those who might discriminate against the victim.

This tweet is an example of how desperate this group is to retain that status.

They have no idea how ridiculous it makes them look.  One day, maybe, they’ll understand that there are lines you just can’t cross and be taken seriously. One is, ironically, no one gets to tell me who I can or can’t love.  And they certainly don’t get to dictate my sexual preference.

~McQ

I have been laughing now, for a few hours.  CNN apparently finds it inappropriate for the President of the US to say ‘sh*thole” in a private conversation about various countries but finds it perfectly appropriate to say it 36 times live on the air during their “newscast”.  Of course there’s no real verification that he said the word, but it was good enough for them.

Look, do I think it is appropriate for the President to use such language?  Yes, certainly, if the conversation was private. If private, then it’s his call as to what is or isn’t “inappropriate” and, usually, that depends on the audience, doesn’t it?

Does the use of such language reflect well on him or anyone in fact?  Probably not.  As I said it depends.  But with the lefty and Never Trumper outcry, you’d have thought  he’d used an intern as a humidor or something.

Fact: Some countries are “sh*tholes”.  If you doubt it you haven’t traveled much.  Somehow the recognition of this fact has caused the delicate left to put away their “pussy” hats and given them the vapors and fainting spells.  My guess is half are now curled up in the fetal position or are petting puppies, talking to kittens and coloring in their safe rooms.

I saw where some African leaders said his remark was “racist”.  Oh, my, bringing out the heavy artillery are they?  Yeah, see, the fact that your country is a “sh*thole” has little to do with your race and everything to do with how it has developed.  Unless these leaders want to argue the opposite.  In fact, I’d point out that making the claim that his remarks were “racist” seems to make that argument, i.e. they’re acknowledging their countries are “sh*tholes” because … race!

In reality, there are Asian “sh*tholes”, Middle Eastern “sh*tholes” and for decades there were Eastern European “sh*tholes”.  Freedom and liberty to a great degree have changed the fortunes of many former “sh*tholes” into more prosperous and modern countries.   The African leaders may want to reflect on that.

And by the way, there are even “sh*tholes” in the US.  Ever been to Detroit?

Yes, friends, as usual, the media and the left (and some on the right) have pitched themselves overboard in their condemnation of this particular bit of verbiage.

But then, what’s new?  This has become an everyday occurrence.

However, the amusement factor?

An unqualified “10”.

~McQ

So has the #MeToo movement become what most thinking adults believed it would become?  A witch hunt?  Pretty much.  And what is even more interesting is the rage of the feminists who guard the #MeToo narrative against any and all who might question it or point to the possibility that it might get out of hand and hurt innocent people … specifically, men.

An example of not supporting the narrative and actually pointing out how the movement has the potential of plowing under the reputations of men who acted in a crass manner or, heaven forbid, like men interested in a woman and attempting to advance that interest, take the case of Catherine Deneuve.   Deneuve was one of a hundred French women who denounced to #MeToo movement as going too far.

Big mistake:

French actress Catherine Deneuve signed a public letter that denounced the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment. The letter said, in part, “Rape is a crime. But insistent or clumsy flirting is not a crime, nor is gallantry a chauvinist aggression.”

What happened next should be an object lesson to those who dare disagree with a left-wing social movement beginning to resemble a Stalinist purge rather than an effort to give women dignity in the workplace.

It’s not that the 100 women from the entertainment, publishing, and academic fields in France who signed the letter approve of sexual harassment. Their crime is that they don’t agree enough with the hysterics who equate a hand on the knee with rape and sexual harassment.

If you read the full article, you, like other thinking people, come to understand her point – that these sorts of movements can do as much harm as good if they are unreasonable.  And if the unreasonable is used to ruin the lives of people who simply don’t deserve to have their lives ruined then the movement is destructive and doesn’t benefit those who have truly suffered sexual harassment because it lumps everything sexual, even those things innocently done or welcomed by the “victim”, under that banner.  Thus if everything is sexual harassment, nothing is sexual harassment.  It’s a bit like the race card.  It has been so overplayed through the years that scant few pay any attention to it when played now.

That doesn’t mean, however, in the early days of the #MeToo movement, that those guilty of nothing more than “insistent or clumsy flirting”, as the letter from the French women describe it, is not a crime nor should it be a reason to ruin the lives of those who do it.

