Jussie's twirl

Not long ago many of my liberal friends were describing the Jussie Smollett attack as emblematic of what is happening in the country at large.

Turns out they were right ­– just not in the way they thought.

You know both stories by now. First there was the phony one immediately embraced by a media foaming at the mouth over another chance to write “Just another day in Trump’s racist America.” The one circulated at light speed across social media, equating a red MAGA hat with a Klansman’s white hood. The one tweeted about by Democrat presidential candidates and pinhead celebrities who never miss an opportunity to display another virtue signaling flourish.

And now we have the actual story. Smollett staged the attack, paid the attackers, and then lied about it to police officers and his Empire costars and ABC’s Robin Roberts.

His actions were, indeed, emblematic of 2019 America. We live in a time when the aspirations of many are not wealth or knowledge or compassion, or the attainment of morals and values that contribute to a purpose-driven life. Instead, the objective is victimhood.

How does one explain why a talented actor on a successful prime-time series, earning $65,000 an episode, would choose to cast himself as the innocent prey of two racist, homophobic Trump supporters?

The short version is he was unhappy with his salary. How many of you would be driven to desperation by a weekly $65,000 paycheck?

The longer and more troubling motivation is that victimhood has become a coveted status. It is sought after by the successful with the same zeal real victims exert to escape their plight.

Politicians have long been the worst offenders. Perhaps they still are. We are supposed to admire whichever candidate had to walk the most miles in the deepest snow to get to school every day.

Then we have the Elizabeth Warrens and Rachel Dolezals of the world, who seek to establish their bona fides by claiming association with a historically oppressed group, with no basis for doing so. They want the sympathy (along with any professional benefits) without the suffering.

If it seems worse now it’s because, for the past two years, the partisan hacks that dominate mainstream media have made it their mission to remind women, African-Americans, Hispanics, gays, and pretty much anyone who is not white, male and Christian that they are oppressed citizens under a lunatic racist president.

That provides a convenient excuse for anyone who didn’t get the job or was not admitted to their dream college, or who has any number of grievances that likely could be overcome by patience, concentrated focus and harder work: It’s not me, it’s you. You’re the reason, Mr. President, society, racist/sexist America, that my life isn’t going the way I planned. My fate is out of my hands. I’m just another victim.

Jussie Smollett shouldn’t fit that category. As a gay African-American he holds legitimate membership in two historically oppressed groups. But instead of celebrating how he overcame the remnants of those societal barriers, and becoming a role model for others hoping to do the same, he decided he wanted more. And the best way to get there was to become a victim. Career advancement via what both Cory Booker and Kamala Harris called a “modern day lynching.”

Now that Smollett has become an actual victim – of his own greed and stupidity –he’ll finally get to leverage his black, gay status. The Don Lemons of the world are already rallying to his defense despite his actions. “In his heart he’s a truly good person,” said actress Sheryl Lee Ralph. And after being indicted for filing a false police report, and diverting law enforcement resources in a city where real assaults occur every minute, Smollett was allowed to post bail and head back to work.

Roseanne Barr wrote a racist tweet, and was immediately fired. Is that worse than committing a Class 4 Felony? Might she also be a good person at heart? Didn’t much matter in this case.

“(The) moral authority that comes from being victimized has replaced the desire for admiration or respect for some act of heroism,” wrote Matt Lewis on The Daily Beast website. “I’m not sure what exactly that says about a society, but it can’t be good.”

The new fascists and the end of America

As I've said many times in the past , I draw my inspiration from unusual places. Today, it comes from one of the classic TV blogs I frequent. At Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, Ivan Shreve describes a time that was perhaps a bit too thrilling, a what-if scenario that supposes the British were defeated at Dunkirk, that the Germans invaded in July of 1940, and that World War II took a very different turn. It's all explored in the 1966 movie It Happened Here, and the title of Ivan's article is the thought for the day - really, the thought that everyone ought to keep in mind: "The appalling thing about fascism is that you've got to use fascist methods to get rid of it."

This, of course, would come as no surprise to the new fascists, the campus fanatics trying to destroy any kind of speech that doesn't align with their own belief system. To them, coining a phrase, "error has no rights"; in other words, some thoughts are so egregious, so clearly wrong, that there can be no protection for them, no allowance for letting people consider them and make up their own minds. To the new fascists (and, really, there's nothing new about them), these thoughts are by their very nature dangerous, so dangerous that they cannot even be allowed to see the light of day, and so must be squashed, often in the name of freedom or some such nonsense. In order to prevent people from being hurt, one must hurt; in order to allow people to be free, others must be made less free; in order for all to be equal, some must be superior. Truly, it would make the Fool Killer shake his head and walk away, overwhelmed by the magnitude of his opportunity.

