Some Questions for the GOP's Cruz Despisers

Some questions are in order:

1) Isn't it true that most Republicans are not known for accusing their adversaries or their challengers (inside the party or outside, i.e., Democrats) — or one of their parents — of having been involved in the JFK assassination, or in the the Reagan assassination attempt, or in the Challenger explosion, etc…

(With Democrats, it's a different story, obviously, as they accused all conservatives in Dallas, in Texas, in the South, even in the entire nation of having somehow caused the death of Camelot's noble young president. Which, not entirely incidentally, is far from a bad reason to vote against the Democrats…)

Wouldn't Trump's immediate counter-attack on Heidi Cruz mean instead that if there is someone in the cry-baby department too thin-skinned for politics, it is him?

Related: If Somone Ought to "Get Over It", in Order to Unify the Party, and Forgive and Forget, Shouldn't That Person Be… Donald Trump?!

For your information, I read on a blog a couple of hours ago (I've searched for the link for 15-20 minutes, but I can't find it again) that at the 1976 convention, Ronald Reagan also gave a rousing speech while refraining from expressly supporting Gerald Ford…

2) Couldn't the assertion that Ted Cruz not being liked, by his fellow politicians in DC, be — very easily — construed as a good thing? Couldn't someone not willing to play by the rules of, being disrespectful of, the Washington establishment be construed as a good thing? Not wanting to raise taxes, not wanting to add ever more rules and red tape, not wanting to add ever more functionaries to the rolls of the federal bureaucrats, shouldn't we wish for that in all our politicians, rather than taking without a grain of salt those peoples' (self-serving) opinions about one of their number not being a player?

Do you want to hear me tell the truth? I would love to see a leader come in the Oval Office, who is not lauded, à la Obama, as a charismatic revolutionary, as a Che Guevara come to help the poor, to feed the sick, to lead the people towards a bright new future. A boring president? One who keeps speaking of little else than his faith and the Constitution and following the law? Yay-es! Bring it on!!

Related: If it's true that Ted Cruz as “dishonest,” or “unlikable,” how can we support him for President?

 … how can we hand the reins to that so-called “jerk,” Ted Cruz? Well, we happen to know him quite well. And we know that the vast majority of these characterizations are completely false; that Senator Cruz is an honest and decent man; that the negative portrayals of him are purposeful and a direct consequence of his willingness to fight for the American people against the massive power of the ruling class that our founding fathers predicted would occur; and that it would be an incredible disservice for you not to take a serious look at him as the only nominee who will lead this country away from its current path and toward the American promise of freedom, security and prosperity our children deserve.

3) As for Donald Trump, isn't it true that there is — unfortunately — a far wider problem regarding the man? Isn't it true that there are doubts, perhaps even serious doubts, regarding his conservative credentials? (For instance, his being pals with the… Clintons (!) and his having adopted conservative policies only a year or so ago, his having indeed lauded Democratic policies in the past and even endorsed Hillary for president.)

CERTAINLY, all the above is not a reason to vote for Hillary Clinton. Far from it.

HERE IS WHAT IT BOILS DOWN TO: there are many who are truly frightened at the prospect of a set-up, one in which the White House and the Democrats (and ostensibly through no fault of Trump's) have maneuvered and manipulated to get the only candidate in the GOP set up as a candidate who could possibly be beaten by an Obama successor after eight years of Obama in the White House. Not to mention creating a truly untenable reputation for the Republican Party while helping Democrats get elected to the House and perhaps take over the Senate. Examples? For instance, by the mainstream media bringing to a complete halt the (lucrative) Republican debates as soon as Donald Trump emerged on top — while giving said Trump 2 billion dollars in free advertising as part of their "news" operations.

Finally, let me direct you to Trump supporter (and Trump VP short-lister) Newt Gingrich (thanks to Austin Bay) who said that

I think you misunderstood one paragraph that Ted Cruz, who is a superb orator, said, and I just want to point it out to you, Ted Cruz said you can vote your conscience for anyone who will uphold the Constitution. In this election, there is only one candidate who will uphold the Constitution. … So to paraphrase Ted Cruz, if you want to protect the Constitution of United States, the only possible candidate this fall is the Trump-Pence Republican ticket.

Indeed, Sean Cash asks:

When he asked people to vote for a candidate who shares your values and would defend the constitution, why didnt you think he was talking about Trump?

Which brings us to The Federalist, in which Sean Davis points out that

Trump's campaign could've made lemonade out of Cruz's speech. Instead, it opened the wound Cruz caused and squirted lemon juice into it. … A savvy, disciplined campaign could have used the three words from Cruz that set off a political firestorm — “vote your conscience” — to the campaign’s advantage.

 … The only sensible Trump response to “vote your conscience” and “vote for freedom and candidates with principles” was to thank Cruz for the rousing speech and his commitment to conservative principles. Praise him for his defense of freedom, and then turn his call to “vote your conscience” into an endorsement of Trump’s agenda. After all, there’s only one candidate in the race who wants to put America first, there’s only one candidate who wants to keep America safe, there’s only one candidate who has what it takes to Make America Great Again.

If you believe in restoring American greatness, then your conscience can only tell you one thing: vote Trump. If you believe in restoring the values that made America the greatest in nation in history, then your conscience can only tell you one thing: vote Trump. If you believe that strong leadership and a commitment to the American people are what’s required to keep this country strong, then your conscience can only tell you one thing: vote Trump.

That’s all Trump’s team had to do.

If Somone Ought to "Get Over It", in Order to Unify the Party, and Forgive and Forget, Shouldn't That Person Be… Donald Trump?!

In response to his non-endorsement of Donald Trump during his speech at the GOP convention in Cleveland, Ted Cruz is told, "why can't you get over it?", "this is politics", to "forgive and forget," to "unify" the party…

Those all sound like very good advice, and very sound recommendations, but the question becomes, why don't people give this advice to the appropriate person?

Why, to be specific, don't they give these recommendations to… Donald Trump?

As the Texas senator explained the next morning to the Texas Delegation:

That pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi, that I'm going to nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say "Thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father." …/… neither he [Trump] nor his campaign has ever taken back a word they said about my family.

Isn't it Donald Trump that it is up to to get over it, to say "this is politics", to forgive and forget, and to unify the party? 

In other words, isn't it up to the Donald to make amends?

Related: Some Questions for the the GOP's Cruz Haters

PS: In answer to the question,

What about the personal attacks against Melania that started this whole thing?

I replied as follows:
Was that attack (not those attacks), that meme, really, on Melania made by Ted or by his campaign? They certainly say it wasn't. Although a pro-Cruz Tea Party was behind it, they deny all involvement. You think that they are lying? Sure, that happens.

