California Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, the Progressive-Democratic Party member who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, claims she’s open to a tax cut deal.
Our ask is simple: if we can provide tax cuts for America’s corporations, we can certainly provide a tax cut for America’s kids[.]
I agree, and it is a simple ask. Provide the tax cut for America’s kids by reducing the personal income tax rates their parents have to pay.
Sadly, DeLauro isn’t at all serious.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson advocates—absolutely correctly—that the West must step up its aid to Ukraine in order to accelerate an end to the barbarian’s invasion on terms favorable to Ukraine.
But early on in his Wall Street Journal op-ed he wrote a serious mistake.
Russian forces must be pushed back to the de facto boundary of Feb. 24.
Johnson’s heart is in the right place, but he’s badly mistaken here.
Johnson wrote in his immediately preceding sentence,
The war in Ukraine can end only with Vladimir Putin’s defeat.
The barbarian must be fully expelled from every inch of Ukrainian territory; that’s the only outcome that actually would be a defeat for Putin. Agreeing the 24 Feb line of more-or-less control only would agree stalemate while actively accepting the premise that put the barbarian that far into Ukrainian territory in the first place: that a Russian Anschluss is legitimate.
There is no alternative to the barbarian’s complete expulsion.
Full stop.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s terms for negotiating with Russia an end to the barbarian’s invasion of is nation begins with the barbarian being driven completely out of Ukraine. Which raises a question that shouldn’t even be a question.
[P]ushing Russian forces out of the entrenched positions they hold in more than 15% of Ukraine’s territory will require an even greater flow of military support—possibly more than the West is willing and able to bear.
This timidity is especially rampant in President Joe Biden’s (D) administration.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told The Wall Street Journal last Monday [4 December] that the US would support Kyiv in recovering territory Russia has grabbed since launching its large-scale invasion on Feb. 24, suggesting that Washington might not back Ukraine militarily in retaking areas that Russia seized in 2014, including the Crimean Peninsula.
Other Ukraine allies are adamant that Kyiv must win back all its lands.
Those others are correct, and it’s especially embarrassing that our own administration doesn’t understand that. Sweden’s Foreign Minister Tobias Billström put the matter succinctly:
Anything less than a Russian defeat in Ukraine will embolden Moscow and other authoritarian powers[.]
Those other authoritarian powers include the People’s Republic of China and Iran. Encouraging the PRC puts the Republic of China at direct risk as PRC President Xi Jinping has said openly and often that he intends to absorb the RoC into the body of the PRC, and at gun point if necessary. The mullahs of Iran will be encouraged to push their domination over Iraq, and they’ll be encouraged press their Yemen war even more zealously to weaken Saudi Arabia and then to dominate that nation. Which puts Israel at deadly risk.
Those aren’t the only costs, either. Russian President Vladimir Putin has often said that Ukraine isn’t really a nation; it’s part of Metropolitan Russia, and he intends to erase that nation and absorb it. He’s also said he intends to recreate the Russian empire, which puts the Baltic States, Poland, and the nations on the western shore of the Black Sea at risk. Even what used to be the German Democratic Republic will be at risk. All that’s required is the barbarian’s victory in Ukraine. Even his merely holding the 14 February already occupied oblasts would only encourage him.
Go back to the PRC. Xi’s successful conquering of the RoC would cement his control over the South China Sea and all of its fisheries, undersea oil and natural gas fields, and all the rare earths on the sea floor. It also would give him control over the sea lines of commerce on which the Republic of Korea and Japan utterly depend—and through which at least 40% of the economic value shipped to the US sails.
Biden and his affiliates need to find some backbone vis-à-vis Ukraine. The problem here is, in the end, not a matter of cost—the cost of failure is far greater, and it includes the non-economic cost of the erasure of at least two independent nations from the Earth.
The problem here is the degree of political will.
A concerned mother posted on her Facebook page an objection to posters at her 7-yr-old child’s elementary school, posters that depicted different kinds of sexuality, including the virtues of being “polysexual.”
Lt Col Christopher Schilling, of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst—McGuire AFB—responded with threats and by siccing his Joint Base security and the local town’s police on the mother for her effrontery.
The current situation involving [the mother’s] actions has caused safety concerns for many families. The Joint Base leadership takes this situation very seriously and from the beginning have had the Security Forces working with multiple state and local law enforcement agencies to monitor the situation to ensure the continued safety of the entire community.
To make even worse this assault on a mother expressing legitimate concerns about what elementary school officials are exposing young children to,
The Joint Base confirmed to Fox News that it notified law enforcement about the social media exchange….
And North Hanover Police Chief Robert Duff followed up on that “notification” and told the mother to delete her post.
This is what SecDef Lloyd Austin and CJCS General Mark Milley are wreaking on our military establishment.
Aside from Schilling desperately needing reassignment—perhaps to an American base on the Arabian Gulf—Austin and Milley need to be cashiered. Soonest.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell had this to say about handling the burgeoning inflation extant in today’s American economy:
Slowing demand growth should allow supply to catch up with demand and restore the balance that will yield stable prices over time.
It’s impressive that a government official as steeped in economics as Powell is has such a deep misunderstanding of the situation.
It’s not a matter of slowing demand growth, it’s a matter of slowing government demand growth. The private economy, especially when it’s not competing with government for goods and services—and for the inputs to those goods and services—will easily and efficiently take care of itself, with changing supply and demand comprising self-correcting stabilizers on our economy.