Monthly Archives: December 2022

Shouldn’t Be Anyway

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In a Fox News piece on the refusal of Russia to continue negotiations on the mutual inspection clause of the current New START treaty that purports to limit the size of the Russian and American nuclear arsenals, there was this from Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball regarding the breakdown:

If there’s not a negotiation on some sort of replacement treaty, there will be no agreement for the first time since 1972 that limits the world’s two largest nuclear superpowers arsenals[.]

Kimball is ignoring—worse, President Joe Biden (D), his Secretary of State, and his Secretary of Defense are ignoring—the absence of the world’s third largest nuclear superpower in any sort of nuclear arms control negotiation.

If the People’s Republic of China, which is expanding its nuclear arsenal and modernizing with state-of-the-art equipment its delivery systems for that arsenal, is not an active and good faith participant in any such negotiation, than any arms limitation treaty between the US and Russia will amount only to the US’ unilateral disarmament relative to the PRC—and relative to Russia, which is rapidly becoming economically dependent on the PRC and which can rely on it in any nuclear war.

That growing disparity in military capability between the US and the PRC, keep in mind, comes against the backdrop of PRC President Xi Jinping’s avowed goal of “supplanting” the US as the sole world power.

We need to accept Russia’s decision, via its current refusal, to begin a new arms race. It’s a race that our survival as a free and independent actor in the world depends on winning, and it’s a race that we can win with our—so far—economic and technological superiority, just as we did vis-à-vis the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The time is now, though, to join and to push that race—the PRC already has been in it for lots of years, and that nation is far more economically and technologically capable than the USSR ever was.

Voting as a Teaching Tool

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The Boston City Council has approved a petition to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in city elections. The city council’s next move is to submit its petition to the Massachusetts legislature for enactment. It’s the council’s rationalization for the move that’s instructive.

Progressive members of the City Council argued that lowering the voting age would help young people build a habit of voting and make them more likely to continue being politically engaged later in life.

And this:

When it comes to making a decision as to who’s going to represent them [16- and 17-year-olds], that has been denied to them.

This, especially, is egregiously misleading. Those children have parents representing them. Those parents vote. Those parents are the source of instruction.

Never mind, though. Voting isn’t important in choosing our political leaders. Nobody teaches American history in grade school anymore, apparently, or Civics in junior high, or Western Civilization at any age. No, voting has no importance beyond teaching children a measure of responsibility, because schools also seem to lack any other tools for teaching them ethics (Aristotle, anyone?) or morality (Aesop, or religion, maybe?).

Sure.

An Excellent Response

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Last Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, a case centered on Web Page designer Lorie Smith and her First Amendment right to not put messages on her designs that conflict with her religious beliefs.

In the course of those arguments, there occurred this exchange (audio is at the first link above) between newly confirmed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Kristen Kellie Waggoner, CEO, President, and General Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Smith in this case:

[Jackson] asked about a situation where a Christmas photo company was recreating old-time pictures and as a result they only allowed white children to participate because it accurately reflects the time period. As part of the hypothetical, the company served Black people for other types of photos and would refer them to other vendors if they desired. Jackson asked if this would be acceptable under Smith’s logic, because by forcing the photographer to take Black customers it would be changing their vision and forcing them to create something they do not want to create.
“…there are difficult lines to draw and that may be an edge case, but this is not. We have a creative—a creator of speech and a very clear message—”

It’s about time lawyers stopped being afraid to call out activist judges and Justices’ dumbass cynical quibbling over corner cases and kept them focused on the matter actually before them.

American Energy Production

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In a piece centered on Texas’ role in our nation’s electricity production and especially on Texas’ role in our nation’s oil and natural gas production, there sat this nugget of information:

Fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—accounted for roughly 79% of total US energy production in 2021, according to the EIA.

This is the magnitude of destruction the Progressive-Democratic Party wants to wreak on our ability to heat our homes in winters, cool our homes in summers, travel to/from work or stores, or produce much of anything at all from food to manufactured products to communications facilities—all of which take energy as the first input. They don’t care about the destruction they intend to inflict on our economy in general.

No more drilling.
There is no more drilling. I haven’t formed any new drilling.

That’s President Joe Biden’s (D) solemn promise to do right now. All in the name of converting us to “renewable” energy sources…sometime. All without regard to those sources being entirely unreliable.

WaPo Racism

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And by extension, much of journalism’s racism through their own silence regarding their colleague’s and their colleague’s employer’s refusal to condemn this racism.

MSNBC fired anchor Tiffany Cross last month, and The Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah called that racism. After all, that MSNBC anchor is a black woman. I’m frankly surprised that Attiah, and that WaPo through its columnist, didn’t cry “sexism,” too. MSNBC fired that anchor who was a woman.

This is yet another example of journalism’s racism: there are very few more insidious examples than to manufacture racism out of whole cloth. WaPo, Attiah—journalism—all know full well Cross was fired over her poor ratings and her own poor performance and that racism had nothing to do with it.