Friday, April 22, 2016

The Council Has Spoken! Our Watcher's Council Results

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The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

"Holly came from Miami F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she..." - Lou Reed, "Walk On The Wild Side"

"All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man." - John Irving, "The World According to Garp"

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” - Aldous Huxley

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This week's winning essay,Bookworm Room's It’s time for conservatives to take advantage of the Left’s reality denial Focuses on what she sees as a the Left's reality denial...the fashionable confusion over what's male and what's female, what's right and what's wrong, and who gets free speech and who doesn't particularly in our universities. Here's a slice:

I finally got around to watching last week’s 60 Minutes, which had a segment devoted to Schuyler Bailar, a person who got admitted to Harvard as to swim on its women’s swim team, but who had breast removal surgery over the summer and presented at Harvard asking to swim on the men’s team. Harvard, reeking of political correctness (you can see oleaginous pride oozing off of the interviewed coaches), agreed, which infuriated me. Schuyler, as a woman, would have set breaststroke records deserving of a place on a highly competitive swim team. Schuyler, as a man, is a chubby, hip-heavy slow poke, who routinely comes in last.

Given that I loathe Harvard, why does this infuriate me? Shouldn’t I be cheering anything that lowers Harvard’s standing in the world?

Well, in theory, yes. In fact, though, I think it just stinks that, in the name of political correctness, some deserving young man with good grades and a fast breaststroke couldn’t get into Harvard (presuming, as I do, that such a man exists) because chubby little Schuyler got his place. It seems to me that if Schuyler wants to play with the big boys, Schuyler should also have to play by big boy rules — one of which is, if you’re really slow, you’re not on the team.

As far as I’m concerned, Schulyer’s gender “bait and switch” is tantamount to committing fraud against Harvard, although Harvard is happily complicit in its own victimization. Thinking in terms of fraud, though, has legal ramifications. If there is no reality anymore — in other words, if reality is shaped by our subjective desires rather than by any objective “facts” (and isn’t “facts” such a silly, old-fashioned word?) — we truly have entered a brave new world legally.

Once you start down that road, it’s a short stop to rethinking entirely the latest chapter in the Left’s despicable and un-American efforts to stifle free speech and association. I’m speaking, of course, of the lawsuit that 20 Democrat attorney generals have launched against ExxonMobile for “fraudulently” denying climate change. In the course of this litigation, the same attorney generals are attacking any conservative institutions that are speaking out against these Stasi tactics:

[U]nder the pretext of combatting fraud, these officials, clothed in immense power, have started what can only be termed a campaign of intimidation against businesses and organizations advocating a thoughtful, cautious approach to public policies dealing with man’s role in impacting the global climate.

Begun by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and followed-on by California AG Kamala Harris, this effort started by looking at the efforts of ExxonMobil in dealing with proposals that would have a tremendous impact on the energy sector in the United States. Among their concerns were the research and education organizations that ExxonMobil may have supported.

Schneiderman and Harris were soon joined by another eighteen attorneys general — and when this effort was questioned by CEI’s Hans Bader in January, CEI found itself to be the target!

Last week, Claude Walker, the AG for the U.S. Virgin Islands, subpoenaed the donor records for CEI — sending a clear signal to both CEI and its donors that such dissent simply will not be tolerated.

Let’s be clear here: Exxon has a fundamental right to support whatever non-profit organizations it wants to, and to do so privately. CEI has a right to accept donations from any U.S. Citizen or U.S. company it wants to. Both have the right to keep their donations private, a right that is protected under the First Amendment, and enshrined in the Supreme Court’s 1957 NAACP v. Alabama decision.

As it happens, after practicing law for almost three decades, I know a little bit about fraud: A fraud claim requires some semblance of objective fact as the standard by which to measure the defendant’s actionable deviation from those facts. Thus, an essential element in any fraud claim is the existence of a “material fact” as to which the defendant lied.


Much more at the link.

In our non-Council category, the we had a three way tie for first place between Caroline Glick's Obama's Political Legacy submitted by The Noisy Room, Andrew McCarthy's piece in Pajamas MediaPay Attention! While Primaries Distract, Obama Shreds Constitutional Governance submitted by Nice Deb , and David P. Goldman (AKA Spengler) withTo be kind is to be cruel, to be cruel is to be kindsubmitted by Bookworm Room .

According to our bylaws, on such occasions I get to put on my Watcher's hat and break the tie, which in this case means I have two Council members peeved at me instead of just one. Well, they don't pay me the big bucks for nothing...

David Goldman's 'To Be Kind is To Be Cruel' is yet another one of Spengler's masterful pieces. His take on how Islamofaschism uses the West's humane impulses against it to intimidate and ultimately subjugate it as well as how to combat this tactic should be required reading for anyone at all interested in turning this tide and saving our freedom. I had no problem picking it as this weeks' winner in our non-Council category.

Here are this week’s full results: Fausta and Puma By Design were unable to vote this week, but were either unaffected or not subject to our usual 2/3 vote penalty for not voting. Two other members voted partially, one whom picked only a first choice in both categories and another who did not pick a second choice in the Council category.

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners


See you next week!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every  Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks' nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

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