Category Archives: politics

Look Who’s Talking

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Congressmen Jamie Raskin (D, MD), Sheila Jackson Lee (D, TX), and Anthony Brown (D, MD), and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D, DC) are pushing a bill that would remove President Donald Trump under the 25th Amendment because, as these Progressive-Democrats insist, Trump is mentally unfit for office.

Indeed, Raskin has said he’s been thinking about this bill since he was elected last fall.  He insists now

This is a president who seems increasingly at odds with everyone and everything around him[.]

With no trace of understanding the irony of this person making this claim after having refused to attend the President’s inauguration.  In fact, the only persons Trump is at odds with are Progressive-Democrats like Raskin and his fellows in both houses of Congress, and that only because they’ve made it their business, through their leaders Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), to oppose everything Trump or Republican.

Notice a pattern there?

Paranoia: typically includes thinking of a persecutory nature, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. Making false accusations and the general distrust of others also frequently accompany paranoia.

This is a textbook description of the Progressive-Democrats’ mindset ever since they lost the elections last fall, including this time the Presidential election.  This has been what the Progressive-Democrats in Congress have been doing since the Trump administration took office, with one specious (to be generous) charge after another: of “Russia collusion,” of “interfering with Comey’s investigation,” of “Trump obstructing justice,” of “Republicans will kill thousands of people with their health care reform,” of “Republicans only want to give tax breaks to the rich,” all at the expense of doing the people’s business in Congress.

Plainly, there is need of such a bill.  But it needs to be aimed at members of Congress who have put their irrational conspiracy theories ahead of their duties to the point some members are no longer capable even of high functioning.

The Meaning of “Is”

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The four liberal Justices on the Supreme Court are still confused.  One of the underreported (the Wall Street Journal did its part here) end-of-term decisions that the Supreme Court announced was its ruling in California Public Employees’ Retirement System v ANZ Securities, Inc.  The Court held that the law means what it says, neither more nor less.

The case revolved around whether Calpers could proceed with a 2011 complaint over securities the pension fund purchased from offerings in 2007 and 2008. The Securities Act of 1933 says that in “no event” shall an action be brought “more than three years after the security was bona fide offered to the public.”

But Calpers’ 2011 filing was too late; it was past that three-year limit (even if only by months relative to the 2008 offerings).  Not minding how special Calpers is (a legend in its own mind as my wife puts it), the Supreme Court held that

the three-year limit “admits of no exception” and “creates a fixed bar against future liability[.]”

Interestingly, the ruling was only by a 5-4 vote.  The liberal faction of the Court was just as self-important, or perhaps confused, as Calpers in disdaining the law: with their four votes they ignored, or were confused by, the meanings of “no event” and of “three years.”

An Area for Sales Increases

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We must be on the right track.  Now it’s time to push the pace.  The People’s Republic of China doesn’t want us to sell to the Republic of China the wherewithal to defend itself against aggression, not even the pittance that is the $1.4 billion arms deal that the Trump administration is contemplating.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang on Friday said Washington should immediately stop the sale to avoid harming relations with Beijing.

He said the deal would severely damage China’s sovereignty and security interests and runs contrary to Washington’s commitment to a “one-China” policy.

That’s risible.  Leaving aside whether good relations with the PRC should come at a cost as steep as meekly abandoning an ally and friend would be, what’s harming those relations is the PRC’s constant drumbeat of threat against the RoC; the PRC’s occupation of international waters and of islands that belong to the sovereign nations surrounding the South China Sea to the east, south, and west (although the RoC has conflicting claims to some of those islands); and the PRC’s aggressions against Japanese islands in the East China Sea.

Further, there’s no threat to any “one-China” policy.  There’s only one China on the Asian mainland, and there’s only one China on the island of Taiwan.  No one is arguing otherwise.

Our next step should be to help the RoC to upgrade their defense forces and equipage into something that truly can defend the nation.

The Europe the Left Wants Us to be Like

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Germany’s Bundestag has enacted legislation that not only attacks the concept of free speech (apparently an American concept, and not a human one), but also requires private enterprises to be the government’s enforcers of the new law.

Under the new legislation, social media companies have 24 hours to remove posts that obviously violate German law [hate speech, fake news, terror propaganda, and the like] and have been reported by other users. In cases that are more ambiguous, Facebook and other sites have seven days to deal with the offending post. If they don’t comply with the new legislation, the companies could face a fine of up to 50 million euros ($57.1 million).

And it’s government that will decide what constitutes hate speech, what news is fake, what is propaganda.  As if any of this should be proscribed by government.

The answer to unpopular speech, the answer to hurtful speech, is not silence but yet more speech.  Apparently, though, that’s another solely American concept and one that’s wholly missed in Europe.

Sadly, this is what our own Progressive-Democrat Left wants for us, too.  Oh, wait—they’ve already shown their attitude toward free speech.  At colleges and universities, at “protests” in DC, etc.

The Specialness of Snowflakes

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The New York Times newsroom is going to walk out (as I write this) on Thursday because they don’t like the cutbacks in editors (an understandable concern, even if the newsroom denizens offered no alternative) and other personnel reductions the paper is being forced to make in an effort to reduce costs to a survivable level.  It’s their plaints, though, that drew my attention.  The copy editors group wrote a letter to Executive Editor Dean Baquet and Managing Editor Joseph Kahn in which they said in part,

You often speak about the importance of engaging readers, of valuing, investing, and giving a voice to readers. Dean and Joe: we are your readers, and you have turned your backs on us.

News flash, guys.  Baquet’s and Kahn’s readers, the NYT‘s readers, are the customers who pay around $325/yr for a subscription, or more than $500/yr for both print and online subscriptions.  You guys get paid to read your boss’ paper in order to make error corrections.

NYT reporters sent a letter to the same targets in solidarity with the copy editors.

Requiring them to dance for their supper sends a clear message to them, and to us, that the respect we have shown the Times will not be reciprocated.

Respect has to be earned, guys.  You have a legitimate beef regarding the lack of transparency in personnel moves your paper is making (another part of your letter), but respect has to be earned the same way any honest American earns it: through actual deeds.  You guys don’t get respect just because you think you’re special.  In particular, you utterly disrespect your readers—those paying customers—when you masquerade unsubstantiated rumors, which you amusingly attribute to “senior officials,” to sources who “are speaking anonymously because they’re not authorized to speak,” and the like, as fact.  And you do that while also carefully declining to corroborate those rumors with on-the-record remarks.

Question for you both—and for Baquet and Kahn—when y’all come back to work on Friday (today, as I post this): did anyone notice your absence?  Besides the janitors, I mean.  Folks like actual customers.