Tag Archives: foreign policy

DHS Responsiveness

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House Republicans have put Department of Homeland Security management on notice to hold onto a variety of data; they’ll be investing the department if they win a majority of the House this Tuesday (and the out-days of vote “counting”).

House Oversight and Reform Committee Ranking Member Congressman James Comer (R, LA) has warned Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that Republicans would seek to hold him and his agency accountable for the ongoing crisis at the southern border should they win in next week’s midterm elections.
“We cannot endure another year of the Biden Administration’s failed border policies,” Comer and his fellow committee Republicans wrote to Mayorkas, per the Washington Times. “We have written DHS fifteen times this Congress to conduct oversight over the border crisis. Again, we request documents and information to understand the Biden Administration’s plans, if any, to secure the border.”

Here’s a thought. Republicans should withhold funding (defund, in the Progressive-Democratic Party’s favorite jargon) for the DHS other than ICE, CBP, and other border/immigration-related agencies, and the Coast Guard unless and until all documents are turned over to the new House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s satisfaction, and DHS Secretary and Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and John Tien, respectively, have resigned.

They shouldn’t just yap about having called repeatedly for documents or bark about “we’re going to investigate the Hell out of you,” knowing there’s no hope of subpoenas being enforced—they should put some teeth into their demands. They should take their own, purse string-related, steps to enforce their demands and investigations.

The Progressive-Democrat President certainly will veto such a budget, and he’ll threaten to shut down the government. However, both the Biden administration in general and Mayorkas’ DHS are prime examples of why that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Aside from that, the Obama Shutdown of 2013 is example of the harmlessness of the Federal government not operating for a time.

Putin Wants an Arms Race

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Russia threatens arms race in space if commercial satellites do not stop assisting Ukraine in war, goes the subheadline.

And:

[Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Konstantin] Vorontsov argued that commercial satellites used to benefit Ukraine in the war violates The Outer Space Treaty and warned it could start a “full-fledged arms race in outer space.”

An arms race in space.

I say bring it. The Soviet Union couldn’t handle a Reagan arms race in space; the USSR couldn’t keep up with the technology developments, and its economy couldn’t keep up with anything—military or civilian.

The Russian economy is in worse shape. Let’s have that arms race. Russia will lose this one, and just as catastrophically, even if the nation doesn’t actually disintegrate the way the USSR did.

Here’s Another Thought

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Two in a week. Settle down.

NASDAQ is (rightfully) suspicious of small-cap companies domiciled in the People’s Republic of China listing their IPOs on NASDAQ’s exchange. The one-day spikes in share prices followed quickly by nearly total collapse of those share prices in so many of the IPOs is what’s drawn attention. For instance:

Shares of more than 20 recently listed companies have risen over 100% on their first day of trading. They include Hong Kong-based fintech company AMTD Digital Inc, which briefly jumped over 320-fold after its July listing, and Chinese garment maker Addentax Group Corp, which rose more than 130-fold on its market debut in August. The two stocks have since lost more than 98% of their value.

As a result, NASDAQ has stopped approving PRC small-caps for listing, for the time being. Which brings me to my thought.

Don’t list any companies domiciled in the PRC on any American exchange, and encourage the other nations in the OECD to do the same. After all, at least since the PRC’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, those PRC companies are too closely tied to the PRC’s intelligence community, and as such, they have no legitimate business raising money through any nation’s stock or bond exchanges other than their own.

Political Cowardice

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President Joe Biden (D) is desperate to avoid encountering Russian President Vladimir Putin during the upcoming G20 meeting.

The White House is bent on preventing President Biden from having a run-in with Russian President Vladimir Putin while the pair attend the G20 summit next month, according to a new report.
White House aides want to avoid even a hallway meeting between the two, or any other situation that might allow for them to be pictured together[.]

It’s true enough, if “reports” are accurate, that it’s those White House aides who are fronting this shameful avoidance, but those folks work for Biden, not the other way around, and as cowardly as Biden would be to run away from Putin, it’s just as cowardly to hide behind his aides on his retreat rather than speaking for himself on the matter.

After all, goes the pseudo-thought, the barbarian chieftain isn’t doing anything worthy of being publicly confronted over. Nothing going on in Ukraine. No barbarian hordes raping and pillaging. No Russian attacks on civilian housing, hospitals, schools, or water and electricity distribution networks. No Russian attacks threatening nuclear power plants.

No Russian cyber attacks made against our allies and friends—or against us.

Nothing to see here.

Instead of running away from Putin, Biden should seek him out and publicly confront him over his invasion of a sovereign nation and the barbaric behavior of his horde inside that nation. Biden should publicly confront him over his cyber attacks.

Still only Chit-Chat

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Now ex-President Barack Obama (D) thinks it was a mistake to essentially ignore the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009, the Iranian people’s uprising against the tyrannical Ayatollah regime.

That’s awfully … of him to say so, now, 13 years too late for it to matter for the Iranian people or for him to suffer any consequences, even as it comes amid the current protests by Iranian women against that same tyrannical Ayatollah regime.

Now he’s saying,

Every time we see a flash, a glimmer of hope, of people longing for freedom, I think we have to point it out.
We have to shine a spotlight on it. We have to express some solidarity about it[.]

Chit-chat. Obama, and his BFF President Joe Biden (D), still are interested in limiting themselves to yakking about the Iranian people’s efforts. Talk is cheap; what concrete action would today’s Obama or Biden be willing to take?

They’re not quite being silent.