Author Archives: eehines

To Abuse a Metaphor….

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Iran has had its inability to defend itself against direct Israeli attacks, and Hamas and Hezbollah, although still fighting, have been severely damaged. The Biden-Harris administration wants a “proportional” response by Israel to Iran’s latest assault, a murderous-intended, ballistic missile attack all across the geography of Israel. They’re not alone. Michael Knights, Washington Institute for Near East Policy senior fellow:

Israeli retaliations always tend to match the reduction in its civilian morale, done as a reassurance that the Israeli qualitative edge is still there and that Israel can hit its enemies back harder than they can hit it. Now, in this case, these Iranian strikes didn’t seem to have hit very hard.

Proportionality: Iran keeps attacking Israel, directly now, through its terrorist clients north and south of Israel also. Our Progressive-Democrat administration’s version of proportionality is to just trade tit-for-tat strikes that do nothing to put an end to Iran’s repeated strikes, and as they continue, the likelihood grows that one strike will get through and severely damage or destroy Israel.

True proportionality would have Israel strike hard enough to prevent Iran from being able to strike again for a good, long time—generations, ideally. Dina Esfandiary, International Crisis Group‘s Middle East and North Africa senior adviser:

It [Iran] really is stuck between a rock and a hard place[.]

It’s time to slam the rock down hard on the hard place and severely damage, if not cripple, Iran. That’s the only way to prevent Iran from continuing its murderous attacks.

The Utility of Automation

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The International Longshoremen’s Association is demonstrating that, in spades, with its strike and its intent on inflicting maximum damage to our nation and our economy. Here’s the ILA MFWIC, Harold Daggett:

We’re going to show these greedy bastards you can’t survive without us!

Pretty nice business you got there. Pay up, suckers.

People are going to sit up and realize how important longshoremen jobs are. They won’t be able to sell cars. They won’t be able to stock malls. They won’t be able to do anything in this country without my f—ing people.

Automation will make such threats to business’ ability to function at all destructions of the past.

In today’s world, I’ll cripple you[.]

That’s Daggett’s response to speculation that the Biden/Harris administration might invoke Taft-Hartly to force the union workers back to their jobs. In the process of crippling our nation, he’s said he’d include slow-walking every step of every task.

Oh, and robots won’t hold out for a 77% pay raise as a precondition to entering into any negotiations at all.

The sooner this union is replaced with automatic facilities at the docks, the better off we’ll all be—including those dockworkers.

“I Don’t Believe in Taft-Hartley”

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Those were Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s words when a reporter asked him if he’d intervene in the now in progress International Longshoremen’s Association strike against East and Gulf Coast ports.

Q    Mr. President, will you intervene in the dockworkers strike if they go on strike on Tuesday?
THE PRESIDENT:  No.
Q    Why not?
THE PRESIDENT:  Because there’s collective bargaining, and I don’t believe in Taft-Hartley.

Taft-Hartley authorizes a President to intervene in strikes that create a national emergency—such as, for instance, a strike that shuts down all of our ports on the East and Gulf Coasts, a strike that thereby cuts imports of food, vehicles, heavy machinery, construction materials, [and] chemicals as well as cutting off critical supply chain imports needed for those and for other products all across our economy, which is still in a fragile state, for all the headline numbers. The strike also cuts off all our exports to trading partners, friends, and allies that would leave from those ports. Those exports include products like oil and LNG destined for Europe, whose economies are in a fragile state from the reduced energy availability due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

This is Biden is proclaiming his disdain for a law he’s sworn to enforce. That disdain is consistent with his disdain for immigration and border control laws and, by extension, for our laws in general.

This is the Party that wants to reign over us for the next four, and more, years.