And it proves the point of Ivan's quote: fascism, which is what these people purport to fight (although I doubt they really know what fascism is, because they're ignorant people and they refuse to acknowledge their own behavior), can only be defeated in two ways, and one of them is by resorting to the very same weapon. The other is by education, which is antithetical to the ways and means of the new fascists, for what they call "education" is what a civilized man knows as "brainwashing," or perhaps even torture.

All this is important because of what we see happening down south. As Dreher points out, when the Civil War statues are pulled down and the police do nothing to stop it, a line is crossed, and this is when it ceases to matter which ideological side one is on. It is then that we come to the true meaning behind the founding of the United States, and the importance of the Rule of Law. It is often said that we are a government of laws, not of men, but since the rise of Oprah and the dominance of feelings over logic, this time has been coming, and is now here. When we reach the point where the law can be nullified based on how we feel, then the law loses its moral authority; when the white supremacists begin to pull down the statues of Martin Luther King Jr. and desecrate the monuments to the heroes of the civil rights movements, the same fascists who destroyed defenestrated the names of Lee and Jackson will wail and gnash their teeth, begging the authorities to intervene on their behalf. And what will their rationale be? That Truth demands it? But, in the words of Pilate's eternal question, what is truth? When gender is what you say it to be, when marriage is what you say it to be, when there is no percentage to logic and words mean whatever the situation demands, then is not truth whatever you say it to be? I'll tell you, the police are going to find it pretty damn hard to enforce laws based on that kind of truth.

That, my friends, is why we live in a government of laws and not of men. It's because the law has to apply equally to all in all situations, and it's why the new fascists have just forfeited that protection with their actions this week. Over the decades we've gotten used to the idea that things will turn out all right in the end because they always have, and besides how else can they turn out? Dreher says there won't be a separation, because geography no longer is the determinant of the fissure lines. Maybe that's the case, but Dreher is always a great one for saying what isn't going to happen; he's not very good at saying what is going to happen. And my feeling is that if you can't say what is going to happen, then why should we believe you when you tell us what isn't going to happen?

Logic, and gut feeling, suggest that this madness can't continue much longer without something happening. Not every civil war is fought along geographical lines, but almost every one is bloody. While Google practices intellectual genocide, while the new fascists eviscerate any trace of law, the pressure inside the cooker builds, and builds. When it blows, as it must, it will not be a pretty site. And if the best we can do is keep pressing down on the bubble when it pops up, we know it will simply pop up again somewhere else.

Flashback Friday: Searching for justice

Ihave never stuck up for any criminal. I have merely asked for the orderly administration of an impartial justice...Due legal process is my own safeguard against being convicted unjustly. To my mind, that's government. That's law and order."

 — Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Cannabinoids but still advancing their push?

If it isn't clear that 1960's liberalism is running amok in this country with courts become tyrannical dictators by overturning constitutions in an attempt to ram down a nation based on their feelings while overturning majorities on any number of issues, including trying to criminalise the Bible in favour of their own feelings, you can see it with the victorious push of cannabinoid legalisation.

As we've documented this year, the Canandigua Motorsports Park 360 cubic inch sprint car incident in August resulted in a fatality, and the toxicology report proved the driver killed tested positive for cannabinoids, which is a prohibited substance in WADA drug tests. Cannabinoids are prohibited in drug testing for most places of work.  We recently learned the Ferguson incident also had a case of cannabinoids in the deceased, who is being deified as innocent despite his actions that led to the shootout, and racial animosity in that area, with threats of massive looting should the policeman, who came close to being defenceless by the cannabinoid-positive thug, be acquitted.  Once again, the writing is on the wall -- cannabinoids created this incident.

But the elections proved sadly, those urban hippies want to remake the country in their own mould.  Already victorious in Colorado (Denver and Boulder) and Washington (King County), the push for cannabinoid legalisation has scored victories in Alaska, Oregon (Portland city-state), and the Washington DC area.  What are these people thinking?  The values of a generation that hates every standard seemingly has won at every bend thanks to such stupidity. Why are people demanding cannabinoids everywhere?  Do they understand the health hazards?

Teenage criminal rampage: UN treaty not ratified by the Senate, but by the Supreme Court, protects the criminals

At church recently, we were informed of a robbery at a bakery where three teenagers ransacked the business and killed an employee there. She had ties to the local community. In Oklahoma, a college student, originally from Australia and a baseball player at a college there, was killed by teenagers "for fun". In Spokane (WA), an elderly war hero from the Greatest Generation died after teenagers attacked him with a weighted flashlight.

