Examples of Progressive-Democratic Party Thought

Posted on by
Reply

This is what some Progressive-Democratic Party candidates for office, some of whom have won their primaries and others of whom have significant leads in their primaries, are campaigning on. Keep in mind that party primaries are where party voters choose who they want to represent them.

Darializa Avila Chevalier Progressive-Democratic Party’s choice for a US Congressional seat from New York:

  • government ownership of the means of production
  • prison abolitionist
  • police abolitionist
  • proud of wiping her dirty hands on the American flag
  • open celebrant of Hamas butchery

Francesca Hong, Progressive-Democratic Party’s choice for Wisconsin’s Governor:

  • abolish the Senate
  • police exist to uphold white supremacy
  • canceling Thanksgiving as a colonizer holiday
  • canceling Halloween and Christmas just because

Christina Bohannan, Progressive-Democratic Party’s choice for a seat representing Iowa in the US Congress:

  • patriotism is a sensitive and controversial subject
  • 1619 Project is preferred history of the US

Party has selected or is close to selecting similarly disposed candidates in other States—viz., Angie Craig for US Senate and Ilhan Omar for US Congress in Minnesota, Pramila Jayapal for US Congress (again!)—and it already elected the dual-membershipped (DSA and Party) Zorhan Mamdami. That’s only so far in this election cycle.

This is what the Progressive-Democratic Party stands for, made explicit by its taking the Democratic Socialists of America into its bosom.

It’s true that Republicans picked Victor Marx as their candidate for Colorado governor, but he’s a clear exception to what the party stands for. Those others are typical of Party.

This is a Mistake

Posted on by
Reply

The lede lays it out.

President Trump over the weekend signaled the US will now rely more on economic pressures than military strikes on Iran to force an end to their war.

The only way to deal with the terrorists who run Iran is to destroy their ability to shoot anything and to kill the terrorists. They simply don’t feel any pressure, least of all economic, because they don’t care what their position and their actions cost their own people.

Trump needs to keep firmly in mind the words of an earlier Iranian President, Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, agreed to since by all of the people in the several administrations reigning over Iran.

If one day…the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel’s possession [meaning nuclear weapons]—on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This, he said, is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.

This is not a gang with which we can treat, nor is it a gang that feels any pressure other than its own urgency to get the destruction going.

Birth Tourism

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump (R) has signed a couple of Executive Orders aimed at curbing, if not eliminating, birthright citizenship. One of those orders seeks to greatly reduce, if not eliminate, birth tourism.

The second order instructs the departments of State and Homeland Security to take steps to limit foreigners from traveling to the US specifically to have children born there, a practice generally referred to as “birth tourism.” …
Though the order doesn’t specify how officials would screen for people intending to come to the US for the express purpose of giving birth….

One way to achieve this would be to not bother screening for purpose. Simply limit visas to three weeks duration for women with two months left in their pregnancy—and to strictly enforce the requirement to leave or be deported on expiry—and to refuse visas to women in their last month until after those women have given birth.

Accesses to Classified

Posted on by
Reply

SecDef Pete Hegseth has revoked the security clearance of Frank Kendall, ex-President Joe Biden’s (D) Secretary of the Air Force. Kendall had been quoted in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal as saying that the Air Force One jet gifted to President Trump by the Qatari government lacks the defensive capabilities of the traditional jets that fly the president.

Kendall is all wide-eyed innocence.

“I’m mystified,” Kendall said in a text message when asked for comment. “I’ve been extremely careful to not say anything that could be classified, and as far as I know I have not said anything classified.” He added, “So far no one has told me what I’m supposed to have revealed.”

Revealing the defensive capabilities of the aircraft flying as Air Force One is perfectly jake?

This is Kendall pretending to not understand the requirements of OPSEC. Or he’s cynically standing on the legalist distinction between classified material vs OPSEC material. That’s assuming, generously, that he didn’t reveal actual classified information—and I would be amazed if information regarding the military capabilities of our President’s transport aircraft were unclassified.

It’s good that Kendall has lost his accesses. More retired or resigned officials should lose their accesses.

The problem could be mitigated greatly if all employees, government or private, automatically lost their clearances as well as any other accesses when they leave the job in which they had those credentials. This needn’t be stigmatic; it should be routine: those people no longer have any need for a security clearance, and so it’s automatically revoked.

Limited Incursions

Posted on by
Reply

The US intelligence community is beginning to wake up to the possibility of Vladimir Putin having Russia engage in a limited incursion into NATO territory in an attempt to relieve Western pressure on him regarding his invasion of Ukraine. (That invasion, keep in mind, he was explicitly permitted to carry out by ex-President Joe Biden, so long as Putin kept it to a small one.)

The likelihood of the most extreme scenario—a limited land incursion—is low, but gets higher as time goes on, according to the reports.

It’s a threat that needs to be taken seriously and to be prepared for.

Putin’s military doesn’t need to be up to snuff to embark on a limited invasion of NATO territory. His military just has to be better than the forces he’d face, and depleted as his military is, they are, strongly so. Likely he couldn’t run all the way to Dunkirk, but he could run all the way to the Baltic Sea. Nobody in Europe, individually or in the aggregate as an alliance presently has the wherewithal to defeat a Russian invasion.

The authors suggested a grey area type of invasion/incursion, and doing so, they missed the larger picture.

The possible threats range from a cyberattack on a NATO country….

Do the authors mean like the cyberattacks Putin has been running all along against the Baltic States for some years?

They posed this bit of ignorance as if it were a serious deterrent:

Such a move [armed invasion] has always been considered extremely unlikely because it would trigger NATO’s Article 5, which commits members to collective defense.

This is a chimera, at best. There’s nothing in Article 5 that requires an armed response by NATO members. The nations’ Foreign Ministers shaking their fingers very firmly at Putin, or Prime Ministers and Presidents issuing strongly worded statements objecting to the invasion, would satisfy the Article.