Monthly Archives: March 2021

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

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Here’s a partial list of what’s in the Progressive-Democrats’ Wuhan Virus “Relief” bill, just passed in the Senate and sent to the House for its concurrence.

A bill, incidentally, passed on strict party lines, after Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) showed his word to be worthless after he swore up and down that he’d not support any bill that didn’t have support from “his Republican friends,” and then voted for its passage.

  • $350 billion for state and local governments—never minding that many States, such as California, Virginia, Arizona, and Colorado, had revenue increases over 2019
  • Over $128 billion for schools—never minding that 95% of that won’t be paid out until after 2021
  • $570 million—$280 per day(!), up to $21,000—for Federal employees to take up to 15 weeks off from work
  • $45 billion for Obamacare
  • $300 per week in enhanced unemployment, the first $10,200 would be tax-free to households with incomes under $150,000—even though unemployment benefits, as replacement income, heretofore was taxable as that income
  • $4 billion for agriculture, including $1 billion for, among other things, “socially disadvantaged” farmers getting their loans forgiven up to 120% of their loan. Never minding the intrinsically racist and sexist nature of that, since non-disadvantaged farmers don’t get a penny of loan forgiveness, at all, and that the 20% excess “forgiveness” is naked “reparation”
  • $50 million in “environmental justice” grants
  • $91 million in “outreach to student loan borrowers
  • $270 million for the National Endowments of the Arts and Humanities
  • $200 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services
  • $10 million for the “preservation and maintenance of Native American languages”

The sad thing—or would be sad were it not for its dishonesty—is that some of these inclusions would be worthy of straightforward debate on their merits, did the Progressive-Democrats have the integrity to propose them separately and on those inclusions’ merits.

That partial list, by itself, works out to $1 trillion of money wholly irrelevant to (unneeded, with a recovering economy) Wuhan Virus “relief,” money that would be better spent on Biden’s—and Trump’s—vaunted infrastructure repair and buildout.

Or on making permanent the personal income tax rate reductions from the Trump tax reform.

Or in addition to the miserly $1,400 “stimulus” payments, make it $3,000 in our pocket direct payment checks.

We need to remember this in 2022.

One More Last Chance

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Britain, France, and Germany decided Thursday not to present a resolution censuring Iran that they had floated to other International Atomic Energy Agency member states earlier in the week. Iran had warned the move could lead it to further curtail international inspections of the country and dissuade it from engaging in direct talks with the US on its nuclear program.

This meek surrender is being masqueraded as a renewing effort.

The US and European powers are giving Iran a last chance to start cooperating with a United Nations atomic agency probe of Tehran’s nuclear activities, backing away from a formal censure of Iran in a bid to revive nuclear diplomacy between Washington and Tehran.
…
The decision was backed by Washington, senior diplomats said, reflecting US concerns that renewed pressure on Iran could derail diplomacy.

We’ll mean it next time, guys.

Nah. No we won’t.

Wrong Move

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On a related note now Congress wants in on the action.

A pair of US senators, a Democrat and a Republican [Tim Kaine, D, VA, and Todd Young, R, IN], have moved to strip President Biden of the power to unilaterally use military force.
The move comes after Biden used decades-old authorizations to “stretch his war powers” when he launched his first airstrike in Syria without congressional approval.

This would be a mistake, and Kaine illustrates a part of its nature.

Congress has a responsibility to not only vote to authorize new military action, but to repeal old authorizations that are no longer necessary.

Not at all. Congress has sole authority to declare war, not to authorize “new military action,” and Congress has the sole power to fund continuing military action. The President has the sole responsibility, and authority, to respond to imminent threats to the United States, including with “new military action.”

Related to this, Congressman Jimmy Panetta (D, CA) led a letter, cosigned by some 30 Representatives, to President Joe Biden, in which he said, in part,

While any president would presumably consult with advisors before ordering a nuclear attack, there is no requirement to do so. The military is obligated to carry out the order if they assess it is legal under the laws of war. Under the current posture of US nuclear forces, that attack would happen in minutes.

This illustrates another aspect of the mistake. It’s too often necessary to decide and execute within those minutes; there’s too often no time for consultations—not with missiles only 20 minutes away from impacting on our cities and military installations, and with even less time to a high altitude detonation or series of detonations for a nuclear-originated EMP strike.

Which emphasizes another aspect of the need for prompt decision-making rather than accepting the delays of contacting legislative-mandated consultants and the dithering in which a committee of those consultants would engage. That is the need, for our nation’s security, to carry out a preemptive attack. Today’s technology, and especially tomorrow’s, compress reaction time to the point that often it’s non-existent, and proaction—preemption—is necessary for national survival.

It would be a serious degradation to our national security to degrade a President’s war powers capacity. And, given Article II of our Constitution, such an effort easily could become unconstitutional.

Bureaucracy is What’s Important

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In a piece about President Joe Biden’s decision to bomb two targets in Syria that was reduced in real-time to one because imagery had identified two civilians in a courtyard of the other, there’s this eye-opener:

Throughout the deliberations, officials said, they sought to strike a bureaucratic balance. The goal was to ensure that all of the interagency machinery was fully engaged while avoiding both the drawn-out deliberations that sometimes occurred during the Obama administration and the quick decisions by the president and smaller groups of aides that often took place during the Trump administration.

Because interagency machinery is more important than decisive—and prompt—action based on predetermined recognition keys and preplanned criteria which make responses specific to a realized situation able to be quickly laid out and executed.

And this second eye-opener, which explains in some degree the above:

…Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin…is the only senior member of Mr Biden’s cabinet with military experience….

Planning ahead, developing contingency plans, takes a military mindset, apparently, and Biden has only the one military mindset, by his choice. And there’s that bureaucratic imperative, again.

It boggles my peabrain that this administration has no framework outlining responses to terrorism and terrorists or to states that harbor or support terrorist entities. Instead, each case seems to be individually analyzed de nihilo and a response individually developed, also de nihilo, and done so in reaction rather than in anticipation. And apparently completely without regard for any other situation, regardless of how similar it might be.

Wow.

Kancel Kulture

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Now the Left is after Dr Seuss.

Dr Seuss Enterprises said it will stop publishing six of the author’s books due to racial and insensitive imagery.

On the Kancel Kulture’s Fahrenheit 451 List are

  • And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
  • If I Ran the Zoo
  • McElligot’s Pool
  • On Beyond Zebra!
  • Scrambled Eggs Super!
  • The Cat’s Quizzer

Never mind that these books, along with the rest of Dr Seuss’ works, fit perfectly the times in which they were written.

Never mind that all of his books, these included, were beloved by children and their parents all over the world.

Never mind that today they could be used to illustrate how mores evolve and to show that being acceptable in the past does not automatically make something acceptable today—nor does lack of acceptance today automatically eliminate acceptability in that past.

Never mind a myriad aspects of value and plain entertainment these books had and still have.

The Kancel Kulture demands to dictate to us what we’re permitted to read or to think.

Never mind the politically opportunistic hypocrisy, either.

Then-President Barack Obama (D) and Michelle Obama (Woke) as recently as 2015:

…pretty much all the stuff you need to know is in Dr Seuss

And again in 2018:

…the nature of human dynamics does not change from level to level.
I’ve been quoted saying this sometimes. Most of what you need to learn you can actually just, read Dr Seuss….

Now, in place of those words of praise is just … .

Start buying the banned books, while supplies last.