Daily Archives: 19 September 2019

Censorship

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Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) seems to have failed her Progressive-Democratic Party’s purity test.  She votes for what she views as right rather than knee-jerkishly IAW Party diktat.  As a result, she

may face a censure vote by Arizona’s Democratic Party because she votes too often in favor of President Trump’s agenda
…
Since joining the Senate in January, Sinema has opposed Trump 81% of the time, The Arizona Republic reported, citing data from the FiveThirtyEight Trump Tracker.
That’s apparently not often enough to satisfy many of her fellow Democrats in the Grand Canyon State.

Here’s Dan O’Neal, Progressive Democrats of America (a Progressive-Democrat PAC) National Field Team Director and Arizona State Coordinator:

[T]he way she is voting is really disappointing. We want Democrats to vote like Democrats and not Republicans.

Think about that.

Sinema was elected to the Senate by her constituents, the good citizens of her Arizona district, not by the Progressive-Democratic Party.  She, like all elected politicians in an ideal world, was elected to do her best to carry out her constituents’ instructions, and where those instructions are unclear—where there is no consensus among her constituents—to carry out her best judgment.  The quality of that performance, and the consequences of unsatisfactory performance, are up to her constituents to decide.  They’re not up to Party.

This is what bipartisanship looks like for the Progressive-Democratic Party.  This is what free speech looks like for the Progressive-Democratic Party.  Remember this in the fall of 2020.

EU Version of Brexit

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EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker says that the risk of a no-deal Brexit is very real.  He also says he told British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

…I have no emotional attachment to the backstop.  But I made clear that I do have an intimate connection to its commitments. I have asked the prime minister to make, in writing, alternatives.

The commitment of the backstop, the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which violates a central premise of the vote to leave the EU—British control of British borders—still amounts to a backdoor to partitioning Great Britain. Keep in mind that one of the EU’s early offers on this backstop was that Great Britain could put its hard border on the Irish Sea coast—an offer quickly deleted when its purpose was recognized as too obviously presented.

On top of that, Juncker has shown his unseriousness in these “negotiations” with his demand that Great Britain offer all the alternatives. Juncker has no need, apparently, to stoop so low as to offer his own.

Indeed, led by chief negotiator Michel Barnier,

EU negotiators say that he [Johnson] is yet to offer a viable replacement solution.

Because if they offered their own solution, and Great Britain accepted it, then Juncker and his court would have actually to say, “Yes,” finally.

It’s hard to see how negotiations can get more bad faith than this.  Juncker is like an emperor on the throne awaiting the pleas of his supplicant.