Daily Archives: 7 May 2014

Taking Their Cue from Wisconsin and Indiana

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Congressman Adam Schiff (D, CA), during an interview on Fox News Sunday, said his party should boycott the House Special Committee being set up to investigate the Benghazi failure and the subsequent stonewalling by the Obama administration and Democrats in the House and Senate. Insisting on knowing the facts of this failure and the associated deaths of four Americans, along with the facts of the coverup, is just election year politicking as far as he’s concerned.

Sure.

The Democrats are looking to cut and run when they can’t get their way. Only, unlike their Party mentors in Wisconsin and Indiana (and the Federal Senate, come to that), this gang won’t be able to shut down the government with their refusal to be a part of democracy. They’ll just expose themselves as spoiled, arrogant brats.

Schiff also carefully elides the simple fact that if President Barack Obama, and Democrats generally (including Schiff), had not stonewalled and outright obstructed the Oversight Committees’ (yes, including the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, the Democratic leadership of which closed their collective eyes to the matter and refused even to look at it) investigation of the Benghazi failure these past two years, there would be no opportunity for election year politicking with it.

Update: Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) has laid out the structure of the Special Committee–it’ll have 7 Republicans and 5 Democrats, should the latter deign participate.  Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) had held out for an even split of 6 Republicans and 6 Democrats, perhaps setting up an excuse for the Democrats to cut and run again–the committee wouldn’t be “bipartisan” enough to suit her.  This, of course, also contradicts then-Speaker Pelosi’s construction of her 2007 Special Committee on Global Warming, which she carefully stacked at 9 Democrats and 6 Republicans on that early iteration of climate panic-mongering.

A Thought on the Ukraine “Crisis”

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President Barack Obama isn’t the only politician too timid to take meaningful steps vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia’s invasion of that nation.

From the outset, Europe’s fragile economy and concerns over a crimp in energy supplies have tempered the continent’s response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

But that’s the thing about war: both sides do get hurt, both sides do suffer damage. The only way to limit the damage to one side is to give in to the aggressor. But then the unilateral damage is done the acquiescer, and the aggressor is only encouraged to aggress again.

Regarding the existing “sanctions,” those

…targeting officials close to Mr Putin and a few banks and energy firms have already rattled investor nerves in Russia and accelerated the country’s downturn.

The hope here that these will somehow lead to changes in Russia’s behavior (much less Russian withdrawal from the occupied parts of Ukraine) necessarily is predicated on Vladimir Putin and a) how much discomfort he’s willing to absorb in order to achieve his goals and b) how much he cares about any discomfort the Russian people will suffer from “the country’s downturn.” And that contains the forlornly naïve, and erroneous, assumption that Putin’s pain threshold and his people’s threshold held in proxy by him are the same as ours.

Alongside these misunderstandings is another:

“It’s [figuring out what sanctions to apply to Russia] a bit like getting into a fight with your spouse,” says Bryan Carter, a senior vice president at Acadian Asset Management, which manages more than $50 billion in assets for pension funds, governments and other clients. “You want to make your point without damaging anything.”

No, it isn’t a bit like that. This is war. If I’m engaged in a war with my spouse, it’s time for a complete break, anyway.

Just like it’s time regarding Russia.