Monthly Archives: November 2021

Be Like Austria

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That’s what Biden-Harris want for us with zir continued penchant for isolation and demands for vaccination—”[t]his is not about freedom or personal choice“—demands for masking, even of small children, and threats of lockdown, whether explicitly or by outcome.

Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg, by fiat, is locking up all Austrians in the nation—even his vaccinated (but apparently still “unprotected”) subjects in order to “protect” all from the Wuhan Virus.

Schallenberg said the lockdown will start Monday and initially last for 10 days. Most stores will close, and cultural events will be canceled.
He initially said all students would have to go back into homeschooling.

After those 10 days, if the subjects don’t satisfy their Chancellor, Schallenberg may well extend his locking up for another 10 days.

At least now the Progressive-Democrats are getting specific, and not just pushing their more amorphous “be like Europe” mantra.

“Sexism and Racism”

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That’s what’s behind the recent criticism of the Kamala Harris half of the Biden-Harris Presidency, according to the Joe Biden (D) half of the Presidency.

I do think that it has been easier and harsher from some in the right wing who have gone after her because she is the first woman, the first woman of color. I’m not suggesting anyone will acknowledge that publicly[.]

That’s what Biden said with the voice of his Press Secretary Jen Psaki as the latter uttered the words at Politico‘s Wednesday podcast, Women Rule.

He went on, still using Psaki’s voice, as cited by Fox News:

Harris bears a heavy burden being the “first African American, woman of color, Indian American woman to serve in this job[.]”

Of course, it couldn’t be that Harris was selected by Biden explicitly and primarily because she is a woman and black; her actual qualifications not being very high at all on his list of selection criteria. (There was one other criterion that Biden ranked higher than actual qualification: the degree to which she was sympatico with him.)

Far from being part of a vast right-wing conspiracy, the racism and sexism here begins with Joe Biden and his explicitly sexist and racist selection criteria, and it extends to the Progressive-Democratic Party and the Left at large for their continued emphasis on Harris’ color and gender rather than on her abilities, talents, and actual performance.

What Is It About the Press Industry…

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Even a press critic cannot avoid injecting moral equivalency sewage into her criticism.

Bari Weiss wrote what could have been a very good dismantling of her industry’s intrinsically dishonest portrayal of Kyle Rittenhouse and the events surrounding him that led to his being put on trial. She had this, in the main, for her piece:

To admit that the press, in the main, got just about every key fact in the Rittenhouse case wrong—that he crossed state lines with a gun, that he had the gun illegally, that he had no connection to Kenosha, that he was connected to white supremacist groups—has nothing to do with whether Kyle Rittenhouse should have gone to Kenosha that day. It has nothing to do with where one stands on the question of open carry….

But then she ruined the entire piece with this moral equivalency:

Or whether or not a teenager should be allowed to walk around with a semiautomatic rifle. No teenager should have been walking around the chaos in Kenosha with a semiautomatic rifle that night.

Why not? Based on what journalistic holier-than-thou requirement is that?

One salient fact Weiss carefully chose to ignore was that, as a 17-year-old, Rittenhouse was legally barred from possessing a handgun, but he could possess a rifle.

Another salient fact that Weiss carefully chose to ignore was that Rittenhouse’s purpose in “walking around the chaos” was to render first aid to people injured in the riot that Weiss hides behind her euphemism and, at the request of some of the folks there, to protect one of the businesses under threat from that riot.

Does Weiss expect anyone to enter that riot wholly unarmed and incapable of defending himself, much less those injured he’s trying to treat, or the business he was asked to protect?

Or does she expect no one to go into an area from which—as she acknowledged—the police had been withdrawn by the decision of a cynical city government to abandon its own responsibilities and allow the rioters to wreak their havoc?

Does she believe that no citizen has a duty to his community and his fellows in that community, especially when its government has abandoned it—that duty always is someone else’s, some other entity’s, to satisfy? Who might that other be, who might that entity be, when government has run away?

And so, here we are: Weiss can’t bear to criticize her industry’s assault without also criticizing her industry’s target.

…that gets people who join it to subordinate their integrity, their morality, to their telling of a story?

“It is a lawful order.”

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That’s what SecDef Lloyd Austin is insisting, through his Press Secretary Admiral John Kirby, regarding his order to States’ National Guard to get vaccinated against the Wuhan Virus or face serious consequences that have

the same potential [for punishment] as active-duty members who refuse the vaccine.

That punishment extends up through dishonorable discharge.

Leaving aside the fact that Austin’s vaccine mandate violates Guardsmen’s religion-related rights and utterly ignores existing virus immunity from having already been infected and recovered, the Austin Mandate is a deliberate overreach of his authority as a Federal government cabinet secretary.

DoD has little control over States’ National Guards and none at all over their medical statuses unless and until units of those National Guards are federalized—and then DoD’s authority extends only to those federalized units.

The Austin Mandate is not a lawful order.

Fannie, Freddie, and the Housing Bubble

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The Federal National Mortgage Association, Fannie Mae, and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, Freddie Mac, are about to start backstopping million-dollar mortgage loans. The rationale rationalization for this is that the jump is a

reflection of the rapid appreciation in home prices nationally over the past year.
The increase may make it easier and cheaper for some borrowers to buy a home….

But such a move only creates a vicious circle of rising prices into an already growing bubble.

But, but—Steve Walsh, President of Scout Mortgage in Scottsdale, AZ, says,

Housing prices are expensive. I don’t believe these people are looking for a castle, just a three-bedroom house with a backyard[.]

Well, NSS. How does Walsh think those prices for what used to be an ordinary home got to be so high?

There’s this bit on that:

By law, the loan limits are updated annually using a formula that factors in average housing-price increases nationwide.

Nothing like building in guaranteed inflation.

One way to slow the growth of this housing bubble would be for the Federal government to stop guaranteeing such high prices and price growth through its mechanism of guaranteeing or otherwise backing such enormous loans and loan growth.

Granted, that would be hard for the Feds to achieve, since the folks who can afford such enormous prices are the largest donors to Government’s politicians. However, “hard” means “possible.”