It’s Monday, August  3rd, 2020…but before we kick off the month, despite having a different line-up prepared, every now and then we receive an item which demands top billing, such as this one from the Washington Examiner submitted by Speed Mach:

Trader Joe’s shows how to just say no to cancel culture

 

“In an age when anything could be considered offensive and anyone could be canceled for it, the only solution is to stand your ground. Trader Joe’s, a popular grocery chain, decided to do just that after an online petition deriding its brand labels as racist began to go viral. At first, it seemed that Trader Joe’s would give in to the mob calling for its head. A company spokeswoman admitted last week that some of its branding (which includes playful spins on ethnic foods, such as “Trader Giotto,” “Trader Jose,” and “Trader Ming’s”) might have gone too far.

But this week, the company announced that it would not be removing the international food labels because the intentions behind them are not and never were racist. Rather, the brand variations are “an attempt to have fun…

…with our product marketing,” the company said in a statement, which is exactly how they’ve been perceived by the vast majority of customers who shop at Trader Joe’s.

“Recently, we have heard from many customers reaffirming that these name variations are largely viewed in exactly the way they were intended,” the company added. “We continue our ongoing evaluation, and those products that resonate with our customers and sell well will remain on our shelves.”

A quick glance at the original petition condemning Trader Joe’s proves the company made the right call. “The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes other cultures — it presents ‘Joe’ as the default ‘normal’ and the other characters falling outside of it,” reads the petition, which has been signed by more than 5,000 people.

But the author of the petition doesn’t stop there. She goes on to suggest that the company’s original name, Trader Joe’s, is also racist…”

Recent statistics suggest 10.5% of the U.S. adult population shops Trader Joe’s at least once a month; that’s approximately 20,500,000 people aged 21 and over, versus the 5,000 who signed the petition.  Something tells us Joe won’t miss their business.

Here’s the juice: we know neither Joe nor his politics, but we’ll continue to frequent his stores if only to demonstrate support for his courage in the face of The Mob, a courtesy we’ll never extend to a professional sports contest ever again, with the exception of the NHL and PGA…at least for now.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, also submitted for your perusal, two videos, the first in which Dianne Feinstein reveals the real collusion between an American politician and a foreign power inimicable to American interests…

…while in the second Bill Maher demonstrates how Progressives can be largely right while still being wrong:

While right about obesity being a factor which weighs heavily against victims of the Wuhan virus, Maher’s totally off-base as to his recollections about Michelle Obama.  Sorry, Bill: Moochie wasn’t “vilified” just for “offering sound nutritional advice”; rather she was justifiably criticized for having hypocritically refused to follow her own “sound nutritional advice” while at the same time imposing her opinions on millions of unwilling Americans.  Even Hitler didn’t force all of Germany to go vegan.  Small but important point.

In a directly related item, for those who continue to claim…

…Trump has somehow convinced COVID-19 to target minorities, let us remind you, the following facts speak for themselves:

White Obesity

Black Obesity

Any questions?!?

Since we’re on the subject of myths deceptively disseminated by those seeking to divide us, as the AP reports via Politico and White House Dossier…

New Prosecutor: No charges for officer in Michael Brown’s death

The county prosecutor announced his decision after quietly re-investigating the case in a five-month review.

 

“St. Louis County’s top prosecutor announced Thursday that he will not charge the former police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a dramatic decision that could reopen old wounds amid a renewed and intense national conversation about racial injustice and the police treatment of minorities.

It was nearly six years ago that a grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson, the  white police officer who shot Brown, a Black 18-year-old. (Note the AP’s use of a lower case “w” in “white” and upper case “B” in Black: très chic!!!) Civil rights leaders and Brown’s mother had hoped that Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, the county’s first Black prosecutor, would reopen the case after he took office in January 2019.

Bell announced his decision after quietly re-investigating the case in a five-month review…”

Even Obama‘s DOJ, under the racist reign of Eric Holder, came to a similar conclusion, the best efforts of Holder, the Race-Baiter-in-Chief and his Communist wife’s to sway public opinion…

…notwithstanding.

Three investigations…one conducted under the direction of a Black Attorney General of the United States and another by a Black County Prosecutor elected in hopes he’d bring charges against Darren Wilson…all of which have resulted in no charges being filed. 

Speaking of très chic political correctness, courtesy of James Nichols, the American Cancer Society recently recommended…

Updated Cervical Cancer Screening Guidelines to Start Screening at Age 25

 

“…The new guidelines are for people with a cervix with an average risk of cervical cancer.

…The 2020 guidelines also recommend that people older than age 65 with a cervix stop being screened as long as they’ve had 10 years of regular screening with normal results…Those [people] who have had their cervix removed, such as from a hysterectomy, don’t need screening as long as the surgery was done for reasons not related to cervical cancer or serious pre-cancer…”

CNN dutifully reported…

“Individuals with a cervix are now recommended to start cervical cancers screening at 25 and continue through age 65…”

Not women, but “people with a cervix”…”individuals with a cervix”.  We’re beginning to sense a pattern here…

…a pattern of political correctness run absolutely amok which isn’ t just…

…but rather completely and utterly…

Or, to borrow a phrase from 300…

Unfortunately, it’s also Great Britain…and America…and Canada…along with the rest of a rapidly declining Western Civilization.

