Demanding Surrender

While Hamas increases its terrorist rocket attacks on Israel’s population centers—explicitly targeting civilian women and children with the targeting—and Israel increases its active defense against Hamas’ terrorism—while at the same time, warning the occupants of targeted buildings, including the terrorists therein, of the impending attacks—the Biden-Harris administration is stepping up its pressure on the Israeli government to come to a cease fire.

Since it isn’t possible for the Israelis to contemplate a cease fire until the terrorists cease firing, this amounts to Biden-Harris pressure on Netanyahu to surrender to Hamas.

This is a despicable Progressive-Democrat betrayal of our strongest ally in the Middle East and one of our strongest allies anywhere in the world—especially since Hamas’ purpose, and that of Hamas’ master, Iran, is not to force Israel to give them anything, but to achieve the utter destruction of Israel and the extermination of Jews. That purpose is well-known to the Progressive-Democrats, but it doesn’t matter to them.

At least, though, Biden-Harris is setting an example for Netanyahu. Biden-Harris has lifted bars to construction of Nordstream 2 and removed associated sanctions against Russian companies and government officials—ze’s own abject surrender to Russia.

It’s telling that Biden-Harris’ meekness in front of Vladimir Putin comes on the heels of a Russian entity hacking into a major US oil pipeline and shutting down 45% of the fuel deliveries to the east coast—until tribute ransom was paid (itself a disgusting display of abject cowardice that only increases the danger to us all).

Update: He’s gone ahead and done it. Biden has forced Netanyahu to call an end to Israel’s defense against Hamas’ terrorist attacks by agreeing an unconditional cease-fire, ostensibly brokered by Egypt (which has brokered similar deals in the past).

With this cease-fire, Israel has been forced to call off its active defense before it has reduced Hamas’ ability to assault Israeli women and children ever again.

Oh, when Biden announced the agreement, he had many pretty words about the US always standing with Israel, many flowery phrases nicely averring Israel’s right to defend itself.

But the bottom line is that Israel has been forced by Biden to stop defending itself before its task was finished, before Israel had achieved its goals of destroying Hamas’ weapons caches and launch facilities and of eliminating Hamas’ terrorist leaders.

Basing Options

It seems the Pentagon is only now beginning to think about where to put the soldiers we’re withdrawing from Afghanistan. (I hope some consideration is starting to be given to the equipment, too, rather than just abandoning it to the Afghanis.)

As some of you might expect, I have a thought.

Maybe work a basing deal with Vietnam (we need one of those for our Navy, too).

Alternatively, or in addition, work a basing deal with India, for its far northeast. The states of Sikkim and Assam come to mind.

What Problem is being Addressed?

What problem are President Joe Biden (D) and his Progressive-Democrat brethren trying to fix?

It’s not the rescue of an already strongly growing economy. The expansion numbers are:

  • GDP growth for Q3-2020 33.4%, Q4-2020 4.3%, Q1-2021 6.4%
  • unemployment at 6.0% and falling as of March 2021
  • labor force participation rate rising from January 2021 61.4% to March 2021 61.5%
  • rising PMI from Jan 2021 59.2 (itself already quite high) to March 2021 64.7

Not the problems of an already waning threat from the Wuhan Virus situation

  • rapidly declining case rates
  • rapidly declining mortality rates
  • accelerating vaccination rates from Operation Warp Speed, begun in high numbers in late 2020

No, the problem Biden, et al., are trying to fix is the impermanence of Progressive-Democrat power.

That’s what’s behind their attempts to

  • eliminate our nation’s borders
  • seize Federal control over States’ election procedures
  • create, through their administrative state, a permanent welfare state
  • restructure and pack the Supreme Court

Us Neanderthals are Winning

At least against the Wuhan Virus, especially as compared with States that are our Betters.

Recall that that most renowned and eminent epidemiologist, Doctor President Joseph Robinette Biden (D), pronounced Texas and Florida to be Neanderthals when those States opened up economically, or refused from the jump to “properly” close down, despite the pronounced demands of the Doctor’s and his predecessor’s minions.

