It’s Friday, May 5th, 2017…but before we begin, we offer a possible, …we repeat possible…politically-incorrect take on the ostensibly racist reception Oriole Adam Jones recently received in Boston:
The “white man’s sport” bin berry, berry good to Jones!
On background, last season, in the wake of the Kaepernick kerfuffle, Jones “explained” the reluctance of major leaguers to take similarly controversial stands with the curious claim,“Baseball is a white man’s sport. We already have two strikes against us already, so you might as well not kick yourself out of the game.”
So, “already” knowing Jones to be a bit confused on the realities of racism, is it not possible the Fenway faithful, rather than drawing on the fires of smoldering racism, simply saw dropping the N-bomb as a means of potentially taking him out of his game?
Sorta like Paul Newman with the Long Island goalie in Slap Shot:
Just sayin’…without condoning in any way what we deem reprehensible behavior…behavior we should mention was precisely in line with the supposed humor of Steven Colbert…a “man” who’s probably holstered more c*ck than Rock Hudson…and who still has his job.
Oh,…and for those requiring further proof Progressives are leading the world to hell in a hand basket, these two headlines should convince you:
Neither of which is an argument germane to the issue at hand!
It’s as if a sufficient number of House Republicans finally woke up and smelled Dan Henninger’s coffee:
“The original ObamaCare reform, assembled over months by the House leadership, was constructed explicitly to avoid opening this Pandora’s box of political interests inside the GOP. It was written so that a North Carolina Republican and a Pennsylvania Republican could be on the same page for one big vote.
For some “real conservatives,” the bill had the stench of compromise, an anathema in their world. One all-American reality that no amount of ranting will reverse is this: Unless you get more votes than the other guy, you lose.You will lose on health care, spending and taxes.
The cost of losing is high. If this Congress’s Republican moderates and conservatives are seen as incapable of working their way through political realities evident to the average American voter or campaign donor, then a resurrected Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be smiling through her weekends at Mar-a-Lago after 2018. That will not be fake news.“
Thus The Gang Who Still Can’t Shoot Straight finally hit the mark. And as Kimberly Strassel asks and answers…
Next, a must-read commentary from NRO‘s David French which deserves reproduction in full:
Justice Is Bigger Than Narrative
Two incidents in Texas advance two very different narratives about police and the use of force.
The story out of Balch Springs, Texas, is horrible. Based on the available evidence (always an important caveat), it began like countless stories in suburban America. A mom left town, and her son made the mistake that kids tend to make — he threw a party. The party got loud, and the neighbors called the police. When the party-goers learned that the police were on the way, they did what teens have done since time immemorial. They scattered.
Sounds normal, right? But in this case, there was a deadly, horrific twist. As the party broke up, gunshots rang out. Fifteen-year-old Jordan Edwards (Jordan is black) got into a car with his brother and three other kids; they backed out of their parking spot and started to leave the party. None of them had been drinking. There were no weapons in the car.
At that moment, they heard cursing, there were more shots, and Jordan was shot in the head, straight through the passenger window. Witnesses said that his “forehead was smoking.” The shots came from the police.
The story gets worse. Initially the police reported that officers fired on the car after it backed towards them in an “aggressive manner.” Then they watched the body-camera footage, and the account changed. The car was actually driving away from police when the shooting started. Now the police chief says that he doesn’t believe the shooting met the department’s “core values.”
In a polarized nation, our political lives are dominated by narratives. We hold on to the stories that advance our narrative, discard as aberrations the stories that contradict the narrative, and press forward — armed to the teeth with tales of outrage. While only the most crazed radicals believe that their side is always right, the contradictory stories tend to disappear. Conservatives are quick to know that “hands up, don’t shoot” was one of the lies of the year. They tend to be quick to forget men such as Walter Scott or don’t know anything at all about Demetrius Hollins. The leftist commitment to narrative is legendary. The Black Lives Matter movement is still deemed “peaceful” even as its rallies keep turning violent, and its supporters have gunned down cops in the streets.
The “hands up, don’t shoot” mantra is still on activists’ lips in spite of all available evidence.And, as the disruption of Heather Mac Donald’s speech at Claremont McKenna College showed, even questioning BLM’s statistical claims and allegations is considered somehow anti-black.
