Monthly Archives: February 2017

Don’t Offend Russia?

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Heaven forfend.  Or at least that was Michael O’Hanlon’s (Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution) concern when he proposed An Alternative to NATO Expansion That Won’t Antagonize Russia.  Never mind that what’s in American national interest is what matters, not that subset of it that won’t upset an enemy of ours.

[T]hese two countries [Ukraine and NATO], as well as other Eastern European neutral states, get no protection from NATO.

I’ll leave aside the value of NATO protection as that organization is currently constituted, funded, and armed; that’s a separate discussion.  No, the nub of O’Hanlon’s misunderstanding is this:

They are also too close to Russia for NATO to protect them, absent the deployment of a large and permanent forward defense.

He wrote that as though he thought forward deployment would be a bad thing.  In some respects it would be, but not for the reason he thinks.  Forward deployment of lots of heavy units would be foolish; such units would simply be targets in the event of a Russian decision to invade (aside from the fact that, with modern weapons and Russia’s forward deployment of nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad and its deployment of nuclear cruise missiles in western Russia, such units would be targets anywhere they’re stationed).  On the other hand, forward deployment of smaller, but still combat capable, units would send a very clear message that any Russian invasion would be an invasion of much more than just the nominally target nation.

On top of that, they most assuredly are not “too close to Russia.”  They merely abut Russia.  Russia is too close to eastern European nations by O’Hanlon’s logic.  Then he suggested this in all seriousness:

It is time that Western nations seek to negotiate a new security architecture for neutral countries in Eastern Europe today. The core concept would be permanent neutrality, at least in terms of formal membership in treaty-based mutual-defense organizations. The countries in question collectively make a broken-up arc from Europe’s far north to its south—Finland and Sweden; Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus; Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan; Cyprus plus Serbia, and possibly other Balkan states. …

The new security architecture would require that Russia, like NATO, commit to uphold the security of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and other states in the region. Russia would have to withdraw its troops from those countries in a verifiable manner

It is, indeed, time for a new security architecture, but O’Hanlon’s idea is little different from unspoken surrender born of false premises.  Permanent neutrality?  Russia won’t allow it; it never has.  Russia commit to uphold another nation’s security?  It’s already partitioned Georgia and occupied parts of it, and it’s dividing up Moldava, working as it is to carve off Transnistria.  It’s partitioned and occupied parts of Ukraine, explicitly crapping on the Budapest Memorandum in the process.

O’Hanlon can’t be that ignorant.

This isn’t naïveté.  This is idiocy.  I repeat: what’s in American national interest is what matters, not that subset of it that won’t upset an enemy of ours.  The same holds for Europe, as well, most especially those nations of eastern Europe, under the Russian gun as they so plainly are.

The Sons of the American Legion is a Gang?

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This happened in a Dave & Buster’s restaurant last Saturday in Kentwood, MI, but corporate headquarters in Dallas has confirmed the thing and said it’s corporate-wide policy.  Two members of the Sons of The American Legion, wearing their SAL vests, and their wives entered the restaurant hoping for a nice dinner.  Management stopped them and told the men to turn their vests inside out.  The men and their wives chose to leave, instead of suffering the insult.  Victor Murdock, Assistant Director of American Legion Post 179 in Grandville, MI, and one of the men, told 24 Hour News 8,

It’s just a good group of guys that want to raise awareness for PTSD, fallen veterans, for the ones that didn’t come back, even for those who did come back and are dealing with situations they never got over.

And

The vest is one way Murdock and other members convey their message. After all, they say, there are few things that define American pride more than the flag and the eagle featured on the vest.

“It says we believe in America. We believe in our troops. We support our veterans,” Murdock said.

The full statement, from April Spearman, Dave & Buster’s Vice corporate President for Marketing:

We are extremely grateful to all of our active military members and veterans and are honored to have them as valued guests in any of our locations.

Our dress code, which prohibits evidence of gang affiliation, is in place to ensure that everyone is able to enjoy themselves in a fun and safe environment. Though we understand that the American Legion promotes a positive mission, for consistency reasons we cannot allow motorcycle jackets displaying patches or rockers. Our policies are in no way meant to be disrespectful and we apologize for any frustration this may have caused.

In addition, please know that this group was not asked to leave, but to simply turn their jackets inside out. Again, we apologize for any misunderstanding.

Because this affiliate of the American Legion is equivalent to a gang.  Notice, too, that last bit of disingenuousity.  No, the four were not asked to leave.  They were just told to disrespect everything they stood for.

Absent a turnover in management, Dave & Buster’s has lost my business.

Constitutional Carry

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That’s the term currently in vogue for the permitless carrying of handguns, whether openly or concealed; it’s the concept that the 2nd Amendment is all the permit an American citizen needs to carry his handgun.

