Category Archives: politics

Contempt

Posted on by
Reply

President Joe Biden, through his Press Secretary Jen Psaki, said he’s just too busy to talk to the press (and, I add, to talk to us ordinary Americans). On the matter of holding a press conference,

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden is too busy with the COVID crisis, but it may happen by the end of March.

Recall that Biden also promised he’d talk to Congress (and through press broadcast of that to us) in early February—no wait, by mid- to late-February. Both of those promises have been reneged on.

Aside from that, Biden is claiming he’s too busy to find 40 minutes to talk to the press? Or, as his habit has been, he’s too busy to find 10 minutes to answer 5 carefully selected questions, for which he has the answers already scripted by his writers?

My credulity meter is pegged.

And this from Biden, also through his Press Secretary:

But this president came in during a historic crisis, two historic crises. A pandemic like the country had not seen in decades and decades, and an economic downturn that left 10 million people out of work.

A pandemic that already was coming under control because of a multiplicity of vaccines developed and for which distribution had begun under the prior administration. A pandemic whose “out-of-control” status already was an open question as actual hospitalization and mortality rate data started flowing in.

An economic downturn that already had been reversed months before Biden took office, and was in full swing when he was sworn in. A recovery sparked and facilitated by Republican-run States either not shutting down their economies in the blind panic to which Progressive-Democrat-run States had succumbed or starting to reopen their economies far sooner than those panic-riddled States.  (Panic-riddled—alternatively, those Progressive-Democrats were/are executing on their Party mantra of never letting a crisis go to waste as they moved to use the Wuhan Virus situation to accrete political power to Party and to them personally.)

Millions of Americans still out of work—mostly in those Progressive-Democrat-run States, whose authorities refuse to reopen their economies so Americans can go back to work.

Four expressions of contempt in one tweet and one short sentence. This is just Biden, typical of Progressive-Democrats, insulting our intelligence again.

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s a partial list of what’s in the Progressive-Democrats’ Wuhan Virus “Relief” bill, just passed in the Senate and sent to the House for its concurrence.

A bill, incidentally, passed on strict party lines, after Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) showed his word to be worthless after he swore up and down that he’d not support any bill that didn’t have support from “his Republican friends,” and then voted for its passage.

  • $350 billion for state and local governments—never minding that many States, such as California, Virginia, Arizona, and Colorado, had revenue increases over 2019
  • Over $128 billion for schools—never minding that 95% of that won’t be paid out until after 2021
  • $570 million—$280 per day(!), up to $21,000—for Federal employees to take up to 15 weeks off from work
  • $45 billion for Obamacare
  • $300 per week in enhanced unemployment, the first $10,200 would be tax-free to households with incomes under $150,000—even though unemployment benefits, as replacement income, heretofore was taxable as that income
  • $4 billion for agriculture, including $1 billion for, among other things, “socially disadvantaged” farmers getting their loans forgiven up to 120% of their loan. Never minding the intrinsically racist and sexist nature of that, since non-disadvantaged farmers don’t get a penny of loan forgiveness, at all, and that the 20% excess “forgiveness” is naked “reparation”
  • $50 million in “environmental justice” grants
  • $91 million in “outreach to student loan borrowers
  • $270 million for the National Endowments of the Arts and Humanities
  • $200 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services
  • $10 million for the “preservation and maintenance of Native American languages”

The sad thing—or would be sad were it not for its dishonesty—is that some of these inclusions would be worthy of straightforward debate on their merits, did the Progressive-Democrats have the integrity to propose them separately and on those inclusions’ merits.

That partial list, by itself, works out to $1 trillion of money wholly irrelevant to (unneeded, with a recovering economy) Wuhan Virus “relief,” money that would be better spent on Biden’s—and Trump’s—vaunted infrastructure repair and buildout.

Or on making permanent the personal income tax rate reductions from the Trump tax reform.

Or in addition to the miserly $1,400 “stimulus” payments, make it $3,000 in our pocket direct payment checks.

We need to remember this in 2022.

