Potpourri: Some thoughts on a few topics currently in the news

Condé Nast’s liberal online publication Teen Vogue is in the news, and not for anything positive that has happened. Alexi McCammond was hired at the magazine on March 5th, scheduled to start as editor-in-chief on March 24th.

But in the interim, magazine staffers got wind of something McCammond had done, and raised enough cane that the up-coming EIC decided to resign the position she had not yet taken.

What horrendous deed had McCammond done? Had she committed murder, or armed robbery? Pedophilia? Did she vote for Donald Trump?

No. She had committed the unpardonable sin of making insensitive, some say racist remarks in tweets. In 2011. When she was 17 years-old. And has since apologized profusely for her transgressions.

But in this day of hypersensitivity, when anyone can be highly offended by anything or everything, even what one did years ago as a teenager is a hanging offense.

Interestingly, the delicate sensitivities of the staffers of this young women’s magazine were not sufficiently provoked by the sponsored content from the Saudi Arabian government, a country where women are routinely mistreated and subjected to male dominance. 

This is the essence of the cancel culture: ignorance and hypocrisy.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., continues to amaze with her impudence, deviousness and heavy-handed partisanship.

When Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., who was recently declared the winner of a challenged election, asked to have her son, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, observe her being sworn in from the gallery above the House floor, Pelosi denied the request. 

“I guess he’s considered a risk,” Tenney said. No doubt. He’s the son of a Republican Representative, graduated from the Naval Academy and is now a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy. Who could be more of a threat to Pelosi than someone with such a positive record? And he never had a relationship with a female Chinese spy, either.

No, he’s not a risk. Pelosi; Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y.; Richard Blumenthal, D- Conn.; Elizabeth (the filibuster is racist) Warren, D-MA, et al, are risks. They are working overtime to weaken the Constitution, nationalize our elections and increase the incidence of vote fraud, assist illegal aliens entering the country by the thousands, ignore the 2nd Amendment, raise taxes, increase unemployment, and the list goes on.

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What is supremacy? Merriam-Webster defines it as “the quality or state of being supreme,” which is defined as “highest in rank or authority.” 

How does a group — perhaps an ethnic group — gain supremacy? In the case of a nation, supremacy would naturally go to a group that is much larger than the others, likely larger than all the others combined.

In Spain, for example, the World Atlas tells us that 89.9 percent of its population is Spanish, and just 10.1 percent is of a foreign ethnicity. 

Guess what? In Spain there is Spanish supremacy.

In the United States, even after decades of immigration, the Statistical Atlas tells us that white people still comprise the majority at 62 percent. The next closest group is that of Hispanics at 16.9 percent. Blacks make up 12.6 percent, Asians are 5.2 percent, and mixed ethnicities are 2.3 percent.

As you go back through time, the white majority was much larger. So, when the culture and norms of the United States were evolving, white people overwhelmingly set those standards. And they still exist.

So, the “white supremacy” we hear so much about is not an unusual thing, and it is not automatically a bad thing. 

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Why will the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) not allow the press to participate in ride-alongs with agents at the southern border? Since the news media are the source of the information we depend upon, that might make some think there is something being hidden down there.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that the department is preparing video to distribute to news media, but cited the pandemic among reasons for not allowing reporters, photographers and camera crews into the facilities housing illegal aliens.

“We are focused on our operations, executing our operations, in a crowded Border Patrol facility where hundreds of vulnerable migrant children are located,” Mayorkas said.

Wallace challenged the Secretary, saying his answer sounded like an “excuse,” and that one pool reporter and camera crew could enter one facility and record what’s happening, without endangering the children or the crew.

Mayorkas emphasized the department’s efforts to provide such a video. Apparently, he trusts the government to provide the best information to the public. Yeah, right!

* * *

If you don’t like Dr. Suess, don’t read those books. If you don’t like Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson because they were Confederates, don’t try to have the carvings on Stone Mountain removed, just don’t go there. If someone you know of goes to an event sponsored by someone or something you dislike, just deal with the difference in opinion, don’t try to get them fired or otherwise punished. 

In America, small groups don’t get to decide what the rest of us can like.

Biden’s early days in office do not spur confidence for the future

The beginning of a new president’s tenure is often rough and tumble. Former-President Donald Trump’s certainly was. And President Joe Biden’s is also following that well-worn path.

In 2019, for the first time in 62 years the US achieved energy independence, or higher energy production than its energy consumption. But this good energy project, the Keystone XL pipeline, had been targeted by candidate Biden, and was ended by executive order, almost before Biden’s hand came down after taking the oath of office. 

The pipeline would have transported 830,000 barrels of crude oil each day from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska. We haven’t lost access to that oil, but it will now be transported overland by trucks and trains instead of underground by pipe.

When you consider that about 70 percent of US petroleum products are already transported through roughly 200,000 miles of pipelines, why was canceling the XL pipeline project of such importance? Though used to move far less petroleum product, truck and train transportation are where a majority of mishaps occur. Trucks and trains also produce more CO2 than a pipeline.

The initial effect of this foolish move was to immediately end a thousand good-paying jobs. Roughly 10,000 more good jobs will not be created. And, $3.4 billion will never be added to the gross domestic product.

