The #MeToo Movement and Mike Pence

If women had only known all it took to shatter the glass ceiling was to accuse your boss of sexual harassment, workplace history would have been very different! Of course — much like a frontal assault on a machinegun nest — the first over the top aren’t getting the plum jobs, but their sacrifice makes it possible for rear echelon women to either achieve or guilt their way into the ‘C’ suites.

The bosses were all for wiping out the barriers that produced a serviceable work–life balance if it meant women were handy 24/7. For them, taking work home meant road testing the new intern.

All this is why it was so refreshing to find a man in a powerful position who had strict rules regarding workplace harassment. More important, he followed those rules to the letter. That meant he was permanently immune to Gloria Allred–type ambushes at Groping Gulch.

Those rules keep his reputation intact and, equally important and often overlooked, the rules keep the reputations of the women who work for him equally intact. His is an office run on performance and not pheromones.

In short, this man is nothing short of a paragon workplace ethics and respect for women. So, you can imagine my surprise when I visited the websites of the National Organization of Women, Emily’s List, the Feminist Majority and even Jezebel and found zero recognition for this pioneer in establishing workplace boundaries.

I soon got the impression you’d see Mitch McConnell attend a Roy Moore Victory Party before these feminist organizations would recognize Vice President Mike Pence.

Way back in March of this year, before our current runaway testosterone tempest, the Washington Post breathlessly announced that Pence had strict rules for his office. The commandments banned Lauer Locks on his office door, because he didn’t hold closed–door meetings one–on–one with women. No intimate after–work dinners with single women either and no attendance at functions where alcohol is served if his wife isn’t there with him.

Pence wouldn’t even wear a hotel bathrobe unless there’s a swim suit under it and he’s at the pool with his family.

Think of it. Following these four simple rules would have kept potted plants unmolested by sperm donors and saved the jobs of Harvey Weinstein, Leon Wiesletier, Michael Oreskes, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Bill O’Reilly, Mark Halperin, Garrison Keillor, Glenn Thrush, Harold Ford, Jr., Joe Barton, Al Franken, John Conyers and the rules probably would have salvaged Trent Franks, because I doubt he would have popped the surrogate question in a general staff meeting.

Optimist that I am, I even think if Bill Clinton had followed the rules Hillary would be a happier woman and Chelsea might have a sibling.

Think of the relief it would bring to a young woman knowing she could spend time with her boss without being sent an unsolicited souvenir cellphone photo of the star attraction or a brief personal exercise video after she got home.

Maybe the response of women at leftist media institutions was caused by the Stockholm Syndrome for it was uniformly negative. You’d have thought Pence had stated sex was determined at birth, rather than by a family meeting sometime around age five.

The truth is the feminist and sophisticate reaction to Pence’s refusal to sexually harass women or put them in an awkward situation was so extreme you’d have thought Charlie Rose invited them to join him in a three–legged race around his desk.

The LA Times asked, “Mike Pence won’t dine alone with a woman who’s not his wife. Is that sexist?” An angry UCLA gender professor (is there any other kind?) dredged up by the Times thundered, “I believe this is gender discrimination. If you don’t go out to dinner with a woman, it’s hard to have a woman be your campaign manager or your chief of staff or whoever you need to regularly meet with.”

Although I think she’s confusing a caterer with a campaign aide.

What woman in her right mind would want to miss the chance to network with Harvey Weinstein’s hands?

And Aaron Blake, a male at the Post jockeying for the role of feminist fraternizer, sniffed Pence’s rules “reeked of sexism.” Which I would think beats reeking of John Conyers’ cologne, but that’s just me.

And Vox, which is currently conducting an in–house purge of its own sex harassers, was ready for a special persecutor, “Vice President Pence’s ‘never dine alone with a woman’ rule isn’t honorable. It’s probably illegal.”

And I could find no evidence of any OpMedia change of heart.