But the attacks on Heidi (also a meme) and on Ted's father (something far far worse) were certainly made by the Donald and by his campaign. Doesn't it seem that accusing another candidate's father of not only being involved in murder, but to be a conspirator in one of the 20th century's grandest tragedies, might — generously — be described as "beyond the pale" (not to mention, uh, ludicrous)?

What If… Hillary Has Been Planning All Along to Drop Out of the Presidential Race

You're right.

Call me crazy.

But what if — with the Democratic primary following the Republican one — Hillary Clinton — along with the top honchos of the Democrat Party — had been planning all along to drop out of the presidential race, once Donald Trump is nominated?

Drop out in favor of a far more electable Democrat?

And have that Democrat run along the problem-riddled New York billionaire? 

Joe Manchin? Evan Bayh? Andrew Cuomo? Terry McAuliffe? Amy Klobuchar?
Even Joe Biden or Al Gore?!

Yes, I know it sounds crazy. I know it doesn't sound like Hillary's — or Bill's — personality to bow out in favor of a fellow politician.

But after eight years of let's-bash-Americans policies, I am far less willing to dismiss crazy conspiracy theories out of hand…

This hasn't been on my mind incessantly, but for a month or so, maybe more, it has been bugging me on and off, and t'is what came up again upon reading Matthew Sheffield's Praxis article (thanks to Ed Driscoll) on a somewhat different subject.

Let us hope, let us pray, that I am indeed crazy…

How to Know Whether We Live in a Democracy or Whether We Are in the Throes of Populism

From Mumbai, Anand Pandya writes:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has put it best:

“When people vote the way of the intellectual-yet-idiot elite, it is ‘democracy’. Otherwise it is misguided, irrational, swayed by populism and a lack of education.” 

Or, as I like to put it:

When the left wins elections, it is the proof that democracy is at work.
When the right wins elections, it means we are in the throes of populism.

Disastrous Claims About Rising Sea Levels Run Into One (Un?)fortunate Fact

The worsening of tidal flooding in American coastal communities is largely a consequence of greenhouse gases from human activity,

writes Justin Gillis as he claims that the Seas Are Rising at Fastest Rate in Last 28 Centuries,

and the problem will grow far worse in coming decades, scientists reported Monday.

Those emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, are causing the ocean to rise at the fastest rate since at least the founding of ancient Rome, the scientists said. They added that in the absence of human emissions, the ocean surface would be rising less rapidly and might even be falling.

The increasingly routine tidal flooding is making life miserable in places like Miami Beach; Charleston, S.C.; and Norfolk, Va., even on sunny days.

Though these types of floods often produce only a foot or two of standing saltwater, they are straining life in many towns by killing lawns and trees, blocking neighborhood streets and clogging storm drains, polluting supplies of freshwater and sometimes stranding entire island communities for hours by overtopping the roads that tie them to the mainland.

Such events are just an early harbinger of the coming damage, the new research suggests.

 … scientists … also confirmed previous forecasts that if emissions were to continue at a high rate over the next few decades, the ocean could rise as much as three or four feet by 2100.

Experts say the situation would then grow far worse in the 22nd century and beyond, likely requiring the abandonment of many coastal cities.

As I wrote in a post at the time of the New York Times article five months ago:

think of New York City, of Miami, of Galveston, of San Francisco, of Tokyo, of Sydney, of Goa, of Alexandria, of Saint Tropez, of Copenhagen.

Correct me if I am wrong, but in the past 5 years, in the past 50 years, even offhand in the past 500 years (?), has the sea level in any of those places risen by even one inch, by even one centimeter?

To the Gray Lady's February article, of course, we must add John Raphael's recent Nature World News report on another study, one that finds that Antarctic Sea Ice Continues to Expand Despite Global Warming.

This is of course to everything the drama queens have been telling us for years, so the authors of the study in the journal Nature Geosciences must scramble to dig up an explanation. (how 'bout "natural climate fluctuation"? Alright; that'll do.)

Does part of the opening sentence contain the kicker?

 … the increase of sea ice in the Antarctic despite global warming caused by climate change

That must be the first time that I read the expressions global warming and climate change in the same sentence. I thought the second was supposed to replace the first.

But no, it turns out that the one (global warming) is caused by the other (climate change). You might be forgiven for thinking that the leftists' main object is to confuse us.

Mallard Fillmore Ought to Be Required Daily Reading

Bruce Tinsley's Mallard Fillmore and…
his take on the Fourth of July

Tech Support Rage: Who Could Dat Be on da Phone?

Dean Young's Blondie comic strip, based on a painful reality:
Grrr... Is Tech Support Designed to Enrage You? by Bob Rankin

A Dozen Years Later: “France is today, clearly, the country the most threatened” in Europe by ISIS

“France is today, clearly, the country the most threatened” in Europe by Islamic State (IS), said Patrick Calvar, the head of the internal intelligence service, to a parliamentary commission in May.

Thus reported The Economist last week. [Note: this post, slightly redacted now, was prepared a couple of days before the terrorist truck attack in Nice on Bastille Day (July 14).]

The underlying threat remains terrorism, and the alert level is still at its highest (“imminent attack”). Last month two police-force members were murdered in a terrorist attack in a suburb west of Paris.

 … in France “the threat is permanently high.” Tight perimeter security at football stadiums, and at the walled open-air “fan zones”, has rendered such venues relatively secure—despite hooliganism at early matches. But fears continue over “soft” targets such as public transport, shopping streets and other crowded places. “We know that [IS] is planning new attacks,” said Mr Calvar.

The French response to this threat has been two-fold: a strengthened military and security presence backed by sweeping powers granted to the police under the state of emergency imposed last November, together with reinforced intelligence. Under Operation Sentinelle, 10,000 soldiers are on patrol across France, putting a strain on the armed forces. Soldiers have become a familiar sight on the Paris underground, and up and down the Champs-Elysées. At the same time, the government has boosted intelligence spending. The number of domestic agents will rise from 3,200 to 4,400 by 2018.

The call to armes 

A dozen attempted terrorist attacks have been thwarted in France in the past year. The shortcomings of counter-terrorism operations, however, were underlined on July 5th by a cross-party parliamentary inquiry into the attacks in Paris on November 13th. Sébastien Pietrasanta, the Socialist rapporteur, pointed to the “limited impact” of the state of emergency. It enabled the police to make some useful searches and arrests at first, but these no longer justify the emergency powers. The government may lift it after the Tour de France ends. Moreover, said Mr Pietrasanta, Operation Sentinelle was “unsustainable in the long run”, and soldiers were “worn out”.

