Author Archives: eehines

Happy New Year

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Originally published in 2012, I repeat it here.

This blogger hopes for increasing prosperity for all in the new year just begun.  Following are some additional thoughts, from those better than me.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
–William Makepeace Thackeray

New Year’s Resolution: to tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.
–James Agate

Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution.  Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise, and thou art happy.
–Akhenaton

Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.
–Cavett Robert

And ye, who have met with Adversity’s blast,
And been bow’d to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass’d
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury –
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.
–Thomas Hood

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.  Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives…not looking for flaws, but for potential.
–Ellen Goodman

New Year’s Day: now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
–Mark Twain

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve.  Middle age is when you’re forced to.
–Bill Vaughn

This bit of ’70s-style wisdom:

A year from now, you’re gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.
–Phil McGraw

And finally,

Let our New Year’s resolution be this: we will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.
–Goran Persson

Don’t Ask

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Just act. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R, OH) and House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R, KY) want Michael Lewitt, a Biden family business associate, to come before their committees and testify regarding his involvement with James Biden and Americore Health.

It’s time wasting, though, to ask pretty please for interviews—transcribed, which the present pretty please is not for, or not—from Biden-associated persons. Just subpoena them, with a certain, nearby date for appearance. The committee chairmen are just idly burning daylight with these time-wasters.

Bring It

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Texas’ Republican Governor Greg Abbott has signed into law a bill which authorizes Texas’ law enforcement personnel to arrest illegal aliens and further authorizes Texas State judges to order them deported.

The Biden administration objects.

In a letter to Abbott…the Department of Justice says it will “pursue all appropriate legal remedies to ensure that Texas does not interfere with the functions of the federal government.”
The letter says that the law “intrudes into a field that is occupied by the federal government and is preempted,” citing a 2012 Supreme Court ruling, US v Arizona, which found that the federal government has the power to enforce immigration law….

Abbott has committed to fighting the Biden/Garland DoJ as far and for as long as is necessary, given the Progressive-Democrat President’s decision to erase our southern border and in pursuant of which he has abrogated his Constitutional obligations, one, to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed with his deliberate decision to ignore our immigration laws and, two, to safeguard our nation by defending our borders.

I say bring the lawsuit. Discovery, all by itself, will be illuminating. Let’s see what you got.

New York City’s Failure

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There are many; this is just one. It seems that a significant number of city officials are thoroughly disgruntled with Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams’ handling of the city’s “migrant crisis.”

Some officials, like New York City comptroller Brad Lander, have directly opposed Adams, restricting “the mayor’s emergency power to contract for migrant services without review.”
Some migrants choose to “sleep on the sidewalk outside an office to hold their place in line” for shelter, with others getting into outright “[s]hoving matches.”
The confusion and overcrowding of shelters in New York City and across the state comes as migrants’ families and advocates protest Adams’ policy for a 60-day limit for stay in shelters….

That failure, though, stems from Adams’ and his coterie’s utter misunderstanding of the situation. New York City does not have a migrant crisis; the city has no serious influx of migrants at all. The city does have a problem with illegal aliens; although in relative terms, the city is skating by with ease—or it would be were there any competence in Gracie Mansion—compared to vast flow of illegal aliens inundating border towns and cities.

Watching and Learning

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The Houthis, the gang of terrorists ruling over parts of Yemen, fired anti-ship missiles at USN combat ships in the Red Sea.

The Navy engaged three ballistic missiles provided to Yemen’s Houthis by Iran. It was the first time the Navy shot down an incoming anti-ship ballistic missile in combat, officials say.
Naval assets, including the USS Laboon and F/A-18 Super Hornets from the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, shot down 12 one-way attack drones, three anti-ship ballistic missiles, and two land attack missiles fired by the Houthis over a 12-hour period, US Central Command said.

What troubles me about this, aside from Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s cowardice in not responding to these attacks in any serious manner, is this. There are three combat ships of the People’s Republic of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy in the immediate area.

Those three PLAN ships aren’t there to stop pirates or to protect commercial shipping from terrorist activity. They’re there to watch the US Navy engage anti-ship missiles and rockets. And to learn. This as the PRC prepares its invasion of the Republic of China and its…neutralization…of the USN in support of that invasion.

The PLAN—and the Russian navy, et al.—are going to watch what we do and where we do it; that’s unavoidable. Done right, though, the watching could be a deterrent as they see how capable we are and how we’re willing to use that capability. But done right, particularly in the present case, necessarily includes using our capability as a coup de main to eliminate Houthi ports and launch sites and the Iranian ports in a matter of some hours or a day or two, to eliminate the threat altogether.