Clowns. They're all clowns.

Yesterday, the progressive left exploded in outrage over the conditions under which immigrant children were being held by the Trump administration, citing an article from AZ Central. Looking at one of the pics, it's easy to see what set them off:

The only problem was that the article (and accompanying pictures) was from 2014, smack in the middle of Barack Obama's second term. A lot of tweets were very quickly deleted, but not before they were captured for posterity over at Twitchy.

Well, those progressive geniuses are at it again. Today, it's this pic...from a 2016 article during the waning months of the Obama administration:

It's worth noting that, according to the two year old article, this isn't a "prison bus" for babies, but one equipped to safely transport toddlers and small children for field trips. But don't bother telling that to reliable CNN token "conservative" Ana Navarro:

America, this cannot be who we are. https://t.co/RaINBHGh0Y

— Ana Navarro (@ananavarro) May 28, 2018

And in the likely event that she deletes the tweet, here's the screen shot:

Clowns. All of them.

NFL rules and the first amendment

National Football League owners approved a rule this week requiring on-field players and team staff to stand during the national anthem. Predictably on the left, there's a 4-alarm freakout over first amendment rights and threats to boycott the NFL.

Jacksonville Jaguars defensive end Dawuane Smoot weighed in on Twitter:

Freedom of speech does not exist for NFL players now, we get fined for protesting for something we believe in, FINE ME!!!! You can’t change my opinion, and can’t stop my protest I have a right as an American to protest when I feel there is injustice in this country.

— Dawuane Smoot (@Bigsmoot_94) May 23, 2018

OK, everyone, repeat after me: "This is not a first amendment issue!"

Freedom of speech still exists for Dawuane Smoot and every other player in the NFL. The first amendment to the constitution restrains the government from infringing on your rights to freedom of speech, not your employer.

My employer often sends me to speak at marketing and industry events, and if I opened a talk with "...but first, let me cram my pet social justice cause down your throat", I'd be quickly shown the door, and for very good reason.

Go ahead and use your fame and name recognition to protest, but do it on your own time. Better yet, use some of that fat paycheck and buy some commercial air time during the game to make your statement.

Journalism in decline

I read this Reuters article on last night's bombing in Mississauga, Ontario, and the closing paragraph had me scratching my head:

India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said in a tweet that the she was in constant touch with the Consul General in Toronto and the Indian High Commissioner in Canada and that the missions would work round the clock.

Um...why? Sure, the bombing took place at an Indian restaurant, but beyond that, there's nothing in the article hinting that that had anything to do with it, or that any Indian nationals were targeted or injured in the bombing.

Whatever happened to who, what, when, where, why, and how? This is lazy, incomplete reporting.

The War On Boys

Blowing off the dust and clearing the cobwebs here so I can put up a new post. Geez...it's been a while.

There's been another school shooting, which means it's time for another toxic "debate" on gun laws. I use scare quotes there because, as we all know, there's no real debate, just meaningless posturing and moral preening from the gun grabbers and repeated denials that they don't really want to take away your guns when we know that's just not true.

But as always with these incidents, our shitty politics drives everyone into a pointless argument over the tool used by the latest unhinged high school kid while we all studiously ignore the more important point: Why in the hell are so many boys opening fire on their classmates? If over the last 20 years there'd been a rising trend of boys stabbing their classmates to death, what would we all be talking about? Surely not "common sense" knife control. Instead, we'd be having a more useful debate over what's causing boys to act out in such a horrifying way. It's time to separate the debate over why school shooters do what they do from the debate over the tools that they use.

I hate to break out the "back in my day" shtick, but when I was a kid in elementary school, boys were allowed to be boys. We played tag (sometimes aggressively), we played dodgeball (very often aggressively), and we got into fist fights. By the time we were in high school, we'd more or less sorted our shit out. Not that we were all perfectly well-adjusted young adults or anything like that, but we weren't complete and total assholes, either.

But something happened starting in the 1980s or thereabouts, and boys were no longer allowed to be boys. Boys became something to be feared and despised and, ultimately, controlled. In the process, boys' natural tendency towards aggressive play became something to be suppressed and stigmatized. These observations are nothing new. Christina Hoff Sommers wrote on this topic 18 years ago.

But it's not just what's happening in schools. In media and pop culture, one of the few remaining acceptable objects of ridicule is the American male. Just watch TV for a while, and watch the non-stop parade of male inferiority. Here's just one example of it in an Allstate commercial currently airing pretty regularly. The open contempt for males is palpable.

It's time we had an honest discussion about the "war on boys" and its links to school shootings.