Biden-Harris Helene Failure

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Regarding the damage done by Hurricane Helene and recovery efforts by those concerned: don’t count the Biden-Harris administration among those concerned. Cynical Publius noted on X:

This is unbelievable.
XVIII Airborne Corps is located on Fort Bragg (I refuse to call it by that other woke name), a mere 268 miles from Asheville and the worst flooding areas of this Biblical-level tragedy.
The Corps’ capabilities include:

-Extensive medium and heavy lift rotary wing aircraft.
-A theater sustainment command with incredible capabilities for delivery of food, potable water, fuel and construction materials.
-A medical brigade with Level III surgical capabilities.
-An engineer brigade with robust heavy construction assets.
-A military police brigade that can provide traffic control and assist local LE.
-An Airborne Infantry division that has routinely supported disaster relief in years past.
-A world-class command, control and communications HQ capability to make it all work.

NONE OF THAT has been ordered to assist civil authorities? NONE OF IT??????
Fort Bragg has routinely supported domestic disaster relief for DECADES—Katrina, Homestead, you name it.  Hell, I myself have a Humanitarian Service Medal for support to Hurricane Fran relief out of Bragg.
Now we can’t do anything for an epic disaster in the SAME FREAKING STATE?
WTF, over?
This goes beyond mere negligence.  It must be malicious.  Perhaps Kamala and Joe don’t want NC’s rural GOP counties to be able to vote on November 5th?
This is an abomination, and one of the worst derelictions of Presidential duties in US history.

He posted in response to this, in which we have Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s cynical (there’s no reason to believe it’s merely ignorant) claim, quoted from a C-SPAN clip of a reporter’s question and Biden’s response (see the clip itself at the end of the post):

Biden on Hurricane Helene:
Reporter: “Do you have any words to the victims of the hurricane?”
Biden: “We’ve given everything that we have.”
Reporter “Are there any more resources the federal government could be giving them?”
Biden: “No.”

The expression on Biden’s face shows how proud he is of this (lack of) effort.

Hugh Wang added

And a little further east is Camp Lejune and cherry point. II MEF [Marine Expeditionary Force] with an entire Marine Air Wing, trucks, engineers, etc.

This is beyond disgusting.

Adding Pressure

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In a Monday editorial, the Wall Street Journal‘s editors suggest that, with Israel’s damaging Hezbollah and the associated weakening of Iran, now is the time for us (and the West) to add to the pressure on Iran. But these worthies are as timid as Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden (and Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential nominee Kamala Harris by her complete silence).

The editors suggest striking the Houthis, despite their having cowed Biden into tolerating their closing off serious commerce through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (he’s only letting our Navy play whack-a-missile (the editors’ term)), just don’t strike now:

The next time the Houthis attack, the US can unleash the same sustained havoc on them that Israel has on Hezbollah. The Houthis and their Iranian suppliers would no longer have the escalation advantage.

Why wait? Strike now. Cut out the tit-for-tat silliness that’s fit only for the grade school playground; in the real world that just costs lives and treasure.

Further, don’t engage in dumbass and wholly immoral escalation games—immoral because all escalation management only drags things out, running up the friendly casualty count even worse that childish tit-for-tat—get after all the Houthis’ sites, destroy them, and sink the Iranian and Iranian proxy shipping that’s moving arms to Houthi hands. And: seal off the Arabian Sea and the Arabian Gulf from all Iranian shipping of any sort, military or commercial, outbound or inbound.

But don’t count on Biden or Harris to support this. They’re too busy with their moral equivalence sewage of demanding cease-fires right damn now, which they know will only benefit the terrorists.

And now, as I write on 1 October, directly pursuant to Biden-Harris’ timidity in the face of Hamas and Hezbollah and the terrorists’ active sponsor and armorer, Iran, Iran has launched a long-duration ballistic missile attack intended to blanket all of Israel. It’s an attack, with a view to destroying Israel, that never would have occurred had the Biden-Harris administration openly stood beside Israel instead of supporting the terrorists with the administration’s shameful moral equivalence demand for diplomacy and cease-fires.

And my own, not humble, advice for the Israeli government. Don’t let your success in these two Iranian attacks go to your head. Keep in mind the possibility that Iran is sandbagging you with these two attacks, holding back their truly capable Order of Battle against the nearby day they have nuclear weapons and launch their serious attack. Which will come out of the blue, not in any face-saving response to some action of your own.