All this leads me to conclude as far as our leftist cultural arbiters are concerned, when it comes to sexual harassment, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Support Your Local Turnstile Jumper

Petty criminals are living in a golden age. Never before in the history of mankind have the elites of Western society been so concerned with the inconvenience enforcing the law imposes on the lawbreaking community.

Our ruling elite has this naïve belief the order they see in the more fashionable parts of their respective cities is the natural state of man. When in truth, Devil’s Night in Detroit is the natural state of man.

In Washington, DC the city council is most concerned about the law violating people.

The reporters at the Washington Post, ever prepared to hop aboard the next cultural fad, have found, “Some legislators are questioning whether fare evasion [on the Metro subway and bus system] should be a crime at all, arguing that targeted enforcement campaigns are bound to ensnare poor and low–income people who don’t have the money to pay their fares — let alone fines.”

This “fare evasion” worry is an offshoot of the “mass incarceration” delusion that posits minorities are being rounded up and thrown into prison on an unprecedented scale. It’s difficult to understand how people residing in a jail, after having been convicted by a jury, constitute an outrage. Common sense would conclude mass incarceration is a result of mass lawbreaking, combined with improvement in law enforcement technology.

It’s not a chicken or the egg question. It’s a chicken, egg, omelet progression.

The defies all logic part of the city council conundrum is how easy it is to avoid being arrested for fare evasion. The choices are practically endless. Pay the fare. Walk. Take a cab. Ride a bike. Carpool. Stay away from the Metro. None of those choices result in arrest. Only the choice to break the law results in arrest.

Yet, it’s the arrest and not the lawbreaking that concerns the council. And the DC isn’t alone. Other leftist hotbeds are working to decriminalize ride stealing. Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. is proving you don’t have to be Harvey Weinstein for him to let you off the hook. According to The Wall Street Journal, “The Manhattan district attorney’s office says it has largely stopped prosecuting subway–fare evaders, offering many offenders alternatives such as counseling and community service.”

In 2015 the entire state of Washington decriminalized turnstile jumping for minors. Their excuse being “such convictions would give teenagers criminal records and that it would be difficult for them to make it to court to challenge a citation.” Unless the court is on a subway line.

Removing responsibility for teenagers is the real pipeline to mass incarceration. The WaPost may contend it’s “unclear whether decriminalization has led to more fare evasion.” But I can give you a hint. Ask an illegal, during a break between demonstrations for his “rights,” what lax enforcement has done for the border–jumping community.

This is where the incoherence of the left’s philosophy regarding responsibility and maturity is so obvious. According to the cultural Marxists who rule us, a four-year-old boy is mature enough to decide if he wants to grow up as a man or a woman and start a drug regimen that will affect him the rest of his life.

While a 16-year-old male is not quite mature enough to evaluate the consequences of breaking the law.

One of the tools used to beat law enforcement into submission is statistical disparity. Cherry–picking data is the greatest gift to race hustlers since Jesse Jackson’s first paternity suit. A New York group contends arrests for fare evasion happen more often in low–income neighborhoods. This has all the scientific rigor of the claim that you won’t find many cats in a neighborhood with Chinese restaurants.

Arrests reflect the number of times the crime occurs. At the Capitol Hill Metro station there are very few arrests for fare evasion, unless Antifa is in town. I suppose the system could post a Turnstile Jumper Apprehension Team, where it would be as lonely as the Maytag repair man, but it would not be a good use of taxpayer funds.

The ACLU is among the professional agitators pushing decriminalization. Nassim Moshiree explains, “Absolutely there’s been a raised consciousness on this that did not exist 20 or 30 years ago.” And right he is, since approximately 30 years ago is when the New York City subway system was a dangerous and disgusting carnival of aberrant behavior that repelled riders.

The New York subway started its climb out of the sewer when respect for if not the rule of law, then at least the consequences of law was reestablished. Today none of these preening social justice warriors remember those days. Instead they are more than willing to risk the safety of your commute in the future to appease law breakers today.

