Category Archives: culture

In Which Biden Has the Right of It

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden is taking heat for his position on legalizing marijuana at the Federal level.  No less a light than Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) objects to Biden’s hesitation:

Marijuana should be legalized, and drug consumption should be decriminalized. These are matters of public health.

And Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT):

Too many lives were ruined due to the disastrous criminalization of marijuana[.]

Biden, though, doesn’t see the need for the rush:

I want a lot more [data] before I legalize it nationally. I want to make sure we know a lot more about the science behind it.

On this one, Biden is right, even if his version of the science is centered on whether marijuana is a gateway drug. There’s better science that argues for reluctance to legalize, and if we do so, to legalize only under very narrow circumstances.

There is considerable evidence that THC, the chemical putatively of interest, in uncontrolled use damages brains. There is, also, considerable evidence that various chemicals, including THC, and chemical combinations in marijuana can have beneficial medicinal effect.

Research needs to be done to identify with clarity those chemicals and chemical combinations. If the research bears out, then growing marijuana for the production of medically beneficial chemicals and chemical combinations can be licensed—just as is done with heroin into morphine and related chemicals.

Then, as with morphine, controlled doses of those chemicals/chemical combinations, with their known side effects and trade-offs, can be prescribed pursuant to useful treatment regimes.

The Coming End to the Crisis in Hong Kong

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The Wall Street Journal, in its piece on the latest and bloodiest overreaction by the People’s Republic of China’s President Xi Jiping to the protests in Hong Kong, asked how “the Hong Kong crisis can be deescalated.”

It will be in the same way that the Tiananmen Square crisis was deescalated; this is made clear by Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Wu Qian. The WSJ cited him as saying that [emphasis added]

[President Xi Jinping] gave “the highest direction of the central government” to end violence and restore order in Hong Kong. He called it the army’s most pressing task in Hong Kong.

Look for the tanks to roll in the not-to-distant future.

California’s Progressive-Democrats

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They have a homeless problem, and they seem oblivious to it.

Oakland has seen a 47% jump in homelessness—one of the largest surges of any California city, according to a one-night street count released in July. The count, which used federal guidelines, showed Oakland had 4,071 homeless people in 2019, up from 2,761 in 2017. The increase puts the city’s per capita homeless rate higher than neighboring San Francisco and Berkeley and comes at a time when several West Coast cities are struggling with a homeless crisis that’s being driven by rising rents, drug addiction, mental illness and pushback from progressives.

San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Los Angeles—the list goes on—have a severe homeless crisis.

One could almost get the impression that Congress’ Progressive-Democratic Party politicians from California just don’t care about the plight of their constituents.

It’s not just California’s Progressive-Democrat-run cities, either.  San Antonio has one so bad that the State has had to move in and try to clean the streets and under-bridge areas for them.  Seattle is just as bad.  Chicago and New York City have the same thing, although they’re less publicized, and their respective State governments—Progressive-Democrat-run—don’t provide, or even offer, any help.  Baltimore is infamous for its terrible neighborhoods.

This is what those Progressive-Democrats in Congress should be working on instead of their smear sham impeachment election year campaign.  These folks are their constituents, not the lobbyists, pressmen, and reflectors in their DC echo chamber.

One could almost get the impression that Congress’ Progressive-Democratic Party politicians everywhere just don’t care about the plight of their constituents.

Naming Conventions

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The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan body set up by Congress to look into our…economic and security relations…has become willing to begin calling a spade a spade, instead of hiding behind euphemisms. At least in one narrow area.

The group believes Mr Xi should be known by his party title, general secretary, as a more accurate description of his role.

General Secretary of the Communist Party of China is certainly apt.  I suggest, though, a title more consistent with Xi’s actions, which are throwback to, and repetitive of, an earlier period: Emperor.

National Sovereignty

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The Paris Peace Forum met earlier this week; fortunately, we didn’t send any government representative to it.  National sovereignty, this claque held, is a danger to the world.

French President Macron advocated for multilateralism and a “balanced cooperation” between the nations.

Balanced cooperation is good, but that requires not the open borders and come one, come all—no matter who the one or the all are—but coalitions built for specific times and purposes.  And those coalitions, even treaties between or among States requires…nation-states with actual borders, nation-states with internal, coherent cultures, nation-states that put their own interests first.

Easy immigration, certainly, but immigrant prospects who are carefully vetted before they’re allowed in, immigrant prospects committed to assimilating into the culture of the nation they wish to enter and become a part of.

National sovereignty, nationalism.

Emmanuel Macron doesn’t want this.

… unilateralism is “very risky. …  Nationalism is war.”

Never mind that balanced cooperation requires nations actually to be willing to cooperate with each other to do something that’s necessary.  The necessary thing needs doing, though, whether or not nations are willing to cooperate, and that requires, occasionally, unilateralism.  Occasions like Iran, openly and bluntly committed to the destroying Israel and supporting terrorism throughout the world, rapidly pursuing nuclear weapons—while Europe not only stands by, but actively funds Iran’s effort with trade and efforts to circumvent unilaterally applied economic sanctions.

Occasions like the People’s Republic of China seizing and occupying the South China Sea, with only the US willing even a little bit to object, the PRC’s economic, intellectual property, and technology thefts while Europe not only stands by, but actively seeks out new trade deals with the PRC.

Occasions like Russia occupying and partitioning parts of Georgia and Ukraine, engaging in cyber war against each of the Baltic States, deploys tactical and intermediate range nuclear weapons on its western border while Europe stands by and watches—and actively facilitates Russia’s ability to export natural gas to…Europe.

But nationalism, putting one’s own nation ahead of an amorphous multiculturally international entity is anathema.

This is who one of our putative friends is.