This excerpt is here for one reason: Ten to 15 years ago, French activists would pride themselves, with clear Schadenfreude towards the obtuse they-deserve(d)-it Americans, that, as Frenchmen, they had nothing to fear from Al Qaeda-like terrorist groups. Since Chirac and De Villepin had opposed the 2003 invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Islamic terrorists would clearly not take action against any members of this enlightened people. (This is easy to think when one ignores the fact that terrorist attacks usually ignore the nationality of their intended victims — wouldn't the Shoe Bomber have had French people among his victims had his December 2001 plane attempt been successful?)

In the wake of the Nice terrorist attack less than 12 hours ago, this post will probably be taken as insensitive and even outrageous. But the fast is, that the question remains: Is there any reason to suspect that any of these people have taken the time to put into doubt that self-serving "opinion" of the past 15 years?

The FBI's on-the-spot revision of federal law; Or, do you know the difference betwen Hillary Clinton and Richard Nixon?

Laws are just words on a page to be rewritten by and for powerful people

notes Benny Huang acidly.

The rule of law died a little last Tuesday when FBI director James Comey announced the Bureau’s findings concerning Hillary Clinton and her illegal email server. After a short speech in which he detailed the findings of the investigation, he recommended against charging her with anything.

You didn’t think it would happen any other way, did you? I certainly didn’t. As blatant as her lawbreaking was—some of which was not even discussed in Comey’s speech—it seemed fanciful to believe that Hillary Clinton, the ultimate insider, would actually do the perp walk. As a former First Lady, former senator, and former Secretary of State, she is for all practical purposes above the law. Her consciousness of this fact enables her bad behavior.

Comey’s rationale for not referring the Clinton case for prosecution defied all logic and, according to former assistant US Attorney Andy McCarthy, represented an on-the-spot revision of federal law. McCarthy wrote:

“There is no way of getting around this: According to Director James Comey (disclosure: a former colleague and longtime friend of mine), Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was ‘extremely careless’ and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.”

Yes, she did all of things and more. According to Director Comey, Hillary’s saving grace was her supposed lack of intent to break the law. She didn’t mean to do what she did, you see. There are two responses to this.

First, yes there was her intention. Hillary Clinton didn’t set up her illegal email server by accident. She didn’t use it for all of her correspondence by chance. She didn’t wipe the server by bumbling error, an issue I noticed Comey did not even address.

But the second response is even more important: intent is not the legal standard; negligence is. Even his whitewash investigation found that she and her staff were “extremely careless” with classified information. Carelessness is a synonym for negligence.

So Hillary will skate. Director Comey dished out the only punishment she will likely ever face—a stern talking-to. Start printing invitations for the Inaugural Ball—Hillary’s going to be our next president!

 … It should be noted here that at least Nixon paid some price: the not insignificant loss of his elected office. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is on the fast track to becoming the next president. That’s the difference.

 … She can store top secret and special access program materials on a secret email server that is vulnerable to hackers. She can wipe that server when it is subpoenaed. When caught, she can lie under oath to Congress about the whole affair. She can stonewall investigators and throw a fit in hearings. “What difference does it make” if it’s illegal?

The rule of law is crumbling in this country. Like most nefarious phenomena, it’s difficult to pinpoint a starting point. Powerful people have been getting away with illegal behavior for quite a long time—but was it always this blatant? I don’t think so.

These days it’s all right out in the open. We’re starting to look like some kind of banana republic where this week’s junta leader rules by fiat. We’ve got a coterie of junta leaders, I suppose—the president, Supreme Court justices, a few powerful secretaries. But it’s the same crap.

Once you understand that laws are just a lot of useless paper, all of our endless squabbling seems pretty silly. What’s the point of learned men standing around in a courtroom arguing the finer points of the law when in the end it means whatever the judge decides it means?

 … Who cares what the law actually says? Let’s determine what Congress meant, rather than what was debated and voted on. In an odd turn of events, the Court handed down another opinion that same day concerning marriage. In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Court found that the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. Am I supposed to believe that the men who labored over, passed, and ratified that amendment intended to radically redefine marriage? It seems that intent is only important when it helps judges get where they want to go.

These people are just making it up as they go along. They decide the hot button issues of the day according to their preferences then go in search of a justification. No justification is too lame because they’re the supremes and we’re not.

This is the way we do things in America these days. The law isn’t really the law. Powerful people do whatever the heck they feel like doing and if the law gets in their way it is magically rewritten on the spot. Sometimes it’s the FBI director who decides to change the plain meaning of a statute. Sometimes it’s a judge. It can be the president, or even on occasion, a backroom bureaucrat. Beneath the tissue-thin pretense of an orderly, principled system, it’s actually just a naked power struggle—and we’re losing.

How Boris Johnson was brought to his knees by the 'cuckoo nest plot'

All of a sudden, the leaking of the Sarah Vine email did not seem so accidental after all. Was it deliberately given to Sky News to undermine Mr Johnson and pave the way for a Gove challenge?

As Theresa May (not to be confused with Teresa May) becomes head of the UK's Tories and enters 10 Downing Street, the Daily Telegraph's Gordon Rayner has a longish story on how Boris Johnson was brought down as front runner for both posts (cheers to Ed Driscoll for the Instalanche).

Incidentally: did you know that Boris is a dual citizen, or, rather, that the then-mayor of London was a dual citizen, until he renounced his U.S. citizenship last year? Can you guess who he had been hounded by into returning his U.S. passport in 2015?
Update: something to think about, when you learn that Theresa May has just made Boris the country's foreign secretary in her new cabinet.

With two hours to go until the launch of Mr Johnson’s leadership bid, [Michael Gove (Sarah Vine's husband)], the man who was supposed to be making up the “dream ticket” with him, had not so much stabbed him in the back as run him through with a pikestaff.

The Telegraph understands that Sir Lynton [Crosby, Mr Johnson’s campaign manager] asked Mr Gove whether he had told Mr Johnson. He had not, but said he intended to. The call, however, was never made.

By noon, Mr Johnson, the front-runner for the Tory leadership, was no longer a runner at all, ousted by what was being called a “cuckoo nest plot”. Having been comprehensively stitched up by his running mate and several other “supporters”, he threw in the towel, his ambitions in ruins. …/…

'Gove is a ----!'

Perhaps Mr Johnson should have seen it coming. The history of the Conservative Party is, after all, littered with the shattered careers of leadership front-runners who were knifed by their colleagues: Maudling, Heath, Heseltine, Clarke, Portillo, Davis. …/…

A 'creepy operation'

“Boris was cavalier with assurances he made,” he said. “We're picking a Prime Minister to lead the country, not a school prefect.” With Mr Boles also gone, one Johnson supporter said: “He hasn’t been double crossed, he has been triple crossed. This seems to have been a pretty well developed, quite creepy operation.”