Virginia Politicians Surprised Drivers Object to Destination Tax

The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) opened a new toll road recently. The highway has been in existence since 1982, but the toll gantries are new. Rush hour tolling, between 5:30 and 9:30 AM, is a test of how badly you want to reach The Swamp.

VDOT uses a system called ‘dynamic tolling’, which works out to ‘do you feel lucky’? Instead of a nice predictable toll that’s the same every morning, Swamp Pike tolls adjust according to how much traffic is on the road. The goal is to keep One Percenters and vehicular communes moving along at a nice, even 55 mph.

This is harder than it seems, since many DC–area motorists drive like the last transportation they operated was a burro. Our ‘diverse’ drivers have a tendency to pause and contemplate cars stopped on the shoulder, flashing blue lights and the odd grocery bag blowing across the freeway.

On the second day the inbound toll peaked at $40 dollars one way for a 10–mile trip. Frankly, I wouldn’t pay $40 to drive into DC and watch Roy Moore sign high school yearbooks. If you want to be penalized by the government, it’s cheaper to take up smoking. One would have to inhale 13 cartons of cigarettes by noon each day to reach $40.00 in taxes.

What’s really interesting was the response of transportation officials to criticism. Their off–hand justification was punish–the–driver propaganda that’s common among transportation wallahs nationwide.

Sec. of Transportation Aubrey Lane told the Washington Post, “No one has to pay a toll. You simply could have put another person in your car and avoid a toll [sic]…everyone has a choice…we wanted to change behavior, we don’t have the resources to continue to lay asphalt and have congested roadways.”

Lane is offering the bandit’s choice: Your money or your life.

The people on the receiving end of this Let’em–Eat–Cakeism aren’t gun owners or disreputable people like Trump voters. They’re among the state’s most productive citizens who are JUST TRYING TO GET TO WORK!

When it comes to trying to stamp out ‘privilege,’ solo drivers are right up there with white people as far as the left is concerned. How dare they want to drive to work and have the flexibility to come and go as they please.

Think of the backlash if this offhand dismissal of genuine constituent concern was applied to other areas of life. Would a police chief confronted by women worried by increasing crime tell them it’s time to “change their behavior”? And then suggest they buy a gun and stop dressing so provocatively?

How about parents dealing with over–crowded schools? Would superintends tell mothers their kids are going to have to get used to someone sitting in their lap, and by the way you might consider using stronger birth control?

And isn’t is strange how transportation experts assure us building more roads is pointless because new highways are an automobile magnet. While no politician has ever said the city won’t build more schools because the buildings just fill up with kids.

The real thumb–in–the–driver’s–eye for this particular toll road is the millions of dollars raised won’t be spent on increasing road capacity. Instead the money will go increasing bicycle capacity, along with other “transit improvements” that include new bus routes and park–and–ride facilities.

Politician’s obsession with forcing their constituents into carpools is another example of elected hypocrisy. Like the Washington, DC Metro board members who it was discovered didn’t actually take the subway, I can’t think of any elected official that has ever been a member of a carpool.

The only time most of those hypocrites want to cozy up to constituents is in a hot tub.

The absolute topper though, is that drivers docilely accept the fact their transportation priorities will continue to be ignored in the future. We’ve come full circle in Virginia. In the 19^th Century state government was too small to pay for roads and most of its effort was devoted to keeping the black man down. The solution was privately–owned toll roads.

Now state government is too big and too lazy to build new roads, so in a particularly larcenous twist it takes a road like I–66 that has already been paid for and makes it a turnpike. It’s time for driver’s everywhere to rise up an exhibit some roads rage. We should be circling our respective state capitals like Comanches until legislators start expanding the highway network.

If that won’t work then it’s time to go nuclear. Force politicians to use mass transit to get to work until they build some new roads for the rest of us.

