Author Archives: eehines

“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.

There’s Always an Excuse not to Bother

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It’s not just the European governments that stand in the way of those nations’ efforts to rearm and to supply arms to Ukraine in the face of Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine and the barbarian’s designs on the rest of Europe. True enough, those governments have bureaucratic red tape that stands in the way, along with politicians disinterested in getting that red tape out of the way.

Months after the acquisition of the [ammunition-producing] factory, a majority in the Danish parliament demanded that the government open the process to bidders, rather than settling for the presumed favorite for the job….

Too often, though, it’s those nations’ private businesses that would be important, if not critical, to the rearmament effort, local governments, and the populations themselves.

…some banks won’t lend to defense contractors, making life particularly tough for small companies in the industry’s supply chain.

And

In the German city of Troisdorf, Diehl Defence said it has struggled to get permission to expand a factory in the city center to boost production of detonators and other parts for the Iris T missile-defense system, which has formed a crucial part of Ukraine’s air defenses since the war began.
Troisdorf’s mayor, Alexander Biber, said the community was in constructive talks with Diehl, but asked whether a city center is better suited for homes or businesses than for factories producing explosives.

And

A leading European tank maker, KNDS, was planning to expand a Munich testing range, but had to pause following local complaints, including one from a man who said the work interfered with his meditation, according to a person familiar with the matter. Other residents were concerned that noise from the testing site would affect housing prices.

These are anecdotal, but they illustrate the trends.

This lack of interest in defending themselves, much less help a nation under a barbarian invasion, just further demonstrates the uselessness of NATO and the importance of standing up a replacement mutual defense arrangement involving the Three Seas Initiative, the UK, and the US.

Self-Sustaining

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Elon Musk wants to get a self-sustaining colony going on Mars in his lifetime—his current goal is to get that started in the next four years with crewed flights, albeit not yet with colonists along. I agree with him in the goal of a self-sustaining colony and with his rationale—that getting off planet in a sustainable way using only the resources available on the second (and further) planets is critical to the survivability of homo sapiens.

I have questions, though.

What will be the long-term effect of living lifetimes in Mars’ gravity field, which is roughly 38% that of Earth’s? What effect would that great difference have on human (and food animal) gestation?

At the very bottom of human metabolism, of Earth-adapted metabolism in general, are a suite of minerals that plants, animals, essential bacteria need. Many of these are used in trace amounts only, but they seem to be critical. Will all of these minerals be present on Mars? What will be the effect, even if the minerals are present in some amount, on the bacteria on which all the other life depends, and on the plants on which all the animals depend?

And one more question: say a self-sustaining colony has been a going concern for some number of generations. With those generations’ adaptation (focusing here solely on the human population) to Mars’ gravity and to that planets’ mineral suite—especially in the latest generations there—will those folks ever be able to come back to Earth and live and operate in our much higher gravity field? Will those folks even still be homo sapiens, or will they be something different—homo mars? It seems likely the two populations still would be capable of interbreeding, much like homo sapiens with homo neanderthalensis and with denisova hominin.

Getting sustainably off planet will facilitate our ability to survive natural disasters and our own machinations, and thereby extend the life of homo sapiens as a species. But evolution won’t be stopped by getting off planet. That will only generate new pressures that guide evolution, new pathways for evolution to follow. And that includes the evolution of homo sapiens, even here on Earth.