Author Archives: eehines

Words

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Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris is “subtly” changing what she says about her economic plans, should she be elected. Her advisers’ claim is

While President Biden’s agenda focused on jobs, Harris is focused on costs. Where Biden sees voters foremost as workers, she sees them more as consumers.
As a result, her policies are aimed at trying to help middle-class Americans afford the things they need and want, and helping them build wealth that can be passed along to their children, her advisers say.

She may be changing the style of her rhetoric, but her plans remain to raise taxes on our income, in the name of making the billionaires “pay their fair share” without specifying what that share is, and which tax increases will reach down into our middle class through their effect on small businesses and large businesses’ employment plans.

She may be changing the style of her rhetoric, but her plans remain to increase government spending on Party special interests, including subsidies for her “green new deal” businesses while hamstringing our oil- and gas-based energy production ability.

She may be changing the style of her rhetoric, but her plans remain to institute price controls on a broad range of products from pharmaceuticals to food in our grocery stores, all in the name of her mythical price gouging.

She’s also said in so many words that her values haven’t changed. Her values are made plain through those plans. What she’s saying now, those “subtle changes,” are as her Senate colleague Bernie Sanders (I, VT) says, just empty words uttered to curry votes.

Nothing more.

One Effect of Biden’s Favoring Iran

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This demonstrates the effect Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s moral equivalence between terrorist- and terrorism-supporting Iran on the one hand and Israel on the other—which amounts to favoring Iran over Israel—has on the situation in the Middle East:

The decision to approve the September 27 strike [killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah] from US soil without alerting the White House beforehand—and later to make public a photo of himself issuing the order—underscored the growing divergence between Netanyahu’s government and the White House.

Netanyahu was speaking directly to Biden with that decision and that method of delivery, but Biden wouldn’t listen.

Biden has done nothing useful in support of Israel, only pushing for—demanding, along with his Secretary of Milquetoast Antony Blinken—Israel to agree a cease-fire even as the IDF is on the verge of defeating decisively both Hamas and Hezbollah, a cease-fire Biden and his syndicate members know full well favors only the terrorists. Biden has been, occasionally, deliberately counterproductive to Israel’s interests, its very survival, by withholding, however briefly, the ammunition resupply the nation needs.

And this:

In the short term, Israel’s unilateral decision-making about striking Iran risks embroiling the Biden administration in another unpopular regional conflict. In the longer term, it could be another flashpoint for critics who say the US gives Israel too much leeway, not using its leverage to rein in its ally.

Rein in!? This is the arrogance of those in the Biden administration, and outside it, who insist, in all seriousness that Israel is nothing but a US satrap, if not a US territory—they’re insisting that Israel isn’t an autonomous, sovereign nation in its own right.

And this:

US attempts to rein in Israel in Gaza yielded only limited results, analysts say.

Analysts are carefully ignoring the major result from the Biden administration’s constant interference in IDF operations in Gaza. By holding Israel back, Biden and his have only prolonged the fight in Gaza, at the expense of more terrorist-caused civilian deaths during the prolonged fighting, increased Israeli casualties, and the murders of more hostages before IDF units could locate and get to them.

It’s no wonder the Israeli government increasingly dismisses Biden administration attempts to pressure and to determine Israel’s self-defense actions.

But it’s not just Joe Biden who’s badly failing here.

As Vice President, it’s hard for Kamala Harris to separate herself from her boss’ position. However, as Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate, it’s imperative that Harris make her position clear on this question. As the highly talented politician and impressively intelligent woman that Party now makes her out to be, of course Harris knows how to walk that seeming divergence. Thus: it’s clear from Harris’ silence on the specifics, and from her Senate colleague Bernie Sanders’ statements regarding the sincerity of her current words, that despite her loud claims of standing four-square with Israel, she agrees with her boss’ favoring Iran and its coming nuclear weapons availability over the security of Israel.

ILA Featherbedding

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Railroad unions are pikers here.

[T]here were 50,000 or so ILA strikers but only 25,000 or so port jobs. That’s right, only about half of the union’s members are obliged to show up to work each day. The rest sit at home collecting “container royalties” negotiated in previous ILA contracts intended to protect against job losses that result from innovation.