Next up, NRO‘s Kevin Williamson catalogues a primary cause for said decline, as he rightly concludes…

NPR Remains Journalistically Incompetent

 

“If you would like an example of how it is that our political discourse gets dumber by the day, tune in to NPR. This morning, Morning Edition host David Greene interviewed Senator James Lankford (R., Okla.) about unemployment benefits. The interview was a fiasco, and you can listen to this exercise in incompetence in full here.

Greene opens in the conventional way, with a soundbite from a woman called Kate who has lost her job working in a theater in California. (NPR knows its audience.) She offers the familiar tale of woe of the kind one always hears in these circumstances. Greene offers his sympathy, but he also makes it clear that he does not understand the actual facts of the case.

Greene claims that the federal government is lowering unemployment benefits from a payment of $600 a week to a payment of $200 a week. He then demands of Senator Lankford: “What makes you think that somebody like Kate can get by on $200 a week?” At which point, one would be tempted to throw the radio across the room in frustration, if the radio were not attached to an automobile.

With a sigh in his voice, Senator Lankford dutifully does his best to explain the actual facts to the NPR audience; i.e., that people in Kate’s position are not being asked to get by on $200 a week but on $200 a week on top of their regular unemployment benefits. Under normal circumstances, the senator explains, unemployment benefits cover about 70 percent of lost income; because of the extra payments authorized as part of the coronavirus response, some people are receiving up to 150 percent of their lost income, i.e., they are making more from unemployment payments than they made from working. Others are making about what they made working. The idea of the current proposal is to get unemployment back to something like 70 percent of lost wages for most people.

Greene’s response: “But this is a pandemic!”

Indeed, it is.

But why would a pandemic necessitate paying an unemployed person 150 percent of his lost wages rather than the usual payment of 70 percent or so? If there is something specific about the epidemic that makes that a necessary or prudent policy, David Greene isn’t saying.

Is pandemic unemployment a special kind of unemployment? Greene, of course, offers no explanation, because his brand of journalism is based on substituting moral posturing for understanding and on substituting emotional spectacle for doing one’s basic homework. It is shoddy stuff. But NPR too frequently traffics in this kind of thing, for instance with its utterly fictitious account of the plague of “exploding bullets” in the hands of criminals.

Greene follows up his display of ignorance with a non sequitur. Citing a Washington Post report, he notes that Oklahoma’s unemployment benefits are administered through an ancient, out-of-date computer system. Oklahoma’s system does indeed appear to be a goat rodeo, but that has very little to do with the federal- supplement formula. And James Lankford is a U.S. senator, not the governor of Oklahoma. He has approximately squat to do with the administration of state-run unemployment benefits in Oklahoma or anywhere else.

But he knows a lot more about it than the guy interviewing him does…

…Greene’s performance is an example of the “often wrong, seldom in doubt” school of journalism. It is one more example of why so many people do not trust the news media, and why the news media so often does not deserve that trust.“

Your tax dollars at work, ostensibly because residents of Utqiaġvik, Alaska…and Manhattan’s Upper West Side…haven’t enough cable channels available on their flat screens, as detailed by a supporter interviewed during a recent telethon (after all, your tax dollars aren’t enough!)…

…in conformance with PBS’s usual journalistic standards.  Hey, if it was on PBS, it must be true!

For more from Kevin Williamson, we turn to this commentary in response to the recent judgement against the WaPo, as one of the brighter stars in print media suggests…

More conservatives should sue for media abuse like Covington student Nick Sandmann

 

“What the world needs now is love, sweet love, and a hell of a lot more defamation lawsuits.

…My view is that our libel laws are pretty good, but civil proceedings have the same problem as criminal proceedings, sometimes summarized by the maxim: “You can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride.” It costs money to pursue a legitimate libel case, and it costs money to defend against an illegitimate one.

Because his was a high-profile case, Sandmann was able to get first-rate legal representation without being obliged to spend a tremendous amount of money upfront. The Washington Post is owned by the world’s wealthiest man, which makes suing it more attractive. But other victims of defamation find it very difficult and financially risky to pursue justice. It is time for conservatives to put together a libel effort parallel to the efforts that have been made on behalf of gun rights and religious liberties, a kind of pro-bono defamation bar. The only way to get the Washington Post or CNN to stop the abuse is to make it cost them dearly.

