Misguided

The Wall Street Journal‘s subheadline summarizes the error.

Biden administration, rocked by a wave of protests at college campuses, needs Israel to cut a deal to stop the fighting

The article centers on Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Israel, among other visits in the Middle East, and Blinken’s Presidential charge to cut a deal with Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in order to distract (my term) from the turmoil on so many American college and university campuses and that turmoil’s negative impact on Biden’s reelection chances.

The “deal” is this:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is beginning a visit to Israel to press for a cease-fire deal in the Gaza Strip….

Its relationship with campus turmoil is this:

…as protests against Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip spread across US college campuses. Biden needs the Israeli leader to deliver a halt in fighting that could ease domestic pressure over the conflict.

No. The two are wholly unrelated, beyond the tangential point of contact between the disruptors’ claimed purpose and the war Israel is fighting for its own survival against the terrorist gang operating out of the Gaza Strip.

The disrupters—they’ve long since crossed the line between legitimate protest to disruption with their violence, vandalism, threats to murder “Zionists,” active blocking of students from attending class, demands (a toddler’s temper tantrum) that their positions be satisfied entirely and immediately—either are actively supporting the terrorists of Hamas or are toddlers (never mind chronological ages) throwing temper tantrums, and in either case, they are acting out their antisemitic bigotry.

College and university management teams need to stop condoning, if not actively supporting, these terrorist supporters’, bigots’, and toddlers’ behavior, and instead call in the campus and city police to eject them from campus, arrest them, and bring them to trial for their violence and threats of murder and their vandalism.

As a University of Florida spokesman said as UF started just these actions,

This is not complicated. The University of Florida is not a daycare, and we do not treat protesters like children—they knew the rules, they broke the rules, and they’ll face the consequences.

Not complicated at all. It may be that some managers are starting to do that, but it’s far too soon to say with any confidence.

With Israel engaged in its war for its existence, Biden needs to get out of Israel’s way and instead actively support it as it goes into Rafah and a couple of nearby villages to finally destroy Hamas, the terrorist gang that has promised an endless repetition of October 7s.

Yet Another Example…

…of Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s disregard for our Constitution. This one comes from the supposedly independent Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of Biden’s Executive Branch (we know what the statute says; we also know who appoints EEOC commissioners). The EEOC’s latest rule

elevates gender identity as a protected class under discrimination laws like race, sex, and religion.
Prohibited harassment includes “repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s known gender identity (misgendering) or the denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with the individual’s gender identity,” the new regulatory document declared.

This is the Federal government attempting to dictate to Americans operating private enterprises what they must say. This is a direct contradiction of our Constitution’s 1st Amendment requirement that Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…. Of course, this limit applies to the Executive Branch, also.

Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (R, NY) emphasized the Biden administration’s hypocrisy in her own response to this…overreach:

They can’t tell you [that] you have to say the Pledge of Allegiance or stand for the flag. And so forcing someone to actually use pronouns that they don’t choose to use, and then holding your employer liable, to me, is going to have First Amendment problems.

It’s also a contradiction of our Constitution’s 10th Amendment which is even clearer:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

In our Constitution there are no powers conferred on the Federal government authorizing it to compel particular speech. Indeed, compelling speech is the same as abridging speech, since forced words take the place of barred words.

And none of this even begins to approach the idiocy of setting gender ideology above the facts of biology.

“We are the source of truth for most questions about the elections we run.”

Maricopa County election officials and the Arizona Secretary of State are colluding with social media to control what gets said about elections and election procedures in the county. But do not fear, it’s for the voters’ own good.

The offices of both the Maricopa County recorder and the Arizona secretary of state work together with third parties to censor social media content that they believe is mis- and disinformation, including drawing up plans to ban social media users from the county social media accounts and using influencers to spread their message, according to public records obtained from both Maricopa County….

The Gavel Project obtained a number of documents from the county and from the State SecState that make this plain.

Some of those documents amply the breathtaking arrogance of the county and SecState officials and their just as appalling contempt for the average Americans resident in Maricopa County. Here’s Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer:

I posit that the gravest threat to voting rights and our elected form of government is no longer the systematic disenfranchisement of a particular class of people, but instead the undermining of the entire election system through lies and disinformation. And it is in this respect, that the Constitution today is in some ways a thorn in the side of my office. Specifically the First Amendment.

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates:

We are the source of truth for most questions about the elections we run.

Trust us. We’re from the government.

Biden would be Encouraged

That’s what’s in the REPO Act, or Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act, which is included in the latest Ukrainian aid package.

It encourages Mr Biden to transfer frozen Russian reserves to a trust fund for Ukraine.

Those frozen assets amount to some $300 billion, globally. Count on Biden, though, to decline to be encouraged.

He won’t touch those frozen assets. He’s already been…encouraged…by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to slow-walk delivery of the weapons Ukraine needs actually to defeat the barbarian and drive him back out of Ukraine. He’s already been…encouraged…by Putin to deny altogether other weapons that would facilitate a Ukrainian outright victory.

Biden has—supposedly—been working on lending money to Ukraine that’s based on the interest accruing on all those frozen Russian assets. As Robert Zoellick put it in his op-ed at the link above, though,

Washington, London, and Ottawa should instead transfer all the frozen Russian assets in their currencies worldwide to a trust fund for Ukraine while urging Europeans to act when they can agree. If Europeans won’t use Russian assets, they can’t expect others to keep paying. After all, the war is in Europe.

Indeed.

Berlin and Paris have been the principal obstacles. Washington can assuage their anxieties.

Don’t bother. If Germany and France wish to render themselves irrelevant to the barbarian’s annihilative war, honor their desire. Move on without them, and move on with those eastern Europe nations still fresh from under the barbarian’s jackboots, Poland and the Baltic States especially, along with newly alert Finland and Sweden.

Turn as much of those $300 billion as are in the direct or indirect jurisdiction of the US and others at least nominally interested in crushing the barbarian’s invasion (if not the barbarian himself) into that trust fund, or better, into a fund on which Ukraine can draw directly, at need. And make the weapons Ukraine might wish to buy or lend/lease available for immediate sale/borrow/lease and delivery in the numbers Ukraine needs.

Our Minds Are Made Up

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs held a hearing in Plano, Texas, Tuesday on energy from the perspective of a number of oil and gas industry leaders.

The 15 Progressive-Democrat members of the subcommittee were invited to the hearing—as all members of a (sub)committee must be when that body meets in its official capacity—and all 15 chose not to attend. That refusal is within House rules, but it’s no less unethical or downright chickens** for that.

Congressional hearings often are puppet theater presentations, with the Congressmen often occupying their time allocations for questioning witnesses with speeches rather than with efficiently asked questions that leave the bulk of the time for witness answers. Too, witnesses often are chosen for their ability to support a political narrative.

All of that, though, is easily enough refuted by Congressmen proceeding from their own lines of questioning. Actual questions, mind you, not self-aggrandizing speech-ifying.

Instead regarding the Plano field hearing, the Progressive-Democratic Party subcommittee members said, “Don’t confuse us with facts,” with their decision to absent themselves.

 

The hearing itself can be viewed via C-SPAN here.