One More Last Chance

Posted on by
Reply

Britain, France, and Germany decided Thursday not to present a resolution censuring Iran that they had floated to other International Atomic Energy Agency member states earlier in the week. Iran had warned the move could lead it to further curtail international inspections of the country and dissuade it from engaging in direct talks with the US on its nuclear program.

This meek surrender is being masqueraded as a renewing effort.

The US and European powers are giving Iran a last chance to start cooperating with a United Nations atomic agency probe of Tehran’s nuclear activities, backing away from a formal censure of Iran in a bid to revive nuclear diplomacy between Washington and Tehran.
…
The decision was backed by Washington, senior diplomats said, reflecting US concerns that renewed pressure on Iran could derail diplomacy.

We’ll mean it next time, guys.

Nah. No we won’t.

Wrong Move

Posted on by
2

On a related note now Congress wants in on the action.

A pair of US senators, a Democrat and a Republican [Tim Kaine, D, VA, and Todd Young, R, IN], have moved to strip President Biden of the power to unilaterally use military force.
The move comes after Biden used decades-old authorizations to “stretch his war powers” when he launched his first airstrike in Syria without congressional approval.

This would be a mistake, and Kaine illustrates a part of its nature.

Congress has a responsibility to not only vote to authorize new military action, but to repeal old authorizations that are no longer necessary.

Not at all. Congress has sole authority to declare war, not to authorize “new military action,” and Congress has the sole power to fund continuing military action. The President has the sole responsibility, and authority, to respond to imminent threats to the United States, including with “new military action.”

Related to this, Congressman Jimmy Panetta (D, CA) led a letter, cosigned by some 30 Representatives, to President Joe Biden, in which he said, in part,

While any president would presumably consult with advisors before ordering a nuclear attack, there is no requirement to do so. The military is obligated to carry out the order if they assess it is legal under the laws of war. Under the current posture of US nuclear forces, that attack would happen in minutes.

This illustrates another aspect of the mistake. It’s too often necessary to decide and execute within those minutes; there’s too often no time for consultations—not with missiles only 20 minutes away from impacting on our cities and military installations, and with even less time to a high altitude detonation or series of detonations for a nuclear-originated EMP strike.

Which emphasizes another aspect of the need for prompt decision-making rather than accepting the delays of contacting legislative-mandated consultants and the dithering in which a committee of those consultants would engage. That is the need, for our nation’s security, to carry out a preemptive attack. Today’s technology, and especially tomorrow’s, compress reaction time to the point that often it’s non-existent, and proaction—preemption—is necessary for national survival.

It would be a serious degradation to our national security to degrade a President’s war powers capacity. And, given Article II of our Constitution, such an effort easily could become unconstitutional.

Bureaucracy is What’s Important

Posted on by
Reply

In a piece about President Joe Biden’s decision to bomb two targets in Syria that was reduced in real-time to one because imagery had identified two civilians in a courtyard of the other, there’s this eye-opener:

Throughout the deliberations, officials said, they sought to strike a bureaucratic balance. The goal was to ensure that all of the interagency machinery was fully engaged while avoiding both the drawn-out deliberations that sometimes occurred during the Obama administration and the quick decisions by the president and smaller groups of aides that often took place during the Trump administration.

Because interagency machinery is more important than decisive—and prompt—action based on predetermined recognition keys and preplanned criteria which make responses specific to a realized situation able to be quickly laid out and executed.

And this second eye-opener, which explains in some degree the above:

…Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin…is the only senior member of Mr Biden’s cabinet with military experience….

Planning ahead, developing contingency plans, takes a military mindset, apparently, and Biden has only the one military mindset, by his choice. And there’s that bureaucratic imperative, again.

It boggles my peabrain that this administration has no framework outlining responses to terrorism and terrorists or to states that harbor or support terrorist entities. Instead, each case seems to be individually analyzed de nihilo and a response individually developed, also de nihilo, and done so in reaction rather than in anticipation. And apparently completely without regard for any other situation, regardless of how similar it might be.

Wow.