Cruising the Web

Well, we knew that this was going to happen at some point – some jerk Republicans would adopt the tactics of jerk Democrats and launch ugly protests at Democratic politicians. If we think it’s wrong for Democrats to hound Republicans, the reverse is also true and this behavior is just as contemptible.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was hounded by a group of protesters in Florida — with some cursing and calling her a “communist.”

Video of the confrontation shows the small group of hecklers shouting obscenities and calling Pelosi (D-Calif) a communist in English and Spanish as she walks into a Wednesday campaign event for congressional hopeful Donna Shalala in Coral Gables.

“You don’t belong here you f–ing communist f-k,” one person howls. “You and your f–ing Democrats.”

When Pelosi wordlessly walks by and enters the building, the protesters start pounding on the door.

“Open up! It’s the Proud Boys in here,” one person says, referring to the far-right hate group involved in a brawl in Manhattan last weekend.

The crowd then erupts into a chant of “Socialism sucks!”

This is what has been unleashed by Democrats and the media closing their eyes to how liberal mobs have been attacking Republicans. Did they really think that they were immune? With conservative speakers being shouted down in colleges across the country, are we going to see the same thing happen by Republican mobs? Conservatives used to think that they didn’t harbor such mobs within their ranks, but I think we’ve seen in recent years that there are crazies on both sides. There just seem to be a whole lot more on the left’s side. One story about protesters howling at Pelosi makes the news, but there have been so many shoutdowns on college campuses and numerous episodes of Republicans getting shouted at when they go out to eat dinner. For example, Mitch McConnell and his wife were harassed at a Kentucky restaurant this past weekend. I would have thought that they’d have Secret Service protection. He’s the Majority Leader and she’s a cabinet secretary, but I guess they don’t.

Karen Townshend makes an observation.

Every time a Republican behaves badly, usually with words, other Republican politicians are called upon to denounce the behavior. And, usually, they do just that. Democrats, however, aren’t held accountable for the violent rhetoric we now hear from Democrat leaders. The double standard in politics is alive and thriving. Most of the media is only too eager to play a part in #TheResistance.

Hillary Clinton, a former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State said that civil behavior cannot happen until Democrats are back in power. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a former Speaker of the House, said there will be collateral damage to those who disagree with her. Rep. Maxine Waters said that Republicans must be mobbed and protested everywhere, whether it’s the supermarket or a gas station or a department store. This is why we have screaming unhinged people in restaurants and airports.

It’s a depressing time and I’d like to see some of these people arrested and fined heavily. Perhaps that would put the brakes on this sort of behavior.

Peter Spiliakos writes on the way that liberals, overwhelmingly white liberals, keep making up the rules as they go along.

The legendary comic strip Calvin and Hobbes had a game called “Calvinball.” The rules were nonsensical to the outsider and the players made up them as they went along, to gain tactical advantage. But the point was that the players were alternating in changing the rules.

In many elite institutions, elite white liberals are used to playing a spoiled-brat version of Calvinball in which only they get to make up the rules. Sometimes the rule is believe the accusers (when the targets are fraternities or Republican nominees). Sometimes — like with Keith Ellison — the rule is pictures or it didn’t happen (sorry, Al Franken). Sometimes colleges need safe spaces, and sometimes armed left-wing militias are an understandable but overenthusiastic response to peaceful, democratic critics.

The key is the relationship of (mostly white, affluent, privileged) activists to authority. They might be students, junior staffers at media companies, or television producers, but they all know that they are part of the in-group and that authority is looking for a pretext to apply the rules in a partisan manner against the out-group. They know that authority is corrupt, and that rules and procedures will be manipulated or ignored to harass the opposition. These expectations of special treatment don’t just disappear when these people leave their institutional playpens.

Jennifer Braceras has some thoughtful questions for Elizabeth Warren and liberals who support affirmative action.

Does Warren favor the use of racial preferences in university hiring and college admissions? Does she believe that race and ethnicity should be considered a plus-factor, or a thumb-on-the scale?

If so, which applicants “count” as racial or ethnic minorities? Does anyone with a smidgen of minority heritage count? Or do only those people with a parent or grandparent from the protected class count? At what percentages do we institute cut-offs?

When measuring “diversity,” should schools count Asian Americans? Native Americans? Latinos? Or should they concern themselves only with blacks, because of their unique history as part of America’s slave-owning past?

Should one be officially registered with a tribe to count as Native American? Who counts as Latino? Only Mexicans and Central Americans? What about South Americans? Or Cubans? Or Puerto Ricans? Do the grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants count? Or only the first generation?

