Tag Archives: responsibilities

Supporting Terrorists

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The House passed a bill that expanded bars against PLO officers from entry into the US to include PLO rank and file, and that further expanded those bars to include the terrorists, Hamas. The bill says that anyone who

participated in, planned, financed, afforded material support to, or otherwise facilitated [the October 7 attack on Israel or attacks after that] shall be ineligible for any relief under the immigration laws.
Any alien who carried out, participated in, planned, financed, afforded material support to, or otherwise facilitated any of the attacks against Israel initiated by Hamas beginning on October 7, 2023, is inadmissible[.]

Congresswomen Cori Bush (D, MO) and Rashida Tlaib (D, MI) voted against the bill, while Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D, IL) merely voted “present.” Since the bill passed with 422 ayes, that suggests that even Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) voted for the bill, or that she was absent and did not vote at all.

Bush and Tlaib, with their nays, have plainly stated their support for terrorists and for terrorism.

Tlaib’s rationalization for her terrorist-supporting No vote:

It’s just another GOP messaging bill being used to incite anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim hatred that makes communities like ours unsafe[.]

Bush’s rationalization:

I opposed H.R. 6679 because it is a redundant, empty messaging bill Republicans are using to target immigrants and incite anti-Palestinian hate.
Republicans have ZERO credibility on these issues.

This is those two projecting their own hatred of all things Republican and their disdain for Americans of any political bent or ethnicity, especially those who disagree with them.

This is Tlaib, in particular, displaying her own bigotry and her disdain for American culture: communities like ours. Holding some groups of Americans apart from American culture on the basis of ethnicity, indeed.

Overly Complex

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It’s also too limiting. Congressman Greg Steube (R, FL) and Senator Tommy Tuberville (R, AL) are introducing a bicameral bill, The Protection of Women in Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, that would bar biological males from participating in Olympic events intended for women. Good idea, bad execution.

The bill defines a female as

an individual who has, had, will have—or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident—the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes eggs for fertilization.

The bill defines a male as

an individual who has, had, will have—or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident—the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes sperm for fertilization.

That’s way too complex, and it allows for too much weasel-wording interpretation. Much more straightforward definitions are these:

Female: a human with XX chromosomes.
Male: a human with XY chromosomes.

Maybe add inclusion as Female those with XXY chromosomes and Male those with XYY chromosomes. Those combinations are exceedingly rare, though, and likely would be better handled on a case-by-case basis.

The bill is too limiting, unless a companion bill also is put forward. There’s no room for transgender athletes in this or any other bills under consideration or in effect. That’s a deficiency that’s easy enough to correct other than politically. Simply amend Title IX to require Federally funded sports programs to include substantially equal programs for transgender athletes as a separate category, in the same way substantially equal programs currently are required for male and female athletes as separate categories. That also would obviate the need to play games with whether an athlete is a member of a particular sex simply on that athlete’s say-so.

Joe Biden Had A Deal

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden had a deal with Venezuela’s MFWIC, Nicolás Maduro: if Maduro would allow Maria Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader, to run in a free, unfettered election for the Venezuelan office of President, Biden would lift the oil and gas sanctions former President Donald Trump (R) had imposed over the Maduro government’s continued and rank misbehaviors.

And so it came to pass that Biden lifted those sanctions.

However.

On Thursday Venezuela’s president of the national assembly said Ms Machado won’t be allowed to run. The next day Mr Maduro’s hand-picked Supreme Court echoed that declaration, upholding the ban, with charges that she had engaged in conspiracies against the regime. The only “conspiracy” is that she opposes the regime.

Who benefits from the deal that lifted the oil sanctions? Not the US. Venezuela’s government men and women do. The People’s Republic of China does.

Either Joe Biden is incapable of matching wits with a thuggish dictator’s machinations, or he knew this would be the outcome, and he agreed the deal anyway. Either way, Joe Biden is unfit for a second term.

Dishonesty Doesn’t Always Pay

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The intrinsically mendacious press industry—the industry that spiked the Hunter Biden laptop story; that pushed Russia collusion; that announced no more balanced reporting, instead picking one political side in the news it presents; that cherry-picked Wuhan Virus data and associated vaccine and alternative palliative data; whose LA Times announced it would no longer print Letters to the Editor from readers who disagreed with the press guild’s predetermined “climate” narrative; and on and on—that industry, has seen 2024 start off with a layoff bang.

  • Los Angeles Times announced last week that would terminate at least 115 reporters, roughly 20% of its staff
  • TIME magazine laid off 15% of our unit members, with additional layoffs in edit and business
  • several Sports Illustrated staff members were let go, though not all of them, it turns out
  • National Geographic terminated all staff writers
  • Pitchfork is being merged into GQ, and all Pitchfork employees are being terminated
  • NBC News terminated “50 to 100” employees

Some press unions are protesting the layoffs and pending layoffs.

  • New York Daily News struck over chronic cuts ordered by the paper’s owner
  • Condé Nast struck for 24 hours to protest planned cuts

Those unions, IMNSHO, are self-identifying who goes in the next layoff round.

All of that is just in January. The year is yet young; it’s a start.

Contemptibly Unsurprising

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Israel has uncovered evidence that UNRWA operatives personnel participated in Hamas’ 7 October ’23 butchery inside Israel, and the nation has passed that evidence along to relevant authorities, including to the UN.

The commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East announced Friday that UNRWA was suspending the alleged participants and launching an investigation.

Suspended their employees—ooh—that’ll show them. UNRWA will conduct an investigation? Say, rather, UNRWA will whitewash itself.

This unsurprising behavior by the UNRWA is merely an extension of its long and active support of the terrorist gang that is Hamas and its Gaza Strip predecessor, the Palestinian Authority, reaching at least as far back as the terrorists’ 2014 attacks on Israel, when the UN agency served as weapons storage facilities for Hamas’s predecessor.

It’s long past time for our own government to stop its timid finger-wagging and take more serious action about the UNRWA’s terrorist support than temporarily paus[ing] all additional funding to the agency and the moderately firm words of welcome[ing] the decision to conduct such an investigation and Secretary General Guterres’ pledge to take decisive action to respond, should the allegations prove accurate.

That more serious action should begin, but not stop, with formally announcing that, aside from permanently halting funding to this UN terrorism-supporting agency, all further statements by the UNRWA will no longer be heard and no action in response to them will be taken, and more concretely on the one hand, getting out of the way of Israel and letting that nation prosecute its existential defense in the war Hamas is waging, and on the other hand, actively supporting the nation in its defense for its own survival.