There is only one way through the tribalism of competing narratives, and that’s through a commitment to justice. No, not “social justice.”True justice — the quest for evidence, the search for facts, and the dispensation of punishment without regard to race, creed, class, or religion.
For conservatives, that means leaving the reflexive defense of the police to the police unions and police lawyers. It means not having a “rooting interest” in any given case aside from rooting for the truth to emerge.It also means grieving with fellow Americans who’ve suffered unimaginable loss, a loss compounded by the horrific realization that it came through the hands of the state — the very people who are supposed to “protect and serve.”
None of this means that conservatives shouldn’t examine each case and each allegation with a skeptical eye. Early reports are often wrong (remember when Charlotte, N.C., erupted in riots because of unfounded rumors that police shot Keith Lamont Scott when he was merely holding a book?), and the mainstream media often shares the far Left’s narrative. But it does mean that the skepticism shouldn’t be limited to the “other” side. Radical activists aren’t the only liars in American life. A depressing number of cops lie with depressing regularity.
We live in a complicated country, and simple narratives can’t tell its story. Yesterday, in Dallas — not too far from Balch Springs — Derick Lamont Brown, the former chairman of the New Black Panther Party in Dallas, reportedly shot a paramedic and a neighbor, leaving them both bleeding in the street. When police arrived, Brown opened fire, and multiple officers risked their lives to drag the wounded paramedic and neighbor to safety.
That’s two Texas incidents, and they advance two very different narratives. In one, cops risk their lives to save lives while a black radical commits an act of vicious violence. In the other, a cop fires into a car full of black kids for apparently no good reason. We have to remember them both.We have to grapple with them both. Any other approach forsakes truth for the tribe.Any other approach elevates politics over people. Seek justice. The narrative is the lesser concern.
Speaking of justice, when can we expect a complete and abject apology from The Left for their scurrilous assaults…
…on the legitimacy of the democratic process? If not you, Dianne, who? If not now, when?!?
Turning now to the Atta Boy, Barry! segment, The Washington Free Beacon reports…
“Iran is using the billions in cash resources provided under the landmark nuclear deal to engage in an unprecedented military buildup meant to transform the Islamic Republic’s fighting force into an “offensive” juggernaut, according to a largely unreported announcement by Iranian military leaders that has sparked concern among U.S. national security insiders and sources on Capitol Hill.
Iranian officials announced late last month that Iran’s defense budget had increased by 145 percent under President Hassan Rouhani and that the military is moving forward with a massive restructuring effort aimed at making it “a forward moving force,” according to regional reports.
Iranian leaders have stated since the Iran deal was enacted that they are using the massive amounts of cash released under the agreement to fund the purchase of new military equipment and other armaments. Iran also has pursued multi-million dollar arms deals with Russia since economic sanctions were nixed as part of the deal…”
Barack Hussein Obama: the gift that keeps on giving…along the lines of a highly pathogenic influenza virus.
And in the Environmental Moment, the WSJ‘s Holman Jenkins wonders, as…
“I’ll admit it: I would have found it fascinating to be party to the discussions earlier this year that led to oscillating headlines on the New York Times home page referring to the new EPA chief Scott Pruitt alternately as a “denier” or “skeptic.” At least it would have been fascinating for 20 minutes.
Ditto thehysterical discussionsundoubtedly now arising from an anodyne piece of climate heterodoxy by the paper’s newest columnist, a former Journal colleague who shall remain nameless, in which he advises, somewhat obscurely, less “certainty” about “data.”
Whether or not this represents progress in how the U.S. media cover the climate debate, a trip down memory lane seems called for. In the 1980s, when climate alarms were first being widely sounded, reporters understood the speculative basis of computer models. We all said to ourselves: Well, in 30 years we’ll certainly have the data to know for sure which model forecasts are valid.
Thirty years later, the data haven’t answered the question. The 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, voice of climate orthodoxy, is cited for its claim, with 95% confidence, that humans are responsible for at least half the warming between 1951 and 2010. Look closely.This is an estimate of the reliability of an estimate.It lacks the most important conjunction in science: “because”—as in “We believe X because of Y.”
Not that the IPCC fails to offer a “because” in footnotes.It turns out this estimate is largely an estimate of how much man-made warming should have taken place if the models used to forecast future warming are broadly correct.