Why are we doing this bean-counting at all?

These questions are not theoretical. They impact university hiring and admission decisions every day. In fact, the same day that Warren claimed victory in the dispute over her heritage, Harvard University was in federal court in Boston, defending its race-conscious admissions policy against claims that it discriminates against Asian Americans.

And that is why Sen. Warren’s heritage is not simply a personal matter. It’s a matter of public concern.

It really goes to the heart of what sort of diversity we’re talking about when diversity is used to uphold affirmative action based on race. If someone has no history of living in a minority culture and just has the DNA or “family lore” to back his or her claim to minority status, what is that person really bringing to the university environment? If a person has an interesting background, culturally or economically, perhaps that person can contribute something meaningful to that environment. But if that person has had a middle-class background much like most of the other applicants to the university, why does it matter that the student has a certain percentage of a desired racial minority flowing through his veins?

The Daily Caller reports on how the Washington Post knowingly published a false story about Georgetown Prep just because they wanted to throw a little more shade at Brett Kavanaugh.

The Washington Post falsely suggested that Georgetown Preparatory School was hiring a new employee to deal with fallout from the Kavanaugh hearings, despite the school directly contradicting WaPo’s report.

Emily Heil reported on October 18 that Georgetown Prep was hiring a director of alumni relations, and wrote that the school posted the advertisement for the position this week. The article further suggested that the school was adding the position because of the news surrounding the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Georgetown Prep alum, to the Supreme Court.

However, Heil was informed prior to publication of her article by a spokesperson for Georgetown Prep that the position was posted back in July.

Heil specifically asked spokesperson Patrick Coyle when the alumni director job was posted, according to a copy of the email posted by @AG_Conservative.

“Just thought it was interesting, given all the attention that your alums have been getting recently,” Heil wrote to Coyle. “I wondered if the job had been posted before or after the Kavanaugh hearings, and anything else you can tell me about it.”

Coyle responded within eight minutes telling Heil that it was “posted in July 2018,” and pointed Heil to a group of other statements from Georgetown Prep….

After Heil’s article was posted with the false claim that the job was posted this week, Coyle followed up asking for a correction.

“I noted in my message below that the Director of Alumni Relations position was posted in July 2018,” Coyle said. “Your article says, ‘The listing went up after Georgetown alumni were very much in the news.’ This is not true and I, in fact, gave you the month in which the position was posted.”

“Please correct your story immediately,” Coyle demanded.

WaPo added a correction to the top of the story that said, “A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Georgetown Prep posted a job listing this week for a director of alumni relations. The school began advertising for the position in July.”

….Heil’s corrected story still tied the alumni director position to the Kavanaugh hearings, and she claimed the job post is newsworthy regardless of when it was posted.

-I would have written the item no matter the date the job was posted
-I really did miss the response about the date-I KNOW I shouldn’t have, but that’s what mistakes are
-I don’t mean to sound blasé about a correction. Believe me, I hate themhave kicked myself plenty over it

— Emily Heil (@emilyaheil) October 20, 2018

I don’t understand why she would have written the story if she’d known that the job opening preceded the Kavanaugh hearings. Do they publish stories on every area prep school job posting. She clearly thought she had a story that she could connect to Kavanaugh and blame him for the school needing the position and just jumped right in without paying attention to the information she received. This is how bias blinds journalists. Without the connection to Kavanaugh there isn’t any story so she just closed her eyes to any information that would contradict her preferred take on the story.

The Arizona GOP must be holding a whole treasure chest of damaging Kyrsten Sinema quotes they they are slowly doling out since we seem to be hearing a new one every day or so. This latest one from 2006 might be more damaging than calling Arizonans crazy.

Democratic Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, once described stay-at-home moms as leeches in a 2006 interview.

“These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism because they’re choosing to live that life,” she told Scottsdale nightlife magazine 944. “That’s bullshit. I mean, what the f*** are we really talking about here?”

With her statements denigrating Arizona, she could pretend that she was just talking about the GOP government there. But denigrating stay-at-home moms is so very offensive. Many of women, like myself, who didn’t stay at home as a mother, have mothers who did. And we don’t like hearing them insulted. And any working mother still has qualms about the time spent away from our children. And, as a teacher married to a professor, we had it a lot easier than many mothers to arrange a schedule to be there for our children. And we still had moments of panic trying to arrange child care and guilt for not being there.

I thought the feminist movement was all about choice. Why would she sneer at the choices that some mothers have made? Aren’t their choices to be just as respected as the choices of working mothers?