Thank You Justice Kennedy

As you probably know Justice Kennedy has resigned.

As you also probably know the left is on fire, again.

It will come as no surprise to you that they are lying, again.

You may remember that after Justice Scalia, a conservative, died in February 2016 Obama nominated someone to take his place. The Senate, which must approve all federal judges, was and is controlled by Republicans. We refused to give Judge Garland (the putative nominee) a hearing.

Our rational was simple and with precedent. A new President would be elected in a matter of months and that person should nominate the next Supreme Court Justice.

Keep in mind that in February 2016 we did not know, although it was becoming more obvious, that Donald Trump would be our nominee. We assumed, like most others, that Felonia von Pantsuit (thank you Mr. Schlichter) would be the Democrat nominee and, according to every poll and most pundits, the next President of the USA.

One of our justifications for refusing to consider the nomination was what has come to be known as the "Biden Rule". In 1992 then Senator Joseph Biden proclaimed that should a vacancy occur on the Supreme Court during that election year any nomination should be delayed until after the November election. You will not be surprised to note that George H.W. Bush was our President at the time.

I do  not recall Vice President Biden repeating his 1992 opinion during the very acrimonious debate about giving Garland his hearings during the 2016 election year. Of course, as with all things Democrat, the rules are situational. A Democrat was President so, of course, clearly entitled to have hearings on his nominee. For once we Republicans, led by Senator McConnell, refused to cave and no hearings were held.

Now Democrats are insisting that the "McConnell rule" be invoked and no hearings be held on any nominee during this election year.

"“Our Republican colleagues in the Senate should follow the rule they set in 2016,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor. “Senator McConnell would tell anyone who listened that the Senate had the right to advise and consent — and that was every bit as important as the president’s right to nominate.”"

Really? I don't remember it that way. Both the "Biden Rule" and the "McConnell Rule" were explicitly formulated as applying during Presidential election years. This is not a Presidential election year. There will be another Trump nomination.

Given the gravity of the threat to lefty policies that a decidedly conservative court would present they have reacted with their usual cool, calm and well reasoned arguments.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) 11:03 AM - Jun 27, 2018" 

The resignation of the fiscal conservative but social liberal Kennedy is, in fact, a monumental (yuuuuuuuge?)  event. He was appointed in 1988 by our most conservative President before DJT, Ronald Reagan. Kennedy "grew" in office and gave us such fabulous social outcomes as same sex marriage invoking the well known legal principle that marriage is the only cure for loneliness.

"...Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness..."

Well, he is gone. An apparently reliable conservative will be appointed in his place which means there will be five solid conservatives on the court with Chief Justice Roberts (the "conservative" who saved Obamacare), more conservative than not, making six conservative voices in most cases. This will bring the left's mostly unconstitutional agenda to an end for at least 25 years. Thank goodness!

How to Read a "News" Story

I have mentioned several times before that we must be very careful reading stories from the Mainstream Media. In "This and That #10" I pointed out that the media will bury crucial details far into a story hoping, I guess, that not too many people will read that far and uncover the deceit that completely explodes their screaming anti-American headlines.

They have other methods of disseminating falsehoods as accurate statements.

One of their most frequently deployed appears in the following paragraph. Subtly mis-representing the words of the person they are quoting..

"The president continued to ratchet up the anti-immigrant rhetoric on Twitter.

“Democrats are the problem,” he tweeted Tuesday morning. “They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can’t win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!”".

Did you spot it? Of course you did. The authors used the completely inappropriate and loaded term "anti-immigrant" when any honest account would have said "anti illegal immigrant". The President was very clear. He is determined to stop "illegal immigrants".

Here  is another sample of the use of mis-characterization.

"The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a blow to the rights of workers on Monday by allowing companies to require them to sign away their ability to bring class-action claims against management, agreements already in place for about 25 million employees."

My goodness. I didn't realize the Court could deliver such a "blow". Surely if  this "right" existed the Court would affirm it. They are not in the business of rescinding "rights".

