Too Typical

Posted on by
Reply

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors had it down pat in their editorial of last Wednesday. The opening sentence of their lede laid it out:

As federal pandemic largesse ebbs, Democratic-run states are eyeing higher taxes rather than reform spending programs.

The rest of their piece expanded on that theme.

Nor does it get any clearer than this bit. In a nation overrun with Federal debt and with Progressive-Democrat-run States joining in on climbing the forest of trees in their world on which money grows, Progressive-Democratic Party politicians still cannot even conceive of cutting spending. Nor do they feel the need to; it’s not like they’re spending their own money. It’s all OPM.

Now it’s Rhode Island that’s fixing to get up into one of those trees. Rhode Island is another of those Progressive-Democrat-run States, this one with a Progressive-Democrat governor, a 38-seat Senate containing 33 Progressive-Democrats, and a 75-seat House filled with 65 Progressive-Democrats.

This is what we can expect nationwide if Party wins control of the House and Senate this fall, and it’ll get far worse if Pary wins the White House in the 2028 election cycle.

Trump and a Chinese Idiom

Posted on by
Reply

Walter Russell Mead’s Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed opened with this subheadline:

For him [President Donald Trump (R)], extreme volatility and risk are not a problem but an opportunity.

Here’s an old and hoary Chinese idiom:

危機

These characters, 危 + 機 in their combination translate to Crisis, and the term is composed of characters meaning Danger + Opportunity

Mead’s piece expands on his theme of President Donald Trump’s (R) use of volatility and risk, but that’s just another way of saying, in Western diction, that Chinese idiom. The only difference between the two is whether the deviation is imposed from the outside or it’s created by deliberately deviating.

That idiom, and the Western rephrasing of volatility and risk, are essentially correct. Gains are not made without taking the underlying risks of deviating from the status quo. Great gains are possible only with making great deviations. Both Crisis and Volatility and Risk are those opportunities from great deviations.

Those who fear crisis or volatility and risk to the point of paralysis seek to have the rest of us similarly paralyzed lest they be left behind.

Misunderstanding?

Posted on by
Reply

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors laid out their “misunderstanding” in the opening sentence of their lede of their Sunday editorial.

Does a biological boy who transitions to become a girl have a constitutional right to compete in girls’ sports?

No, this is no mere misunderstanding; even a journalist knows better than this. It’s a deliberate distortion, which these editors are dishonestly presenting as established fact.

The fact that these…persons…are trying to steer us away from is that gender is immutable, and it is established at the moment a sperm unites with an egg and the genetic combination of XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes are established.

No amount of surgery and/or hormonal treatments can transition a boy into a girl; those actions can only alter his appearance. His genetic makeup remains untouched: he’s still a boy, regardless of what he looks like.

Contradictory and Foolish

Posted on by
Reply

The lede lays it out, with Valero, California’s major refinery operator, at the center of the contradiction and foolishness.

A refining company proceeding with its plans to idle its gasoline refinery in California announced Tuesday it will help out California consumers by importing gasoline, which will help shore up the state’s dwindling supply.

The refining company is Valero, and it’s being forced to close its refinery by California’s hostile regulatory environment for oil and natural gas production and for gasoline and ICE engine-powered vehicles in particular. The contradiction is Valero’s decision to close its gasoline-producing refinery as no longer economically viable while deciding to import gasoline from outside the State.

The foolishness is Valero’s decision to import gasoline into the State after closing its refinery in the State.

As Tim Stewart, US Oil and Gas Association President, put it as quoted by Just the News,

Governor Newson trumpeting his leadership is like the captain of a sinking ship taking credit for handing out life jackets after he’s crashed the ferry on the rocks. It was the lack of leadership on energy policy that got California to this point….

It’s not entirely Newsom’s fault, though; he had help from his Progressive-Democrat-run State legislature, which passed the laws he signed, and from his regulators, who wrote the implementing regulations.

Much more than that, though, the fault lies with California’s citizens. If those folks really were concerned about their gasoline availability and pricing and their ICE vehicles, they’d stop electing representatives and governors who are overtly hostile to gasoline and local production of gasoline supplies and to ICE vehicles.

Watching in Unanimity

Posted on by
Reply

European leaders are unanimous in their position regarding Iran and that nation’s government abuse of the people over which the mullahs reign.

From Rome to Brussels and from Paris to London, leaders have criticized what the European Union’s foreign policy chief called a “heavy-handed” and “disproportionate” response from Iranian security forces toward protesters.

But….

…European leaders are clearly gauging how much regional uncertainty they can tolerate.

Translation: European managers [sic] are unanimous in their decision to watch the hell out of the mullah’s abuses of the Iranian people. Unfortunately, those same European managers are just as unanimous their being too timid to do anything concrete in opposition to those abuses. As we might say in Texas, those worthies are all hat and no cattle. Unfortunately, though, those worthies don’t even have the hat. Stetsons are made in Texas, not in the haberdasheries of Paris or Milan.