Tag Archives: ethics

Biden Had a Bad Day

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden had a tough time reading his teleprompter during his speech to the NAACP last Monday. He misread no less than nine times, errors ranging from what otherwise could have been written off as minor misspeaks to major errors that can be ascribed only to his deterioration.

The White House staff had to issue corrections in the What He Meant to Say vein.

OK.

But far worse than that is what that same White House staff did to the official record of his speech. They altered the transcript of his speech—that official record, made explicitly to record for history the actual event—to “correct” those errors, to pretend they didn’t exist. Acting Deputy Press Secretary Sam Michel:

We’re focused on the substance of the transcript and the heart of President Biden’s speech….

Not the truth of what he said, but the “substance” as defined after the fact—what Biden said is what those staffers say he said, not what Biden actually said.

This alteration of history is extremely dangerous to our nation. If we’re not allowed to know what happened in the past—whether those happenings are major or trivial—we’re not going to be able to do better in that future. The only ones who will be able will be those who know, and keep to themselves, those historical facts.

And what they do that’s better will be better only for their own gain and power.

The IRS Is Going Broke?

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The IRS is in front of Congress, saying the $60 billion with which Congress plussed up its money pot last year—an addition that was supposed to last for 10 years—already is used up, and Commissioner Danny Werfel is in, pleading for an additional $104 billion. The Wall Street Journal editors are correct to wave a big, red BS flag on that, saying Congress should demand (and conduct, I say) an audit of the IRS and its spending instead.

I agree. But I also say there’s an alternative path to controlling the IRS, and its spendthrift ways, and that alternative would benefit all of us average Americans and our businesses. It’s a proposal I’ve offered before.

Congress should pass, and the President should sign, legislation that would vastly simplify our tax code. The new tax code should have no income tax levied on our businesses—which don’t pay much in the way of income tax, anyway; business customers pay most of it—and the new personal income tax should be a single flat rate on all income, regardless of source, and with no credits, deductions, subsidies, or other frou-frou gerrymanders on income.

A rate in the range of 10% to 15% would raise all the revenues for the Federal government it needs to provide for the only three Constitutionally mandated spending types: providing for our national defense, paying our Federal government debts, and providing for the Article I, Section 8-enumerated items of the general Welfare of the United States.

A vastly reduced IRS, consisting primarily of receiving clerks, would be all that’s necessary to manage the resulting tax code. It’d be hard for such a reduced agency, even a Federal government one, to waste $60 billion.

Why Should It Take So Long?

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Ukraine has asked NATO leadership to have member nations, including the US, send military trainers to Ukraine to help train 150,000 new recruits into the Ukrainian armed forces. The US is exceedingly reluctant.

So far the United States has said no, but General Charles Q Brown Jr, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that a NATO deployment of trainers appeared inevitable. “We’ll get there eventually, over time,” he said.

To paraphrase John Maynard Keynes from another venue: over time, Ukrainians are all enslaved.

Worse,

For now, he [Brown] said, an effort inside Ukraine would put “a bunch of NATO trainers at risk” and would most likely mean deciding whether to use precious air defenses to protect the trainers instead of critical Ukrainian infrastructure near the battlefield.

Imagine that—soldiers in a war zone might be in harm’s way. But we’ll only protect selected ones. Brown also is ignoring the simple fact that critical Ukrainian infrastructure extends throughout Ukraine. And so does the battlefield, as the barbarian’s targeting by missiles, rockets, drones, even glide bombs, all launched from the Biden-created Sanctuary Russia, make clear.

Is this another example of Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden cynically slow-walking aid to Ukraine? Or is this Biden and his too-woke military advisors being deeply chicken…t?

Who’s the One Favoring Russia?

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Former President Donald Trump (R) has been repeatedly and over the long term caviled for his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him brilliant, an effective leader, more. Even as he was extolling the skills (not the virtues, as the intrinsically mendacious press wants you to believe), though, Trump was busily arming Ukraine with lethal weapons after the prior administration, that of Progressive-Democrat President Barack Obama had withheld lethal weapons, telling the Ukrainians they should be happy to make do with blankets and MREs.

A subset of the Trump-delivered lethal weapons, antitank Javelins, proved decisive in the Ukrainian defeat of the barbarian’s original onslaught out of Belorussia toward Kyiv and out of Russia into Kharkiv and Donetsk Oblasts, ultimately pushing the barbarian back out of Ukraine’s Kyiv Oblast altogether and most of Kharkiv Oblast.

Now we have Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden. He insists that no weapon the US transfers are permitted to be used against Russian territory. As The Wall Street Journal put it in its Thursday editorial,

President Biden’s strategy, even after a cash infusion from Congress, looks like a plan for Ukraine to lose as slowly as possible.

After all, the outcome of Biden’s limits (I haven’t approached Biden’s cynical slow-walking the delivery of those weapons he will permit be transferred to Ukraine) is succinctly described by the WSJ‘s editors.

The President has precluded Ukraine from using American weapons to hit sovereign Russian territory. The practical effect of this is to offer the Russian military a safe haven. The Russians can build up troops, supplies and weapons near Ukraine. Mr. Putin can then deploy scarce defensive systems elsewhere, confident anything inside Russia is safe, courtesy of Mr Biden’s preconditions.

Even as Biden excoriates Putin, trying to show his own bona fides, he has actively created the invader barbarian as a sanctuary nation within which no attacks will be permitted.

Who was the one willing to confront the barbarian, and took concrete steps to do so, and who is the one actively protecting the barbarian, and taking concrete steps to further that protection?

A 21st Century Mugwump

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Monica Tranel is a Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Congress, looking to replace Montana’s Republican Congressman Ryan Zinke. Tranel has bragged about being in the middle on political matters:

…being in the middle is in my DNA. I have no interest in playing party politics. I want to come to the center….

She claims on her Web site,

I’m running for Congress to represent the missing middle—the people who feel invisible, whose voices are not heard, who are not represented in the current political divide.

And she’s proud of her fence-sitting.

She’s also nakedly duplicitous. She’s proud, instead, of her anti-women position regarding biological men in women’s sports. This is the Progressive-Democrat candidate consigning women to invisibility, ignoring their voices, refusing to represent them—contributing, in fine, to the current political divide for her own political profit.