Could it be that the deployers of these terms are mistaken? In a word, yes.

" "The policy may be debatable but the law is clear: Congress has instructed that arbitration agreements like those before us must be enforced as written," Gorsuch wrote."

So, change the law, end the problem. That, of course, is difficult. It would require articulating a coherent case for a legislative fix to what the left sees as a serious problem.
Not a course they happily choose. Too difficult. Much easier to throw stones at conservatives.
 
"The justices, in a 5-4 ruling with the court's conservatives in the majority, endorsed the legality...". They confirmed the clarity and constitutionality of legislation. They also hinted that they might not favor the policy. As conservatives they understand that their job is not making policy. That is the job of the legislature.

Whenever I read lefty objections to Supreme Court decisions I am reminded of Barbara Boxer's (former Democrat US Senator, CA) comment when interviewed on the 30th anniversary of Roe v Wade. "When the Supreme Court speaks it is as if God has spoken".

Except, apparently, when it isn't.

Oceans 8. Spoiler Alert

My wife and I went to see Oceans 8 last week. Yes, I know, but sometimes we just endure things good naturedly for the ones we love.

Do you have any idea how long I spent playing with He-Man and Skeletor dolls? How many hours watching mostly incredibly boring gymnastics meets? Well, three of you do. The rest can only imagine.

To my surprise there has been a lot of talk about the movie, a female version of the Oceans franchise.

 There have always been chick flics. This one is a little different. We are presented with a group of women, most of whom are attractive, some of whom have very substantial acting credentials and all of whom are playing criminals.

Not just criminals, inexplicably brilliant criminals. We have no idea how they acquired their various skills except for Ms. Oceans, whose entire family tree is apparently composed of criminals and an Asian pickpocket who learned her skills from a wayward uncle as a child.

In my opinion the movie is ok if you are willing to overlook the many times it has to rely on tricking the audience to succeed. If not, it is a really bad movie. Having watched 100's of really bad movies over the years, I know whereof I speak. This is a bad movie.

Apparently the ladies are unhappy with the reviews the movie has received.

"Speaking to Yahoo Movies, Mindy Kaling called the dominance of white male reviewers “unfair”."

Approximately 80% of credentialed reviewers are white males according to the article.

It is, theoretically, a perfectly reasonable assertion. Except when it is not. Here it is not.

If this was a romance movie the assertion would not only be theoretically reasonable, it would be actually reasonable. Reactions among men and women would be expected to be different.

The movie is a crime/adventure movie. It is a female copy of the male genre and must be judged by the same standards (equality and all that, right?) regardless of the gender of the reviewer. By those standards it is a bad movie.

There is one aspect of it I think is unique and would not be tolerated if the cast was male.

These criminals steal a fortune in diamonds from Cartier and a much larger fortune in historic treasures from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. These criminals steal from the good guys and get away with it. Has that ever been permitted to happen before? I cannot recall a single instance.

There is an interesting social parallel with respect to the ladies complaints about reviewers being overwhelmingly male and white and the White Privilege movement. (I know, I can't help it.)

Rather than looking for the organic reasons for the poor reviews the ladies default to blaming the gender of the reviewers. Rather than looking for the organic reasons for the catastrophe that is black urban culture, black people blame white people.

Much easier to hold yourself blameless in both cases.

Higher Education

Doing some email housekeeping I came across an old email sent to a good friend following a discussion about higher education. Kathleen is a very well educated (several post-grad degrees including a PhD in Bio-ethics which could not land her a job) and very nice Canadian socialist who has lived in Arizona for the past 25 years or so. She is married to a successful physician, also Canadian, who claims, unpersuasively, in my opinion, not to be a socialist.

I thought the email worthy of wider dissemination. As is almost always the case with leftists, in my experience, they never bother to really engage. There was no response to my email nor was its subject ever brought up again the dozen or so times we have had dinner together since I wrote it.

