Monthly Archives: June 2016

Tragedy Equals Excuse to Inflict Gun Controls

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That’s the focus and modus operandi of the Democrats.

Congressional Democrats are renewing their push for gun control measures in the wake of the Orlando terror massacre, arguing the best way to prevent suspected terrorists from carrying out acts of violence is to legally limit their access to firearms.

They’re right this far—certainly such limits would be a large help.  The problem is how to do it without disarming American citizens.  And that leads to the real problem: Democrats don’t care about American citizens and our right—our obligation—to defend ourselves and each other.  Democrats just want us disarmed.

Here’s an example of Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) disingenuousness:

If the FBI believes there is a reasonable chance someone is going to use a gun in a terrorist attack, it should be able to make that determination and block the sale.  If it had that belief about the shooter in Orlando, it should have had the authority to act. But it couldn’t, so we will never know what could have been.

Never mind that if the victims in the Orlando bar or passersby on the street outside had been allowed to be armed, the casualty list would have been far smaller.  No, Schumer’s…foolishness…is here: he carefully elided any definition of “reasonable.”  He carefully omitted to define the parameters of “that belief.”  We’re just supposed to trust his Progressive government.  We’re just supposed to trust a DoJ that strenuously objects to its lawyers being disciplined for lying in open court.  We’re supposed to trust an FBI that demands a backdoor into private citizens’ private communications encryption algorithms and that studiously couldn’t find any criminal wrong-doing in the IRS’ targeting groups of Americans in disfavor with the Progressive government.  Sure.

It doesn’t get any more cynical than that.  Elections have consequences.

Democrats, Gun Control, and Cynical Uses of Tragedy

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In Ohio on Tuesday, former Governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat running for the Senate, called on Republican Senator Rob Portman to reverse his position on the watch list legislation from Ms Feinstein [Democratic Senator from California].

“The constant has been that these crimes are committed with guns—and that our leaders in Washington like Senator Portman are not taking simple, common sense steps to keep weapons out of the hands of those who would do us harm,” Mr Strickland wrote in a Medium post.

This is disingenuous on its face.  The constant is that these crimes were committed in gun-free zones, where both the victims and others present were completely unarmed and had no way to protect themselves—which the killers knew.

Strickland knows this full well, but in the words (without too much deviation from the original) of an earlier Obama advisor, Strickland will never let a tragedy go to waste.

Another Failure of Leading from Behind

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As the Tuesday [ASEAN] meeting ended, people briefed on the matter said discord emerged over how the proceedings should be presented to the public—between China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, and among ASEAN members themselves.

Indeed, no official post-meeting statement was produced, as is usual for international meetings.  Several participants issued their own statements, and Indonesia canceled a joint appearance with the PRC representative.  The PRC—not an ASEAN member—even presumed to instruct the participants that whatever ASEAN might say could not be the official ASEAN comment.

We’re not a member of ASEAN, but as a Pacific nation, we certainly could—and should—exercise a measure of influence and help.  But this administration doesn’t want to engage here, either.

Obama’s High Dudgeon

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A carefully manufactured one, too.  The Wall Street Journal has an accurate read on President Barack Obama’s (D) constructed ire.

“For a while now the main contribution of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have made in the fight against ISIL is to criticize this Administration and me for not using the phrase ‘radical Islam,'” Mr Obama said Tuesday, using his preferred acronym for Islamic State.  “That’s the key, they tell us.  We cannot beat ISIL unless we call them ‘radical Islamists.’ What exactly would using this label accomplish?  What exactly would it change?”

Since the President asked, allow us to answer.  …  If the US is under attack, Americans deserve to hear their President say exactly who is attacking us and why.  You cannot effectively wage war, much less gauge an enemy’s strengths, without a clear idea of who you are fighting.

Mr Obama’s refusal to speak of “radical Islam” also betrays his failure to understand the sources of Islamic State’s legitimacy and thus its allure to young Muslim men.  The threat is religious and ideological.

Obama also said this:

Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. … There’s no magic to the phrase of radical Islam.  It’s a political talking point.

And yet, here he is, making it a political talking point.  As well as repeating his lack of understanding of what our enemy is and so preventing himself from constructing a means of destroying it while also preventing Defense from constructing such a means and then acting on it.  As well as repeating his lack of understanding of why it’s important to accurately name our enemy.  The idea of accurately identifying our enemy is not to “make it go away.”  It’s to help in accurately understanding our enemy so we can destroy it.

The term “radical Islam” plainly is extremely important to Obama, too, despite his emotional denial of the importance of it; his seven and a half year refusal to use the term to identify the terrorists demonstrates that.  His steadfast refusal to identify these terrorists, to say who they are, also says far more about his failure to do his duty regarding our nation’s safety, and it says far more about his level of immorality in that failure than it says about any of his critics who decry his failure.

Talk about playing politics with terrorism.  Jeez.

Elections have consequences.

Time to Decertify the Local

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Some employees of Cablevision in Brooklyn, members of the Communication Workers of America union, were at a company BBQ circulating a petition to decertify their local, 1109.  Naturally the local’s officials objected, and they threatened the petition circulators.

I just want you to understand, to be perfectly clear that CWA we’re probably going to personally sue y’all[.]
…
[W]e’re going after y’all personally[.]

It’s especially serious when an NLRB administrative judge objects to the union local’s behavior, ruling these union officials had violated Federal labor law with their threats.  It’ll be interesting to see how the NLRB board itself rules on the union’s inevitable appeal.