Cowardice in another Milieu

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The Washington Post posted its screed of hatred against all things Israel when it castigated some parents of hostages being held by Hamas for not criticizing Israel enough to suit the tabloid in the parents’ own plea for their children’s release. The tabloid’s post:

Omer Neutra has been missing since the October 7 attack on Israel. When his parents speak publicly, they don’t talk about Israel’s assault on Gaza that has killed over 38,000 Palestinians, according to local officials. Experts have warned of looming famine[.]

American Jewish Committee has succeeded in preserving the tabloid’s disgusting post:

The parents of Israeli-American hostage Omer Neutra have one goal: TRYING TO FREE THEIR SON from Hamas captivity.
That’s all they need to say.
How could this tweet have been posted? Shame on @WashingtonPost for calling the Neutra’s morality into question.

Leave aside WaPo‘s open support for the terrorists in taking the terrorists’ casualty claims at face value. This is WaPo‘s naked hatred made manifest.

The tabloid sinks deeper into the cesspool holding tank, though. In response to the hue and cry against the outlet, its managers chose to not correct the post. They chose instead to delete it and try to pretend it never occurred.

That’s revisionist history, it’s an insult to honest Americans, it’s an act of dishonesty, and it’s naked cowardice.

Panic

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The day after the Republican convention closed, with Republicans the most unified they’ve been in several election cycles, this occurred:

Friday brought calls from several more Democrats for President Biden to end his candidacy….

Never mind that party Presidential nominating conventions typically produce spikes in poll numbers favoring the party that just concluded its convention and that spike quickly dissipates as the adrenalin rush of the convention fades. Those polls aren’t even out, yet, so the degree of spike isn’t known.

The calls from several more Progressive-Democrats this soon after the Republican convention is just the blind, stinking panic of the Progressive-Democratic Party as its politicians run hysterically in circles, screaming and shouting.

Is this a political party we want anywhere near our government in these dangerous times for our nation?

Separately but relatedly, I hope Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden stands tall, metaphorically, and refuses to end his campaign for reelection. If Party elites want to execute a coup against their Party leader, let them do it at the convention, where nomination debates and nominations should occur. Let the people have their voices stand, through their delegates, which they solemnly elected throughout the primaries. Folks voted in those primaries long before they understood the condition of their preferred candidate? That’s a lesson that might be taken to heart regarding (too) early voting in general.

In the realization (I wrote this post Saturday night), Biden folded and dropped out. Then it took him two tries actually endorse his VP as his replacement for reelection. He can’t tell his delegates how to vote at the convention, but it seems likely to me that the party bosses will deny those 14 million primary voters their representation through the delegates their votes selected and anoint Harris. If so, so much for democracy in the party that bleats about threats to our democracy.

Mask Bans

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There are mask mandates, and there are mask mandates. In lieu of government action (and hopefully, government will butt out this time), local businesses are implementing their own mask requirements in this post-Wuhan Virus world: they’re saying no masks allowed in our stores. In this brave, new post-Virus world, masks have become tools of disguise during robberies far, far more than they are (questionable, it turns out) means of protecting against viruses.

Naturally, the Whiner Community is whining.

Critics say the bans jeopardize the health of immunocompromised people, violate civil liberties, and foster discriminatory enforcement.

Cue the Disabilities Act lawsuits and other such inane frivolities. Maybe it needn’t be so difficult to sanction lawyers who bring frivolous lawsuits into courts.

And, yes, these would be frivolous on the part of the fee seekers and the Whiners looking to squeeze some bucks for themselves with their frivolous plaints. Many of those stores are offering separate hours for the immunocompromised, just like big box stores and grocery stores did for the especially challenged geezer community during that Wuhan Virus Situation. This is a nonproblem that’s already been long solved.

Cut Rates Now?

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Greg Ip, Chief Economics Commentator for The Wall Street Journal, thinks the Federal Reserve should cut its benchmark interest rates sooner rather than later. After all, he says, inflation is down to 2.6% and the unemployment rate stands at 4.1%.

I disagree. Ip makes much of the rate of inflation drop, from 4.3% then to an estimated 2.6% now, the steepest decline since 1984, and of the unemployment rate increase, to 4.1% from 3.6%, an increase seldom seen outside recessions.

Not so much. The inflation rate drop also is from its 9+% peak a couple years ago, and as Ip put it, the current rate is within shouting distance of the Fed’s goal of 2%. That much Ip has right; the difference now is economic noise. Regarding unemployment, 3.6% is historically consistent with a hot, inflationary labor market while 4.1% is historically consistent with a healthy economy. The rate of increase bears watching, but it doesn’t warrant action.

In fact, nothing in Ip’s article data warrant Fed action. The Fed’s current benchmark interest rates, between 5.25% and 5.5%, are entirely consistent, historically, with 2% inflation and 4-ish% unemployment. Actual economic fluctuations around those targets are normal and self-correcting.

Rather than cutting rates further, or dithering about when to cut—or to increase, an option the Fed also still is mumbling about—Powell and his Governors should stop the hand-wringing, and announce that they’re going to leave the rates alone for the foreseeable future because the economy has arrived. No further movement, in either direction, in the benchmarks is warranted.

But They are the Same Theater

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A letter writer in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section expressed his concern for NATO’s increasing emphasis on the People’s Republic of China threat in the Pacific, saying in part,

NATO, however, shouldn’t be pushing into Asia or treating Europe and Asia as the same theater.

And

…founding charter: to maintain the peace in the North Atlantic and defend its member states from a Russian attack.

Asia, the Pacific theater, dominated as it is by the enemy nation, the People’s Republic of China, and the European theater that’s formally the DOC of NATO are, in fact the same theater; the two regions are adjacent Areas of Responsibility.

This isn’t a matter of who’s got the intercontinental reach of missiles. It’s the closely intertwined—and dependency creating—trade regimes and economies, as the PRC exports at artificially lowered price its goods into Europe; the PRC engages in active cyber espionage and cyber sabotage activities; the PRC engages in active dis- and misinformation, pushing as it does its state-owned and -run social media facilities like TikTok and ecommerce facilities like TEMU, one of which actively pushes false claims (not information) and both of which actively hoover up individualized personal and business information for the use of the PRC’s intelligence community; the PRC’s PLA moves into the eastern Pacific and western Atlantic Oceans and into the northeastern Mediterranean Sea with its dual use commercial and military seaports and airports; and on and on.

Maintaining the peace in the North Atlantic, thus, requires the PRC threat to that theater be addressed. Furthermore, the PRC’s nakedly open support of Russia in the latter’s equally naked invasion of a sovereign nation makes it imperative that “defending…from a Russian attack” involve addressing the PRC threat. That’s optimally done at the source; hence the need to emphasize the threat to NATO interests and security by including Asia as one of the AORs in the NATO theater of operations.

Distance in the modern world is nonexistent. It’s entirely appropriate that NATO expand its area of regard and learn to do two things at once.