Tag Archives: ethics

Pulling Patriotic Products

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Harris Teeter, a supermarket chain, used to sell, among other things, products that were distinctly pro-American—things with slogans like “Give me liberty or give me death” and “America, love it or leave it.”

Then a customer complained about their presence on store shelves—they were insensitive, after all, in light of recent mass shootings. Apparently, being pro-American, being patriotic, is insensitive today. Never mind that slogans like these have been around for decades and all the way back to the runup to our Revolutionary War.

Harris Teeter promptly folded.

Thanks for reaching out. As soon as these items were brought to our attention we put a recall request into place and these items are being removed from all store locations.
We appreciate your concern[.]

Not to be outdone, another person complained to Kroger, a chain of supermarkets and department stores, about the presence on its shelves of coozies with Arms Change, Rights Don’t printed on them. Not to be outdone by Harris Teeter, Kroger promptly folded and pulled the coozies.

Harris Teeter and Kroger may think this is a sound business decision, but it’s likely they’ve badly misread their customer base. In any event, it’s certainly true that the recall is decidedly unpatriotic and amoral.

Maybe it’s time we Americans educated these two store chains about the nature of their customer base by no longer being their customers.

Border Control Failure

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…by our Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden and his pet (Harry Reid’s term) DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas:

Lawmakers in Congress are sounding alarm after 15 illegal migrants with suspected terrorists [sic] ties were caught crossing the border in a single month, raising worries that some might eventually reach the stage of launching an attack.

Failure? Customs and Border Protection agents caught them, didn’t they? How is that a failure?

Congressman Andy Biggs (R, AZ) said border agents are increasingly overwhelmed processing the nearly quarter million illegal migrants who are crossing monthly and that means more dangerous players are sneaking across perilously undetected.
“You have probably 80,000 to 100,000 people coming into the country that we don’t interact with, we don’t we see them, we don’t stop them,” Biggs told Just the News.

That’s a rough estimate, to be sure—”don’t see” means don’t see. However, say it’s an overestimate by 100%—that’s still 40,000-50,000 illegal aliens not interacted with at the border, and that’s a large population within which terrorists could be mixed and go undetected and so uncaught. It only took 19 terrorists to perpetrate 9/11. On the other hand, if Biggs’ estimate is an underestimate by half, the number of terrorists getting in could be much larger.

That doesn’t get to the so-called got-aways—illegal aliens spotted crossing our border but who escape capture and succeed in penetrating to our interior and secreting themselves. By Mayorkas’ own April testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee, there were nearly 390,000 got-aways in FY21. In April 2022 alone, there were 58,000 got-aways, nearly double the monthly average of Mayorkas’ FY21 admission. How many of those got-aways are terrorists or have terrorist ties?

Catching 15 potential terrorists out of all of that is no success. Not at all.

Here’s an Idea

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The Biden administration is becoming more open about transporting illegal aliens (which administration personnel and too many in the press cynically call “migrants”) into the interior of our nation.

President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is drafting plans to drop off migrants in American towns hours past the US-Mexico border, Republican lawmakers say.
The potential policy is one way DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is seeking to ease the influx of migrants to US border towns….

It’s being done behind the backs of the Congressional Representatives in whose districts the “recipient” towns sit and whether or not those towns agree to the moves, too. Congressman August Pfluger (R, TX) formally asked DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about it, saying in part,

San Angelo is a welcoming community, but the locality has not volunteered for this mission, nor are they responsible for the burdens of the border crisis.

Pfluger also noted that he only found out about the DHS plans after local law enforcement in San Angelo informed him. From that, he asked Mayorkas what communities Mayorkas already was targeting with illegal alien transport, what steps he was taking to ensure the illegal aliens being so transported would pose no danger to the victim recipient towns, what procedures Mayorkas was using to

notify and alert local, state, and Congressional leaders that illegal immigrants will be transported to an area….

and

How much notice do you provide these entities before illegal immigrants arrive?

Ease the influx of “migrants:” here’s an idea—work with me on this, it’s apparently a difficult concept for those on the Left and in the present administration—stop letting the illegal aliens in in the first place. Stop them at the border and keep them out. Push Mexico to stop letting them in at the Mexican southern border and detain the illegals as they enter that country.

In short, reimplement the border and immigration policies of the prior administration.