This ILA monopoly abuse is aided and abetted by Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden. Biden, far from invoking Taft-Hartley, which he doesn’t believe in, openly made his own extortionate threats against management:

President Biden had threatened the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) with legal action this week if it didn’t give in further to union demands. “My Administration will be monitoring for any price gouging activity that benefits foreign ocean carriers, including those on the USMX board,” he said in a statement. This was a direct threat to Maersk and other ocean carriers if they added a surcharge because of the disruptions from the ILA strike.

Keep in mind, too, that this was just for the precondition the ILA demanded in order for the union to agree to negotiate at all. The union will be back with its still-open strike threat on 15 January. And to hell with the rest of us Americans:

Mr Daggett [the ILA MFWIC] was happy to put countless truck drivers, warehouse employees, retail clerks, and auto workers out of work so he and his “connected” members can buy another yacht.

This is what a Progressive-Democratic Party-dominated Federal government will do to all of our economy and to us American citizens’ right to work and to choose for ourselves whether to join a union or not—and to keep all of our paycheck if we choose to not join a union.

Should Folks Stand for the National Anthem?

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Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was asked that question, and she gave an answer that, at first blush (at least in this edited clip) seems a non sequitur. It was, but it needn’t have been had Harris actually understood the question and the significance and importance of our national anthem and of standing for it whenever it’s played. Her answer:

I think that one of the beautiful things about our country is that we were founded on certain principles that we articulated in 1776, that we are all to be treated as equals; we articulated those principles in our constitution. And part of what we decided that makes a fair and just and noble society is, in a democracy, a true democracy, is freedom of religion, freedom—right—to association, freedom to organize—first amendment. So, that is part of who we are as a country, and I will defend it to the core, which is that we give people certain choices in our country.

Her words are muddled, but in context, I think are substantially correct (leaving aside that we’re not a true democracy, but a republican democracy, but that’s a distinction for another time), but her problem—the Left’s problem, our problem, our nation’s free speech problem—is that Harris doesn’t understand why her muddled words are correct. That context of her lack of understanding makes her words, counterintuitively to be sure, wrong.

Her words themselves are consistent with accuracy for two reasons. The first is where she didn’t directly answer the question. Yes, I answer for her, folks should stand, and face our flag or face in its direction, hats off, hand over heart, or salute if in uniform, for our national anthem. Doing so shows respect for the symbol of our nation, respect for our nation itself, respect for all of those who’ve fought under our flag in defense of our nation, and especially for those who have been killed or maimed in that defense.

That’s what makes possible the intent of Harris’ fuddled words: not standing cannot be a protest of anything if standing is not a requirement, of respect if not of law. Absent that requirement, there is no counter; there is nothing to protest.

Joe Biden’s Passive-Aggressive Timidity

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The lede says it all.

Well, that was fast. Iran fired 181 ballistic missiles on Israel Tuesday, and a day later President Biden was already telling Israel what it shouldn’t do in response. Asked Wednesday if he’d support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the President said “The answer is no.”

Our Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is showing his desperation for Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, which he knows full well will be used, promptly, to attack and destroy Israel and to exterminate Jews in the Middle East.

He broadened his desperation:

He also hauled in the leaders of the G-7 democracies to add to the pre-emptive pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We will be discussing with the Israelis what they are going to do. All seven of us agree that they have a right to respond but they should respond in proportion,” he told reporters after a G-7 conference call. “We are giving them advice. I will talk to Bibi relatively soon.”

This is, as The Wall Street Journal editors put it, Biden tell[ing] Irans [sic] Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that the US will help the regime protect its most prized and threatening military asset.

Proportion. I discussed what true proportion is nearby. I can only hope that Netanyahu has the courage and the IDF has the wherewithal to carry out its necessary active defensive (which is to say offensive in respond to Iran’s murderous attacks) actions against Iran, and against those targets the IDF deems most useful to Israel’s national security, independently of Biden’s despicable interference.

Joe Biden’s behavior—favoring as he does Iran getting nuclear weapons along with his parallel antisemitic attitude toward the Jewish state—is both disgusting, and a national humiliation to rival his panicky running out of Afghanistan.