I’m Glad I’m Not an Alabama Voter

More specifically, I’m glad I’m not an Alabama conservative. The choice confronting conservatives in the December 12^th special senate election is very difficult. But not so tough that our cultural arbiters aren’t eager to give conservatives and Christians the benefit of their wisdom.

The same Opposition Media—Pundit—Celebrity nexus that didn’t condemn Teen Vogue for its recent issue introducing young girls to the “joys” of anal sex, is now urging Christians to vote “their convictions.” This is certainly a welcome change from being characterized as figures of fun who dabble in hate, but I’m still skeptical of the OpMedia’s sudden admiration for our sterling character.

Particularly when they urge us to choose a candidate based on moral beliefs the OpMedia routinely mocks and derides. Our media betters want Christian voters to pick an ideal candidate. Someone who would look good in a Baptist pulpit, instead of the left’s hotel bathrobe.

Naturally, their choice is Democrat Doug Jones instead of hands–on Republican Roy Moore. The argument isn’t all that compelling, particularly when one recalls all of Roy Moore’s alleged victims survived, whereas Democrat Ted Kennedy’s didn’t.

This election is also noteworthy in that it reverses the usual nose–holding option conservatives confront. I recently wrote how I was tired of being told to hold my nose and vote for country club conservatives. The Republican establishment would patiently explain that even though this spineless weathervane could never be depended upon to fight for bedrock conservative issues, he would be marginally better in office than his leftist opponent, since he’s a sure vote for Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader.

This year conservatives have a chance to vote for a somewhat tarnished candidate that will fight tooth and toenail for conservative causes and the establishment tells us to forget about that nose thing and just vote Democrat.

From the beginning I was suspicious of the alleged underage abuse allegations against Moore. I’ve worked in campaigns for over 40 years and timing is a key factor in the negative side of the campaign. I’ve been the media consultant for races where we had devastating information regarding the opponent and we sat on it for weeks or months until such a time as the information could be released and the opposing campaign would not have time to recover.

I suppose I could accept the Washington Post’s claim that their scoop on Moore was generated in–house and not handed to them on a platter like the Russian Dossier. Only, if the stories about Moore’s alleged behavior were “common knowledge,” why did the knowledge only become common nationwide after Moore defeated Luther Strange and it was too late to put someone else on the ballot?

That convenient timing looks like a premeditated decision to hold the story and thereby influence the election. Then there’s the yearbook signature that’s an exact copy of the Judge Moore signature on the woman’s divorce decree from years later, but bears no relation to his unofficial personal signature at the time the yearbook was supposedly signed.

The OpMedia is doing its part to make voting Democrat less painful for wavering conservatives and Christians. Why Democrat Doug Jones’ middle name is ‘Moderate’ according to his glowing press clippings. He’s going to focus on jobs, education and infrastructure. There’s zero mention of Jones being the frontman for a George Soros–funded effort to politicize US Attorneys.

According to Breitbart, the Soros–funded effort supported ‘ending mass incarceration’ and its report — authored by Jones — used language similar to the Obama Justice Dept. effort to grant de facto amnesty to illegal aliens.

Running in the middle and governing from the left is common for Democrats. Last election Virginia had its first transvestite candidate for the House of Delegates. This man in woman’s clothing assured voters that he also intended to focus on meat–and–potatoes issues like transportation.

You can imagine voter’s shock after he won when they learned his first issue in Richmond would be forcing insurance companies to cover ‘gender transition’ and ‘gender reassignment’ surgery. Evidently, the road our shift–shifter was most interested in improving was the one between his house and the gender–bending clinic.

Alabama voters will see the same transition when Jones gets to Washington, absent the pronoun switch.

As far as I’m concerned, the voting decision for Christians comes down to a single comparison. Roy Moore may or may not have fondled babies 40 years ago, but if Doug Jones gets to Washington he’ll be voting to kill babies and fund Planned Parenthood from day one.

That’s why if I were an Alabama voter I’d choose Roy Moore now and support a conservative opponent in the 2020 Republican primary.