Tag Archives: freedom

Rules Don’t Matter

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The Progressive-Democrats want to toss inconvenient Senate rules so they can have anything they demand. And they’ve become very open about that.

A group of House Democrats, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) penned a letter urging the Senate’s Democratic leadership to ignore the Senate Parliamentarian ruling that a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants cannot be included in a budget reconciliation bill.

And from the letter,

We do understand that the Senate Parliamentarian has issued a memorandum dismissing—despite evidence to the contrary—the budgetary impact of providing a pathway to citizenship. But the role of the Parliamentarian is an advisory one, and the Parliamentarian’s opinion is not binding.

Never mind the carefully unsubstantiated claim of budgetary impact. Consider the demand that the Parliamentarian’s ruling be blithely ignored. It is an advisory ruling, but under Senate reconciliation ruling it is binding, and the Senate is bound by it.

Sure, the ruling can be overridden, but that capability is irrelevant, as the Progressive-Democrats know full well. Statutes are binding, also, as are Federal agency regulations, and statutes and regulations also can be overridden: by subsequent statute or regulation, by the issuing agency rescinding its regulation, by the courts overruling or striking altogether the statute or regulation.

But overrule it the damned thing, Progressive-Democrats demand; it’s inconvenient to their purpose.

Nor will such disregard be limited to immigration. They’ll move to ignore any Senate rule, any regulation, any statute that gets in their way.

The Progressive-Democrats, in their drive to “fundamentally transform our nation,” now are saying out loud that a Critical Item in their desired transformation is that we should no longer be a nation ruled by law, but a nation ruled by men and women—their men and women in particular.

Remember this next fall, and keep it firmly in mind for 2024.

Government Control of the Means of Production

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And it begins with Government control of the means of financing the means of production (among other things to be financed).

The acting head of the US’s top banking regulator called for banks to be screened for climate risk as part of their periodic stress tests and said the agency’s own regulatory approach was focused on maintaining the safety and soundness of the financial system.
“Banks face all sorts of risks everyday—credit risk, market risk, liquidity risk,” said Michael Hsu, acting comptroller of the currency. “What’s emerging now is that climate change is going to be impacting a number of those risks in different ways, and we need banks to prepare for that.”

This is nonsense. The risk that banks must be able to manage, in this venue, is the risk involved in Government reaction to the “climate change,” whether global warming is real or not.

Hsu’s attempt has nothing to do with the safety and soundness of our nation’s financial system; it has everything to do with an attempt to increase Government control of our nation’s financial system.

In Which VP Harris Has It Right

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Just not in the way she means. Following the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges in the Kenosha riot shooting case, the Kamala Harris (D) half of the Biden-Harris Presidency said this:

The verdict really speaks for itself[.]
As many of you know, I’ve spent the majority of my career working to make the criminal justice system more equitable, and clearly there’s a lot more to do[.]

She’s right, of course. The shootings wanted, as a matter of course, a careful and thorough investigation. Either that was not done—a lot more to do in our justice system—or the prosecutors ignored the results of a careful and thorough investigation and brought the case to trial, anyway—a lot more work to do in our justice system.

As the evidence brought to trial clearly showed, Rittenhouse was there in the middle of the riot to render first aid to those injured by the rioters; to fight fires set by the rioters; and to protect a business, at the behest of the business’ operators, from rioters bent on its physical destruction. As the evidence just as clearly showed, Rittenhouse was hounded, stalked, threatened with murder, chased, attacked, and threatened with a firearm aimed at him by his attackers. Ultimately, he was forced to defend himself, and sadly, lethally so regarding two of his attackers.

Yet the prosecutors brought their charges to trial anyway. And in the course of their presentation, they attacked Rittenhouse for daring to not speak publicly before the trial, to not answer their charges before the trial. In the course of their presentation, those prosecutors attempted to enter evidence that had been barred from entry by the judge. In the course of their presentation, those prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense until after the evidence presentation portion of the trial was closed and closing arguments begun.

The verdict really does speak for itself.

There really is a lot more work to do to make our criminal justice system more equitable.

Winning the War with the PRC

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Retired US Navy Captain and current Telemus Group Vice President Jerry Hendrix expresses considerable dismay over our Navy’s shrinking air combat reach, and it’s entirely justified.

In 1996 the range of the carrier’s air wing was about 800 nautical miles. By 2006 that figure had dropped to 500 miles. Meanwhile, China has developed antiship missiles like the Dong Feng-21, the “carrier killer,” with a range of 1,000 miles.

He concluded his op-ed with this:

[Absent] long-range, penetrating strike aircraft…carriers will be unable to make a meaningful contribution to deterring and, if necessary, winning a conventional conflict with China…. To avoid that unfortunate outcome, civilian leaders, including lawmakers and the Navy secretary, will need to step in to get naval aviation back on target.

He’s right up to a point. That’s a necessary step, but it’s not sufficient. The Navy needs also to expand and increase its capability with ship-launched land attack missiles (along with expanding its arsenal of air-launched land attack missiles and their range).

The PRC aims to overwhelm ship defenses with raw numbers of anti-ship missiles. We need to overwhelm PRC defenses with numbers of accurate, maneuvering, penetrating missiles to destroy PRC facilities. We have the core of this, already—as we do for an expanded naval aviation facility. That core is in the ship-launched anti-ship missile weapons in inventory and in the submarine-launched cruise missiles in inventory. Those need, badly, to be expanded: the anti-ship weapons on board augmented with long-range land-attack missiles, and the SLCMs on board augmented with long-range cruise missiles. Along with getting long-range air-launched land attack missiles into the inventory.

Absent these, the outcome of a war with the PRC will be catastrophic: we’ll be swept from the Western Pacific, and there’s no reason to believe the PRC wouldn’t follow up that success in the way Japan could not 80 years ago.

Progressive-Democrat Strikes Again

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Austria is locking up down into their homes all Austrian citizens who remain unvaccinated against the Wuhan Virus.

World renowned epidemiologist and Progressive-Democrat Arne Duncan, late Secretary of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) Education Department, says that’s a good idea.

If you [sic] a danger to yourself and others, you must remain at home. If you aren’t, you are free to roam around the country. Austria is onto something…

Then he closed his deal with this:

I look forward to the day when we Americans value the health, safety, and well-being of our neighbors at least as much as we value our personal freedom.

Those pesky freedoms. How they do get in the way of our Know Betters telling us how to live our lives. For our own good, of course.

Duncan’s position, the core ideology of the Progressive-Democratic Party, is a clear illustration that our safety and well-being, along with those of our neighbors, are at greatest risk when we lose those personal freedoms.

The Left and their Party know this full well, which is why they’re at such pains to disparage our personal freedoms.