I’m Not Talking to You

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Like an angry wife of a bygone era, the Iranian government is having a hissy fit over the latest round of sanctions, these applied directly to the likes of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s MFWIC; Foreign Minister Javad Zarif; and three military leaders:

Ali Reza Tangsiri, who was responsible for the Iranian regime’s forces threatening to close the straits of Hormuz; Amirali Hajizadeh, who was commander of the air force and responsible for downing the US unmanned aircraft in international airspace; and Mohammad Pakpour, who is responsible for IRGC’s ground forces.

Iran’s government isn’t happy.

A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a tweet Tuesday that the new US sanctions that target Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other Iranian officials permanently end any chance of diplomacy between countries.

This, though, is just another example of the Iranian government’s dissembling. When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe visited Khamenei, Khamenei refused to receive a message from President Donald Trump that Abe was bearing, and Khamenei said that he’d never talk to Trump.

All channels of diplomacy and any chance of future diplomacy have been closed off by Iran for some weeks.

Khamenei, Abbas Mousavi (Spokesman and Head of the Center for Public and Media Diplomacy), Hassan Rouhani (Iranian President), et al., are just acting out the temper tantrums of those angry wives.

Censorship

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James O’Keefe’s Veritas did some undercover work, produced a video of that work, and ran it on YouTube.  However, the exposé was of…Alphabet’s Google (which in turn owns YouTube), so YouTube took it down—Alphabet’s censors couldn’t stand the criticism.

The video seems to be back up a few hours later as I write this on the late afternoon of Tuesday.

However.

Alphabet’s attempt to censor, regardless of its (temporary?) failure, is wholly unacceptable, and it demonstrates Alphabet’s (as the owner of Google and YouTube) dishonesty and cowardice.

How is it possible to trust an organization so precious, so self-important, that it can’t even handle criticism of itself?

A Bit about Hate

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Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Cory Booker (D, NJ) has accused President Donald Trump of being hateful and running a campaign based on hatred.  He warned his fellow Progressive-Democrat candidates not to run on hatred, but on love.

Booker is right about some of that.  Progressive-Democrats and Republicans (and Greens, Libertarians, etc) are unlikely to win much of anything campaigning on hate.

Yet it’s Senator Spartacus who, along with the rest of his Party, preach the divisiveness and hatred of Party’s racist and sexist identity politics.

It’s Senator Spartacus who hatefully distorted Biden’s words about being able to work with anyone, even segregationists and racists, when the task was important enough into Spartacus’ own manufactured racist beef—and pettily, too, for no other end than his own personal political gain.

Would Biden be able to work even with such a one as Cory Booker?  That’s far from certain.

Beyond that, the only ones preaching about hate are the Bookers, the Harris, and the rest of the Progressive-Democratic Party.  Others are talking about accomplishments and policies.

Where, indeed, is this love from the Progressive-Democrats? As Spartacus himself has demonstrated, they even hate their own.

Trump and the New York Times

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In one of a series of Letters to the Editor in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal, one letter writer decried both President Donald Trump’s and the NYT‘s words.  It’s a false comparison, though.  The letter writer wrote in the Trump part of his comparison

President Trump’s use of the word “treason” to characterize the Times, and his attempts to misuse government authority to retaliate against journalists must end, full stop.

This is a cynically misleading claim. Trump did not use the word “treason” to characterize the NYT; he used the phrase “virtual treason” to characterize the NYT‘s behavior.

Trump is well-known for disdaining euphemisms, for preferring plain, blunt speech.  If he had meant to say the NYT was a treasonous institution, he would have said so.  Beyond that, “virtual” treason is not treason; it describes behavior that might look like treason in a purely metaphorical way.  Full stop.

Regarding retaliation, Trump has never had his surveillance apparatus spy on journalists’ emails, nor has he ever thrown a journalist in jail or harassed a journalist’s mother. Again, full stop.

Nor has Trump ever tried to bar an entire news organization from its news collection duties at the White House. A third time, full stop.

Not an Iron Curtain

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But it is intended to be a chain-link fence.  It’s not intended to keep folks out, though, but like its Big Brother, it is intended to “encourage” folks to stay in.

Connecticut has expanded its mansion tax on homes.  Here’s how it works.  On sale, Connecticut taxmen will exact from the seller a 2.25% tax on the value of the sale that exceeds $2.5 million.  This is an increase from the already existing “conveyance tax” of 1.25%, but it adds a fillip: if the seller stays in the State for a suitably long time after the sale (“suitable” being defined by the State’s politicians), he’ll get the money back as a tax credit.  If he leaves Connecticut for greener and friendlier pastures too soon to suit those politicians, too bad—he loses those 2.25%.

Governor Ned Lamont (D) made the nature of his chain-link fence explicit. He said that the tax is a

penalty when people whose homes are valued over $2.5 million sell their homes and leave the state.

There’s also a related question: with Connecticut making it so hard to leave, why would anyone want to go there in the first place?

It’s not all bad, though.  The center of Connecticut is only 35 miles from Massachusetts and only 55 miles from Rhode Island and New York.  To the extent there are jobs at all in Connecticut, those are easy commutes, as any Angelino, Metroplex resident, or New Jersey-ite knows.