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May 13, 2024 08:35
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- Frog Act
- Feb 10, 2012
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This showed up in my local newspaper today. The editorial page is always outlandishly offensive, but this one bugged me in particular:
quote:History is the propaganda of the victorious
Editor, Times-Dispatch:
Dr. Charles Bryan states that the Civil War sesquicentennial commemoration has embraced the full story that slavery was the root cause of the war. One might with more veracity say that abolition was the root cause, for the ancient institution of slavery was worldwide at the founding of the U.S., whereas abolition was not.
We all know the South held slaves. We all don't know that the North sold its slaves down the river during the Industrial Revolution when steam power replaced muscle power. But the South, with its large population of African slaves, could not do like the North. Slavery was a means for the social control of a large alien population, and it was protected by the federative nature of the Constitution. But that nature became a stumbling block for Northern industry, and the North sought to subvert it to its interest — to the South's peril.
When the North abolition party won the presidential election of 1860 by a strictly sectional majority, the South seceded for self-preservation. The North should have been glad to be rid of it. But Northern industrialists needed the South's cotton and markets, which they would lose to England if the South got from under the North's control. So after Northern abolitionists drove the South out of the voluntary union, the Northern capitalists drove it back in with bayonets. They then disenfranchised the white and put them under Reconstruction regimes until the federative nature of the Constitution could be effectively gutted.
History is the propaganda of the victorious. Dig there if you want the full story.
H.V. Traywick Jr.
Richmond.
Confederate apologism, with a nasty underlying "slavery is just the way things are" theme.
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Jun 4, 2012 15:09
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- Frog Act
- Feb 10, 2012
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One of today's letters to the editor in the local paper threw me at first, I was stunned it wasn't a generic ARE TROOPS, but actually much, much more reprehensible.
quote:Heroism is not for the faint of heart
Editor, Times-Dispatch:
I thought the age of heroes died out several generations ago. I was wrong.
Consider Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. One doesn't have to agree with his politics to recognize the courage he exhibited by risking his career and, yes, perhaps even his life and the lives of his family in order to break the hold of the unions in the state of Wisconsin. Yes, Scott Walker is a hero.
The strength and dedication he showed to the people of Wisconsin is an example to others who might feel the call to serve their country by putting self last. Heroism is not for the faint of heart.
Barbara Hutton.
Waynesboro.
Every day when I wake up, I pour myself a cup of coffee, step outside and light a cigarette, and crack open the editorial page. Starting every day with a dose of pure  can't possibly be healthy.
So it's pretty rare that I find myself wanting to write in and respond, but this undoubtedly rascal-bound degenerate's dismissal of 200 years of progress is probably the worst thing I've ever read. Idolizing strike breaking teachers? What in the absolute gently caress?
It's terrible that generations bled so this rear end in a top hat could feel this way.
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Jun 15, 2012 15:23
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- Frog Act
- Feb 10, 2012
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I know this is sort of a tired old anti-choice canard but it still bugs me every time.
quote:Editor, Times-Dispatch:
I want to thank Odette Cook for her letter, "Never forget the Veledrome d'Hiver," about the Holocaust atrocity in Paris. Ironically, just a few days ago, I watched the movie "Sarah's Key," a graphic portrayal of one Jewish girl's story that reverberated through the next generations of both her family and the French who stood idly by.
Evil is ever with us, as evidenced by the horrendous violence committed both in the Aurora movie theater recently and against unborn lives every day in this nation.
The words of Isaiah and King David still speak to the societal evil today: "Their feet run after evil. They rush to shed innocent blood." (Isaiah 59:7) and "There is no fear of God before his eyes." (Psalm 36:1)
Whether it is 15,000 innocent Jews, 70 innocent Colorado moviegoers or millions of innocent unborn babies over the past three decades: Never forget.
Rebecca Hogg.
Henrico.
Let's baldly exploit national tragedies! Surely that will bring people around to my point of view! 