“Negotiate”

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French President Emmanuel Macron is at it again vis-à-vis Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Ukraine would eventually have to hold peace talks with Russia, while Ukrainian troops fought hard to hold back the Russian invasion force in the country’s east.
“At some point, when we will have helped Ukraine as much as possible to resist, when I hope Ukraine will have won and fighting will have stopped, we will have to negotiate,” Mr Macron told reporters while visiting French troops in Romania.

Whose definition of victory, though? Whose definition of what’s possible? Whose definition of fighting will have stopped?

Will the fighting have stopped because the Ukrainians have run out of weapons and ammunition because wobbly (to use a Margaret Thatcher term) nations like France have decided for Ukraine that it’s enough and stopped supporting Ukraine materially and materiel-ly?

Will Macron decide for Ukraine that fighting—or supplying Ukraine—is no longer possible? Will Macron decide for Ukraine when “victory” had been achieved?

Ukraine is in a war for its very existence as a polity and as a society, and it’s fighting a barbarian bent on destroying that polity and society. Macron apparently has forgotten his own nation’s struggles for existence in two wars in the last century, the first of which threatened its existence but for the unalloyed aid of other nations, and the second of which did erase France from the map except for one part that was a satrap of another nation and the other part that was a rump country wholly subsidiary to that other nation, an erasure undone only by the unalloyed aid of other nations.

The only victory possible for Ukraine has already been articulated by Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That victory consists of the Russian barbarian (my term) gone entirely from Ukrainian territory.

I suggest that the only negotiation with the barbarian that is possible once he’s driven from Ukrainian territory is how far back into Russia from the Ukrainian border all roads and railroads must be torn up and plowed over.

“We, Europeans, we share a continent, and geography is stubborn: it turns out that at the end of it, Russia is still there,” [Macron] said.

Macron’s cheap snark, despite itself, puts a premium on victory on Ukrainian terms and on subsequent negotiation on my term. We do, indeed share a continent under stubborn geography. However, France is still there, as I noted above, only because other nations came, without hesitation or reservation, to its aid.

So it must be for Ukraine. France above all owes this debt to Ukraine, owes this debt to Europe.

An Incoherent Biden Diktat

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It’s in the offing. This time, President Joe Biden is threatening to inflict his “emergency powers” on American oil producing companies if they don’t produce more oil.

President Biden may resort to using emergency powers if American oil companies don’t increase output at their refineries, the president told oil CEOs in a series of letters Wednesday.
Biden’s statement blames oil companies for running “historically high profit margins” even as Americans experience surging gas prices.

Never mind that they cannot just turn on the faucet and more oil comes out of the tap. It takes lots of money and quite a bit of time to reopen capped wells, and it takes even more money and lots of time to drill a new, producing well.

But Biden’s administration stands in the way of all of that, even as he threatens his diktat. His administration has already canceled large leases in Alaska. His administration has closed most Federal lands to further exploration, much less drilling. His administration is slow-walking new lease applications. His administration is slow-walking the permits needed actually to explore, and then the permits needed actually to drill, once a lease is approved.

His administration has closed major pipelines and is slow-walking construction of other pipelines so that even were a new well drilled or an existing one uncapped, the producers would have no way to deliver output to a refiner.

Given all of that, and with existing refiners already operating at near capacity, there’s no reason to open/build new refineries—they’d have no additional oil to refine.

Beyond that, there’s the matter of trust. Beyond the time and money it takes to (re)open a well, it takes more time—years—for those costs to be recouped and profit begun to be received from the proceeds of that well. Biden’s administration, though, cannot be trusted not to pull the rug out from under those oil companies and demand wells’ or pipelines’ closure once the current—Biden-created—gas price abates.

And this: oil companies’ “historically high profit margins” exist in part (not entirely) because they’re limited in where they can commit their revenues. They can’t spend them on exploration, drilling, producing, transporting, after all because of those Biden administration policies above.

Biden isn’t alone in this incoherence, though—this is typical of his Progressive-Democrat Cabinet and of the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians who dominate both houses of Congress. Nor is the incoherence limited to oil: there’s the environment and Party’s separate global warming mantra. See, too, our southern border, Party’s immigration “policy,” Biden’s foreign policy, defense attitude, and on and on.