Tag Archives: freedom

The Senate and the Republic

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Senator Jeff Merkley (D, OR) has said the quiet part aloud (to coin a phrase). His immediate venue is the coming Progressive-Democrat effort to Federalize our nation’s elections, which by our Constitution are set by each State’s own legislatures and only modifiable under narrow circumstances by the Federal Congress.

You can think of January as a moment when two different forces are converging. One is the functionality of the Senate and the other is the functionality of our republic.

No, these are not different “forces” at all. The functionality of our republic depends on our Federal Senate remaining the bipartisan body that it was designed to be. In the present case, that requires the Senate’s filibuster function to remain as it is, which enforces the Senate’s bipartisan nature.

It gets worse, though:

[Progressive-]Democrats have called passing new elections legislation their priority, arguing that minority voters need protections from new state rules.

This is Party being openly, loudly and proudly racist. There are no minority voters or “other” voters or non-minority voters. There are only American voters. As a man said not so long ago,

There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there’s the United States of America.

Even if that man turned out actually to not believe his words, the concept he pretended to espouse is true, nonetheless.

But, then, this is just another aspect of the Progressive-Democrats’ drive to fundamentally change America. The next year, and the two years after that, are going to be very dangerous times for our Republic.

Child Abuse

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Now the New Orleans government is requiring children as young as five years old to get vaccinated, whether they need it or not, whether their parents want it for their children or not.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell said she is implementing the policy “to keep the omicron variant at bay,” amid surging cases in Orleans Parish.

And

“The vaccine mandate will expand to include children ages 5-11,” she said. “We will require proof of vaccination or negative tests at bars and restaurants and other locations for everyone ages 5 and older.”

(I’m not aware that patrons as young as five years are allowed in New Orleans bars, but that’s another story.)

And, she orders:

Starting in January, you MUST ensure that your children are getting vaccinated!

This too closely approaches child abuse. There is virtually no risk to children—or from them to others—from the Wuhan Virus, especially from the mildest of all the variants, Omicron. It’s also true that the risk of dangerous side effects from the vaccines against the virus seems very small.

However.

We have more than two years of empirical data from a sample size that is the population of children on Earth with which to assess the level of risk to children from a Wuhan Virus infection. We have a much smaller set of data, collected over a much shorter period of time, with which to assess any risk to children of serious side effect from any of the virus vaccines.

Stipulate, though, that the vaccines’ serious side effect risk really is quite small. The comparison of interest is not whether the vaccines have an absolute level of risk in isolation of other factors or risks. The proper comparison is the level of risk to a child from being unvaccinated compared with the risk to the child of serious side effect from the vaccine.

If the two levels of risk are comparable—and they seem to be, even with the so-far assessed optimistic side effect risk—then the risk from the vaccine is not worth the risk to a child from going unvaccinated.

Forcing that second risk onto the child is too risky, to the point of abuse.

Ultimatums

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has them, so far centered on his buildup opposite Russia’s border with Ukraine.

“Further movement of NATO eastward is unacceptable,” Mr Putin told a press conference on Thursday.

This is the Kaiser presuming to order Poincaré/Viviani and Asquith not to respond to his buildup opposite the French border.

And this:

Mr Putin warned that Russia’s actions would depend not only “on the course of the negotiations, but on the unconditional provision of Russia’s security, today and in the future,” he said.

Like he’s honoring Ukraine’s security, as he’s already committed to do via his agreements under the Budapest Memoranda? He’s in no position to complain, at least in no moral position.

The Russian Anschluss:

[Putin insists] the future of the breakaway eastern region, called the Donbas, should be determined by residents there and he described the Kremlin’s role as being “mediators in creating the best conditions for determining the future of the people who live there.”
More than a million residents of the Donbas region have Russian passports, according to senior Russian officials.

The question is whether Biden-Harris, Macron, Johnson, and Scholz will have the moral and political courage that even those two sets of feckless predecessors had. In making their decisions to run and hide or to stop Putin and force him back out of Ukraine (and Georgia), these worthies need to consider that the farther Putin expands his borders, the farther he’ll demand the West retreat, for the unconditional provision of Russia’s security, today and in the future.

