Monthly Archives: January 2017

The Party of No Refugees

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…doesn’t turn out to be Republicans, or even President Donald Trump.

Recall the Vietnam War, and our collapse in it, including the abandonment of South Vietnam by the Democrats then controlling the Congress when North Vietnam began its final invasion and that Democratic Congress refused to allow the US to try to rescue the South.

Recall the vasty numbers of refugees trying to escape the North’s takeover and to come to the US.

The Democrats said, “No!”

…a chorus of big name Democrats…refused to accept any Vietnamese refugees when millions were trying to escape South Vietnam as it fell to the communists.

They even opposed orphans.

These Democrats included

California’s then and now Governor Jerry Brown
Delaware’s Democratic Senator and lately Vice President Joe Biden
former presidential “peace candidate” George McGovern
New York Democratic Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman

Brown even went so far as to try to prevent refugee-laden aircraft from landing at the Federal government’s Air Force Base, Travis.  The Democrats’ excuse, epitomized by Brown?

We can’t be looking 5,000 miles away and at the same time neglecting people who live here.

And

They said they had too many Hispanics, too many people on welfare, they didn’t want these people.

And this:

McGovern said he thought 90% of the Vietnamese arrivals “would be better off going back to their own land,” according to the Library of Congress.

Three of those are still around, and two of them remain active in Progressive-Democratic Party politics.

Refugees, to this Party, to the individual men and women of this Party, are not human beings in desperate straits.  Not at all.  Refugees are merely tools for scoring political points for personal political gain.

Oh, and let’s not forget that Progressive-Democratic Party heroic icon, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who locked up hundreds of thousands of Americans who were already here just because they happened to have Japanese, Italian, or German heritage.

Regulators Against Market Competition

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Their obstruction sometimes has lethal consequences, and sometimes those consequences kill the least of the least among us: babies.

A little bit ago, in Salem, VA, a 24-weeks pregnant woman was taken to the ER suffering what turned out to be a placental abruption, a condition in which the placenta has detached from the uterus.  It’s often deadly for both the mother and the baby.  This hospital was not equipped to handle this sort of emergency, but six miles away, there was a hospital, Carilion Medical Center, that was so equipped, including an ambulance with incubators that could sustain the necessarily untimely ripped baby during transport to the other hospital.

That ambulance proved unavailable; it was on a call in the opposite direction.

They saved the mother’s life.

The baby didn’t make it.

The hospital to which the pregnant mother had been taken—the closest one to her—had been denied a permit for its own “high-tech neonatal care facilities:” the government of Virginia had decided that the facilities were not necessary.  The government of Virginia had made a business regulatory decision instead of letting the hospital business make its own decision, and that decision contributed to the death of this baby.

Virginia has a Certificate of Public Need (COPN) law requiring hospitals and other medical providers to get special permission from the state government before they are allowed to offer new services, like the specialty nursery that may have saved that child’s life…. These COPN licensing processes are supposed to balance the interests of hospitals with the needs of the public, but in reality they are fraught with politics and allow special interests to effectively veto unwanted competition.

Government balancing hospital interests against public necessity, with competing hospitals for the scales.  Because neither the hospital nor the public can be trusted to be adult enough to make their own decisions without their Know Betters “guiding” them.  But competing interests are fully competent.

The only opposition came from Alice Ackerman, a professor of pediatrics at Virginia Tech’s medical school—the Carilion School of Medicine, which has longstanding ties to Carilion hospital. In written testimony submitted to the Department of Health, Ackerman argued that the number of specialty bassinets at Carilion was sufficient to meet the needs of southwest Virginia.

And then Karen Remley, then Virginia Health Commissioner, denied the hospital’s permit. Under Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need laws, she alone had the final say in the matter.

Read the Reason report at the link.

This stinks.

False Hoo-Raws and Immigration

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The Left’s and the Democratic Party’s carefully manufactured hysteria over President Donald Trump’s Executive Order titled ROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES is at best irritating, but more likely it’s both an embarrassment and a naked continuation of their efforts to delegitimize an election they lost so…unexpectedly.

Here’s The New York Times:

[R]eflect on the cruelty of President Trump’s decision on Friday to indefinitely suspend the resettlement of Syrian refugees and temporarily ban people from seven predominantly Muslim nations from entering the United States.

Umm, no, and the NYT knows this full well.  What the EO does is continue the Obama administration’s functional suspension of Syrian refugee resettlement in the US.  These are the numbers Obama permitted from Syria over the last years of his administration before in his final lame duck year he decided to tear down our doors and let anyone in who took a notion to come:

  • Fiscal Year 2011: 29
  • Fiscal Year 2012: 31
  • Fiscal Year 2013: 36
  • Fiscal Year 2014: 105
  • Fiscal Year 2015: 1,682

That last year was the start of his ramp-up to 13,000 unvetted “refugees” from war-ruined and so terrorist-laden Syria.

And no, the EO doesn’t ban people from seven predominantly Muslim nations.  It bans people from seven state sponsors of terrorism and failed nations, so designated by Barack Obama himself.

Here’s House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi:

As the Statue of Liberty holds her torch of welcome high, there are tears in her eyes as she sees how low this Administration has stooped in its callousness toward mothers and children escaping war-torn Syria.