Deneuve, et. al, acknowledge that “rape is a crime” in the first sentence of their open letter.  But they also point out that there are degrees of everything and somewhere, as yet undefined by the #MeToo movement, is a line where actions do not equal “sexual harassment”.  The movement declines, or in fact, refuses to acknowledge that or the possibility that not doing so is and will be detrimental to those accused of sexual harassment. When their actions simply don’t measure up to what any sane and thinking person would consider sexual harassment, this movement is fine with their destruction.

Deneuve isn’t the only person being pilloried by the digital lynch mob of the feminist wing of the #MeToo movement.  One only has to read the Katie Roiphe story to see how out-0f-hand the movement is becoming.  Brendan O’Neill (who puts any “feminist” creds he may have had in the dust bin) tells the story:

Consider what has happened to Katie Roiphe over the past 48 hours. Roiphe is one of America’s most interesting essayists and authors, having come to public prominence with her precocious 1994 book The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism and going on to write everything from cultural criticism to a book on famous writers’ dying hours. She is currently the target of a most extraordinary Twitterstorm – a furious, censorious rage not over something she has said, but over something people think she is going to say in a future issue of Harper’s. We’ve had precrime; this is precensorship, the violent-minded punishment of an author for what she might at some point utter.

The Twitterati heard whispers that Roiphe, in a March feature for Harper’s, will name the woman responsible for the Shitty Media Men list, a kind of informal blacklist of journalists and editors who allegedly behave badly towards women, and they went berserk. They said this would endanger the creator of the Shitty Media Men list.

Let’s leave to one side that it is entirely legitimate and in the public interest to reveal who created this frankly chilling list, to which anyone can anonymously add the name of a media man who they claim, or think, has engaged in sexual misconduct. For the supporters of a naming-and-shaming, rumour-riddled list of names of the like a Witchfinder General might have drawn up in the past to rage against someone who dared to name the creator of that list is of course hilarious, and speaks brilliantly to the double standards, deep sense of entitlement and ugly disregard for due process of #MeToo’s chief public shamers.

Make sure you read the whole thing … it is indeed chilling and it gives you a good example of the bankruptcy of third-wave feminism. O’Neill also covers Deneuve:

Any woman who criticises #MeToo can expect to be metaphorically attached to the stake. This week the wonderful Catherine Deneuve and other French cultural figures slammed #MeToo for being anti-men and demeaning to women’s agency. Deneuve was raged against, with Asia Argento, the actress who started the accusations against Harvey Weinstein, saying she has clearly been ‘lobotomised’ by ‘interiorised misogyny’. Shorter: the old witch has been morally corrupted. Women like Ann Leslie and Anne Robinson have also been demonised, by other women, for raising criticisms. This week the B-movie actress Blanca Blanco got in trouble for daring to wear a red dress to the all-black fashion and virtue-signalling shitshow that was the Golden Globes. How dare women wear what they want? Or express their opinions? Seriously, can these feminists who are raging against ‘bad women’, outspoken women, difficult women, hear themselves?

Indeed.  There’s an old saying – “when your enemy is self-destructing, get out of the way and let it happen” or words to that effect.  With every cause, every action, every pronouncement and attack, these sorts of “feminists” demonstrate that feminism isn’t at all their cause.  Instead it is power and narrative. The narrative gives them power, and they will brook no straying from that narrative.  Nor will they spare anyone who does, regardless of gender.

How?  Well, consider this:

Elsewhere Roiphe was branded an ‘Uncle Tom’ of gender, ‘trash’, a ‘bitch’ of course, a ‘demon’, and a ‘danger’ to good feminists who simply want to keep criminalising men without the benefit of such archaic things as due process or legal investigation. And all of this came from women, from women who pose as pro-women. Writer Nicole Cliff even encouraged writers to pull their pieces from Harper’s and offered to pay them to do so – an explicit attempt to heap editorial pressure on Harper’s to pull Roiphe’s piece / silence the evil witch. Five writers pulled pieces from Harper’s. Self-censorship to the end of censoring a woman who disagrees with mainstream feminists – what a degraded spectacle.

It is certainly a “degraded spectacle.”  And those leading the attacks are certainly positioning themselves to be the feminist versions of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.  That’s because their attacks will eventually leave them with no credibility. Just as Sharpton and Jackson are almost universally slammed as race baiters, the feminists of this movement will be seen as the equivalent in their area.  With these feminists however we haven’t yet arrived at that point.  It will happen, but one has to wonder how many lives will first be ruined by these shrieking and undifferentiating harpies.

~McQ