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Aug 1, 2012 01:34
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- Frog Act
- Feb 10, 2012
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This was pretty terrible. It's not even really full of points that can be rebutted, it's just awful nonsense. The worst part is this was the editorial sidebar of my local newspaper, not just a letter from some syphilitic old republican out in surrey, or something.
quote:Once again the Rage Boys of the Arab world are letting the planet know just how much they resent having their feelings hurt. But they have no monopoly on histrionics. Before the Democratic National Convention fades too far in the rearview mirror, it's worth looking back to note that even by the debased standards of modern political discourse, this year's event was remarkably mean-spirited and hateful.
So many Democratic officials compared Republicans, either by name or in general, to Nazis (or in one instance, to Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun) that the Romney campaign asked the Obama campaign to intercede and elevate the tone a little. Good luck: One Puerto Rican delegate said of Mitt Romney, "If I see him, I would like to kill him."
But then, the air was full of violent imagery. Rep. John Lewis suggested that a Republican victory in November would bring back the days when civil rights workers were beaten and left "lying in a pool of blood." Sandra Fluke said Romney would "allow pregnant women to die preventable deaths in emergency rooms." A Jewish Democrat from Palm Beach said Christians "are not our friends" and "want us . . . to be slaughtered."
North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue said Republicans would bring back "the days of coat hangers in the bathtub, and you'll see women die." One delegate said asking for ID at a polling place is "like raping somebody." Bill Clinton boasted that he never learned to hate Republicans. He could have found plenty of tutors in Charlotte.
The hatefest extended well beyond the convention hall. Rep. Barney Frank called gay Republicans "Uncle Toms." Teamsters president James Hoffa said Tea Party members are "basically the modern-day John Birch Society." On and on it went — nearly all of it ignored by the establishment media, which was in full cheerleading mode and will be until Election Day.
In "1984," residents of Oceania must participate in a "two-minute hate," a hysterical outburst of fear and loathing directed at enemies of The Party. But the daily ritual lasted only 120 seconds — not three whole days. Orwell, it seems, was an optimist.
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Sep 14, 2012 15:58
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- Frog Act
- Feb 10, 2012
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"gently caress everyone. Especially you" - Victor Davis Hanson
quote:STANFORD, Calif. Ideas of the 1960s have now grown reactionary in our world that is vastly different from a half-century ago.
Take well-meaning subsidies for those over age 62. Why are there still senior discounts, vast expansions in Social Security and Medicare and generous public pensions?
Five decades ago all that made sense. There was no such thing as double-dipping. Seniors often were physically worn out from blue-collar jobs. They were usually poorer and frequently sicker than society in general. The aged usually died not long after they retired.
Not now. Seniors often live a quarter-century or longer after a mostly white-collar retirement, drawing subsidies from those least able to pay for them.
Seniors are not like today’s strapped youth, scrimping for a down payment on a house. Most are not struggling to find even part-time work. None are paying off crushing student loans. In a calcified economy, why would an affluent couple in their early 60s earn a “senior discount” at a movie, while the struggling young couple with three children in the same line does not?
Affirmative action and enforced “diversity” were originally designed to give a boost to those who were victims of historical bias from the supposedly oppressive white-majority society. Is that still true, a half-century after these assumptions became institutionalized?
Through greater intermarriage and immigration, America has become a multiracial nation. Skin color, general appearance, accent or the sound of one’s name cannot so easily identify either “oppressors” or “victims.”
So who exactly should receive privileges in job-hiring or college admissions — the newly arrived Pakistani immigrant, or the third-generation, upper-middle-class Mexican-American who does not speak Spanish? Both, or neither? What about someone of half-Jamaican ancestry? What about the children of Attorney General Eric Holder or self-proclaimed Native American Sen. Elizabeth Warren? What about the poor white grandson of the Oklahoma diaspora who is now a minority in California?
Even if the 21st-century state could define who is a minority, on what moral grounds does the targeted beneficiary deserve special consideration? Is his disadvantage defined by being poorer, by lingering trauma from his grandparents’ long-ago ordeals or by yesterday’s experience with routine racial prejudice?
If Latinos are underrepresented at the University of California, Berkeley, is it because of the stubborn institutional prejudices that also somehow have been trumped by Asian-Americans enrolling at three times their numbers in the state’s general population? Are women so oppressed by men that they graduate from college in higher numbers than their chauvinist male counterparts?