Sources have told The Telegraph that Mr Gove had told Theresa May about his intention to run even before he told Sir Lynton Crosby, such was the cold-bloodedness of the ambush. …/…

'It makes House of Cards look like Teletubbies'

Her performance was masterful: if anyone doubted Mrs May had the ruthlessness required to be Prime Minister, they would soon have their answer.

She talked about people in Westminster who did not understand what it was like to struggle for money and who needed reminding that politics “isn’t a game”. She was not, she said, a “showy” politician enamoured of “gimmicks” (instantly conjuring an image of Mr Johnson dangling from a zip wire), she did not go drinking in the Commons bars or tour the TV studios, “I just get on with the job in front of me”. No-one needed subtitles to explain who she was referring to.

Mrs May also knows that the most devastating thing you can do to an opponent is to turn them into a laughing stock.  …/…

Johnson-backer Nigel Evans MP was asked whether Mrs May had stabbed Mr Johnson in the front after Mr Gove had stabbed him in the back.

“That’s about it,” he said. “It makes House of Cards look like Teletubbies.”

Over at camp Boris, MPs were withdrawing their support by the minute. The 97 backing him were now down to 47, and Mr Johnson’s team realised they had been undone by what they referred to as a “cuckoo nest plot”. For months Mr Johnson had nurtured Mr Gove’s grand plan for Brexit, only to be kicked out when it finally hatched.

Mr Johnson, feeling “sad, disappointed and betrayed”, according to one source, decided he could not go on.

Related: Boris Johnson's heart not in Brexit, ex-aide Guto Harri says (BBC)

The Stories About the NRA and Blacks That the National News Media Does Not Tell Usl

Colion Noir makes some points regarding the national Rifle Association.

2:22:

If any organization acts in a racist manner towards [blacks'] gun rights, it's you — the national news media! You call the NRA racist — while in the same breath telling blacks like me that we shouldn't own guns. Because we can't be trusted to not just kill each other.

2:40:

The Democratic Party invented gun control after slavery — to keep guns out of the hands of black people. And they haven't stopped since. But you don't tell that story either.

In related matters: Fox News:

Only days after watching five of his officers gunned down by an anti-white anti-cop shooter, Dallas Police Chief David Brown on Monday offered some advice to protesters who remain upset about recent police shootings: Join us.

Even as sometimes violent demonstrations against police continued Sunday night throughout the nation, in cities from Baton Rouge to Los Angeles, Brown made his argument for disaffected civilians to put down cardboard signs and pick up a badge.

“Become a part of the solution,” Brown said during a Monday news conference. “We’re hiring. Get off that protest line and put an application in. And we’ll put you in your neighborhood, and we’ll help you resolve some of the problems you’re protesting about.”

Brown knows something about becoming part of the solution. Dallas’ top cop since 2010, Brown joined the department in 1983 after, he said, watching his friends swallowed up by the crack cocaine epidemic.

“It broke my heart and it changed what I wanted to do,” he said.

Today Is George Bush's Birthday (George Turns 13)

Today George Bush will be celebrating his birthday. Some will protest and say, that's not true, the president's birthday was July 6. But we're not talking about the same person, apparently. Nor his father. Because this George Bush turns only 13 today.

The George Bush I have in mind is not the one whose full name is George Walker Bush, nor the one whose full name is George Herbert Walker Bush, but the one whose full name is George Bush Abdul Kader Faris Abed El-Hussein (no relation to Saddam). And this George Bush was born in Baghdad on July 11, 2003.

From a post of exactly 10 years ago:

As far as can be ascertained, George Bush’s parents named him in honor of some Western leader one of whose recent feats they found to be not only impressive and admirable, obviously, but worthy enough to name their new-born son after. They must have been plenty impressed, in view of the fact that they gave their child the name of someone not of their faith, with linguistic roots not of their culture. (Sort of like a Westerner — say, someone from the Bush clan — giving a newborn son a name such as Mohammed Ahmed Yusuf Bush.)

Now, here is what I suggest. I suggest that the West should send a number of representatives to Baghdad. The type of people that David Brooks calls “the members of the sneering brigade”, “the think-tank johnnies and the rest of the commentariate” in “their usual sky-is-falling mode” — people like José Bové, François Hollande, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder, José Luis Zapatero, Jean-Marie Colombani, Plantu, Willem (to name only the Europeans), etc… They should choose a couple of high-visibility VIPs, “arm” them with all the usual arguments, and send them to Baghdad.

And there, they should seek out the parents of George Bush. Once the couple has been found, they should patiently explain the “truth” to them and seek thereby to install some common sense in them. That would include telling them…

• that the war was unnecessary and a sham, conducted for bogus reasons;
• that Iraq, and the world, were far better off before the conflict;
• that the presence of foreign soldiers is “humiliating” for George Bush and his fellow countrymen;
• that they must resent America (or at least, the Bush administration) for the current situation in which thousands have been killed over a period of more than three years and hark back to the previous situation in which the secret police killed several thousands per month with total impunity;
• that, in contrast to the administration of George Bush’s namesake, they, the holier-than-thou members of the peace camp, had (and have) nothing but the best interests of his parents in mind;
• oh, and, of course, that George Bush’s namesake is nothing but a nincompoop and a despicable liar.

Once the parents of George Bush have been converted to the sky-is-falling truth, the “the members of the sneering brigade” could go to work convincing more of Iraq’s population.

The members of “the commentariate” could start with Mohammed, Ali, and Omar, the brothers from Iraq the Model and expand outwards, to include the Iraqis who lost hands and tongues to Saddam’s thugs, had their faced scarred by acid, had their sisters, mothers, and daughters raped, and had their parents, brothers, and children shot down and their bodies thrown into unnamed graves. With luck, “the think-tank johnnies” would eventually reach that vast majority of people who in polls believe life has never been better since the war toppled Saddam and who say they feel more optimistic than they ever had in the past.

Let us join together and wish them “good luck and godspeed with your sacred mission”.

Oh, and by the way, Georgie: Happy birthday!

