Monthly Archives: March 2017

Of What are they Afraid?

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The People’s Republic of China has been vociferously objecting to the US deploying a missile defense system—THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense)—in the Republic of Korea, with the RoK’s blessing and at their behest.  The PRC has begun taking economic retaliatory actions against the RoK and threatening the Koreans and us with further, more serious action if we don’t desist.

So my question.

Ankit Panda, writing for The Diplomat, offered some thoughts last week, one of which centers on the PRC’s concern that the THAAD deployment, relying as it does on a particular radar system—two of which already are deployed in Japan—would let the US degrade a PRC second nuclear strike against the US.  To be clear: a second strike is an ability of one nation to respond to another nation’s (first) nuclear strike with a nuclear strike of its own, the second strike of an exchange.

Since it doesn’t matter that THAAD is incapable of intercepting the PRC’s ICBMs en route to the US, and the US has no offensive interest in the PRC (and not to put too fine a point on it, neither do the RoK or Japan, and neither of them have a nuclear capability even were they offensive minded), I have to wonder why the PRC objects so harshly to a nation having the capability to defend itself against a rogue nation, gang-run, that’s bent on developing nuclear missiles of intermediate and intercontinental range.  Especially when that same rogue nation constantly threatens Armageddon against the RoK.

Especially when that rogue nation is a client of the PRC.

As Panda put it,

To avoid the need for a massive nuclear build-up and to feel comfortable with its several hundred or so nuclear warheads for targeting, China needs to feel comfortable enough its intercontinental ballistic missiles can reliably penetrate US antiballistic missile countermeasures.

Just what are the Warring State PRC’s plans vis-à-vis the US?

What are the Warring State’s plans, via its madchild-run client, vis-à-vis the RoK?

Appalling

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Students at an Iowa high school have apologized to a neighboring school for wearing red, white and blue to a recent basketball game.

The Valley High School students’ USA-themed attire was seen as offensive because some of the rival school’s players were from refugee families.

Because we shouldn’t celebrate the nation that gives these refugees succor.

No.  The administration members of West Des Moines’ Valley High are behaving in a despicably offensive manner, and they should apologize to our great nation at large, and then they should be terminated for cause.  Calling national colors racist is itself stinkingly racist.

Full stop.

Tax Credits in the Obamacare Replacement Proposal

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In the main, I’m opposed to these on a couple of grounds.  One is that it’s just more welfare; we need to find a way to move folks off welfare and into the labor force and jobs rather than keeping them trapped in the welfare cage—like we did when we originally reformed the food stamps program by requiring recipients to get a job or lose the stamps.  That reform not only reduced overall unemployment, it put recipients back into jobs (and off that welfare program).  These weren’t make-work jobs, either; net prosperity for those recipient families increased.  (Then the Obama administration withdrew the work requirement, and we got record numbers of folks back on food stamps).

The (refundable) tax credits are just more of this sort of subsidy, just in the form of a tax credit rather than a direct payment, like most subsidies are.

The other is that the tax credits won’t encourage health coverage providers to lower their rates and deductible requirements.  Quite the opposite, the credits would prop up those costs by allowing the providers to put a commensurate fraction of their charges onto the taxpayer: the credits would be used by the providers to make up the difference between what the coverage purchaser pays and what the provider charges.

On the other hand, the tax credits would approach acceptability under a couple of conditions: if the credits decline year-on-year to a final value of zero over some number of years, say, two or three; or the credits are sunsetted and disappear after some number of years, say two or three.  Or a combination of the two.

With those conditions, and with the understanding that both individual and State budgets need time to adjust, a disappearing tax credit, by providing that adjustment time, could become acceptable.

Empty Rhetoric

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A Progressive-Democrat attacked a journalist who was covering the latest CPAC convention…for his hairstyle.  Samantha Bee, the host of Full Frontal on TBS, took one look at the journalist and ran a segment in her show that included imagery of the journalist, who had a hairdo that might have been called a high-top fade in other circumstances (imagery at the link) and the remark

This year, the bow ties were gone, replaced by Nazi hair, Nazi hair, Nazi hair[.]

Never mind that the man is fighting an aggressive brain cancer, stage 4 glioblastoma.  That didn’t matter to Bee.

Not until the man’s sister call Bee out, anyway.  Then she tweeted that mealy-mouth pseudo-apology with its risible excuse.  There are two things about that “apology.”  One is that she did know because like any responsible adult Hollywood denizen, Bee had her intern check on the journalist and his hairstyle before putting her segment together, and then she ran it anyway.

The other thing is that, in her haste to demonize anyone not of the Left, she didn’t bother to check any facts related to the matter; she just ran with her segment.

But wait—there’s more.  The journalist she attacked turns out to be a registered Democrat.

The paranoia of the Left has gone so far out of control they even attack their own in their knee-jerk lashouts.

Privacy

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Cross-posted from my comment on the matter at Grim’s Hall and based on a CNN article.

From Comey’s quote as provided by CNN:

There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America….

That’s his (cynically offered, because I don’t agree he’s either as stupid or as ignorant as he’d have to be otherwise) straw man; he’ll have to play with his dolly without me.

He also has distorted (deliberately, if not from his lack of understanding, coming from Government’s perspective as he does) what the Founders wrought:

Our founders struck a bargain that is at the center of this amazing country of ours and has been for over two centuries.

No. Not even close. Our Founders allocated to the Federal government a strictly limited set of authorities and powers to execute them. There was, and is, no bargain other than the one that exists between any employer and employee: do your job, or I’ll fire you. And as one of our social compact documents puts it on two occasions, at gunpoint if needs be.

Full stop.

Perhaps this distorted view of things is near the core of his failures to perform–three times–vis-à-vis Hillary Clinton during the campaign, and again since the inauguration.