Another self-inflicted wound is the senseless change in attitude and policy addressing the security of our southern border and the constant entry of illegal aliens.

“Statistics released Wednesday by US border officials reveal that the surge of children at the US-Mexico border is worse than previously reported,” according to a story in the New York Post last week, “with nearly 30,000 unaccompanied minors crossing the border in a single month.”

The Post continued: “The one-month total in February is nearly as high as the count of unaccompanied minors in the entire year of 2020 and is five times higher than the 5,871 unaccompanied minors in January, which itself was an increase from 4,995” in the month following the Presidential Election.

More than 100,000 illegal aliens entered the country in Biden’s first full month, compared to 36,000 for the same period in 2020, an increase of 170 percent since Biden suspended the border security system. Most are not being tested for COVID, and of those who were tested, 10 percent were positive. 

For tweeting the truth that illegals were bringing the virus with them into the US, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had his Twitter account suspended. Yet another blunder for Twitter owner Jack Dorsey and company.

To make a bad situation worse, most of these illegals are being released into the country, and sometimes are taken by bus to areas far away from the border, as far as New York.

Does anybody know who these people really are? Are 100 percent of them good people merely looking for a better life? No. How many are drug users or dealers, gang members, child traffickers or pedophiles, other types of sex offenders, or are infected with the virus. I don’t know. You don’t know. And Joe Biden doesn’t know.

The Epoch Times reported that 22 wanted felons were captured recently at the border in Texas, and that the Biden administration has proposed a plan to legalize an estimated 11 million illegal aliens living in the United States. 

If anyone thinks Biden’s border policy is foolish, this information certainly does nothing to contradict that idea. And, more than a few of those wishing to enter the US illegally were wearing tee shirts proclaiming “Biden please let us in.”

Yet, the administration continues to call this crisis a mere “challenge.”

Biden seems dedicated to the idea of overturning every action taken by his predecessor, even the good things. Of course, the Democrats do not acknowledge, or admit, that Donald Trump’s administration did anything good. It is a fool’s errand to try to compare the border situation under Biden with the much-better results under Trump.

During the Biden administration’s first two months of existence, the wall on the southern border has been halted, and a border wall around the US Capitol, and the National Guard security there have been maintained. This has the effect of making it easier for people -- some of whom are violent criminals -- to waltz into the country, and harder for citizens to access the people’s house.

Of those two conditions we know that the threat of illegal entry along the southern border is real; we don’t know that the alleged threat of illegal activities at the Capitol is real.

Biden seems content to rule by executive orders, sometimes circumventing the proper lawmaking process through Congress. And he gives public statements, occasionally answers a question shouted by reporters, but does not hold actual news conferences. 

This behavior gives some the idea that the Biden administration will be more of an authoritarian one than it will be the administration of a democratic republic. And his behavior with the press gives credence to the idea that he is unable to speak to the press and the public without a teleprompter.

The Biden administration may ultimately be as bad as many expect.

Big Tech has grown too big, and is a true threat to our freedoms

America’s Founders recognized that certain rights existed that were absolute and unassailable, and that those rights were fundamental to the nation they had created. Before some states would ratify the new Constitution, they insisted that these rights be specifically detailed. And they were, in the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

Back in the day, we learned important elements of our nation’s founding in school. We studied the Bill of Rights, and learned that the First Amendment cited the five freedoms of religion, speech, the press, peaceful assembly, and petitioning government for the redress of grievances.

Religion and speech have been under attack off and on for a long time. Religion has been under strong attack lately, and now free speech has also become a target.

In many countries, what the people say and do is controlled by a dictatorial government. In America, where the Constitution limits what the government can do, the current attempt to kill free speech is being carried out by a political faction that has among its members the fat-cats who own the Big Tech companies.

The Big Tech companies whose disrepute has blossomed of late — Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Amazon — have grown too big for their britches. The oligarchs who own and run these giants have gained such riches that their over-fed egos persuade them that they can and should control the rest of us for their own narrow purposes.

The level of control of Big Tech reaches into the news we read, see and hear; information we find online; the ads we see and the things we buy; and discussions in the political sphere.

These platforms gather information on users about their likes and dislikes, the websites they visit, videos they watch, issues they are interested in, and their political party affiliation.

This information is used to make money and to influence how users think about many things. Even the results of online Google searches are determined by this user information.

The arrogance of Big Tech has produced the censoring on their platforms of a story in the New York Post on the questionable behavior of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Social media platforms Facebook and Twitter banned the now-former President of the United States Donald Trump from their platforms. And Big Tech took down the upstart social media site Parler, which has now been reborn.

There are continuing issues regarding the censoring of political posts and comments by Republicans and conservatives. Things that do not favor the leftist/liberal side of things are frequently blocked or removed on the grounds that they violate some internal policy.

These policies supposedly protect the public from dangerous speech, which is not the job of social media platforms. They originally were available for users to have their say about any topic, except for things like promoting violence or illegal activities.

The vast majority of speech, even that which is highly offensive to some, has been determined through litigation to be protected by the First Amendment. Nevertheless, Big Tech owners and employees, who should not be the judges of the appropriateness of their users’ comments, continue to do so. And they condemn language like what has been determined by law to be okay. 

