Some Americans Are Worth More Than Others

Free Markets, Labor, Military

You’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who will commiserate with your loss or dub it “dangerous and bad for the morale”—a risk to your family—in the event that you get the pink slip while serving nobly in the private economy, supplying fellow Americans with the services and products they need and desire.

On the other hand, the Pentagon “shrinks” the largest military in the world a smidgen—and the military-industrial-complex’s spokespeople fly into a rage.

Said Major Gen. Robert Scales: “It puts the soldier, the soldier’s family and the men under his command at risk.”

Seconded Sen. James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Once again [President Obama] is putting domestic politics ahead of the security of our nation. The Army captains and majors receiving pink slips while on the battlefield is just the latest example. My heart goes out to these men and women who are risking their lives and making great sacrifices, yet are now being told they are being separated from the Army and will have no job when they return home to their families.

Why should Army captains and majors be spared unemployment, a reality that faces American working in the market economy?

Militarism gone mad.

Three Almighty Amigos

Business, IMMIGRATION

Apples and oranges. The article “Break the Immigration Impasse,” as Mark Levin pointed out today, has absolutely nothing to do with the deluge of Central-American dependents across the Southern US border. Written by three business men who’re worth many billions—SHELDON G. ADELSON, WARREN E. BUFFETT and BILL GATES—the editorial dwells on skilled immigration. The new arrivals, for whom the welcome-mat is being rolled out, are unskilled. To switch the three amigos’ words around, they’ll “make hefty withdrawals from the economy, not deposits.”

Aside from conflating their wishes with “the nation’s interests,” the three billionaires manage also to cram the short op-ed with misconceptions (or lies).

There is no limit to the number of geniuses American companies can import through the open-ended O-1 visa program, which allows unlimited access to individuals with unique abilities. I imagine that a graduate student with unique abilities can apply for an 0-1 visa.

Levin is absolutely correct. These ponces have written an op-ed in a paper no real American will even read, purporting to know what’s good for the same folks and their families. Does Gates send his kids to the overflowing and backward public schools? Do bully boy Buffett’s grandchildren mix with yours at the local community college? Do ADELSON, BUFFETT and GATES live in third-world east Los Angeles?

What hubris.

UPDATE II: Joan Rivers: Antidote to PC Totalitarianism (‘PC Demands Deadly Seriousness’)

Celebrity, Communism, Political Correctness, Pop-Culture, Propaganda, The Zeitgeist

“Joan Rivers: Antidote to PC Totalitarianism” is now on WND. An excerpt:

WARNING: If you suffer from spineless conformity; a deformation of the personality often euphemized as political correctness—quit reading this column, NOW!

If you don’t quite know whether you are thus afflicted, ask yourself this: “Do I police what people say for political propriety? To the extent that I seek it out, do I scrutinize great literature, music, art, television or comedy for signs of so-called sexism, racism, elitism, homophobia, antisemitism and meanness? Am I incapable of appreciating a superbly written script or book; a sublime painting or symphony; a smart stand-up routine, if only because the material and its creator violate the received laws of political correctness?

Still unsure if you belong to the tyrannical, joyless tradition of cultural Marxism, read on. In the event that you convulse with laughter, give yourself a clean bill of health. If you foam at the mouth, fit to be tied, go away. And stay away.

Women who should make themselves scarce but won’t are the prototypical, inquisitor-cum-anchors plaguing leftist “news” networks. Acting anchor-enforcer for Fourth of July was CNN’s unremarkable Fredricka Whitfield. Fredricka What’sHerName’s would have left behind a sustained program of non-achievement. No longer. Henceforth, her claim to fame is that she attempted to re-educate an iconic comedienne, Joan Rivers.

Since cultural Marxists police speech for propriety, if not consciously, then reflexively, they will take pains to stigmatize and isolate those who violate standards set by the PC set. The term re-education is associated with this totalitarianism. It has been used in the context of both brainwashing as well as “reformation” induced in labor camps.

Through a series of loaded, snide taunts, coupled with unhinged body language, the prissy preachy Fredricka set about reeducating her featured guest about the rules of conduct in the post-personality era. “You shall not be mean” (*except to all men and all conservatives and authentic contrarians) is the latest monomania to grip the politically correct.

Alas, as the object of her pelting, Fredricka the fundamentalist was foolish enough to target the wrong funny lady. Rivers is too old and too independent for “rehabilitation.” …

… Read the complete column. “Joan Rivers: Antidote to PC Totalitarianism” is now on WND.

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UPDATE I (7/13): Writes my mom:

“I so enjoyed your article defending that great American satirist: in bone and blood Joan Rivers is a satirist. In intelligence and wit and comedy she’s far above others, she is a great. Outrageous, I love her.

UPDATE II (7/14): Jack Kerwick has a lovely column on same topic. A quote: “For certain, much of life demands seriousness, but our culture’s prevailing zeitgeist—what we commonly refer to as ‘Political Correctness’ (PC)—demands not seriousness, but deadly seriousness. … Contrary to the conventional wisdom, racial, ethnic, and religious ‘stereotypes’ are most decidedly not fictions sprung from thin air. They reflect enduring patterns among a significant number of a group’s members—even if (as is almost always the case) it is only a significant minority. When these stereotypes reflect positively on a group, all is good. When they are negative, though, there is no end to the inter-group conflict that they can so easily fuel. …”

A Traitor To His People

Barack Obama, Bush, IMMIGRATION, Private Property

How incompetent is Big Media in the age of the “Internet of Everything”? Having only just disgorged his usual pablum about the surge of dependent minors rushing the Southern border, President Obama’s words are not yet online, except for brief mention on ABC.com. This much I can relay:

Not a word did BHO utter about his initial impetus, which was to reverse the Bush-era law preventing the repatriation of minors from central America. Not a peep.

Minted for the occasion was a new catch phrase or two such as that we “lack the capacity” to control the US border. What happened to the famous pen and phone? Hussein also hammered home a guilt trip about American compassion, the implication being that compassion precludes enforcement and protection of private property stateside.

His promise of more American foreign aid to enable youngsters to remain in their homes of origin only enforced the president’s flippant attitude to the private property of Americans, by which I also mean the safety of our bodies, for they are our prime real estate.