According to my second grade arithmetic and Monday last Johns Hopkins University data, Florida and Texas had a combined 63,103 new cases, or roughly 0.0012 new cases per capita.

Pennsylvania, New York, and Michigan, all Progressive-Democrat-run and all Lockdown States, had 97,350 new cases, or roughly 0.0023 new cases per capita—twice the rate of those Neanderthalers.

Maybe it’s a case of Denisovans calling names.

Another Start

And an illustration of why this sort of start is so necessary.

The Florida House of Representatives is putting forth a law (readable here; remarkably, it’s only 12 pages long, vice another party’s Federal level laws) regarding individual liberty and due process on Florida’s taxpayer funded college/university campuses.

Some high points:

[S]tudents would be permitted to conduct “free-speech activities”, including “all forms of peaceful assembly, protests, and speeches; distributing literature; carrying signs; circulating petitions; faculty research, lectures, writings, and commentary, whether published or unpublished; and the recording and publication, including the Internet publication, of video or audio recorded in outdoor areas of campus.

And

The State Board of Education may not shield students, faculty, or staff at Florida College System institutions from free speech protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution[.]

The bill also protects professors’ intellectual property. While students can record the profs’ lectures, they are not permitted to publicly release the recordings with the profs’ permission. The recordings are solely for the students’

own personal educational use, in connection with a complaint to the public institution of higher education where the recording was made, or as evidence in, or in preparation for, a criminal or civil proceeding.

Of course, if the matter does go to court, the recorded lecture(s) would enter the public record, as they should.

The proposed bill also makes a strong move, contra the Obama DoEd and President Joe Biden’s (D) reconstruction of it, to protect students’ access to due process when faced with allegations.

Colleges and universities who discipline a student for violating the code of conduct must give written notice within 7 business days that includes allegations being investigated, the citation to the specific provision of the code of conduct at issue, the process being used to determine whether a violation has occurred, and the date, time and location of the disciplinary hearing.
At least five days prior to the disciplinary hearing, each student must also be provided with:

  • A list of all known witnesses that will provide information against the student or student organization, all know information related to the allegation
  • The right to a “presumption that no violation occurred”
  • The right to an impartial hearing officer
  • The right against self-incrimination and to remain silent
  • The right to present relevant information and question witnesses
  • The right to an advisor, advocate, or legal representative at the student or student organization’s own expense
  • The right to appeal the final decision of hearing directly to the vice president of student affairs or any other senior administration designated by the code of conduct to hear the appeal and make a final decision
  • The right to an accurate and complete record of every disciplinary proceeding relating to the charged violation of the code, including record of any appeal, to be made, preserved, and available for copying upon request by the charged student or student organization
  • A provision setting a time limit for charging a student or student organization with a violation of the code of conduct, and a description of those circumstances in which that time limit may be extended or waived

And an illustration of why this sort of law is so badly needed, conveniently provided by a Progressive-Democrat, the State Senator Tina Polsky, who

questioned whether hate groups such as Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan would be able to enter a campus under the legislation.
“You just can’t practice in absolutes and say that every single person is welcome on campus, because they’re not,” Polsky told AP. “This is meant to be a safe place for students.”

Umm, no. Leave aside Polsky’s own absolutism even as she claims otherwise with her cynical distortion that the proposed law says every single person is welcome on campus. Every single person isn’t welcome, true enough. But that unwelcome is strictly limited to criminals. Nazis, KKK, any other solely nasty person saying nasty things, of course must be welcome, else we’ll have the likes of Polsky defining for us who will be welcome, what speech or political bias will be permitted.

Beyond that, No, a campus most assuredly is not intended to be a safe place for students. It’s intended to be a place where various, and variously conflicting, views of the political and social world are openly explored, discussed, and debated. That can be deucedly uncomfortable and challenging to cherished beliefs. Students, though, aren’t on campus to be wrapped in swaddling blankets.

The safe place for students? That only exists with the safety of liberty for all of us, with the safety of thinking and speaking aloud those thoughts freely by all of us.

Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake. But Progressive-Democrats like Polsky would deny us that safety because they know so much better. And that makes them especially dangerous to our liberty.