Since these “platforms” frequently abandon that realm in favor of behaving like “publishers,” which are expected to control speech to a higher degree, they should lose the protections of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which protects platforms from lawsuits over content generated by users on their sites. It gives them the right to moderate content, but does not give them the responsibility to do so.

This allows platforms to operate without needing to moderate content, therefore, platforms must not go too far if they do moderate. Despite this, they continue censoring conservative speech.

Allum Bokhari, an author and technology correspondent, speaking to a conference of the Center for Constructive Alternatives at Hillsdale College, had the following comment in his address: “If Big Tech’s capabilities are allowed to develop unchecked and unregulated, these companies will eventually have the power not only to suppress existing political movements, but to anticipate and prevent the emergence of new ones. This would mean the end of democracy as we know it and place us under the thumb of an unaccountable oligarchy.”

Big Tech platforms are such a sham, I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.
They cheat, and censor what people say, but only those who don’t think their way.
They think they are king of what they do, but they must also be red, and not just blue.
Their egos swelled as they gained power, and now Big Tech needs a really cold shower.
They have gained the throne and now they are woke, but justice will be done if they go broke.

Freedom of speech must be protected. Big Tech should be sanctioned, regulated, or broken up into smaller, less powerful and less harmful units with little ability to control free speech. This would allow the public to express all but the most truly dangerous ideas, as platforms originally were.

Dems are frivolously spending money under guise of pandemic relief

In an early-morning vote last Saturday, President Joe Biden’s 591-page American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 passed the full House by a 219-212 vote along party lines. This plan would borrow and spend $1.9 trillion to, we are told, combat the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is roughly $825 billion aimed at actual COVID-related spending. So where is the rest of the spending going? The majority of funds, according to the Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal, is dedicated to “expansions of progressive programs, pork, and unrelated policy changes.” 

“Critics say that my plan is too big, that it costs $1.9 trillion,” Biden said. “Let me ask them: What would they have me cut?”

Well, since you asked: The measure included raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by the fifth year of raises, but must be approved by the Senate, and is in question. This increase will result in reduced hours, job cuts, or price increases, or a combination of those, as employers struggle to offset the increased expenses.

One feature would provide an additional $135 million in funding to the National Endowment for the Arts, on top of the $167.5 million already budgeted for this year.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., said recently that he’s “not comfortable” with “embarrassing” spending unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic. He told CNN of his misgivings on $1.5 million for the Seaway International Bridge between Massena, New York, and Canada, and also $100 million for an underground rail line linking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district and Silicon Valley.

There is $350 billion in aid to state and local governments, which is thought to be “bailouts” of poorly run Democrat areas like New York City and the state of New York. California, which recently reported a $10 billion budget surplus, is expected to receive more than $40 billion from the bill. Some folks think California doesn’t need it. The bill rewards poor stewardship of cities and states and is wasteful.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 95 percent of the bill’s $129 billion for K-12 schools won’t be spent until 2022-2028. That’s because much of the already appropriated $113 billion hasn’t yet been spent. Why not wait and see if all or any of the $129 billion is needed?

Freshman Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., said in a tweet that, “Less than 1 percent of the COVID relief bill will actually go to vaccine development and distribution. When a top priority accounts for such a small part of the overall spending, it just shows how massive (and unnecessarily bloated) this spending bill is.” 

While the Democrat-controlled Congress is busy spending our tax money on frivolous things under the guise of pandemic relief, the attack on our individual freedoms continues unabated.

One of our freedoms that has been under assault for some time is the ability of business owners to control who they do business with.

When the seasoned citizens among us were young, it was common to see signs on the front door of businesses that said, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason,” or similar language. These days, the government of our free country will punish you and try to force you to do things that are not just things you don’t want to do, but things that are against your religious or personal beliefs.

No doubt more recent such signs saying “No shirt, no shoes, no service” will likewise be deemed illegal by the control-happy government that that thinks it knows best about far too many things.

A long-standing issue holds that while you may be opposed to abortion for religious or other reasons, if you have a business, you may be forced to provide insurance coverage that pays for abortion.

If you are a service provider — such as a baker, photographer or florist — you may be sued or otherwise punished for refusing service for same-sex marriages, regardless of your beliefs or personal feelings.

More recently is the issue of trans-gender women being allowed in women’s restrooms, locker rooms and showers, and participating in women’s sports.

And the State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo has suspended a male student from his field teaching programs after he was found supporting conservative ideas, such as, “A man is a man, and a woman is a woman.” 

It is reported that two California Democrats, Representatives Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, are pressuring cable companies to drop Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network, or pay lower carriage rates in order to shut these networks down. The opposition must be silenced!

It is things like this that cement as reality the idea that our elected representatives have not read, do not understand, or don’t like the rather plain English of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

Why, in the United States of America, the land of the free, is it sensible or permissable to say that being for something like same-sex marriage, trans-genderism or abortion is okay, but being opposed to one or more of them is wrong? 

We are guaranteed the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Does that not include making up our own minds about social and political issues?