Another Government Shutdown?

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That’s what the Progressive-Democratic Party Representatives and Senators are threatening if they can’t continue their spendthrift ways in the upcoming budget negotiations.

[House] appropriators are expected to propose federal spending levels lower than the threshold in the Biden-McCarthy deal….

Two things about this: the spending level limit agreed in the debt limit deal is a ceiling, not a floor; it’s entirely legitimate for any budget to come in with even lower spending. The other thing is that cuts in spending (not merely reductions in spending growth) are critical to our nation’s weal.

Nevertheless, the Progressive-Democrats are playing their threats and lies game. House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D, CT) has made Party’s threats explicit:

This moves us in the direction of, you could say a CR [continuing resolution], but in October, we’re looking toward a shutdown[.]

Nice little government you got here, says the Congresswoman, be too bad if somethin’ was to happen to it.

HAC member Pete Aguilar (D, CA) demonstrated Party’s lack of integrity:

This is an agreement that the speaker made directly, and he took pains—remember?—to get everybody else out of the room and to get to a deal with just him and the president. And now he’s walking away from that deal[.]

Aguilar is lying. There’s no other way to put a claim that a budget proposal that’s entirely within the limit agreed in the debt ceiling deal breaks that deal. His claim is cynically and deliberately false. Then he assured us that the [Progressive-]Democratic-led Senate would ignore any appropriations bills that come[s] in under the caps set in the debt limit agreement.

The Progressive-Democrats want to shut down our government if they can’t have their way? I’m down with that.

Joe Biden and Women

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And no, I’m not writing about the Progressive-Democrat President’s penchant for sniffing women’s and little girl’s hair. This is much more general than that.

Biden tweeted out his congratulations for a Las Vegas National Hockey League Stanley Cup victory, tweeting that the team’s win last week was

the first major professional franchise in such a proud American city.

Never mind that the Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA won the league championship last year.

It’s clear that Biden disdains women and women’s sports so thoroughly that he doesn’t even recognize women’s teams exist. Which may be why he’s so enthusiastic about allowing men to play in women’s sports.

You Must Accede to Us

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That’s the message the People’s Republic of China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Qin Gang, has given to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a phone call with Blinken prior to Blinken’s upcoming hat-in-hand trip to the PRC. Qin instructed Blinken,

The relationship between China and the US has encountered new difficulties and challenges since the beginning of the year. It’s clear where the responsibility lies.

Qin went on, paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal:

Qin called on the US to stop using competition as a pretext for damaging China’s sovereignty and security, according to the Chinese readout. He also urged the US to take steps to implement a plan to manage differences and stabilize ties….

The PRC bears no responsibility for the tensions it’s generating. It’s entirely on us to quiet down and to quiet the tensions.

This demand for American acquiescence to everything PRC—for American surrender—coupled with the PRC’s Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu casually ignoring Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s repeated pleas to meet with him, even to simply talk to him, is what the Biden administration’s timidity has brought us to.

A National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

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The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact wants to put together a coalition of States whose Electoral College votes aggregate to 270—the minimum majority required to elect the President and Vice President—and which coalition then would allocate their Electoral College votes to the national popular vote winner, instead of to the popular vote winner of the particular State.

This is a naked attempt to defeat the purpose of the Electoral College as it is constituted in our Constitution.

This is what Art II, Section 1, says about the Electoral College:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress….

This is what the 12th Amendment of our Constitution says about the duties of those Electors:

The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President….
…
…if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote….

Notice that. The intent of the Electors of the Electoral College is to give each State its own, individual, voice in the election of our President, to place each State on an entirely equal footing with each of the other States.

The Compact, however, argues that

The compact points out that in the 2012 presidential race all 253 general-election campaign events were in just 12 states, and two-thirds were in just four states.
“Thirty-eight states were completely ignored,” the compact concludes.

The Compact wants to subsume those individual State voices into the tumult of a collective. This not only deprecates each State, it’s plainly unconstitutional. Worse, what this Compact wants to do is have its collection of States whose Electoral College votes total 270 to be the sole determiner of our President and Vice President—to explicitly ignore every one of the other States. Their votes simply wouldn’t count at all.

The Compact argues further that each State’s legislature can decide who the State’s College Electors are in any way the legislature wants to do. That’s true; see the Art II quote above. However, the legislature may not dictate to its Electors what their duties are—for whom they must vote. The 12th Amendment’s stricture has already determined that, and in this venue our Constitution supersedes the State’s wishes. The Electors must cast their own votes, not the national population’s votes.

The Compact complains that it’s somehow unfair for a Presidential candidate to get all of a State’s Electoral College votes when the candidate “won” the State with only a bare plurality instead of an outright majority in those States that have winner-take-all allocations. No Compact is needed to address this perceived unfairness. The State(s) in question can amend its allocation, if the citizens of that State wish it.

The Compact is doubly unconstitutional; even the name gives the game away. Here’s what Art I, Sect 10, of our Constitution says about interstate compacts:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress…enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State….

The States involved in this Compact think they’re getting around this minor Constitutional impediment by not strictly formally entering into an agreement. But the intent is clear, from the Compact’s title through its statement that

The National Popular Vote interstate compact will go into effect when enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough to elect a President (270 of 538).

No wink and nod and fingers crossed nonsense can cancel the fact of their intent to form this Agreement or Compact among the States.

The Compact’s pushers know this full well. But what else would be expected from the Left? After all, as Ezra Klein, then of The Washington Post, put it during reign of the Progressive-Democrat Barack Obama in a canonical example of the Left’s contempt for law,

[Y]ou can say two things about it [the Constitution]. One, is that it has no binding power on anything. And two, the issue of the Constitution is not that people don’t read the text and think they’re following. The issue of the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person and differs depending on what they want to get done.

Our Constitution, our laws—who cares? Us average Americans do.

Cowardice and NATO

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This characteristic might seem a non sequitur as it applies to NATO, given that entity’s support for Ukraine in the war the Russian barbarians have inflicted on it.

But maybe it’s apt. NATO is planning for a successor to current Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, a Norwegian, whose term expires at the end of this year. Currently favored to succeed him is another Nordic, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.

Poland objects, and since the Secretary-General must be chosen unanimously, that would seem to put an end to that choice. Poland’s primary objections are two. One is that Denmark is one of the majority of NATO member nations what have welched on failed to meet their obligations to support NATO with spending equal to 2% of their national GDPs. What could we expect of Frederiksen, then, in leading NATO actually to strengthen its military capability, goes this objection.

Poland’s larger objection, though, is less an objection to the Dane and more a preference for a leader of an Eastern European nation, one that once was an SSR of the late and unlamented (at least in civilized circles) Soviet Union, or Poland. Such a one would have an up close and personal understanding of the threat Russia poses and how much that threat is expanded by the barbarian’s invasion of Ukraine. Poland’s President Andrzej Duda wants someone from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, or Poland; although he is leaning toward Estonia and that nation’s Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas.

That brings me to the title of this post.

[S]everal Western nations are wary that naming a secretary-general from the eastern flank would be too provocative, as it brings the alliance’s leadership to Russia’s doorstep.

This is shameful timidity, and it has no place in a defense alliance whose avowed duty is to confront and defeat aggression, at least against a member nation (although NATO troops—not only national troops—have fought elsewhere, also). Thus, this objection puts a premium on installing Kallas, or Lithuania Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, or Latvia Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, as much to inject backbone into NATO constituent nations as to advise Russian President Vladimir Putin that his barbarians are not welcome outside of Russia.

Full stop.