Related: There's a new George Bush in Baghdad,
six weeks old and screaming in a crib
• Nadia Jergis Mohammed, 34, … told Associated Press Television News:

"I tell you all Iraqis hated Saddam's regime. It was only George Bush who liberated us, without him it wouldn't have happened. If he hadn't done it the sons of Saddam would have ruled us for years. He saved us from Saddam and that's why we named our son after him"

The statistics behind gun violence: Mass shootings in the U.S. have fallen so much in the past century that the political left has had to redefine what a mass shooting is

The BBC brings us the statistics related to gun violence. Check them out, and as you will see below, I and Erick Erickson will put these into perspective:

Guns in the US: 

The statistics behind the violence

The statistics

Mass shootings: There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which catalogues such incidents. A mass shooting is defined as a single shooting incident which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant.

Source: Mass Shooting Tracker

School shootings: There were 64 school shootings in 2015, according to a dedicated campaign group set up in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in 2012. Those figures include occasions when a gun was fired but no-one was hurt.

Source: Everytown for Gun SafetyResearch

All shootings: Some 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured [those figures exclude suicide]. Those figures are likely to rise by several hundred, once incidents in the final week of the year are counted.

Source: Gun Violence Archive

How the US compares: The number of gun murders per capita in the US in 2012 - the most recent year for comparable statistics - was nearly 30 times that in the UK, at 2.9 per 100,000 compared with just 0.1.

Of all the murders in the US in 2012, 60% were by firearm compared with 31% in Canada, 18.2% in Australia, and just 10% in the UK.

Source: UNODC.

The home front: So many people die annually from gunfire in the US that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country. According to research by Politifact, there were about 1.4 million firearm deaths in that period, compared with 1.2 million US deaths in every conflict from the War of Independence to Iraq.

Source: Politifact.

Total number of guns: No official figure exists but there are thought to be about 300 million in the US, held by about a third of the population. That is nearly enough guns for every man, woman and child in the country.

The NRA: The right to own guns is regarded by many as enshrined in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, and fiercely defended by lobby groups such as the National Rifle Association, which boasted that its membership surged to around five million in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Gun violence and terrorism: The US spends more than a trillion dollars per year defending itself against terrorism, which kills a tiny fraction of the number of people killed by ordinary gun crime.
According to figures from the US Department of Justice and the Council on Foreign Affairs, 11,385 people died on average annually in firearm incidents in the US between 2001 and 2011.

In the same period, an average of 517 people were killed annually in terror-related incidents. Removing 2001, when 9/11 occurred, from the calculation produces an annual average of just 31.

As I have written, in The Misleading Statistics of Gun Control,

most of these mass shootings occur between criminal gangs. To learn that a gangster has been, or a group of gangsters have been, shot dead will simply not touch the average citizen — American or foreign — as much as the innocent dead of Orlando or Utøya. And rightly so, since violence is part of their calling, of their chosen profession, if you will. (Which is why — even left-leaning — journalists don't mention those killings in the first place; except, of course, as part of the respective city edition's metro section.)

Thus, "bare" figures of 11,000 killed by guns compared to 17 (or to 31 or to 517) killed by terrorism is misleading because the statisticians, deliberately or otherwise, fail to take into account everyday average beta people who are gunned down with hardly any warning as contrasted with thugs who are in an "occupation" in which shooting by firearm is, shall we say, an accepted risk.

A similar remark concerns "the death toll between 1968 and 2011 [eclipsing] all wars ever fought by the country"; the statisticians would have you believe the dead, like the citizen soldiers on the battlefield, all amount to be the same average all-American red-blooded Joe.

Finally, while the people using weapons in Canada, Australia, and the UK are almost certainly (of necessity, due to their respective gun control laws) outlaws killing people, whether a fellow outlaw or a law-abiding citizen, the shootings in the U.S. might very well be a law-abiding citizen (successfully) defending him- or herself against an criminal, whose "career" he or she helped bring to a close.

From the numbers above, moreover, it is not immediately apparent that, in fact (as Erick Erickson puts it),

mass shootings in the United States have fallen so much in the past century that the political left has insisted we redefine what a mass shooting is. 

Indeed, when we think of a mass shooting, don't we think of a dozen people dead, minimum, or certainly at the very least half a dozen. Check out the BBC's numbers:

372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870. 

You hardly need a calculator to figure out that 371/475 is less than 1.5 (!) people killed on average per mass shooting (along with four wounded or more). In other words, the average number of dead bodies per "mass" shooting — as redefined downwards — turns out to be between… one and two! And closer to one, at that! (And with the assailant being included nowadays, wouldn't that mean that a "mass" shooting might include one in which the only dead person turns out to be the criminal himself?!)

It takes an Erick Erickson to take an even deeper perspective on these "factual" statistics.

There are more than 300 million guns in private hands in the United States and more than 2 trillion rounds of ammunition in private hands. What we are seeing is not an out of control gun problem. In fact, mass shootings in the United States have fallen so much in the past century that the political left has insisted we redefine what a mass shooting is. It is all in the name of gun control.

The left will not talk about mental illness. The left will not talk about radical jihadism. The left only wants to talk about gun control. There is a very easy to understand explanation for this phenomenon

 … Conservatives look on these acts, whether it be Baton Rouge or Ferguson or Orlando or Dallas and they see a world in moral collapse and struggles between good and evil. Black families have crumbled. Black fathers are in jail while the mothers struggle to keep the family together. Unemployment among black youth is high and people of faith understand that there is something soul nourishing about work. Even in the Garden of Eden there was work.

But we cannot even talk about the Garden of Eden because the left laughs it off. Morality, faith, prayer, and concepts of good and evil are all rejected by the left. So they grasp for something on which they can make a principled stand and it is gun control and the erosion of a right the left refuses to recognize in the second amendment.

Secular reporters lament that there are too many guns in America, but they will not admit there is too much moral decay. In fact, they not only revel in the moral decay and defining deviancy as normal and normal as deviant, but they expect the rest of us to do the same. If you uphold natural law or moral law, you are a bigot.

Because they cannot talk about a morality they no longer recognize or the need for a God they long ago rejected, they are forced to insist more laws will solve problems. It is the metaphysical equivalent of the religious believing more prayer will solve problems. When God is traded in for government, prayer gets traded in for law. The more laws there are, the better off we will be because government is our god now.

See also: What Is to Blame for Mass Shootings?
Does the Blame Lie with the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere?

Update: Meet the Moral Equivalence on 'Meet the Press' After Dallas Attack on Police by Jack Dunphy (thanks to Ed Driscoll)

 … on Sunday’s Meet the Press, crime was scarcely mentioned. Only Charles Ramsey, former commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department, mentioned the 13,000 murders that occur every year in the United States, yet he couldn’t go so far as to note that about 6,000 of those murders are committed by blacks against other blacks.