In each case, the criminals involved were teenagers. In each case, there will be no justice for the victims' families. The teenage criminals will be protected to the full extent of the law, and may not even serve as much as thirty years in prison, and that is a problem in our justice system. A popular trend in the United States Supreme Court is a virtual relocation of the nation's legislative capital to Geneve (Suisse), as a rash of Supreme Court decisions has stated foreign law trumps local, state, and federal laws.

In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court declared a “constitutional” right to sodomy based on foreign laws. Justice Scalia warned this decision would push liberals' to attack churches in redefining marriage based on "bedroom laws," and would be the lightning rod to elimination of a fundamental freedom (of religion) and replacement with a forced acceptance of sin as normal. Two years later, again on foreign laws, Roper v. Simmons cited more foreign laws, and in an attack on the nation's sovereignty, violated Article II, Section 2, Paragraph 4 of the United States Constitution, which requires a treaty to be approved by a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate, by de facto ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that had been signed by Ambassador Albright in the 1990's, but rejected by the Senate. This decision barred death sentences on teenage murderers. Five years later, Graham v. Florida, citing the treaty-infused decision, codified the UN treaty by banning even life sentences on teenage criminals, in effect giving them a "get out of jail free" card. Not even 30 years is now legal for a sentence for teenage criminals.

Considering in the past decade the courts have ruled foreign law is superior to local, state, and federal law, and the criminals cannot be sentenced properly for their crimes, have we reaped what the courts sowed by giving criminals special rights? Is there an incentive for teen criminals to perform heinous crimes, knowing the penalty cannot be enforced because of their age?

With nullification being a major issue in many states, have we seen the price of Lawrence, Roper, and Graham, where the adoption of foreign laws and unratified treaties has taken our country back to a savage time, where there is no punishment for those guilty, as they are under special protections caused by foreign laws that coddle criminals at the expense of justice for the victims?

Think about it. As foreign law and unratified treaties creep into our country by court fiat, their mandates to appease moral relativism does not match with strict law and order that form the backbone of the American criminal justice system. These criminals have taken advantage of the laws that protect them, and punish victims. My fourth grade history book discussed the failure of the United Nations since its 1945 founding, and protecting of dictatorial despots while oppressing freedom-loving nations (such as the betrayal of Taiwan). Now we are seeing how they are now protecting teenage criminals at the expense of families they victimised. ◙

Why I didn't celebrate the 4th last week

From this great takedown by Judge Andrew Napolitano, "Jefferson Weeping":

The litany of the loss of freedom is sad and unconstitutional and irreversible. The government does whatever it can to retain its power, and it continues so long as it can get away with it. It can listen to your phone calls, read your emails, seize your DNA and challenge your silence, all in violation of the Constitution. Bitterly and ironically, the government Jefferson wrought is proving the accuracy of Jefferson's prediction that in the long march of history, government grows and liberty shrinks.

Somewhere Jefferson is weeping.

Read the rest and weep as well. (H/T Mark Shea) ◙

Wish I'd Written That

The law is an envious monster, and you represent it. You can't tolerate a decent and swift conclusion to a skirmish between an individual and what you call society, as long as you have it in your power to turn it into a ghastly and prolonged struggle; the victim must squirm like a worm in your fingers, not for ten minutes, but for ten months. Pfui! I don't like the law. It was not I, but a great philosopher, who said that the law is an ass."

- Nero Wolfe, as written by Rex Stout, The Red Box

Opinion Digest

I remember boys complained in schools about the girls' dress code, and they wanted to have the girls' dress code adopted for school, and they won the complaint -- the school was forced to adopt the girls' dress code for boys (only thing that matters is if it touches the top of the knee, but the hem line moved up regardless of gender).

Seems the increased pop culture "flashing" as shown by certain pop culture stars is enough, as are the cases of girls pulling off copycat moves, impersonating their heroines with similar hiking tactics. Officials in some British schools have told girls the boys' dress code will be enforced on them, banning articles of clothing that often are used to create the mess in the first place. Turnabout is fair play, is it?

The censoring of the West, and the enforcement of Shariah are both troubling. Have we seen a rise of Islam since Usama attacked the US? Diana West's thoughts.

Thirty-nine men came to Philadelphia to form a more perfect union two hundred twenty-four years ago this weekend. Yet the courts today are eliminating their document in favour of adopting foreign laws today, and even abolishing the Bill of Rights (1-10 and 27*). Katie Pavlich reports.

Professor Krugman's rude commentary on Patriot Day was seriously offensive to the soldiers and those who lost family members in the attacks of Usama's Henchmen. Michael Reagan's thoughts.

