Tag Archives: culture

Trapped Americans

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In Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, the editors offered this in describing President Joe Biden (D) and his administration as the Taliban’s hostage:

Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted they lack the military resources and political mandate to ensure that every American is evacuated amid the Taliban control of Kabul.

The key part here, assuming Austin and Milley are on the up and up (which I have no reason to believe, given their emphasis on the wokeness of our military over its combat effectiveness), is the political mandate. If Biden were a serious actor in this tragedy, the political mandate would be loudly extant, with the direct result of the military resources being promptly available.

There are some 10,000-15,000 Americans out in the Afghan sticks. How are these supposed to make their own way to the airport, Biden and his State Department having written them off as needing to fend for themselves?

There are lots of airfields scattered around the countryside that those military resources could be used to retake for the purpose of staging military transport to go get those Americans and ferry them to Kabul.

That would be difficult to do this late in the Biden Retrograde, but eminently possible.

A Remade Population, Progressive-Democrat Style

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The Progressive-Democrats are bent on reducing Americans to dependency on the largesse of that Party’s politicians for our…everything.

One move in that push is the explosion of the Federal government’s food stamp program—a program created by Party’s forbears, the Democratic Party, and which the Progressive-Democratic Party is using the Wuhan Virus program as an excuse for expanding—and expanding Americans’ dependence on them.

A family of four will get up to $835 per month after adjusting for inflation. The average four-person household in the US spent only $537 per month on food at home in 2019.

That’s 55% (!) more than that family actually spends for food.

But that’s only one move.

Entitlements before the pandemic consumed two-thirds of federal spending. Now [Progressive-]Democrats want to create new entitlements that make the middle class more dependent on government while enlarging existing welfare programs like food stamps, which they plan to pay for by raising taxes and cutting defense. This is a recipe for a weaker and fatter America.

It’s also a recipe for a population of Julias and Pajama Boys dependent on Party, and so a population of Party voters. And a weaker America.

America Last Again

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In the collapse of the US presence in Afghanistan and the collapse of the Afghan “army” and so of that pseudo-nation, there is a wholly justified effort to help Afghan refugees escape from the coming destruction and slaughter.

However.

This is what our President Biden/Harris and their Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin are doing about that:

[Department of Defense Press Secretary Admiral (Ret) John] Kirby says American citizens will not be given priority evacuation over Afghan SIV [Special Immigrant Visa] applicants.

In Biden/Harris’ and Austin’s own words, recited by Kirby:

We’re going to focus on getting people out of the country, then sorting it out at the next stop. It’s not going to be just Americans first, then SIV applicants. We’re going to focus on getting as many folks out as we can.

It’s not going to be just Americans first.

Wow.

Not even in this administration’s present failure are these folks putting Americans anywhere but the back of the metaphorical bus.

Economists and Economists

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Casey Mulligan and Tomas Philipson open their op-ed on how free markets provided answers to the Wuhan Virus (my term, not theirs) that government gave us with this remark:

Economists are trained to believe that the purpose of government policy is to correct market failures….

No. Economists are trained to answer the question of what are the likely outcomes given a set of economic/economic-related inputs.

Political economists are trained to answer the question of what, if anything, ought be done about those outcomes. Sadly, political economists increasingly are “trained” to believe that every outcome needs something done about it and that every doer must needs be Government. Political economists are increasingly incapable of understanding that, in a free market, minimally regulated, economy, unfavorable outcomes are, in the very broad main, self-correcting, and favorable outcomes are, in the very broad main, self-perpetuating. They miss the fact that the actual actors in those economies, the individuals, make in their free market aggregation sound decisions.

That’s what comes from the invisible hand that somebody wrote about some years ago. That’s what political economists no longer understand.

Woking Kindergartens

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Bailey’s Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences in Falls Church, VA, put a woke video on its Web site in which kindergartners were used to push an anti-police agenda. The video, it turns out, was part of a summer curriculum that also included critical race “theory,” Black Lives Matter stuff, and news articles critical of white parents.

After a hue and cry, the video (but only the video, apparently) was taken down from the Web site.

A spokesperson for the Fairfax County Public Schools, just outside Washington, DC, said the video had been posted by mistake and was removed as soon as officials became aware.

Sure it was a mistake. And maybe there’s some beachfront property north of Santa Fe that folks might be interested in, too. Or maybe the mistake was in getting caught.

There’s a larger set of questions, though, a set that’s not being asked, especially by the Fairfax County Public Schools. That set includes the circumstances under which the video was made in the first place, why it was made, who made it.

And whether the persons who made the video still are employed by Fairfax County.

Oh, and whether the BLM and trashing white parents sewage also was taken down, or why not.