They Could Just Get Off Their Collective Behinds

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The nations of Europe are concerned about any peace deal regarding the barbarian’s invasion of Ukraine leaving Ukraine and those European nations vulnerable to later attacks on either.

The leaders of the UK, France, and Germany met in British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Downing Street residence with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday, their latest effort to influence negotiations as the US pushes for a swift agreement to end the war.

Zelenskyy’s concern should be Europe’s as well:

“Russia is insisting we give up land, we don’t want to give anything away.” Zelensky added that he couldn’t cede land legally or morally.
“This is what we are fighting for[.]”

If Europe wants the Influence in US-Led Peace Talks on War in Ukraine that the headline mentions, the best and fastest way to achieve that influence is to bypass the US proposals and simply to start transferring to Ukraine the equipment, logistics, and financial support that the UA and the Ukrainian government personnel say they need, in the amounts they need them, and on the schedule they say they need them. Stop waiting on the US to make the first move. Stop worrying about what the US might think of them for seeing to Ukraine’s and to their own interests first.

After all, the only reliable peace with the barbarian that’s achievable is a defeat of the barbarian that includes his being driven entirely out of Ukraine.

It’s true enough that European military equipment isn’t as good as American. It is, though, a generation or two better than what the Russians are putting into the field. That difference is heavily magnified when put into the hands of Ukrainian fighters, who themselves are better and more determined then the barbarians they’re facing, especially as they are fighting for their nation’s—and their wives’ and children’s and mothers’ and sisters’—survival.

On the other hand, it would fit snugly the premise of some that Europe’s nations don’t give a fig about Ukraine—viz., their reluctance to act without US approval or first move—only concerning themselves with their own security. The nations’ concerns about their own safety are valid in themselves. They know the solution, and it’s the same as for Ukraine.

So Much for Liberty

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Contempt for ordinary citizens is the order of the day in the United Kingdom, which has fallen and can’t seem to get up.

[T]he [British] government is moving to allow jury trials for “indictable only” offenses such as murder and “either way” offenses with likely sentences of more than three years in prison. Judge-only “swift” courts will hear cases ranging from burglary and theft to sexual assault and stalking. Judges will also sit without a jury in fraud and financial cases deemed too complex for jurors.

This is…disappointing. It’s also a revival of the 350-year-old Bushell’s Case but with the addendum of eliminating the case’s question altogether. Bushell’s Case was a trial of a couple of government-defined religious miscreants during which the presiding judge refused to accept the jury’s acquittal verdict and jailed the ringleader, Edward Bushell, until he voted for the judge-approved verdict. That case was resolved on appeal in favor of Bushell and British commoners generally, extending as the appeal finally ruled habeas corpus to those commoners as well as the nobility.

Now the British government is moving to go beyond that presiding judge’s position and eliminate juries altogether in a vast number of cases. No juries, no verdicts that run counter to the government’s position.

This revival also is a clear expression of the contempt with which British government men and women hold their subjects: commoners are just too grindingly stupid to understand many kinds of cases, and so they must be led away so their Betters can handle them without any pesky commoner interference.

Juries? We ain’t got no juries. We don’t need no juries! We don’t have to show you any stinkin’ juries!

Foolish Social Conservatives

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Some are as foolish as the Republicans’ House Chaos Caucus in their all-or-nothing positions. A case in point is Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and its supporting cohorts. These entities are, quite properly, anti-abortion, but their tactics are, at best, suboptimal.

The activists’ warning was simple: extending subsidies without such limits [no funding for abortions] was a line Republicans must not cross to keep social conservative support in next year’s midterm elections.

Withholding support for Republican candidates in 2026 over their not being anti-abortion enough to suit them will guarantee a Progressive-Democratic Party majority in the House—and those politicians absolutely will not stay with the status quo; they will enthusiastically and loudly expand access to abortion and make all of us taxpayers—including members of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, et al.—pay for those abortions.

Better would be, for the near term, to push a concrete (not merely conceptual) plan for using the putative subsidy funding instead as vouchers for us citizens to use to fund our HSAs and FSAs, with limits on annual contributions to those eliminated. An additional improvement to HSAs in particular would be eliminating the requirement to have a particular kind of health coverage policy (so-called high-deductible policies) in order to have an HSA. Any citizen should be able to set up and fund an HSA regardless of the kind of policy or no policy at all that he has. Allowing unused FSA funds to be rolled over into subsequent years would be a useful step toward rolling FSA accounts into HSAs, eliminating the quasi-duplication.

True, But

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A letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Friday installment of its Letters section suggested a solution to our nation’s baby-birth dearth.

The problem isn’t finances—it’s perceived inconvenience.
Children are a responsibility: a limitation on us in an age of careerism and radical individualism. But they also contain a hidden wealth that exceeds anything else—and hope for the future. We need to stop framing decisions about childrearing as simply another cost-benefit analysis and present young people with a more beautiful vision of what family life can be and do for the world.

The problem, though, also includes this simple, critical fact: today’s young people have already experienced what family life is, not hypothetical “can be’s.”

It’s necessary to address that realized experience in these proposed presentations. Absent that, such presentations will be perceived as just another installment in the empty words of lectures by older generations.

On Whose Side Are They?

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Via Deputy SecState Christopher Landau:The data are for the Biden administration years of 2022-2024. As Landau pointed out, the money sent to Russia is in blue; the money sent to Ukraine is in orange. This is how much the nations of Europe really care about Ukraine and their own security. The money transfers to the barbarian invader pales the paltry financial and equipment support those nations have been offering Ukraine. Only the UK was sending more aid to Ukraine than to Russia; that has been colored by the UK’s access to North Sea oil and natural gas.

This, despite the hooraw over the US’ apparently fading support for Ukraine.

As usual, right click on the image and select Open Link in New Tab to enlarge the image.

H/t @ralflongwalker