It’s Not So Much That

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The Wall Street Journal is puzzled by President-elect Donald Trump’s (R) move to persuade the Republican-majority Senate to go into recess so he can install his several Executive Branch nominees as recess-appointments.

…it was strange the other day when President-elect Trump issued a pre-emptive demand that his own party let him make recess appointments, “without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner.”

The editors go so far as to try to lay Trump’s move off on trying to ram through his nominee for AG, Matt Gaetz (R), the ex-Congressman from Florida. There is much about Gaetz over which to be dismayed by his nomination, but getting the Senate to blanket allow a plethora of recess appointments to mask this appointment really isn’t the reason for the recess appointment push. Or certainly not the only one.

Going through the confirmation process is interminably slow even in the best of times. It can take months to work through the list of nominees, years even, with a determined and skillful opposition. For a variety of reasons, most of them entirely sound, the Committee vetting process takes days—for each nominee—a time frame that can be dragged into weeks when the minority party wants to. It was the Progressive-Democratic Party Senators’ practice throughout Trump’s first term to hem and haw and delay and stall each of then-President Trump’s nominee confirmations.

Then, once out of committee, Senate rules mandate a minimum 30 hours per nominee of floor debate, absent unanimous consent.

Party already is gearing up to block as much of Trump’s announced agenda as it can; blocking as many of his nominees as it can will be an extension of that.

It’s not at all surprising that Trump would ask Republicans to go along this time.

More Free Speech Leftist-Style

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As if we don’t need another example of Leftist censorship version of free speech, Ezra Klein, of the text [of our Constitution] is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago infamy, provides us with another.

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein slammed Democrats over their stubborn denials that US cities are plagued with rising crime, out-of-control migration, and skyrocketing prices….

To this point, Klein is right to decry the Progressive-Democratic Party’s foolishness.

As reported by the New York Post (the article is behind a paywall, but the tabloid’s subscription cost isn’t worth the candle), though, Klein couldn’t stop there, and he expressed a core tenet of Party:

And this idea that “The economy is actually good,” or “Crime is actually down, this is all just Fox News,” shut the f–k up with that[.]

Because speech of which Klein personally disapproves—even if he’s correct in its thrust—cannot be allowed. Free speech is only what he, or his Leftist cronies, say it is. It’s certainly not what that old-young Constitution of ours says it is. Of course, I have it on similarly good authority that [our Constitution] has no binding power on anything, anyway, so there’s that.

A Question

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A letter writer in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section asked a question regarding Matthew Hennesey’s Electoral College editorial.

48 states are winner-take-all when it comes to electoral votes. With this, it is possible to secure enough electoral votes with only 23% of the national popular vote. Though unlikely, what would the founders say?

Our Founders would say, “So what?” The Electoral College was created explicitly to separate President and Vice President elections from popular votes and to put those elections up to States acting in their own names. One citizen, one vote for nearly all elected offices, but for these two offices, which exist to speak for our nation as a whole, the States united into our nation get the vote: one State, one vote. If there’s to be a change to how Electors in the College are selected, it should be to change that small minority of States who allocate Electors in rough proportion to their citizens’ votes—by House District among other means—to a winner-take-all selection.

Part of the Task

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President-elect Donald Trump (R) is, supposedly, drafting an Executive Order that would create a warrior board whose purpose would be to review three- and four-star officers and to recommend removals of any deemed unfit for leadership. The board would consist of retired general and noncommissioned officers.

The draft order [if it’s actually being drafted] says it aims to establish a review that focuses “on leadership capability, strategic readiness, and commitment to military excellence.” The draft doesn’t specify what officers need to do or present to show if they meet those standards.

Such a review and removal has been needed for some time. Flag rank is a political rank as well as a military one, but for some years, now, the political has taken precedence over the military in the minds of too many flag-ranks. Nor do the officers need to do or present anything to show whether they meet those standards; the board, presumably, would have access to the officers’ personnel records, and the board would have in front of it those officers’ recent empirical performances in the staff and command positions they’ve been holding.

There are a couple of additional steps, though, that remain to be taken. One is that the board membership needs to be lined up, if less publicly than Trump’s Cabinet and staff picks, and ready to be appointed in the minutes after the EO is signed.

The other step is to set up a similar board to review the senior civilian posts and their incumbents with a view to removing those personages who fail to have the requisite leadership capability, strategic readiness, and commitment to military excellence. This board also should review all of the civilian positions with a view to identifying those positions not actually needed. Those incumbents should be returned to the private sector along with those civilians who failed the explicit leadership review. The latter, however, should be returned without opprobrium or stigma.

It’s time DoD was put back into the role of building, maintaining, and supporting a lethal military establishment capable of taking on our enemies in two and a half simultaneous wars and defeating those enemies so decisively they cannot attack us again for a long time. Two and a half simultaneous wars? That was the DOC of our military at the height of the Cold War, and Russia, the People’s Republic of China, and Iran are bent on another Cold War against us, with two of them already engaged in hot wars against a friend and an ally, and the third threatening and girding itself for a hot war against another of our friends.

Time’s a-wasting.

Terrorist Chimera

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Hamas and Hezbollah say they have reached a concord regarding governing Gaza once the war Hamas inflicted on Israel and in which Hezbollah enthusiastically joined with Hamas is at an end.

Palestinian officials from both factions, long bitter rivals, have reached a consensus to create an apolitical committee of Palestinian technocrats not affiliated with either of them to manage the sensitive and massive jobs of aid distribution and rebuilding, Palestinian and other Arab officials said.

Tariq Kenney-Shawa, of the Palestinian Policy Network:

They have a lot more room and urgency for common ground now and to avoid being sidelined[.]

There expressed is the chimera of the concord. Hamas and Hezbollah don’t want to be sidelined in setting up the governing body or in its operation.

Nor will they be, if their proposal is accepted; they’ll remain in complete control: keep in mind who would be selecting these technocrats, or at the least who would have the final say in their selection. It’s beyond naïve to believe that personnel selected by the terrorist entities wouldn’t be tied to those entities.