Monday, 23 November 2015

In Passing

And besides, it’s ‘‘cultural appropriation’’

Alinsky Rule #4  Dept

The Telegraph:
Ban Christmas ads if you don’t like religion, Church tells cinemas

Cinemas should ban all Christmas adverts after refusing to screen a commercial featuring the Lord's Prayer because of its religious content, the Church of England has said.

The Church is threatening to take legal action against Digital Cinema Media (DCM), which handles adverts for cinema giants Odeon, Vue and Cineworld, after it barred an advert featuring the Archbishop of Canterbury encouraging prayer.

DCM told the Church the advert risked ‘‘upsetting or offending audiences’’ and pointed to its policy document barring commercials that advertised ‘‘any religion, faith or equivalent systems of belief’’ or ‘‘any part’’ of any such religion or faith.

Rev Arun Arora, the Church of England’s director of communications, told the Telegraph: ‘‘If they want to be consistent on not carrying any ads that have any connection with religious belief, I’d like them to cancel all ads linked to Christmas as a Christian festival.

‘‘If they’d like to apply it consistently, ban every ad that mentions Christmas.’’
‘‘RULE 4: ‘Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.’

Elsewhere:

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Tuesday, 17 November 2015

In Passing

Forecast: Same old same old


Mike Hendrix on what follows:

...Hey, we’ll get to have who knows how many cute little parades showing how we’re all Charlie Hebdo Paris now, and how we’re ‘‘Boston Paris strong,’’ and how we ‘‘stand in solidarity with the people of Paris,’’ and how our ‘‘universal values’’ (which aren’t universal at all) will triumph in the end even if we can’t be bothered to actually defend them beyond crying a lot and lighting some candles and building those maudlin memorials to all the people killed by our fecklessness, cowardice, and inattention every time another of these Moslem slaughters even occurs.  So we got that going for us.

We’ll light up our buildings and public squares in red, white, and blue, and sing La Marseillaiseand the Star Spangled Banner till our throats are raw.  Our news-readers will report all this twee horseshit with a tear in their eye and a quaver in their throats, simply overcome with emotion at the sheer courageof it all, assuring us that such noble, brave heroes as we will never be defeated, because HISTORYâ„¢.  And the tough, doughty, dauntless #HashtagWarriors will march on, until it’s all forgotten in a couple of weeks, and we’ve all re-assumed the position of presenting our soft underbellies for the next slash of the Moslem scimitar.

At this late date in the death agonies of the enervated West, besieged on one side by violent animals and on the other by idiot Leftists who have nothing but spiteful resentment for the blanket of civilization they cower under, what is there left to say?  We aren’t going to do a damned thing to end this...
Read the rest.  You know you want to.

LATER:
S.Weasel objects:  No. More. TEDDYBEARS.

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Sunday, 15 November 2015

In Passing

Beyond talk?


‘‘CBD,’’ blogging at Ace:

Last night, barely 24 hours after the cowardly Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris claimed the lives of so many innocents, I experienced something that was both reassuring and oddly disturbing.  I was eating with family in a French bistro in Manhattan (A good one. If anyone wants the name I will e-mail it.) when, half way through the meal, to a packed restaurant, one of the waiters, a late-middle-aged woman, climbed the stairs to the second floor and belted out an excellent rendition of ‘‘La Marseillaise,’’ the French national anthem.  All of the patrons stood, and many joined in to sing with her.  I was pleased that even in the heart of liberal, accommodationist America we can still recognize patriotism and understand the need for unity with and support for one of our allies.

But....I am troubled that we in the West have become so soft that we have replaced steadfast belief in ourselves, and the determination to defend Western culture, with emotional responses that, ultimately, do nothing.  It is one thing to sing La Marseillaise.  It is quite another thing to support a long, painful war against an adversary that will give no quarter and whose goal is the utter and complete destruction of our way of life.


LATER (151115 23:36):
‘‘kennycan’’ comments at Instapundit:
‘‘Je Suis Charlie Hebdo.’’

Remember that?  What was that, 9 months ago?

There will be arrests.  There will be hashtags.  There will be pronouncements that they are contained.  There will be massive pushing down the memory hole.  There will be business as usual.

Then, Unexpectedly! There will be another attack.

We've been going through this since at least the Boston Marathon bombings.  Probably longer than that. First WTC bombing, perhaps?

MORE:

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Thursday, 24 September 2015

In Passing

Organizational capture at Wesleyan

SJWs Always Lie  Dept

Daily Pundit:
That train is never late….

There’s a kerfuffle going on at Wesleyan University over an op-ed piece the student newspaper, The Argus, published recently...

The response — a petition signed by roughly 150 students and faculty — is predictably rich in the variety and inanity of its demands, yet as fascinating as these details are, there is a leitmotif that runs through the outrage — one as familiar to us as the sound of coins clinking in a pocket.

It appears that, in the eyes of the petitioners, the Argus is insufficiently diverse, in part because it offers no ‘‘paid’’ positions on its staff.  This purely volunteer workplace, therefore, is discouraging to students — chiefly minority students — who need compensation for their efforts, owing to their oppressed economic status.

Among the demands of the petition, therefore, is that the newspaper establish a number of staff positions with sufficient hard cash emolument to enable suitable candidates to add their voices to the general chorus, no longer obstructed by the grinding poverty that hitherto has impeded their progress at a $60,000+/year college...
To which Bill Quick offered:
They could add ten paid positions and then, to reflect the racial makeup of the Wesleyan student body, they could give one of those positions to a black kid...

That should make them happy...
Which misunderstands what is really going on:  It’s not about one position that might go to some protected class member, its about the other nine positions which will be filled with noisy Social Justice Warrior types.