New Hampshire has become the 12th State eliminate the need for a State-issued permit for concealed carry; it already had permitless open carry.  With the bill signed into law by Governor Chris Sununu, a New Hampshire citizen is allowed

the unlicensed transport or carry of a firearm in a vehicle, or on or about one’s person, whether openly or concealed, loaded or unloaded…if that individual is not otherwise prohibited by statute from possessing a firearm in the state of New Hampshire.

[Aside: it’s too bad Federal laws can’t be this brief and to the point.]

Of course, the Progressive-Democrat gun control persons are up in arms about this.  Raymond Buckley, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman, for instance:

New Hampshire has imminent issues that need the Governor’s attention, but further relaxing the state’s notoriously lax gun laws is not one of them[.]

Never mind that there have been zero school shootings in New Hampshire since 1990.  California has had 19 school shooting deaths just since 2010.

DC had at least 32 incidents of gunfire within 500ft of a school, during school hours, in 2011-2012; the District still has one of the tightest gun control régimes, even after Heller.  Chicago, also with one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation, averaged 82 shootings per week in 2016 through August of that year.  And on and on.

“Notoriously lax”—read: Progressive-Democrats can’t impose their rule asserting government control over the matter.

Of Course He Does

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California has an infrastructure failure problem that involves everything from its roads to its dams and other water control facilities.  Governor Jerry Brown (D) says it will cost $187 billion to fix its infrastructure, and he wants $12 billion per year of Federal funding to help with that.  In actuality, Brown doesn’t want Federal funding, he wants what Federal funding consists of: money taxed by the Federal government from the good citizens of financial straitened New York to help pay for his needs, he wants money taxed by the Federal government from the good citizens of nearly bankrupt Illinois to help pay for his needs, he wants money taxed by the Federal government from the good citizens of fiscally responsible and so flush Texas and Utah to help pay for his needs.

He doesn’t care that his State’s infrastructure is in such poor shape because he and prior administrations of both parties deferred maintenance they knew at the time was promptly needed.

When asked why California hadn’t spent more on infrastructure before, Mr Brown said it wasn’t seen as a priority before. “This is the way the world works,” he said. “The immediate takes precedence over the more fundamental.”

Leadership wouldn’t acquiesce so meekly to the immediate, though.  Leadership would push the matter and get his bosses, the citizens of California in the present case, behind the more fundamental.

Oh, and there is the “green” lobby, too.  Amid all the current plenty of water, all that’s happening is flooding (those badly maintained dams are part of this problem, to be sure), denial of that plentiful water to farmers, and routing of plentiful water that isn’t flooding straight to the sea.  For instance,

the Central Valley Project Improvement Act[] diverted 1.5 million acre-feet of water—roughly a fifth of the total water delivery—annually to wildlife and green hobbyhorses. That ultimately means flushing it out into the ocean. “Basically, they’ve now legislated a permanent drought in the San Joaquin Valley,” Mark Borba, a cotton farmer….

That’s still going on.  And this:

The San Joaquin River Restoration Program, the result of a 2006 settlement in a lawsuit over fish habitat, took away another some 225,000 acre-feet of water annually.

Progressive-Democrats are willing only to spend OPM; fiscal responsibility, discipline in spending their own money is an alien concept.

It’s certainly true that in a republican democracy all of the States are in the nation together, and all of the States need to, are bound to, support each other, as Brown and others have also claimed.  But a major part of that mutual support is each State not creating itself a burden on any of the other 49 through its own wanton profligacy.

The NLMSM’s Hurt Feelings

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The Trump administration had a press gaggle Friday.  A gaggle is a press pool that is a subset of the press who then participate in a press conference, and the members of the pool are responsible for getting the content of the conference to the rest of the press.  The Friday gaggle was an expanded one in that, in addition to the pool itself, additional members of the press were explicitly invited to participate—which of course means yet other members, the vast majority of the press, were not explicitly invited to attend.

The additional invitees included reporters from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox Business, and Fox News. Not invited were Buzzfeed, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, the Hill, and Politico.

Therein lies the problem, at least in the minds of the Precious Ones (keep in mind that there would have been no outcry had the gaggle not been expanded).  Buzzfeed, NYT, LAT, et al., have their panties in a wedgie over not having been included when the other outlets were.  They’re so special: how dare the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, the man who made the decision to expand the gaggle for the occasion and who decided who would be the expanded invitees, not exclude (the Precious Ones’ term—”not invited in as extras” not being the same as “kept out”) those others and include themselves instead?

Indeed, they’ve spent the last several days publishing stories about how they were excluded (again, their term), while not reporting on substantive matters (and while not saying who was included in their stead).  They’ve chosen, instead, to create their special selves as the news instead of being reporters of and opiners on the news.

And they’re confused over why they’re not taken seriously by mainstream America.