President Joe Biden (D) seems to have identified a long-standing error regarding our nation’s response to espionage.
President Biden’s decision…to punish Russia for the SolarWinds hack broke with years of US foreign policy that has tolerated cyber espionage as an acceptable form of 21st century spycraft[.]
Espionage is espionage, spycraft is spycraft; the tools used are irrelevant to these simple facts.
Congressman Jim Langevin (D, RI) is continuing the misapprehension, though.
Mercantilist tariffs (as opposed to tariffs as foreign policy tools) are purely protectionist, designed to punish competitors for competing. They’re not only aimed at foreign competition, either, as Europe’s auto industry is demonstrating [emphasis added].
Auto makers in Europe eager to boost sales of their electric vehicles have a new strategy: demanding higher taxes on conventional vehicles that burn gas and diesel fuel.
The top executives at several car and truck makers are calling on European governments to introduce the new taxes on carbon-dioxide emissions from gasoline- and diesel-powered cars and trucks as a way to help their EVs better compete.
Maybe. President Joe Biden (D) is acting like he’s taking action that would seem to respond to Russia’s SolarWinds hack and interference with the 2020 Presidential election. His potential action includes
The sanctions will take effect on 14 June.
And doesn’t care. That’s Dr. Anthony Fauci, as he made clear in his…testimony…before the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis last Thursday. Congressman Jim Jordan (R, OH) questioned Fauci regarding when Wuhan Virus (my term, not Jordan’s or Fauci’s) situation would be ending and CDC guideline restrictions lifted.
Fauci insisted that the restrictions would begin to be relaxed
When we get the level of infection in this country low enough that it is not a really high threat[.]
Despite repeated questions from Jordan to define “low enough,” Fauci remained evasive, repeatedly refusing to be specific, to identify the number…what metrics, what measures, he would use to define “low enough.”
In one of their Tuesday editorials, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about the shooting of Daunte Wright in the Minnesota town of Brooklyn Center. They seemed to be on the right track in their insistence for due process both for Wright and for the police officer who, according to body camera video and audio, fatally shot him.
Sadly, the editors blew up their thesis with this, regarding post-shooting events:
On Monday night protesters looted businesses….
Accuracy, and truth, die at the hands of political correctness.
Protesters don’t loot. Criminals loot.
Protesters don’t riot. Rioters riot.
Especially in Los Angeles County, where County District Attorney George Gascón rules.
Gascón has proposed legislation that would bar felonies committed while a juvenile from being counted as “strikes” under California’s Three Strikes law when the person commits a felony as an adult. Superficially, it seems like a good idea. After all, Gascón argues, the child’s brain isn’t fully developed.
A sister of a gang-related murder victim exposed the flaw in that argument, though. Aja Courtney:
Anybody who has children understands that children know at very early ages what’s right from wrong[.]
That’s President Joe Biden’s position vis-à-vis Michigan as that State experiences an increase in Wuhan Virus infections, particularly via the UK Variant. Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been trying to get President Joe Biden (D) to increase the number of vaccine doses allocated to her State. Biden says, “No.”
Here’s Biden’s CDC Director Rochelle Walensky:
The answer is not necessarily to give vaccine. The answer to that is to really close things down, to go back to our basics, to go back to where we were last spring, last summer, and to shut things down.
Jay Bhattacharya, in his Tuesday Wall Street Journal op-ed, (mostly) correctly called out and decried YouTube for censoring and spiking a public-policy roundtable hosted by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and in which Bhattacharya had participated.
Among other things discussed by the participants was the wisdom of requiring children to wear masks in the face of the Wuhan Virus situation. The panel said the requirement was foolish and counterproductive, and this was too much for the Know Betters. YouTube
removed the video “because it included content that contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”
A couple of nuggets in a Tuesday Wall Street Journal editorial prompt this in my pea brain. The editorial itself concerns [t]he issue [of] how best to address public anxiety over rare blood clots seemingly associated with the J&J anti-Wuhan Virus vaccine.
The nuggets are these:
six US cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) [in] 6.8 million who have received J&J’s vaccine
and
This particular brain blood clot is extremely rare in the general population—five individuals per million per year….
It’s especially dangerous in the face of People’s Republic of China aggression. Yet it’s the position of Canada’s Justin Trudeau government. Don’t angrify the bully.
The Halifax Security Forum is a congress of international security experts:
…sponsored by NATO [and by the Canadian government, the latter especially with money], draws scores of powerful military and civilian leaders. Previous speakers have included then-US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel; Admiral Phil Davidson, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command; Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan; and officials from a host of other countries, including Israel, Estonia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Poland and Japan.
And