Consider also the calcified assumptions about college education. The expanding 1960s campus was touted as the future gateway to a smarter, fairer, richer and more ethical America. Is that dream still valid?
Today, the college-educated owe a collective $1 trillion in unpaid student loans. Millions of recent graduates cannot find jobs that offer much chance of paying off their crushing student debts.
College itself has become a sort of five- to six-year lifestyle choice. Debt, joblessness or occasional part-time employment and coursework eat up a youth’s 20s — in a way that military service or vocational training does not.
In reaction, private diploma mills are springing up everywhere. But there are no “diversity czars” at DeVry University. There is no time or money for the luxury of classes such as “Gender Oppression” at Phoenix University. Students do not have rock-climbing walls or have Michael Moore address them at Heald College.
The private-sector campus makes other assumptions. One is that the hallowed liberal arts general-education requirement has been corrupted and no longer ensures an employer that his college-graduate hire is any more broadly educated or liberally minded than those who paid far less tuition for job-training courses at for-profit alternative campuses.
Scan the government grandees caught up in the current administration’s ballooning IRS, Associated Press and Benghazi scandals. In each case, a blue-chip Ivy League degree was no guarantee that our best and brightest technocrats would prove transparent or act honorably. What difference did it make that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Holder, President Barack Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice had degrees from prestigious universities when they misled the American people or Congress?
The now-aging idealists of the 1960s long ago promised us that a uniformly degreed citizenry — shepherded by Ivy League-branded technocrats — would make America better by sorting us out by differences in age, gender, education and race.
It is now past time to end that ossified dream before it becomes our collective nightmare.
Contact Victor Davis Hanson at
This legit might be the worst and most roundly ignorant misanthropy I've ever seen from a mainstream republican shill.
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May 31, 2013 14:49
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- Frog Act
- Feb 10, 2012
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So my newspaper printed what may be the most absurd letter to the editor I've ever seen.
quote:Editor, Times-Dispatch:
It is heartwarming to read The Times-Dispatch’s news account of how Sen. Tim Kaine performed a historic first by delivering a speech on immigration reform in Spanish. Nice going, Senator. I assume that for his next trick, he’ll deliver a speech on Islamic terrorism in Arabic.
Not too long ago, politicians were expressing concern about the “creeping Hispanization” of this country. We don’t hear much about this anymore — the creep has turned into a gallop while Kaine and other politicians struggle to outdo one another in jumping on the Spanish-speaking bandwagon.
Before we let our leaders turn us into a bilingual country, it would be advisable to look at what is going on in those countries which have more than one official language.
The former Yugoslavia had four official languages, and when it split up into five countries, it did so basically along linguistic lines. The recent long and bloody war in Sri Lanka pitted Tamil speakers against Sinhala speakers. Closer to home, in Canada, alleged discrimination against French speakers by the English-speaking majority prompts the province of Quebec to periodically hold secession referendums. In Belgium, there is never-ending friction between French speakers and Flemish speakers. In South Africa, Afrikaans speakers are pitted against English speakers and the island of Cyprus is partitioned between Greek speakers and Turkish speakers. And on and on it goes.
The one exception to this rule of thumb is Switzerland, where the inhabitants live in peace and harmony despite having four official languages. However, if America decides to go bilingual, I doubt very much if it would become the second exception.
John B. Browning. Charlottesville.
Literally everything this guy is asserting is wrong. Just so utterly wrong. Spanish has as long (longer really) a history in North America as English, virtually every country on the planet has recognized minority languages that don't cause violent civil wars, and holy poo poo I love the "maybe next he'll deliver a speech on terrorism in Arabic" part.
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Jun 18, 2013 15:50
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- Frog Act
- Feb 10, 2012
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I know I posted something odious from this newspaper yesterday too but this featured editorial really chapped my caboose today. Here is a black man hating the idea of "diversity", and then somehow claiming diversity is responsible for wind farms.
quote:alterWilliams
Grutter v. Bollinger was the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s racial admissions policy. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the majority, said the U.S. Constitution “does not prohibit the Law School’s narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.” But what are the educational benefits of a diverse student body?
