Monthly Archives: February 2024

It’s an Alliance that’s Sinking Itself

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The Wall Street Journal spilled a lot of pixels and ink in an opinion piece masqueraded as news that purported to answer its question of whether loose lips can sink an alliance.

[Republican Primary Presidential candidate Donald] Trump’s recent broadsides against European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for not spending sufficiently on defense raised the question of whether shaming allies strengthens or weakens the alliance.

And this, an opinion masqueraded by the article’s writer as fact—all too typical in this article:

Trump’s recent comments crossed a line, even if they were inflated with campaign-trail hyperbole.

I’ll leave aside the salutary effect Trump’s harshly blunt rhetoric has had on NATO readiness—more member nations have stepped up and begun honoring their 10-year-old(!) spending commitments as a direct result of his words and NATO commensurately more capable of supporting non-NATO member Ukraine in its fight for survival in the barbarian’s war on it. This, after 50 years of “pretty please” has merely encouraged European member nations to break their promises, shirk their duties to their fellow members, and thereby betray those fellow members.

As I’ve written just a bit ago, 13 NATO member nations continue to refuse to honor their commitments to NATO: they continue to refuse to spend even a paltry 2% of their GDP on NATO.

That’s 13 members who are shirking their duty, who are betraying their fellow members by consciously and with careful forethought rendering themselves incapable of meeting their Article V commitment to those members in any concrete way. That’s 13 members who are deliberately imposing risks on their fellow members by choosing to freeload off them, rendering themselves so plainly incapable of resisting an attack that they tacitly invite one, requiring their fellow members to spend their blood and their treasure to rescue them.

That’s 13 members who are risking destabilizing NATO, who are sinking the alliance.

Trump says he said the following to a major NATO member head of state who asked him whether, given his nation had not honored its fiscal promise vis-à-vis NATO, we would protect him.

“You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?” No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.

Indeed, neither should any other NATO member move to protect this nation that had shirked its own duty, broken its own promise, so cravenly betrayed the rest of its fellow member nations.

Trump’s was not an empty threat, nor an unjustified one. Why, indeed, should we, or any NATO member, gush out blood, throw away hard-won treasure on nations that are so willing—and so active at—betraying their fellows in the alliance?

No CR

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The House Freedom Caucus wants House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) to attach a House-passed border security bill that’s sitting in the US Senate to the next spending bill that Congress must pass to avoid a government shutdown. Freedom Caucus member Bob Good (R, VA):

I think we ought to be willing to have a fight over securing the border. I think we ought to refuse to fund the government if the administration continues to be unwilling to secure the border, then we ought to tie the funding of the government to border security implementation where some funds are held back until the measurables are met, the performance metrics that demonstrate that the border is being secured. And we do it to through Sept. 30 at the FRA levels[.]

No, that’s a typically Republican timid temporization, and as such, it continues to cede the budget—and our border security and support for our friends and allies—to the not-tender mercies of the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Republicans, including the apparently courage-fading Freedom Caucus, need to be willing to engage in a fight over securing the border (et al.) by not having another CR.

Let the Progressive-Democratic Party and Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden eat their government shutdown over their flat refusal to secure our border and to pay for the spending they want for Ukraine, Israel, and the Republic of China, however badly that spending is truly needed.

Of course that means Republicans need to stop being so timid when talking about government shutdowns—when they’re not actively ducking the subject—and they mustn’t hesitate to identify, by name, those Congressmen and Senators who are actively blocking the agreements necessary to conclude the bills.

What Damages?

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Stipulate, arguendo, that Republican Primary Presidential candidate Donald Trump was, indeed, guilty of civil fraud as New York judge Arthur Engoron ruled regarding the way Trump valued his properties in order to obtain loans. As a result of that civil conviction, Engoron has ordered, among other things, that Trump must pay more than $350 million in “ill-gotten profits” which are some sort of “damages.”

I have to ask: what damage? What ill-gotten profit? All the bank loans were repaid in full along with all of the associated interest accumulated over the lives of the loans. Think about that for a moment. The question of damage goes, or should go, far beyond the proximate question of whether the banks got all that was due them under the terms of those loans.

Had Trump valued his properties in line with Engoron’s claims—Mara Lago, for instance was worth only $18 million in Engoron’s judicial (not financial) estimation rather than the $420 million (at least) at which Trump valued it—the associated loans would have been far smaller, and the banks would have made far less money. What damage, indeed?

And those “ill-gotten profits” that Trump made with those loans? Those loans and associated profits allowed some of his businesses to survive and those employees to continue to have good jobs, and those loans and associated profits allowed other of his businesses to grow and those businesses to hire more employees into growth-created good jobs.

That’s One Spin

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Battery car sales seem to be falling off in California.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday that Tesla sales fell significantly in the back half of 2023, declining by 10% in the final quarter alone. This sales drop came despite California’s previous pledge to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035.

The LA Times is busily spinning the reason for the fall-off. The outlet is claiming

“controversial pronouncements” from Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

It added

There’s no survey to prove it, but there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest liberal-leaning California car buyers are done with Elon Musk’s abrasive personality and his stands on political issues.

No data; LAT just Knows Better.

And this:

If enough buyers here are truly fed up enough with Musk to influence their purchasing decisions, Tesla’s sales could continue to suffer.

On the other hand, Greg Bannon, AAA‘s Automotive Engineering Director, told the LAT

The government and automakers have spent billions on something consumers may not want.

Of course. Who is this Bannon guy, anyway? It couldn’t possibly be that consumers, even in California, are increasingly becoming less enamored of battery cars.

Mm, mm. Nope.

Why Wait?

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House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R, NC) has subpoenaed multiple leaders at Harvard University for their failure to produce documents the Committee has been trying to get through more cooperative channels for some time. These docs are related to Harvard’s performance in correcting antisemitism that’s rampant at the school.

The subpoena requires that documents in 11 key areas, show what actions the university has taken, or will be taking, to ensure that Jewish students “feel safe and welcome on campus,”  be produced NLT 5 pm on March 4.

My question is why the long deadline?

The Harvard management team knows where the documents are, those people have had all this time already to get the documents gathered up, and those people can deliver the documents in a couple of hours. They don’t need more than two additional weeks to do what they’ve been required to do, and have known that they’ve been required to do it, all this time.