Perhaps most galling about the discussion was the way in which some of the guests seemed to draw a moral equivalence between the atrocity in Dallas and the police shootings that engendered the Black Lives Matter protest that preceded it. Asked by Chuck Todd if he was concerned about the state of race relations in America, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson struck a politically cautious but morally obtuse note. “Well, I am concerned, Chuck,” he said. “And I think at a time like this when tensions are high, in the wake of events in Dallas and Baton Rouge and Minnesota and elsewhere, it's important to remember that just as the shooter on Thursday night is not reflective of the broader movement to bring about change in police practices, that any police officer who engages in excessive force is not representative of the larger law enforcement community, which with increasing frequency, reflects the community at large.”

Note what Johnson did there. Tensions are high, he says, because of “events” in Dallas, Baton Rouge, and Minnesota, all of which were, in his apparent opinion, equally objectionable. What rubbish.

 … it’s so discouraging to see these incidents lumped together with the Dallas shooting as though they were two sides of the same coin. Micah Johnson, the killer in Dallas, did not overreact in performance of a lawful duty. Motivated by his self-confessed hatred for white people in general and white police officers most especially, he set out to kill as many of them as he could. Yet the Wise Ones on Meet the Press couldn’t bring themselves to make that distinction lest they appear racially insensitive.

The Story of Five Men Gunned Down Becomes Perturbing When It Goes Against the Narrative

My God isn't this horrible? Doesn't Fox News show its racism by showing the faces of the victim and of the killer in a case where the tragedy does NOT show white-on-black racism?!

Fox News isn't following the narrative!

As Kevin D. Williamson puts it (thanks to Instapundit), the

same people who literally blamed the NRA for the Orlando shooting while the blood was still being mopped up are today demanding that Black Lives Matter not be smeared by association with the violence in Dallas.

The people who blamed Sarah Palin’s use of crosshairs as a graphic-design element on a poster (“targeting” certain Democrats for electoral challenges) for the shooting of Gabby Giffords suddenly have nothing to say about violent and irresponsible rhetoric.

 I myself hold to the view that we hold criminals responsible for their actions and that speeches given by third parties are generally, at most, tangential questions. Maybe your view is different, and that’s fine: But pick one.

Leftists are not only not demanding that Black Lives Matter not be smeared by association with the violence in Dallas, they are also steadfast in their insisting that the entire left, including their post-racial healer-in-chief aka the activist-in-chief in the White House, have no ties to the Dallas killings…

Stephen Miller:

America finds itself rocked once again by post racial violence in the era of “Hope and Change,” stoked by a president content to fan the flames before facts or motivations are known in ongoing investigations.

Back-to-back shootings of young African-American men, this time in Baton Rouge and St. Paul, captivated social media. The shootings certainly looked bad, but judging what is on a Facebook Live video is something for social media pundits, not sitting presidents.

The nation then sat by and watched as police officers in Dallas were gunned down by a group of suspects, with one perpetrator reportedly inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and angry at the shootings that led up to this.

Read the whole thing, i.e., read Stephen Miller's short history of Obama’s habit of jumping to conclusions when it comes to the police coupled with "the media’s love affair with race riots"…
John Ziegler has a question:

As the news media refuses, as it seems to have done so far, to even address the black online support for these soul-crushing murders, it will further prove this point. Can you imagine the outrage in the news media if the Charleston murderer Dylann Roof had been widely supported online by whites and no one in the white community, or conservative media, had immediately condemned that response? It would obviously be a huge part of the story’s entire narrative. In this situation that’s not allowed because, under the media’s absurd rules of political correctness, it would somehow be “racist” to criticize black people. 

Ben Shapiro weighs in by asking, point blank, what sort of responsibility does President Obama bear for the massacre: Is Barack Obama Responsible For The Dallas Anti-Cop Terror Attack?

First off, let’s point out the obvious double standard from the left: when a white racist, Dylann Storm Roof, shot up a Charleston black church, the left immediately blamed a widespread culture of racism, and insisted that states across the country tear down Confederate war memorials and stop sponsoring the Confederate flag at state capitols. When non-black cops shoot black suspects, the left insists – without a shred of evidence – that such killings are endemic among police officers, and that the entire system is racist. When anti-Donald Trump protesters riot against Trump supporters, the left blame Trump’s rhetoric. When a nutcase shoots up an area near a Planned Parenthood, the left blames the pro-life movement. When another nutcase shoots Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, the left blames Sarah Palin’s Congressional targets map.

But when obvious anti-white racists murder white cops, the left suggests that gun control is the issue; when obvious Islamic terrorists murder gay people in a nightclub in Orlando, the problem is white Christians who don’t support same-sex marriage and Republicans who defend gun rights.

In other words, for the left, rhetoric can only connect with murder when it’s rhetoric they don’t like. If they do like the rhetoric -- or at least if they want to defend the people responsible for the rhetoric -- then the actual motivation for murder will be [omitted].

But now let’s tackle the real question: when is rhetoric responsible for violence? Rhetoric is responsible for violence when it calls for violence. Radical Islam calls for jihad. Protesters chanting “pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon” calls for violence against cops. Barack Obama didn’t call for violence against cops.

That said, he did do three things that are particularly despicable:

1. He denied that murder charges require evidence;
2. He denied that charges of racism require evidence;
3. He ignored the actual cause of anti-cop violence.

Obama didn’t cause the Orlando shooting attack, but his failure to label it Islamic jihadism surely stopped America from fighting it properly. Obama didn’t cause the Dallas shootings, but his attempts to turn the conversation toward gun control or police brutality are just another way to avoid a real conversation about anti-white racism.

As usual, Jonah Goldberg presents some good commentary:

 … here is something particularly vile and disgusting in the way many of the leading masters of sanctimony keep changing their standards. When a registered Democrat and Muslim murdered people in Orlando in the name of ISIS, it was outrageous to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t point fingers at Christian conservatives or the NRA. When Gabby Giffords was shot by an utterly apolitical schizophrenic, Paul Krugman blamed it on Michele Bachmann’s “eliminationist rhetoric.” The Democratic party almost en masse blamed it on some crosshairs on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page. The Orwellians leapt out of their bunkers and started memory-holing martial metaphors.

But now, I gather, any suggestion that rhetoric from Black Lives Matter influenced these murderers is beyond the pale.

I keep repeating the old line: Behind every apparent double standard is an un-confessed single standard. The single standard here is that only the right people may politicize tragedy. Only the right people get to determine what sort of speech incites violence. Only the right people know when it’s a time for prayer and unity and when it’s time to take up action. Only the right people know when the blame falls solely on the murderers and when the murderers are simply a symptom of a larger problem. And when anyone disagrees with the right people, they reveal themselves to be the wrong people. Because you can only be right if you agree with the right people.

