Another in the interminable series. This time, it’s Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) demanding Republicans support raising the debt ceiling during this Congressional session:
We’re paying the Trump credit card with what we would do to lift the debt ceiling[.]
Not at all. What she—and her Progressive-Democrat syndicate family—want to do is raise the debt ceiling so they can borrow an additional $3.5 trillion for their reconciliation spend-a-thon.
Portland’s Mayor Ted Wheeler and his City Council are upset with Texas and our heartbeat law.
Portland City Council is to consider an emergency resolution this week to ban future travel, goods and services from the state of Texas in protest of the state’s new abortion law.
In statement released Friday, Mayor Ted Wheeler said City Council will hold a vote on the resolution on Wednesday, Sept 8, with the intent to ban Portland’s “future procurement of goods and services from, and City employee business travel to, the state of Texas.”
That works for me. Wheeler, acting as both Mayor and Police Commissioner, has actively condoned the rioting, looting, and arson that’s been going on in his city for more than a year, and he’s actively prevented his police force from protecting Federal property. He’s even, just recently, allowed a riotous clash between antifa and a far right group to continue to the point of gunfire by requiring his police to not interfere.
Portland’s City Council is working assiduously to defund the police altogether.
With the exception of those police themselves and the city’s other emergency responders, the city’s employees have shown themselves unfit for decent company. They’ll not be missed here.
At a Pennsylvania State House Consumer Affairs Committee hearing, solar industry representatives decried the level of State interest in solar energy production relative to more traditional sources of energy production.
[T]he potential for the industry to flourish still exists, said the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), if only the state revamped some of its policies to incentivize more investment.
And this from SEIA’s Mid-Atlantic Senior Manager of State Affairs, Scott Elias:
Some states have more aggressive goals. Even 2.5% by 2030 would increase the demand in Pennsylvania.
If only the state revamped some of its policies to incentivize. That attitude clearly illustrates solar energy’s dependence on Government for its growth.
When solar energy becomes an actually viable source of energy, the industry won’t need government “incentives;” the free market will drive interest and facilitate industry growth.
Ambassador Kelley Eckels Currie, former US ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues:
Currie’s group organized buses to take roughly 700 Afghans, women and their families, to the [Kabul] airport, maintaining communications with the State Department, vetting the evacuees in advance and sharing passenger lists for the buses.
“The State Department was aware of the groups we were trying to assist,” Currie said. “I was told that this information had been raised at the highest levels; we had very senior people reaching out to State leadership.”
That included at least one message sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, she said. And she personally wrote a note to Undersecretary of State for Management Ambassador John Bass.
Authorities told the group to wait in a staging facility for 24 hours before the State Department reversed course and said it couldn’t help fly them out.
Those women remain stranded, abandoned by President Joe Biden’s team.
And this:
Taliban supporters in Afghanistan holding a mock funeral while hoisting coffins draped with flags from the US and other NATO countries.
None of this counts the hundreds (thousands?) of Americans Biden also has stranded—abandoned—in Afghanistan.
These represent the victory of which Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, JCS Chief General Mark Milley are so proud of accomplishing.
They’re metastasizing into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a guide to “inclusive language” in order to promote “health equity” and “inclusive communication.”
For instance, their “Corrections & Detentions” section “suggests”
replacing terms such as “Inmate,” “Prisoner,” “Convict/ex-convict,” and “Criminal” with terms such as “People/persons,” “Persons in pre-trial or with charge,” “Persons on parole or probation,” or “People in immigration detention facilities.”
The problem with euphemisms, though, is that they mean precisely the same as the word they’re intended to replace. Persons on parole or probation still are criminals. That’s the status of folks on parole or probation—they’re still criminals, felons, until they complete their sentences. People in immigration detention facilities remain illegal aliens—that’s why they’re being detained.
The substitutes may soften the language in a misguided attempt to disguise or obfuscate the facts, but that’s only a temporary condition, and the frankness of the underlying meaning ultimately (and quickly) comes through. That’s why there’s a constant search for euphemisms.
The problem with government agents—the men and women who populate government agencies—being the ones pushing for euphemisms is that their push becomes mandates, and government mandates are nothing more than restrictions on free speech, limits on one of our most basic individual liberties. When government agents presume to dictate how we must term concepts, they’re dictating how we must think about them.
Even the worthies in government know that. Which is maybe why they’re making their push.