The IPCC has a bad reputation among conservatives for some of its press-release activities, but the reports themselves are basically numbing testimonies to how seriously scientists take their work. “If our models are reliable, then X is true” is a perfectly valid scientific statement.Only leaving out the prefix, as the media routinely does, makes it deceptive.
We don’t know what the IPCC’s next assessment report, due in 2021, will say on this vital point, known as climate sensitivity. But in 2013 it widened the range of uncertainty, and in the direction of less warming. Its current estimate is now identical to that of the 1979 Charney Report. On the key question, then, there has been no progress in 38 years.
For journalists, the climate beat has been singularly unrewarding. It has consisted of waiting for an answer that doesn’t come. By now, thanks to retirements and the mortality tables, the beat’s originators are mostly gone. The job has passed into hands of reporters who don’t even bother to feign interest in science—who think the magic word “consensus” is all the support they need for any climate claim they care to make.
…But not even the EPA’s Mr. Pruitt or the New York Times’s newest recruit exhibits the ill grace to phrase the “so what” question.
“So what” is the most important question of all.So what if human activity is causing some measure of climate change if voters and politicians are unwilling to assume the costs (possibly hugely disproportionate to any benefit) of altering the outcome of the normal evolution of energy markets and energy technology.
Even liberals have noticed that climate advocacy has morphed into a religion, unwilling to deal honestly with uncertainty or questions of cost and benefit…”
After all, what’s the cost of a nation’s entire economy compared to the benefit of Progressives enjoying an uninterrupted night of smug slumber?!?
In a related item, as Steven Hayward asked in our Quote of the Day on Wednesday, who are the real “deniers” NOW?!?
Segment debunking transgenderism cut from ‘Bill Nye’
A segment attributing biological sex to chromosomes has been cut from a re-release of “Bill Nye, the Science Guy.” The episode, titled “Probability,” originally contained a scene describing why boys are boys and girls are girls.
“I’m a girl. Could have just as easily been a boy, though, ‘cause the probability of becoming a girl is always 1 in 2,” a young woman says in the show. “See, inside each of our cells are these things called chromosomes, and they control whether we become a boy or a girl.”
“Your mom has two X chromosomes in all of her cells, and your dad has one X and one Y chromosome in each of his cells,” she continues. “Before you’re born, your mom gives you one of his chromosomes, and your dad gives you one of his. Mom always gives you an X, and if dad gives you an X, too, then you become a girl. But if he gives you his Y, then you become a boy. See, there are only two possibilities: XX, a girl, or XY, a boy.The chance of becoming either a boy or a girl is always 1 in 2, a 50-50 chance either way. It’s like flipping a coin: X you’re a girl, Y you’re a boy.”
That segment is not in the show as it appears on Netflix.Requests seeking comment from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, which distributed the show on DVD, and Netflix have not been returned.
So much for “settled” science!
At the risk of appearing to beat a dead horse…or in this case, a recalcitrant, prevaricating mule…Nye’s retreat from what is now a politically-incorrect recounting of scientific fact is yet another reason you…
Which brings us to The Lighter Side…
Finally, we’ll call it a week with one of the most inspired pieces of journalism we’ve come across in some time, courtesy…curiously enough…of diehard-Dimocrat Gersh Kuntzman writing at New York’s reliably-Liberal Daily News:
Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be writing a book — she should be drafting a long apology to America
“Hey, Hillary Clinton, shut the f— up and go away already.
I voted for Clinton on Nov. 8 and thought she’d be a good president. But she lost. And she still wants us to feel bad about that. And, worse, she’s still blaming everyone else.
On Tuesday at the Women for Women conference, she reminded us again what a flawed candidate she was last year — and what a flawed person she has always been.
In her talk before a friendly audience, Clinton said she’s writing a memoir — and said it’s “painful” to revisit how Donald Trump beat her like a ragdoll in an election that was a lock. Painful?We’re the ones in pain, Hillary. You’re making millions to process it.We’re the ones living it.
…Sorry, Simon & Schuster may want Hillary Clinton to write the history, but I’m not about to let her re-write it.No one deserves more blame for the election debacle than Hillary Rodham Clinton.
…The American public does not want a book from Hillary Clinton. It wants an abject apology.And it wants it for free. She got what she deserved: She lost.
Now she needs to shut up and go home.“
And take her rapist husband and skank-a*s daughter with her.
Loading ...
You must be logged in to post a comment.