8/13/2017

Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a quiet weekend here at The Manse, between the somewhat wet weather on Saturday (meaning no real work outside), Deb being away visiting relatives in Vermont, and nothing much but chores to take care of today.

One of those chores has been cleaning out the garage, a task made more difficult due to a number of items in 'storage' for BeezleBub. Having to work around stuff he was supposed to have moved out months ago hasn't made the job very easy. At best I got about a quarter of the job done and the rest will have to wait until he moves his stuff out.

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That the continuing 'pearl clutching' by the DNC-MSM over Donald Trump's remarks about the homicide in Charlottesville, Virginia by the motorist who ran down a number of anti-Nazi/white supremacists protestors, in this case not following the Progressive script, amuses me to no end.

That he cast a wide net in his remarks proved to the media that he wasn't taking it seriously, but they choose to ignore the hatred and violence committed by the anti-fa and far Left protesters that has taken place over the past seven months or so.

As more people that I have said again and again, if they didn't have double standards they'd have no standards at all.

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Ed Driscoll illustrates Heinlein's axiom about history, that being that those who ignore history have no past...and no future.

In this case it appears the New York Times has forgotten about the Bad Old Days in Soviet Union, looking back at it nostalgically as if it were some kind of paradise. Never mind the KGB, the gulags, the long lines for every day staples, and a long list of things the Soviets did to their own people.

It's like they're trying to whitewash the excesses and tyranny of the Soviets, in the process of making iot more palatable for the masses.

One has to wonder when they'll change their name to New York Pravda.

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Sherlock Holmes explains why DWS IT scandal is not at the top of the news.

Indeed.

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Yet another crisis to panic about in the EU:

A butter shortage.

A group that represents bakers in France, the Federation des Entrepreneurs de la Boulangerie, called the lack of butter a “major crisis” that may lead to a steep price increase of pastries, croissants and brioches.

“The price of butter, while certainly volatile, has never reached such a level before,” the group said in a statement. “Butter shortages appear to be a real threat by the end of the year.”

That's what happens when production of commodity goes down even as demand surges. It's Economics 101.

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Do the folks at CNN need a refresher course in US geography?

One has to wonder because they couldn't seem to tell the difference between Charlottesville, Virginia and Charlottesville, North Carolina.

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Considering Google's idiocy (and hypocrisy) in regards to the firing of James Damore for expressing his honest opinion about some of the corporate programs, most of my searches are now run on Duck Duck Go and Bing.

One of the WP nieces works for Google in the Boston area and, as liberal as she is, thinks that Google has done an incredibly stupid thing. She didn't disagree with anything Damore wrote, but said he could have been a bit less direct in his criticism. Here, I must disagree with her as sometimes only the direct approach works. If nothing else it has a lot of people both inside and outside of Google talking about the non-inclusive 'inclusive' social structure within the corporation.

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And speaking if hypocrisy, there's this story about a writing conference being canceled because there weren't enough non-white writers who were going to speak at the conference.

If the conference, which was about writing young adult fiction, was supposed to be about anything other than writing young adult fiction, then maybe there would have been a point to canceling the conference. In fact, the organizers of the conference stated:

“We have set a goal for ourselves to be inclusive and to work toward equity, and we didn’t think the conference would live up to that mission,” Britt Udesen, executive director of the Loft, said Wednesday.

Then why call it a writing conference? It was anything but. According to the post, “More the 30 people of color had been invited to speak at the conference who declined the invitation.” So the problem wasn't that no one invited anyone that would have helped the organizers reach their “equity & diversity” goal. It's that all but one declined the invitation. Maybe they had more important things to do than attend a diversity circle jerk rather than a writing conference. You know, like maybe writing young adult fiction.

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Here's yet another example of being forced to work against one's moral conscience and religious beliefs.

This story, taking place in Madison, Wisconsin, would be entirely different if the person involved were Muslim. But because person involved is a devout Christian, she gets no such pass. But at least the courts in Wisconsin seem to have a little more sense, saying the laws that would have forced this person, one Amy Lawson, a photographer, are not germane to her business because she is an artist without a physical storefront.

While a win for Ms. Lawson, it is still troubling because she found a loophole. But what of others without that loophole?

We have talked about this before. If you want someone to create something, the artist should not have to create things that are contrary to their beliefs. The Wisconsin law goes further than many states in that it also demands that people not turn down jobs based on political beliefs. That means a liberal copywriter would be forced to write a speech for Donald Trump. A Jewish graphic designer would have to design flyers for neo-Nazis. A pro-choice marketer would have to accept work from a pro-life group.

Insanity.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer rolls on, boating continues, and where yet another Monday approaches that's ruing a perfectly good weekend.