Update: Putin is withdrawing some 10,000 soldiers of the 175,000 that he’s mobilized on the Russian border with Ukraine. There are some reasons for this. One is that he’s making a show of this to cover the fact that he’s simply rotating troops in and out of the field to keep them fresh.

Another is that he’s giving up something small in the expectation of–and added pressure to–get something major for his going first with this “concession.”

Another is that Biden-Harris already has surrendered something, and he’s making a token gesture preparatory to forcing a major surrender regarding Ukraine, having thus built  momentum in Biden-Harris toward yielding and gotten him deeper into that mindset.

Updated Update: Other Russian troop movements include these:

Satellite photos revealed that Russia this month has moved infantry vehicles, tanks, artillery, and more into Crimea, according to reports. Additionally, a military unit has arrived near a Russian town that is situated nine miles from the border with Ukraine.

Contempt

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A Wall Street Journal piece centered on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) supposed plan to bring President Joe Biden’s (D) and his Progressive-Democratic Party’s “Build Back Better Act” to a Senate floor vote in January, and therewith dare Senator Joe Manchin (D, VA) to vote against it, had the following highly instructive bit buried toward the end.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D, WA), Chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, castigated Manchin over his decision regarding the Progressive-Democrats’ reconciliation bill:

We cannot hang the futures of millions of Americans on the words of one man who represents a state that has a tiny percentage of the country’s entire population.

Never mind that Senators and Representatives, at least nominally, work for their constituents and not for Party or the nation at large. Never mind, either, that pesky 10th Amendment, much less the 9th Amendment.

This is the utter contempt that Progressive-Democrats have for our Constitution and for the federal republican structure of our government that our Constitution creates.

This is the utter contempt that Progressive-Democrats have for us average Americans.

Everything from the center, and the center over everyone.

Seth Moulton’s Symbolism

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Congressman Seth Moulton (D, MA) had some thoughts on “saving Ukraine” in his Sunday WSJ op-ed. He began by announcing that our options are limited.

At this point, US options are limited. President Biden has already said he won’t send more troops.

Then he listed some things we could do, anyway, to show our support for Ukraine.

  • First, dramatically increase the speed of weapons procurement for Ukraine, and do so publicly. Washington must clearly articulate to the world how the weapons we provide will force Mr. Putin to incur substantial losses of Russian troops right away, not merely over time.
  • Second, organize effective sanctions. They must be targeted, powerful and widely agreed on in advance by NATO. … Mr Putin needs to know that he’ll have trouble buying a soda five minutes after he invades….
  • Third, clearly communicate the grave consequences of invading—not only to Mr. Putin, but to the Russian people.

All of those steps are necessary, but even in their aggregate, they’re insufficient. They’re especially so individually. We could—if the Progressive-Democratic Party, in control of Congress and the State and Defense Departments, were willing to stop slow-walking the supplies. But even if they were, it still would take weeks, at best, to get the weapons delivered in sufficient quantities, deployed, and the soldiers trained on them. Putin is ready to jump in days.

Effective sanctions? Certainly there is plenty of room to toughen them up, but consider: even if Putin were finding it hard to by a soda five minutes after invading—he’d still have Ukraine. There’s a real big so what factor in play here.

Clearly communicate the costs of invading…. On what basis does Moulton think either Putin or the Russian people would take anything Biden-Harris, or Blinken, or Austin—or Milley—have to say seriously? They’ve been weak and their words less than weak tea for the last eleven months.

No.

Also necessary is making concrete those suggestions. Biden-Harris must correct his assurance to Putin that he won’t resist Putin’s coming invasion of Ukraine (or of the Baltics, if Putin’s moves opposite Ukraine prove to be misdirection).

Biden-Harris must redeploy American troops (beginning from out of Germany, which disdains NATO, anyway, and so won’t miss them beyond the GIs’ spending on the German economy) into southern and northern Poland—opposite Ukraine and Kaliningrad—and into Lithuania.

Biden-Harris must move naval forces into US air strike range of Kaliningrad.

Biden-Harris must begin joint air training and CAP exercises with Ukrainian and Lithuanian air forces in those nations’ airspaces.

Absent these, the Progressive-Democrat’s suggestions are nothing but symbolism.