Intellectuals argue that diversity is necessary for academic excellence, but what’s the evidence? For example, Japan is a nation bereft of diversity in any activity. Close to 99 percent of its population is of one race. Whose students do you think have higher academic achievement — theirs or ours? According to the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, the academic performance of U.S. high school students in reading, math and science pales in comparison with their diversity-starved counterparts in Japan.
Should companies be treated equally? According to a Wall Street Journal op/ed (9/7/2009) by Manhattan Institute’s energy expert Robert Bryce, Exxon Mobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with its pollutants. The company paid $600,000 in fines and fees. A recent Associated Press story (5/14/2013) reported that “more than 573,000 birds are killed by the country’s wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife
Society Bulletin.”
The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted windmill farms, sometimes called bird Cuisinarts, for killing eagles and other protected bird species. In fact, AP reports that the Obama administration has shielded the industry from liability and has helped keep the scope of the deaths secret. It’s interesting that The Associated Press chose to report the story only after the news about its reporters being secretly investigated. That caused the Obama administration to fall a bit out of favor with them. But what the heck, the 14th Amendment’s requirement of “equal protection” before the law for everybody can be cast aside in the name of diversity, so why can’t it be cast aside in the name of saving the planet? There are politically favored industries just as there are politically favored groups.
What’s the difference between a progressive, a liberal and a racist? In some cases, not much. President Woodrow Wilson was a leading progressive who believed in notions of racial superiority and inferiority. He was so enthralled with D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” movie, glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, that he invited various dignitaries to the White House to view it with him. During one private screening, President Wilson exclaimed: “It’s like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” When President Wilson introduced racial segregation to the civil service, the NAACP and the National Independent Political League protested. Wilson vigorously defended it, arguing that segregation was in the interest of Negroes.
Thomas Sowell, in “Intellectuals and Race,” documents other progressives who were advocates of theories of racial inferiority. They included former presidents of Stanford University and MIT, among others. Eventually, the views of progressives fell out of favor. They changed their name to liberals, but in the latter part of the 20th century, the name liberals fell into disrepute. Now they are back to calling themselves progressives.
I’m not arguing that today’s progressives are racists like their predecessors, but they share a contempt for liberty, just as President Wilson did. According to Hillsdale College history professor Paul A. Rahe — author of “Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift” — in his National Review Online (4/11/13) article “Progressive Racism,” Wilson wanted to persuade his compatriots to get “beyond the Declaration of Independence.” Wilson said the document “did not mention the questions” of his day, adding, “It is of no consequence to us.” My question is: Why haven’t today’s progressives disavowed their racist predecessors?
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
Liberals who love diversity, don't you understand liberals are racists and you're responsible for bird genocide? Also, like many white nationalists, this guy recognizes the strength of homogeneity in Japan and that it obviously has never caused them any problems. 
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Jun 19, 2013 17:09
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- Frog Act
- Feb 10, 2012
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"At Lakehead University here in Thunder Bay there are now washrooms designated for men, women and LGBT, which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. Presumably, LU acknowledges that transgender persons entering either of the other washrooms is not acceptable. Presumably, too, transgender students accept that with the right to protection from discrimination comes the responsibility to avoid pushing the bounds of acceptance too far.
There comes a point in all matters where a line is reached. That line was crossed when the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission penalized a storeowner for acting reasonably and understandably to protect her livelihood and her customers from unreasonable and ultimately selfish behaviour."
This is the most bullshit non-argument I can think of. "Pushing the bounds of acceptance too far" is just a nice euphemism for "at least we're not threatening you with death", and that is absolutely abhorrent. Furthermore, it's bullshit that they would designate a bathroom for LGBT individuals specifically as opposed to just allow transpersons to use the bathroom that aligns with their identity.