But not a tear shed by Pelosi or her version of our Statue of Liberty for Obama’s long-standing ban.  And never mind that we welcome immigrants and refugees with open arms, but not terrorists.  And those from terror-sponsoring, failed, or ruined nations we can’t yet sort out the terrorists—hence the 90-day block on those seven and the indefinite (which means not permanent) block—on folks from Syria.

Here’s Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has earned himself a Razzie for those overwrought crocodile tears.  He also had this to say:

Tears are running down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty tonight as a grand tradition of America, welcoming immigrants, that has existed since America was founded, has been stomped upon[.]

Not at all.  All that’s being “stomped upon” is the ability of terrorists to come in with that flow of immigrants.

What the EO actually does is institute a 90-day ban on folks coming in from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen—those seven nations Obama had designated as terror-sponsoring and failed nation entities.

What the EO does is institute a 120 day block on refugees generally so that the vetting process can be improved.  After all, it currently takes two years to vet a refugee.  What clearer demonstration of a system that can’t do what it was intended to do is that?  The 120 days looks like a deadline for the immigration authorities, beginning with DHS, to get their vetting act together and take the matter seriously.

What the EO does is authorize State and DHS to make exceptions to each of those blocks and grant entry visas “or other immigration benefits” on a case-by-case basis to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.

Just to extend an already too long post, here are some key excerpts from the EO.

Numerous foreign-born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes since September 11, 2001, including foreign nationals who entered the United States after receiving visitor, student, or employment visas, or who entered through the United States refugee resettlement program. Deteriorating conditions in certain countries due to war, strife, disaster, and civil unrest increase the likelihood that terrorists will use any means possible to enter the United States.

And

The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall immediately conduct a review to determine the information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act] (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat.

And

Implementing Uniform Screening Standards for All Immigration Programs. (a) The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shall implement a program…[that] will include the development of a uniform screening standard and procedure….

(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the Secretary of State, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, shall submit to the President an initial report on the progress of this directive within 60 days of the date of this order, a second report within 100 days of the date of this order, and a third report within 200 days of the date of this order.

And, regarding refugee admissions procedures

Upon the date that is 120 days after the date of this order, the Secretary of State shall resume USRAP admissions only for nationals of countries for which the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence have jointly determined that such additional procedures are adequate to ensure the security and welfare of the United States.

And

Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality. Where necessary and appropriate, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall recommend legislation to the President that would assist with such prioritization.

And

Notwithstanding the temporary suspension [of refugee admissions]…the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may jointly determine to admit individuals to the United States as refugees on a case-by-case basis, in their discretion, but only so long as…it would not pose a risk to the security or welfare of the United States.

The NLMSM and the Democrats are carefully ignoring these minor facts.  Both groups should be ashamed of themselves—were they rational enough to be so.  Their TDS has gotten the better of them.

The EO can be read here and here.

The Party of Hell No

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Not now, not ever.

In legislative proposals, campaign promises, donor pitches and even in some Senate hearings, Democrats have opted for a hard-line, give-no-quarter posture, a reflection of a seething party base that will have it no other way.

Democratic Party strategist and Party Leader, in fact if only unofficially, David Brock:

I predict the coming divide in the Democratic Party won’t be ideological so much as it will be between those who resist and oppose and those who accommodate and appease[.]

And Jehmu Greene, one of the candidates for officially leading the party:

We have an opportunity as a party to be that place of resistance. So we have to form a solid resistance as a party. And no, it is not about working with Donald Trump.

It’s not only in Congress, either.

Other sessions [at Brock’s weekend donor and Party MFWICs conference] detailed a massive pushback operation that featured expansive litigation plans and opposition research efforts.

This is nothing more, or less, than destructive of the nation’s welfare, and it’s all for petty, bruised egos.

The New York Times Misunderstands

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Again.  This time the paper is hyperventilating over the coming end of the world order as we know it because the UK and the US are reaffirming our special relationship through the mechanism, as the NYT‘s headline has it, of British Alignment With Trump….

Great Britain’s relationship with the US spells doom because, as seen through the lens of the NYT‘s TDS, Great Britain’s dependency on Europe will be upset, and the European Union is key to world stability.  For instance:

Mr Trump offered to reward Britain’s exit from the European Union with a speedy trade deal. But this risks encouraging more exits from the bloc and possibly its disintegration. The resulting turmoil on the Continent, which includes several top British trading partners, could risk harming Britain’s economy far more than an American trade deal would help.

There are two major (not sole) reasons the Brits chose to go out from the EU.  One is the ability to cut its own trade deals without the bureaucrats of the EU ruling body looking over their shoulder and telling them no, they can’t do that.  The other is the ability to control their own borders and deciding for themselves who should be allowed to come in without the bureaucrats of the EU ruling body….

The paper’s plaint also operates from the false premise that the EU should remain together unchanged.  The nations of the EU are too disparate in social, political, economic philosophies; it’s an inherently unstable arrangement.  Too, those several top British trading partners, which are not limited to France and Germany, will benefit from being able to cut their own trade deals, should they decide to go out from the EU, too.

Beyond that, British security will be greater for the closer alignment with us that’s becoming possible than it is and would be with an EU as timid toward Russia as it is and wants to be.