Marc Morano reports a Nobel Prize winner resigned from the American Physical Society because of their embracing of false anti-industry "science" pushed on a generation.

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* There were twelve articles in the Bill of Rights; The first article assigned the House to one representative per 40,000 people, and once it went to 200 representatives, the limit was one per 50,000; thar article did not pass, and it would be compex today, as it's nearly 650,000 people per Representative. The second article took 201 years, and 28 more states that was needed when originally proposed, to ratify and is the 27th Amendment. The third to twelfth articles are the first to tenth Amendments to the United States Consitution, henceforth, the Bill of Rights are actually the 2nd to 12th articles of articles sent to the legislators on March 14, 1789. For historical purposes, the 27th Amendment is part of the Founding Fathers' documents.

◙

More stupidity

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
- from the Declaration of Independence

Another absurd ruling by Judge Vaughan Walker, an admitted sexual deviant, who believes his feelings and foreign laws are superior to the laws passed by the people by the defeat of Proposition 8.

Sen. DeMint (who is this author's Senator) noted in a statement, “(W)e cannot simply toss (marriage) aside to fit the political whims of liberal activists with gavels. Marriage is a religious institution that was codified into law to protect it. Now, the courts are trying to deprive the majority of Americans who value marriage the democratic ability to protect it any longer. If our marriage laws are valueless, they will become meaningless.”

California voters passed Proposition 22 that declared “marriage is a between one man and one woman” in 2000. In 2008, an activist judge ruled it unconstitutional, and mandated the legalisation of false marriage, resulting in a Constitutional Amendment to secure the rule of one man and one woman (Proposition 8), which passed. Now a judge has decided this is illegal, and this time, the laws and constitutional amendments of a majority of states are being overturned on the feelings of one activist judge. This decision was cheered by both Senators of the state in question and the de facto Prime Minister of the nation (Speaker Pelosi) who, not the President (GW Bush), ran the nation from 2007-09 by passing legislation that created this mess in the totalitarian style of the Left, which together cheered the decision (in fact, her press secretary, a homosexual male, “married” his partner in Washington DC, where false marriage is recognised) to force marriage to be redefined to what is used in Argentina, Canada, Sweden, Netherlands, South Africa, Belgium, and other “progressive” nations. The danger here is the more nations approve such false “marriage,” the more we'll see the Supreme Court justices who believe the nation's legislative capital is in Bruxelles use those nations' laws to overturn state amendments passed by the people (which is how Massachusetts started this mess in the first place by declaring foreign law superior).

The approval of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court (who told law school students to not study United States law, but mandated study of foreign law, and wanted the military off campus in order to protest against her feelings), and the declaration of Proposition 8 as unconstitutional both fit the long train of abuses by leaders to reduce the people to Despotism. ◙

Supreme Court Victory

By Bobby

It is finally pleasing to see that the United States Supreme Court, which has long tilted towards allowing foreign countries to overrule the United States when it comes to lawmaking (and metaphorically, make Bruxelles, Belgique our nation's capital), has been put down to its pieces by this week's 5-4 ruling declaring legal a federal law making a crime an act where a baby in the process of being born in breach (feet comes first through the birthcanal) is then decapitated before the head appears.

It is the first time since the gruesome and tragic day of January 22, 1973 (a day where in Jamaica that night, Howard Cosell called "Down goes Frazier!" in the Foreman-Frazier fight) that the United States Supreme Court has restored sanity to this battle in favor of life.

After over 34 years, it is a scene to see sanity has been partially restored by prohibiting the practice of infanticide which had been declared legal by courts using "invented lawmaking" which has created the "constitutional right to an abortion," and "constitutional right to sodomy," both of which declared legal by a "right to privacy" to invent these rights.

The "right to privacy" not only has created incentives to do immoral acts, even criminals have taken advantage of this. Over the Christmas week, a criminal went to our shop and paid for a computer repair bill with a forged check, looking perfectly legitimate, with someone else's name and address, and phone number on the front, and a second victim's Community Resource Bank (AMEX: SCB) account number on the check, with the bank's former name written on the check and base city misspelled, and a different bank's code numbers on the top, and topped it off with a false driver's license. The check initially cleared the bank, but two months later, after the victim of the check fraud reported the incident, the check was returned unpaid. I contacted authorities and they could not continue the investigation because the officer noted the right to privacy made it impossible to trace the phone number of the criminal.

Considering the costs of "right to privacy," and who pays for the criminal acts which are being permitted, it is a blessing finally to see the United States Supreme Court return to some form of sanity by banning this gruesome form of infanticide.