Tag Archives: politics

Our Minds Are Made Up

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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.

Are Some Jews More Important than Other Jews?

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The home of Progressive-Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) was visited by anti-Israel, pro-HamasPalestinian protestors the other night. They were arrested.

This is while those same anti-Israel, pro-HamasPalestinian protestors (not the same bodies, of course, but the same kind of terrorist-supporting “protestors”) are busily shutting down college and university campuses in Schumer’s New York as well as Ivy League campuses around the northeast and colleges and universities across our nation. Those same “protestors,” while doing their disruptive (not protest-y) things, are zealously threatening Jewish students, chanting their threats of destruction, actively blocking Jewish—and all other—students from attending the classes for which they and their parents paid several pretty pennies to have access to.

This is the same Jewish Majority Leader who has called for regime change in Israel because he doesn’t like the way the Israelis are fighting for their existence against Hamas terrorists.

Schumer didn’t want to talk about the protests at his house or the differential treatment of those “protesting” the schools vs those operating at his house.

Schumer did not respond directly to the arrests or protests, but referred to an earlier comment on the protests happening at college campuses nationwide….
“College campuses must be places of learning and discussion,” Schumer said in his statement. “Every American has a right to protest, but when protests shift to antisemitism, verbal abuse, intimidation, or glorification of October 7 violence against Jewish people, that crosses the line. Campuses must remain safe for all students.”

Empty words, since he’s attempting nothing to back them up.

However, when you’re a Progressive-Democrat Senator from New York and the sitting Senate Majority Leader, it seems that yes, some Jews are more important than others.

Responsibilities

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The subheadline illustrates the misunderstanding of where responsibility lies.

School officials reap what their politically monoculture faculties have sown.

The WSJ‘s editors then went on about how those thinking antisemitic bigotry are exaggerating are mistaken, pointing out in their examples the rampant antisemitic bigotry on college campuses.

Antisemitism has too often been tolerated within Near Eastern Studies departments. On October 8, 2023, Columbia professor Joseph Massad praised the “awesome” scenes of the October 7 massacre “witnessed by millions of jubilant Arabs.” In 2018 Columbia professor Hamid Dabashi posted on Twitter (now X) that “Every dirty treacherous ugly and pernicious act happening in the world” could soon be traced to “the ugly name of Israel.”

Then they wrote,

The liberal elites who run these institutions seem to lack the moral self-confidence to stand up to these student bullies. College presidents have to take charge, restore order and protect Jewish students, or the trustees should fire them and find someone who will.

But that’s closing the chicken coop after the weasels have moved in and taken over. Monocultural faculties have not created the schools’ problems, including the schools’ systemic (to coin a word) antisemitic bigotry. Schools’ management teams have created their environment of bigotry by allowing—perhaps even encouraging—from the start the creation of their faculties as monocultural, and bigoted.

It’s long past time those management teams were fired for cause, and the bigots on those faculties also fired for cause. Bigotry should not be allowed to survive contracts or tenure.

Misunderstood Difficulty

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Hamas terrorists are resuming their presence in northern Gaza Strip, months after the IDF had initially cleared the Strip except for the far south of the Strip: Rafah and a couple small villages near Rafah.

[R]enewed violence, in areas Israeli forces had previously largely cleared of Hamas, serves as a sobering example for Israel’s forces of the difficulty of consolidating gains as they prepare an offensive in Rafah, the militant group’s last major bastion.

It’s certainly true that clearing an area of the remnants of a terrorist entity that operates as a dispersed network and that is skilled at (literal) underground operations and keeping that area clear is deucedly difficult.

The problem illustrated by the renewed fighting in the cleared areas, though, is not one of that difficulty. On the contrary, the problem so illustrated originates in the IDF’s failure to finally destroy the terrorists in their last enclave, Rafah and those one or two remaining villages. So long as those terrorist entities exist, they’ll continue to infiltrate from wherever they are concentrated to other areas of Gaza.

Israel needs to stop dithering about Rafah and go in, in force, and finish exterminating the terrorists there. The Biden administration needs to stop supporting Hamas with its words and Biden’s kowtowing to the terrorist supporters in his administration and get fully behind Israel in words and especially in overt action as the IDF (finally) moves in.

Government Convenience

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The Federal government’s Securities and Exchange Commission is vacuuming every scrap of data—including personally identifiable—on every single stock trade done by every single American, and it’s collecting these data from every single broker, exchange, clearing agency, and alternative trading system in the US.

It’s also doing this without any Congressional authorization to do so. The New Civil Liberties Alliance has filed suit to attempt to block the SEC from continuing and to get the SEC’s Consolidated Audit Trail, the mechanism by which the SEC collects and stores these ill-gotten data, completely eliminated. Peggy Little, the NCLA’s Senior Litigation Counsel:

By seizing all financial data from all Americans who trade in the American exchanges, SEC arrogates surveillance powers and appropriates billions of dollars without a shred of Congressional authority—all while putting Americans’ savings and investments at grave and perpetual risk.
The Founders provided rock-solid protections in our Constitution to prevent just these autocratic and dangerous actions. This CAT must be ripped out, root and branch[.]

The SEC’s argument in favor of its invasion is utterly cynical [summarized by former Attorney General William Barr]:

[I]t could investigate things more easily if it weren’t limited to gathering investor information on a case-by-case basis after suspected wrongdoing took place.

Barr’s response:

But the whole point of the Fourth Amendment is to make the government less efficient by making it jump through hoops when it seeks to delve into private affairs[.]

Indeed. The convenience of Government is no excuse for Government doing anything. We the People don’t exist to give Government something to do. Government works for us.

It’s time to thoroughly rein in the SEC, and a (not the) efficient way to do so is for Congress to cut the SEC’s budget to the bone, including reducing its payroll line item, until the SEC’s commissioners and staff straighten up or are replaced. And note that that payroll line item includes those commissioners’ pay.