Sandmann is pursuing litigation against Twitter, too, which raises a different issue. Under current law, companies such as Twitter and Facebook are not legally responsible for third-party libels published on their sites. (They are liable for any libel of their own making.) That seems to me the right way to do things, but that does not mean that Twitter should be considered a free for all. Joy Reid of MSNBC is being sued — rightly, in my view — for her smearing of California immigration activist Roslyn La Liberte on Twitter, falsely putting racist words in her mouth with what can only be described as “reckless disregard for the truth” at best. The account offered by Reid is flatly denied by witnesses. False and obviously defamatory: Reid should face a very heavy judgment.

And not Reid alone. It would not be proper to hold Twitter liable in the suit, but there is a very good case for sanctioning not only Reid but also MSNBC corporately, given the way media companies use the social-media activities of their on-air talent as an extension of their own business operations. Reid uses her Twitter communications as part of her MSNBC work, and her misdeeds should be understood as MSNBC’s misdeeds, too.

Even among those who are defamed, not very many are willing to put themselves through the ordeal of litigation and the financial risks associated with it. Here is an opportunity for lawyers — and people who care about accountability in journalism — to do some good.“

You know,…other than…

…as a passenger on a particular bus.

Moving on, writing at The Resurgent, Josh Barker relates how…

Portland Demonstrates Why Washington DC Is Not a State

James Madison wrote that Congress’ control of the capital is an “indispensable necessity.” Portland reminds us why.

 

“As the Portland saga has dragged on, the Department of Homeland Security finally reached a deal with Oregon on Thursday evening to withdraw federal officers who have been defending the Hatfield Federal Courthouse from rioters. This is simply one step in the long fight between battling jurisdictions. While there are immediate consequences of these actions, the whole episode is representative of a broader reality.

Just one month ago, Democrats were touting statehood for the nation’s capital. Nancy Pelosi told reporters that the “deprivation of statehood is unjust, unequal, undemocratic and unacceptable.” In fact, HR 51, the Washington DC Admission Act, passed the House. However, this recent fight between federal and state officials in Portland demonstrates why that policy could be disastrous.

The federal government needs jurisdiction over its capital in order to maintain security.In defense of a capital district, James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 43 that it would not “be proper for the places on which the security of the entire Union may depend, to be in any degree dependent on a particular member of it.” States can be unreliable. This is true historically; back in 1783, Pennsylvania proved unreliable when angry protesters stormed the capital at Philadelphia. Congress, fearing for its safety, fled across the Delaware River to Princeton, New Jersey and would move around to various cities, not returning to Philadelphia for over 7 years…

A big problem comes when local officials, like Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, order police to abandon local government buildings, like the 3rd precinct police station, and let rioters torch them. We can debate the strategy and wisdom behind such a decision by asking whether it is a good idea to let rioters overwhelm and level government buildings or whether we should, as Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake did in 2015, “g[i]ve those who wished to destroy space to do that…” Regardless the outcome of the debate, since it is municipal government property that is at issue, it is easier to agree that they had the authority to make that decision. They can decide that they would rather not risk defending their property. The more difficult question comes when we are no longer dealing with property owned by the municipality. Can local governments make the decision to let federal buildings burn—particularly when federal officials are willing to defend their property?

That is what is happening in Portland. People on both sides of the aisle have criticized the Department of Homeland Security’s move into Portland, because it was against the approval of the mayor and governor. In fact, Portland’s city council passed a resolution forbidding local police from assisting federal officials. For these reasons, putting Washington DC, the seat of government, in the hands of a hostile and uncooperative state government could be quite dangerous.

It has been forgotten that Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser made many of the same complaints and requests as Oregon, back in June. She wrote to the president “requesting that [he] withdraw all extraordinary federal law enforcement and military presence from Washington DC.”

Since, under the Constitution, the federal government has the authority “to exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever,” her requests had little weight. The president has command of the Washington DC National Guard and was able to continue using it as he saw fit. If Mayor Bowser were a state governor, she would have control over the National Guard and be able to deny its assistance to protect federal buildings and officials from rioters.

The Constitution requires a capital district under Congressional control…

…It cannot be forgotten why Washington DC is not a state. This is not some unintended consequence; this was by design. These strong reasons date back to the revolutionary era, and recent events remind us that states are just as unreliable now as they were then. We must not look past this history lest we relearn the lessons of 1783 once again.“

There’s those who refuse to learn from history, then there’s those who lie about it: turning to the latter, here’s…

Twenty Things You Probably Didn’t Know about Susan Rice

Being soft on African dictators, pondering the electoral implications of calling genocide genocide, and giving Richard Holbrooke the finger

 

And probably don’t care to know, as you’re likely never voting for anything with her name attached to it regardless.

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s these from Ed Hickey…

…four more from Balls Cotton…

…along with one from Speed Mach…

…James Patrick of the County Cork Crilleys…

…and this classic from Shannon:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with the Sports Section, courtesy today of The Washington Free Beacon‘s, where we learn…

In Bow to NBA’s ‘Inclusive’ Values, China to Install Gender-Neutral Bathrooms at Xinjiang Labor Camps