“Not to my Knowledge”

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When then-DNI James Clapper said that under oath during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in response to a question regarding whether the Federal government was using FISA to collect communications that it knows are entirely domestic, he was plainly lying, as lately released information has revealed.

When Progressive-Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar (MN) said that [the first 30 seconds carries the exchange; the rest of the 8 minute video is just The Hill‘s “analysis” and commentary] in a cable news interview in response to a question about whether she had married her brother, she may or may not have been lying. On watching the video of that exchange, it seemed to me that she and her pressman interviewer were bantering and make fun of the whole question of her immigration status (opinions may vary on that), but it’s not possible to tell whether she was lying (and if she was, there’s a big so what attached: she was talking to a pressman with no particular legal need to be truthful).

DNA evidence that has been collected during the recent raids on her DC residence and those of some of her family members will shed some dispositive light on her genealogical relationship with that man, but it will take patience to wait for the outcomes.

It was reported in the press some years ago that the two were half-siblings, and it was “widely reported” that at that time the half-sibling nature of their relationship was “well-known.” The press, though, has never provided any evidence of either of those claims, most especially of the latter; we’re just supposed to believe their smiling faces’ unsubstantiated pronouncements.

Proximately, though, what’s carefully missing from today’s press hoo-raw about Omar’s “not to my knowledge” (from both the Left and the Right side of the press) is any information about the history of the woman and the man: were they raised together in the same family household, or had they been widely separated at birth or while still babies or toddlers? If the latter, it’s entirely plausible that the two didn’t recognize each other as siblings at the time they met and then married. If the former, she’s lying (though subject to that so what).

At this point, we have too little information, and the press (and too many Congressmen) are wasting too much of our time fixating on this bit at the expense of covering her many and already manifest failures as a politician.

There’s an additional contaminant in this question. It’s also been claimed in the press (yeah, yeah) and in government immigration circles that Omar married “her brother” in order to facilitate his legal entry into the US. It’s a contaminant because whether he was her brother or not is wholly irrelevant to this. Sham marriages intended to circumvent immigration law is itself a felony. Omar is already being investigated, albeit only desultorily, on that ground.

Bigotry and Virtue Signaling

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Making land acknowledgments purporting to recognize the inequity of modern political, social, and economic successes have been in vogue among the Left and Progressive-Democratic Party political jurisdictions for some years. The recently done land acknowledgment from Los Angeles County provides a clear and canonical example, its repeated bodice-ripping mea culpas are especially illustrative: We respectfully acknowledge… and We acknowledge… and We recognize….

What’s instructive, though, is the utter lack of proposed solutions in these so-called acknowledgments. “We’re so sorry about all this; sucks to be you, good luck.”

That’s not just hypocrisy by these Leftists and Progressive-Democratic Party members; these…statements…demonstrate the same racist bigotry, if far more invidiously, as the Left’s and Party’s insultingly bigoted premise that black Americans are intrinsically inferior and desperately need the plethora of special treatments from Government, from “affirmative” action programs to race-based (now sotto voce) selections into universities and employment, in order to be able to operate, much less compete, in the same world as the rest of us.

Virtue signaling. Too bad, so sad. Carry on.

A Small Quibble…

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…within a larger problem. In the WSJ‘s Tuesday house editorial regarding President Donald Trump’s (R) quest for a grand bargain creating a global triumvirate (the editors’ term, but it’s apt), the editors had this characterization of Trump’s “Yalta 2” goal:

The Yalta analogy isn’t entirely apt since Stalin and Churchill were US allies in 1945.

That’s only half right, and that’s my small quibble. Stalin was by no means a US ally in 1945 or at any other time. The US and the USSR were on the same side in that war; the USSR was a co-belligerent of convenience, only for the duration.

The larger problem is that Trump wants to divvy up the world with our two most dangerous enemies, one of which badly regrets as a global catastrophe the collapse of the USSR late last century and is currently pushing at gunpoint his western border further into Europe while expanding his “gray zone”—a very dark shade of gray—conflict with the rest of Europe even as he kidnaps journalists that write things he doesn’t like, and the other of which has publicly and repeatedly stated its overriding goal of replacing us as a serious player around the world (which is tantamount to saying take functional control of our foreign policy and of our economy) and has a long-standing law requiring each business domiciled within it to conduct any espionage its intelligence community requires of it.

This is a meeting that should never take place. As the editors put it,

A new triumvirate that divided the world into spheres of influence would blow up America’s global credibility as a reliable ally.

Worse than that, it would badly weaken the US itself, making us vulnerable to defeat politically, even kinetically, in any conflict with either of these two nuclear powers, one of which is extremely powerful cybernetically, already holds the trump cards in rare earths, and currently has a first strike capability.

A Slick Idea in the Oil Trade

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Miad Maleki, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has one.

The US has imposed sanctions on some 160 shadow fleet oil tankers, 70% of which are relatively young as tankers go: less than 20 years old.

[T]he administration was reportedly considering easing sanctions on shadow-fleet vessels and allowing them to carry oil not subject to sanctions in an effort to bring down record high freight rates. Those discussions, a US official told Reuters, include the possibility of lifting sanctions on tankers “on an individual basis” so they can change hands.

Maleki’s idea is a tightening of this:

Washington should create incentives for US-aligned operators to buy ships out of Iran’s black market and put them to legitimate use in the Strait of Hormuz.

That legitimate use would be shuttling crude from within the Arabian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf of Oman, there to be transferred to waiting tankers for shipping forward to the oil’s final destinations.

Even just lifting the tanker sanctions on a case by case basis to facilitate each tanker’s sale to a legitimate buyer would be a very good move, but doing so to facilitate an American buyer’s purchase would make a good move much better, easing as it should, the shortage of American tankers.

And this, a bit of well-deserved schadenfreude:

Washington should open a gate and let the [Iranian] regime watch its fleet work for someone else.

Vote

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Voting season is upon us. It’s important that all of you—each of us—go vote regardless of which candidates or party you favor.

It’s not only our individual civic duty. Keep in mind that not voting at all leaves a vote for the other side unanswered.