See also: What Is to Blame for Mass Shootings?
Does the Blame Lie with the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere?

The Misleading Statistics of Gun Control

To an Instapundit reader who, on the subject of gun control, takes issue with my (longish) list of mass gun crimes in Western Europe over the past 20 years or so — "Maybe you don't realize but if you add all those victims up and that's a month in Chicago or Baltimore" writes J. Daniels; "Those examples are rarities in those countries but not here" — I reply as follows:

You are making the mistake of using statistics
to conflate victims (American as well as foreign)
and make all of them (as well as all shooters) alike.
Like the cattle herd that statists and statisticians
alike think we members of the dirty masses are.

Typically, leftists will say that there are something
like 400 mass shootings every year in the U.S.
(I forget the exact number, it keeps changing, both
up and down). Why, then, do we not read about
every one of these shootings — in America proper
as well as abroad — and why aren't they given as
prominent news coverage as Newton or Orlando?

Because most of these mass shootings occur
between criminal gangs. To learn that a gangster
has been, or a group of gangsters have been,
shot dead will simply not touch the average
citizen — American or foreign — as much as
the innocent dead of Orlando or Utøya. And
rightly so, since violence is part of their calling,
of their chosen profession, if you will. (Which
is why — even left-leaning — journalists don't
mention those killings in the first place; except,
of course, as part of the respective city edition's
metro section.)

Here is where leftists, American as well as foreign,
start using their misleading Chicken Little statistics
coupled with Drama Queen melodramatics. They
come, like you do, saying there have been hundreds
more of "mass killings" in the USA than abroad, that
13,000 "Americans" (or whatever the number is) are
shot every year compared to the much lower foreign
numbers.

Yes. Well, call me a hater all you like,
express as much indignation at my lack of humanity
as you will, I would say that it is easy to argue that
500 or 700 thugs ("Americans") killed by other thugs
in America (or in Europe, for that matter), in the
context of their "business" dealings, are not to be
compared to the 50 revelers shot in Florida or to the
70 teenagers gunned down over the space of an hour
or so on a Norway island…

Edited and updated to reflect the following post:
The statistics behind gun violence: Mass shootings
in the U.S. have fallen so much in the past century that
the political left has had to redefine what a mass shooting is

Related:
The Story of Five Men Gunned Down Becomes Perturbing When It Goes Against the Narrative

Hunting for Heretics: Nondiscrimination laws are a statist monstrosity, selectively enforced against disfavored groups, often to shake them down for money

In case more proof was needed that the homosexual movement does not want to “live and let live,”

notes Benny Huang,

Aaron Werner and Richard Wright will gladly provide it. The two “gay” men sued Christianmingle in 2013, claiming that the website violated their rights under California law because it offers only opposite-sex matchmaking. Last week, they won their case. Christianmingle must now accommodate homosexuals. Oh yeah–and it has to pay Werner and Wright $468,000 in damages and attorney’s fees.

The two men sued under the Unruh Civil Rights Act, a state law that prohibits discrimination based on a number of protected categories including “sexual orientation”–an amorphous and troublesome social construct that is almost always interpreted to mean sexual conduct. The operative portion of the law is short and sweet:

“All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.”

To a lot of people that sounds like an eminently reasonable law that offers equal protection to everyone. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s a statist monstrosity, selectively enforced against disfavored groups, often to shake them down for money. Forcing everybody to do business with everybody does not make us “free and equal.” True freedom and equality arise when people are free to choose to engage in economic transactions of their volition. Unruh should be repealed  

Dating services illustrate in vivid color the stupidity of private sector nondiscrimination laws. Many dating sites cater to niche markets and must therefore discriminate by necessity. In other words, dating sites discriminate because they want to meet the discriminating tastes of their customers. Not all dating sites specialize of course, and that’s fine if they don’t. Customers have the option of using all-purpose dating sites such as Match.com or Okcupid, but if they want a more tailored experience they have a smorgasbord of options to choose from. Nondiscrimination laws mandate that all sites cater to (nearly) all tastes. Sure, you can still have your niche dating site, as long as it serves everybody.

There are niche dating sites for every imaginable group—farmers, military members, smokers, fat people, liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Those sites might still be free to operate under their current business models because they do not bump up against legally protected categories. Or do they? According to an official pamphlet published by the State of California, the power of Unruh is expansive to the point of theoretical limitlessness. According to the pamphlet:

“…the California Supreme Court has held that protections under the Unruh Act are not necessarily restricted to these characteristics. The Act is meant to cover all arbitrary and intentional discrimination by a business establishment on the basis of personal characteristics similar to those listed above.” 

Whether the aforementioned websites are illegal in California is an open question but dating sites that cater to different races, ethnicities, and religions are all certainly illegal in California even if the state has not yet enforced the law against them.

With such a wide array of sites for every possible taste, one is left to wonder why people can’t simply seek out the right one for them. There are even sites for “gay” Christians such as Dateagaychristian.com. The two crybaby homofascists who sued Christianmingle could have found mates on that site but of course they weren’t looking for love; they were hunting heretics. The very thought that there’s someone somewhere who won’t fix them up with a sodomy partner is enough to drive them into fits of rage.

But wait a second—don’t “gay” Christian sites discriminate as well? Yes, they do. They exclude heteros and non-Christians. They are in fact more discriminatory than Christianmingle! Some homosexual dating sites cater exclusively to men or women, which is also illegal in California. Why isn’t anyone suing them? I think we know the answer to that.

If Christianmingle is violating the Unruh statute, then there are plenty of other dating websites in violation as well. Any website that excludes anyone is by definition discriminating, and in a great many cases that discrimination is illegal. All of them should be forced to cough up half a million dollars, just the same way Christianmingle was. Fair’s fair.

Some of the protected categories found in Unruh are absolutely ludicrous, such as “medical condition.” Shouldn’t dating websites have the prerogative, for example, to decline to do business with someone who is spreading contagious diseases? That’s not as far-fetched as you might think. A cursory search of the internet revealed a number of episodes in which people have intentionally spread HIV. All of those I found were men, and most were homosexual. Here’s one from California, no less–Thomas Miguel Guerra of San Diego … seemed to take perverse joy in spreading the virus. If a sociopath like that were using a dating website to meet men, shouldn’t the website have the right to dump him as a customer? California law says no.
 
What about Muslim dating sites? … Should[n't] Singlemuslim.com be sued as well? I won’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen. The crybaby homofascists are terrified of Muslims. Like most bullies, they avoid picking fights with people who might fight back.