The facts described in the final paragraph are astonishing, in my opinion.

"Dear Kathleen,

Add my thanks to Susan's. We appreciate your hospitality and always enjoy the company.

I came across this  http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/02/15/university-administrative-glut-worse-than-we-thought/  article this morning and thought I would share it with you in the context of our conversation last evening.

I have never met Crowe (President of Arizona State University) and assume he is a nice guy never having read or heard anything to the contrary.

Nice as he may be, he and his like minded colleagues have pushed a very cynical model for increasing the size and budgets of their organizations at the expense of 10's of thousands of students whose ever increasing tuition expense lead to ever increasing borrowing, ending, for many, in financial servitude. All facilitated by the never ending increase in funding of federal student loan programs promoted by their like-minded colleagues running the federal bureaucracies. It is the national socialist version of command and control economy. Never works but, for some reason, remains very compelling to those who think that their lever-pulling will produce a better outcome than their predecessors. 

I prefer to believe that all these people believe they are promoting the best policies for all involved. The fact that  they think that does not make them correct. They are obviously, demonstrably and tragically wrong. Unfortunately the consequences of the tragedy are not visited on them (elites never suffer) but on the naive young people persuaded that it is worth borrowing large sums of money to finance a degree that might once have been valuable but has been devalued by the PC university environment and huge proliferation. Things for which there is a huge oversupply generally fall in value.

Did I understand you to say that ASU has a program that requires chairpersons to deliver 1 1 hour lecture per year  and tenured professors 2 1 hour lectures per year in order that they not fall out of touch with the students? I know I asked you to clarify at the time but am still hoping I misunderstood you."

 

Integration

In "This and That #8" I wrote about President Trump's alleged "shithole" remark. My local paper editorialized on the subject on January 14, 2018. Just a reminder; The Arizona Republic endorsed Hillary in 2016. They hadn't endorsed a Democrat in a very long time. They really hate Donald Trump. Another reason to love Mr. Trump. He inspires their rhetorical excesses and flights of pure fantasy.

Here is the first paragraph;

"Donald Trump scrawled racist ideas on the walls of the Oval Office with the recklessness of a kid with a can of spray paint."

Whoa! You guys are impressive writers. That is a beauty.

They go on to excoriate Mr. Trump, reflexively assuming that his remark about preferring Norwegian immigrants was racially motivated. Projection anyone? Mr. Trump, of course was referring to Norwegians likely being better educated than immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa or Haiti and more likely to be productive members of society in the 21st century.

"In this country, the dream has long been to create a place where people will be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin." Really?

The editorial board had apparently been sleeping while Barak Hussein Obama's administration stoked the fires of racialism at every opportunity and college campuses across the country began re-segregating.

Dorms and clubs where whites are not welcome have proliferated all over the country. Ever heard of the Congressional Black Caucus? It is so segregationist that J.C. Watts a black Republican Congressman in the 90's was refused membership. Racial and ideological purity, lovely. Remind you of anything?

The reason for the racialist rhetoric and re-segregation is that after about 50 years of  real progress toward achieving Martin Luther King's lofty goal they realized that achieving his goal was exposing them and their white Democrat enablers for the incompetent ingrates they are.

 

Our President was black, our Attorney General was black, mayors of many major cities were black, police chiefs, judges and city councilmen were too. The bankruptcy of the black inner city culture could no longer be blamed on racist white people.


So they invented their version of White Privilege (I have my own, as you know) and set Baltimore, MD and Ferguson, MO on fire. My version only sets hair on fire.

Do you think the inventors of White Privilege and Cultural Appropriation have any interest in anything but dividing people by color? Character? Obviously white people, by definition, are lacking in character. How else could we possibly be such thoroughgoing racists? We are to be re-educated, not integrated.

I hope I have not been boring you with my White Privilege fixation. The idea, as the left defines it, is so damaging that I think it important to keep pointing out how pernicious and dangerous it is.