A litany against the madness from Common Sense

July 7, 2022

From Common Sense. Here is just some of the nonsense the world tolerates -- if not promotes -- today, as promulgated by the legacy media of celebrity journalists.

As the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, we are seeing an unprecedented spike in mortgage rates. And Biden keeps on trucking with the phrases ultra-MAGA and Putin’s Price Hike, though other Dems are realizing the terms are “lame,” according to Politico’s Alex Thompson (a really great White House reporter to follow).

→ January 6 committee getting ahead of their skis: In the midst of real grievances about the riot on the Capitol have been a lot of absurd ones, which, at least for me, undermine the hearings. For example: Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s chief of staff, claimed that Trump wanted to go join the riot, tried to grab a steering wheel from his secret service driver, and then in a struggle tried to choke the guy. For a few hours this was the big news, even though Hutchinson said she’d heard it second-hand. It was a new Pee Tape! The same day: Secret Service agent Bobby Engel—the lead agent and the guy who drives the president’s car—said he’d be happy to go under oath and deny this account outright. And, poof, the whole thing disappears.

Now, when it comes to Hutchinson’s testimony that Trump apparently threw his lunch against the wall, yeah, ok that I can see.

→ There’s still no movement for a national abortion-rights law: Pro-choice organizations are determined to only pass the already attempted and failed Women’s Health Protection Act, which, in practice, allows abortion up until the latest stages of pregnancy. Any reasonable compromise—say a ban after 12 weeks or 16 weeks—is seen by these activist groups as a nonstarter. So there’s no movement on getting a national abortion-rights bill passed, and a sort of fatalism has set in among top Democrats.

Why? If this is such a high priority, why have Democrats never tried to actually codify Roe into law, even when they’ve had a supermajority, as they did during Obama’s first term? One theory: Both the left and the right benefit from having abortion undecided and contentious because it brings out their voter bases. Meanwhile, pro-life groups are working to stop people from crossing state lines for abortions.

I would like to see a national compromise law that can really pass. But when I look at women’s organizations I can donate to that are working toward this, I can’t find any. All the abortion rights groups seem to spend half their time advocating for unrelated issues (defunding the police, for example), and the other half of their donor-funded time on internal drama. This is a pattern: None of the old guard liberal groups are actually doing the things they were originally formed to do (see: Sierra Club, ACLU, etc).

For a textbook example . . .

→ There are 900 kids without summer camp after staff had a meltdown: A group of Bay Area camp instructors walked into a historic house that had been built in 1929, and they saw three tiles, each approximately 12x12 inches, that featured Buddhist swastikas and a lotus. There was a staff outcry. How could these 100-year-old Buddhist tiles be here!

It didn’t matter that the tiles were bought in 1913 while the camp’s founders were on a trip through Asia. And it wasn’t enough to remove them. Instead, the camp’s leadership team promptly resigned.

The chair of the board sent out an apologetic email this week about those fateful tiles: “It highlights the need for the organization to pause, reflect, and further develop plans of action to address the racial equity concerns shared by staff.” Also in the email: Camp is canceled. Those 900 children can find something else to do because the staff of Hidden Villa camp need the summer to heal together. “We were too slow to respond to the voices that expressed pain and concern over the symbols on the house. . . The decision to cancel Camp has been heart wrenching and staff is still triaging care for all involved.”