Monthly Archives: September 2018

Another Miss

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This time by The Wall Street Journal.  In an op-ed about the coward’s piece in The New York Times (if that individual actually exists, otherwise it’s the cowardice of the NYT editorial staff), the WSJ closed with this remark.

The tragedy of this Presidency is that his rants and insults—even toward people who work for him—threaten to overwhelm his policy achievements.

This is true only because the persons of the press choose to enable that. It’s their conscious editorial choice to give emphasis to President Donald Trump’s rants and insults over his policy efforts and achievements. It’s their carefully deliberated editorial choice to give primacy to form over substance.

“Trump is a symptom, not the cause”

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Ex-President Barack Obama (D) said that in his Friday speech at the University of Illinois.  I agree with him, but not for the reason he might think.

President Donald Trump might have triggered our economic recovery with lower taxes and reduced regulation.  He might have begun restoring our nation’s position around the world with his firm rhetoric regarding responsibilities and his refusal to apologize—indeed, his willingness overtly to celebrate—American uniqueness and greatness.

But his election, and his performance in office, are symptoms of the malaise under which our nation labored during eight years of Obama’s economic failures, constant apologies for our nation’s historic successes around the globe, and timidity in enforcing even the most glibly offered red lines.

The Trump administration is the result of Americans’ disgruntlement with the dysfunctional policies of the prior administration.

Unitary Executive

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Senator Ben Sasse (R, NE), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that held hearings last week on Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, had an op-ed in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal that opened with this.

Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of hating women, hating children, hating clean air, wanting dirty water. He’s been declared an existential threat to the nation.

He’s also accused of favoring a unitary Executive and thereby ceding dangerously broad power to the President.

What the accusers carefully ignore is that it’s Congress that has so broadly expanded the power of a unitary Executive, while eliding the fact that our Constitution’s Article II created the unitary Executive in the first place.  It is, after all, Congress that has created all of the Agencies and Cabinet Departments that are in the Executive Branch.  It is Congress that has delegated all the power to those facilities by ceding to them rule-making authority.  All the Executive can do is hire and fire the facilities’ management teams–the only check he has on an overreaching Congress and its abuse of power.

Mind Your Place

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Ken Harrelson, a broadcaster for Chicago’s White Sox baseball team and himself a some-time baseball player, thinks basketball player LeBron James should just shut up and play.

Well I used to watch LeBron [James] but no more. I wish these guys would keep their nose out of politics and just play because people didn’t come to hear their opinions on politicians[.]

Because everyone should just mind his place.

This stinks.  It’s of a piece with the Left’s identity politics: blacks are required to vote a particular way, women are only allowed specific opinions, whites have privilege, and on and on.  It’s the return of segregation, only it’s political segregation rather than physical, and political segregation doesn’t even pretend to be equal while separate.

There’s much with which I disagree in James’ commentary, but his status as a professional basketball player no more disqualifies him from commenting on political matters, or any other subject, than does my status as a writer qualify me to comment.

Oh, and on the subject of political commentary by sports figures, maybe Harrelson should heed his own advice and stick to calling baseball games.  He’s is, after all, “just” a sports figure like James.

Or not.  Because sports figures really do get to comment on politics.

Little Nations

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…and big nations.  There’s a meeting of 18 nations of the Pacific, the Pacific Islands Forum, occurring in the nation of Nauru, an island nation in the Pacific.  Nauru is 2500 miles north of New Zealand, and it would fit inside Providence, RI (in fact, it would fit inside my home town of Kankakee, IL).

The People’s Republic of China is present at the meeting as an observer; it’s not a member of the PIF.  You already know where and how big the PRC is.

Nauru formally recognizes the Republic of China, resident on the island of Taiwan, and it does not recognize the PRC—Nauru’s version of a One China Policy.  The PRC tried to take advantage of the meeting and the size disparity to force an opportunity for its representative to speak at the forum when it’s not otherwise authorized—that lack of membership bit.  Nauru President Baron Waqa said

[The PRC official] insisted, and was very insolent about it, and created a big fuss and held up the meeting of leaders for a good number of minutes when he was only an official.  Maybe because he was from a big country he wanted to bully us.

Waqa and the tiny island nation faced him down; the rep did not speak to the forum.

It would be good if some larger nations were inspired by this and also faced down the PRC.