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Sep 17, 2013 21:43
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- Frog Act
- Feb 10, 2012
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This incredibly awful editorial was in my newspaper today entitled - "Billionaires - ya gotta love em!"
quote:WASHINGTON — Rush Limbaugh can relax. The popular “demon of the right” has been replaced at least through the midterms by the Koch brothers, Charles and David.
Who?
Exactly. Though cable and online news junkies know the names, the vast majority of Americans probably have no idea who the Kochs are. They’re about to find out.
For the uninitiated, the brothers are libertarian billionaires whose vast industries in petroleum, asphalt, natural gas liquids, coal and ethanol employ 60,000 people. More to the point, they are spending gobs of their own money to sway politics toward free-market principles and away from current government expansionist trends.
For this, they have been targeted by Democrats, who are not exactly penniless when it comes to advancing their own politicians and policies. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke down all barriers to protocol recently when he called the Kochs “un-American.”
Charles Koch, in an op/ed in The Wall Street Journal, responded by calling Democrats “collectivists.”
“Instead of encouraging free and open debate, collectivists strive to discredit and intimidate opponents,” wrote Koch. “They engage in character assassination. (I should know, as the almost daily target of their attacks.) This is the approach that Arthur Schopenhauer described in the 19th century, that Saul Alinsky famously advocated in the 20th, and that so many despots have infamously practiced. Such tactics are the antithesis of what is required for a free society — and a telltale sign that the collectivists do not have good answers.”
Billionaires — ya gotta love ’em.
But they’re so much easier to hate.
Thus, Democrats are trying to make the Koch brothers the new face of the Republican Party. Conveniently, the name Koch is pronounced the same as that other capitalist goliath, Coke.
Appointing a person — or a pair of brothers — as the human face of the “enemy” is not a novel idea. During a previous election cycle, the Obama administration identified Limbaugh as the true leader of the Republican Party. This was an easy sell as many Republicans genuflected to Limbaugh, even apologizing when they might have offended him.
And Limbaugh, whose grandiosity needs no buffing, was all too willing to accept service on the credential. The more the left hates Limbaugh, the richer he gets. Oh, please, Mr. Democrat, hate my guts some more.
Mr. Limbaugh, take your bow, it’s Koch time.
The doubling down on the Kochs has been in play for some months, advanced by frequent mentions among liberal commentators who, though perhaps not as influential as Limbaugh, have large followings. But Reid’s McCarthyesque name-calling took hell to the devil. It was not only cringe-inducing but also profoundly sad. One would hope the leader of the Senate Democrats might have better rhetorical devices at his intellectual disposal.
Reid suffers no remorse and fired back that he was delighted if people now knew who those un-Americans are. The more who despise the Kochs, the better. The Kochs aren’t just leaders of the Republican Party, as Democrats are proposing; they are the face of the Haves. To dislike the Kochs is to dislike the wealthy in general.
This is really the heart of the Democratic proposition. As the midterm elections take shape around the debate about income inequality, the Kochs personify the uncaring-est of the 1 percenters. Before November comes and goes, the Kochs may as well have been tarred and feathered and made to ride backward on a mule down Pennsylvania Avenue.
One needn’t support the brothers’ preference for unfettered markets or their willingness to fund positions that might favor them. Plenty of conservatives disagree with their support for tea party insurgents and their climate-change skepticism.
Allowing the super-wealthy to disproportionately influence political outcomes may indeed be bad for the democratic process — and that’s of legitimate concern to all. But one’s eyes should be wide open when people are singled out as un-American. What’s next? A Senate committee investigating such un-American activities as advocating free-market principles or pursuing capitalist endeavors?
Of course, I’m kidding. That could never happen here, except it sort of already has. When Reid called the Kochs un-American, a powerful government official fired a shot across the bow of two private citizens who have acted within the law while contributing wealth to the economy through employment.
Yes, it was bad when right-wingers called Obama un-American, but Obama is the most powerful man in the world and the rabble is just that. Reid owes the Kochs — and the American people — an apology.
Just literally slopping on the Koch brothers knob the whole time. This sets a new low in official editorials.
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Apr 8, 2014 23:04
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May 13, 2024 08:35
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Mar 9, 2012 01:42
HOLDER'S PEOPLE 