Singlemuslim.com runs afoul of California law in another regard—as the name implies, it’s only for single Muslims. What if a married Muslim wants to play? Marital status is a protected category under California law and so all businesses, even dating services, must offer their services to married people. If you aren’t willing to facilitate adultery, you can’t go into the matchmaking business in California.

 … But let’s return to Singlemuslim.com, which may be the most discriminatory dating site on the internet. First, it discriminates on the basis of religion, second on “sexual orientation,” and third on marital status. Someone ought to sue the pants off these “bigots.” No, I’m serious. Demand to be paired with a married Jewish homosexual then scream bloody murder when they won’t do it. I wouldn’t have standing in a California court but someone else really ought to sue them, if only to demonstrate the intrusive absurdity of private sector nondiscrimination laws.

 … The reason we have these insane laws is because we allow the word “discrimination” to have entirely too much power over us. Nothing shuts off brains quite like the “D” word. Oh no, not discrimination! Gasp! All that word means is treating different people differently. Some forms of discrimination may be malicious, but none should be illegal in the private sector. We all discriminate every day, and nowhere more than in romance and dating.

Related: • Diversity isn’t really a compelling need in most sectors of society
(Liberals just tell us that because they hate merit-based hiring)
• Diversity compels society give up its traditions, its sacred rights, and even its basic decency
• That’s what nondiscrimination laws are—involuntary servitude laws
• The story of Matthew Shepard's life and death bears no resemblance to what actually happened
• Stealth is the Left’s watchword (Oh, those stubborn conservatives, when will they ever learn the value of compromise?!)
• "No One Is!" Leftists and Their Calculated Lies Intended to Pacify the Bitter Clingers

Former Prime Minister Michel Rocard, 3-Time Candidate for the Presidency, Is Dead

A former French prime minister who thrice tried to run for the presidency has died, reports Le Monde (No Pasarán's Michel Rocard posts).

Michel Rocard avait le « parler-vrai », la dent dure et le jugement acéré. Nul doute qu’il se serait gaussé de l’avalanche d’hommages qui lui ont été rendus, au lendemain de sa mort le 2 juillet.

A gauche, bien sûr, François Hollande a salué ce socialiste capable de « concilier utopie et modernité », Manuel Valls a évoqué avec émotion ce « visionnaire » qui fut son « père en politique », Lionel Jospin cette « référence », Emmanuel Macron cet « exemple », Jean-Pierre Chevènement ce « militant sincère qui croyait à la force des idées », ou Jean-Luc Mélenchon cet « éclaireur » dont « la vie est une leçon ».

A droite, tout autant, où Jacques Chirac et Nicolas Sarkozy, Alain Juppé ou François Fillon ont dit leur respect pour l’homme d’Etat. A l’extrême droite même, puisque Marine Le Pen a adressé ses condoléances aux proches de cet « homme de conviction ». Sans oublier Nicolas Hulot et Brigitte Bardot.

 … L’homme de gauche Rocard mérite ces hommages, évidemment. … Pour son pragmatisme tenace, sa capacité d’innovation autant que de conciliation, le premier ministre Rocard (1988-1991) ne mérite pas moins l’éloge.

 … La frustration de constater que les qualités reconnues à Michel Rocard – une exigence de morale en politique, un inlassable engagement pour ses idées, une inépuisable ouverture d’esprit – paraissent si peu et si mal répandues aujourd’hui.

Lire aussi :   Michel Rocard en héritage

Le regret est de voir disparaître un homme, et une voix, qui incarnait une conception noble de l’action publique : celle qui fonde l’ambition et l’exercice du pouvoir sur la force et la justesse des idées, du savoir et de la culture. Et non celle qui instrumentalise les idées au service de la seule stratégie qui vaille, la conquête du pouvoir. C’est ce qui a fait sa singularité et lui confère aujourd’hui une aura particulière. C’est aussi, et il le reconnaissait lucidement, ce qui a fait sa faiblesse pendant quarante ans.

Washington Post Shows How Badly Racist White Americans Treat Minorities In Order to Remain at the Top of the — Hold on a Minute!

Doesn't this poll reflect an outrage? Doesn't this report prove what a racist society America is? How the whites keep all the benefits of society for themselves? To keep minorities down? While remaining at the very helm?

 … the Pew Research Center released a new report on how Americans are paid by race and gender 

reports the Washington Post's Danielle Paquette.

— and boy, are there some bombshells for those interested in our nation’s wage disparities.

 … Pew found women typically still take home smaller paychecks than men.

 … But here are five other, less-discussed angles in the pay conversation:

1. America's top earners are Asian men

Racial and gender wage gaps persist in the United States, though they’ve narrowed for some groups in recent years. (Pew used white men as the comparison group, since they comprise the largest chunk of the work force at 33 percent.)

All groups trail white men in earnings — except Asian men. They made 117 percent of what white men earned in 2015:

Last year, average hourly wages for black and Hispanic men were $15 and $14, while white men pocketed $21 and Asian men made $24. …

Some Thoughts on American Patriotism…

Some thoughts on American patriotism…

In France and around the world, July Fourth is a day like any other, i.e., one to complain, worry, moan, wail, and lament, not least over Uncle Sam's misdeeds as well as the distressing state of patriotism among Americans. …

Related —
by Matthew Spalding:
What the Founders ask of us
for the Fourth of July 2016:

 … Lincoln spoke about another set of Americans, the ones whose families came here after the great Revolution was over. In a word, immigrants. Of these, Lincoln said:

 “If they look back through this history and trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none. They cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel that the moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.”

And so we are. None of us fought at Bunker Hill or Lexington or Concord. None of us endured famine, cold, or the impact of a musket ball. None of us signed our names to a document that made us traitors, fit to be hung.

Yet, despite all that, we are still Americans, and the Fourth is still our celebration, because we hold dear the “moral sentiment” for which those iron men fought and died —

“That all men are created equal.”

Lincoln would fight and die for it, too.

Lincoln reassures us that this alone is enough to form that “historical connection” with men who in all other things bear no relation to us. Or, as he puts it:

“That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”

… yet we find our present culture riven by a hypersensitive strain of identity politics. We are told, even by some who belong to Lincoln’s party, that we should provide this group of Americans with one kind of government handout and that group with another.

We are told that we must “speak to” a certain group of Americans in a certain way or else lose their vote. We are told that skin color or sex  determines whether a group is more or less deserving of government perks. If one disagrees, one is shouted down as a racist, bigot, or chauvinist.

Yet Lincoln would disagree. The Founders would disagree as well. And so must all whose connection with that great and glorious generation of “iron men” consists of embracing an ideal that was meant to be taken literally; namely, that all men are created equal.