Possibly making SJWs the majority of the paper’s staff; certainly putting the paid SJWs at an advantage vis-a-vis the unpaid volunteers.  Expect organizational capture within a year or so.

Remember:  It’s never about the issue; it’s always about the power.

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Friday, 18 September 2015

In Passing

Stock up on coal?

Your Government Inaction  Dept

Trains:
BNSF Railway’s chief executive, Carl Ice, said September 9 that BNSF would in effect shut down most of its network rather than violate a federal law mandating that positive train control be operational by December 31.  CSX Transportation has said it, too, questions whether it should violate federal laws, and other Class I carriers are likely to follow suit.  This set up the real possibility of a national transportation crisis at the beginning of 2016...
...
BNSF reads the law as saying no train can legally operate on a PTC-mandated line if PTC is not in service by December 31...  Ice adds that were his railroad to operate over lines where PTC is not in place and an accident occur[], the exposure to legal claims and punitive damages would be significant.
...
Six years ago Congress thought it was giving railroads enough time to do this...  But implementation has been a disaster.  The technology being put in place is largely new.  [The] FRA was slow to issue necessary rules.  Signal engineers able to put all the pieces together have been in short supply.  And then for more than a year everything ground to a halt because the Federal Communications Commission would not issue permits for construction of radio towers and antennae.
...
...Railroads have sought is an extension of the deadline, something that Congress has thus far refused to act upon... 

Appears we might get a chance to try out the President’s new no-coal energy rules a bit sooner than planned.

Sleep warm!


More:
(Thanks to J.E.D.)

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Tuesday, 15 September 2015

In Passing

Crony Capitalists ‘‘Endorse’’ Trump?


Indirectly...

...A key group of business leaders is pretty clear about who they think will come out on top, according to the latest CNBC Global CFO Council survey.

The CFO Council represents some of the largest public and private companies in the world and collectively manages more than $2 trillion in market capitalization across a wide variety of sectors.  Of the 34 council members, 19 (or 56 percent) of the council responded to this quarter’s survey.

More than 72 percent of members of the council surveyed earlier this month say Jeb Bush will in fact win the Republican nomination.
That was June.  Now, three months later, there’s this:
Wall Street is growing increasingly terrified that Donald Trump — once viewed as an amusing summertime distraction — could actually win the Republican nomination for president.
...
The industry began this election cycle confident that a GOP candidate like Bush would win, and offer some reprieve from populist anger.
Bush?  Reduce ‘‘populist anger?’’  Really?

Trump:  Making all the right people nervous, one at a time...


Elsewhere:
Daily Pundit:  Nobody I Know Voted For….Trump?
Ace of Spades HQ:  Wall Streeters Beginning to Panic...
I hope they are panicking.  They are liberal Democrats, and aggressive ones, who despise conservatives, but rely on conservatives to protect them from liberal Democrat tax policies, which for some reason, we do.
Ed Driscoll:  President Goldman Sachs Hardest Hit

HT:  CNBC via Ace’s sidebar

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Friday, 10 July 2015

In Passing

Political Illegitimacy


‘rdbrewer,’ in the Ace sidebar:

In 15th century England, Courts of Chancery developed when people became unsatisfied with remedies found in increasingly rigid and corrupt common-law courts.  They petitioned the king, and Chancery Courts were created.  Similarly, we are in a position of needing a new court devoted exclusively to public corruption, because when the Department of Justice will not investigate or prosecute the most heinous public corruption--and, indeed, when they’re in on it--there must be another place to turn: another investigative agency, another court.  This banana republic reduction in political legitimacy in America cannot be allowed to stand.

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Wednesday, 24 June 2015

In Passing

The Enemy of my Allies


David French:

...the defeated South... soon supplied the newly reunified nation with many of its greatest warriors — men who were indispensable in preserving our democracy against the existential threats of fascism and communism.

One never-acknowledged reason the American left hates the American South.

Via:  Mike

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Tuesday, 12 May 2015

In Passing

Saying what, ‘‘Bend over’’?

It Doesn’t Matter WHO You Vote For  Dept

‘‘Republican’’ Leader Mitch McConnell:

A lot of folks like to joke about the odd couple that was Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch... but I think Mitch McConnell and Barack Obama may have them outdone...  I’m even getting handwritten notes from the president these days.
Why, Mitch! Bless your lil’ ol’ heart!

Elsewhere:
Related (And You Too, Jeb!  Dept):

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Saturday, 09 May 2015

In Passing

On the U.K. Election

Familiar strains?  Dept

What the election has fundamentally exposed is the existence of Two Britains. No, not a Labour Britain vs a Tory Britain — that old divide has been flagging for years.  Not poshos vs workers, as Labourite commentators like to fantasise.  And it’s not even England vs Scotland...  [It] is, on one side, the Britain of the moral clerisy, which is pro-EU, multicultural, anti-tabloid, politically correct and devoted to welfarism and paternalism as the main means through which to govern the masses; and, on the other side, the Britain of the rest of the us, of the masses, of those people increasingly viewed by the cultural elite as inscrutable, incomprehensible, and in need of nudging, social re-engineering and behaviour modification.  Those people whose votes, whose temerity in rejecting Labour, made so little sense to the observing classes. This is the true story of the shifting map, the geographical shrinking of Labour, and the shocked response of opinion-makers to the results.

And of course, the more Labour comes to be occupied by influential but unrepresentative middle-class professionals, the more contemptuous it becomes of the Other Britain, the lesser Britain, the stupid Britain that won’t obediently vote Labour even though Labour only wants to care for it and nudge it towards health and decency... - Brendan O’Neill, Spiked


Via:  David Thompson

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