Tag Archives: foreign policy

The Veterans Administration

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…won’t clean up after itself.  In this instance, literally.  This is the VA “hospital” room a veteran was placed in when he went to that…facility…for treatment that involved 18 injections.  Injections to be done in a room as filthy as this.

Dr Karen Gribbin, the chief of staff at the George E Wahlen Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Center, on Saturday reportedly said that Wilson should not have been in the room. She said the rooms should be cleaned prior to each patient and called on an investigation.

Wahlen is the imitation hospital at which this failure occurred.  The vetaran’s father, who posted the tweet, also tweeted

The condition of the room was the way it was when he went in, no other room was offered and no attempt to clean it up was made for the duration of his appointment[.]

Gibben also admitted that the veteran got his injections in that dirty room, but she claimed that the injection equipment—the needles, for instance—

would have been used just on him.

While that is, in fact, highly likely, how can we be sure, given the condition of the room and the level of professionalism and of integrity demonstrated by going ahead with the patient’s treatment there?

And this:

Gribbin was asked what the typical procedure was for when to clean patient rooms in order to ensure they are clean for each visit.

“We are investigating that. To be quite honest I do not work in that clinic area and I am not sure…exactly what that process is. We will be absolutely clarifying that, making sure our policies and procedures are well thought out and well communicated to staff[.]

She’s the Chief of Staff.  How is it possible that she does not know her own procedures or protocols?

Again, I say: disband the VA altogether and use its budget and nominal future budgets for vouchers for our veterans to see the doctors, clinics, and hospitals they choose, when they choose, and for the care they choose.  Enough of the VA’s trash.  Literally.

The original tweet, posted by the veteran’s father, can be seen here.  Poke through the reply thread, too.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

German Defense Spending

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Recall that at the just-concluded summit between President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump urged Merkel to increase Germany’s defense spending.  Recall further Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s subsequent meeting with NATO bigwigs in which he urged NATO members generally to increase their defense spending.

This table illustrates why Germany really needs to plus up its defense spending.

And this:

In February, the newspaper Rheinische Post cited an internal Bundeswehr paper stating that the army lacked the necessary basic equipment for its deployment in a NATO rapid reaction force.

Basic equipment: really basic, like tents for winter shelter, winter clothing, even combat basics like protective vests.

Germany’s Defense Minister has said she wants €12 billion ($14.6 billion) more than currently allocated to begin to bring the nation’s military establishment to a higher state of capability.  That’s barely a third of one per cent of Germany’s €3.4 trillion ($4.2 trillion) GDP.

I have to ask: is Germany serious about its own defense? Or does it really intend to continue to freeload off other NATO members—not only the US?

Diplomatic Cowardice

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In response to a remarks US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, made regarding Hamas’ role in the deaths and injuries of Gaza inhabitants as they keep trying to storm the fence separating Gaza from Israel, Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said Haley’s remarks “lacked credibility.”

What Haley said:

She said the terrorists hide behind innocent women, children and men to further their cause.

Haley in part said that, “Anyone who truly cares about children in Gaza should insist that Hamas immediately stop using children as cannon fodder in its conflict with Israel.”

What Mansour said:

We challenge the liars who advocated lies in the Security Council yesterday.

When asked if he was calling Haley a liar—was she one of the “liars” to whom he was referring—Mansour said she:

created a very strong resentment among the entire Palestinian nation.

And

With regard to Ambassador Haley, the fact that she goes on the tangent that she did…would make her whole story not credible, in addition to being extremely insensitive.

Mansour didn’t have the moral courage to say straight up that he was calling Haley a liar—or that he was not and clarifying that he was not.

This diplomatic cowardice is of a piece with the physical cowardice of the Hamas terrorists who do, indeed, cower behind women and children (and men who want nothing to do with terrorism, even if they do protest the fence).

The “Muslim Travel” Moratorium Case

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The Supreme Court is hearing this case as it pertains to the current Executive Order that imposes a moratorium on entry into the US by persons coming from certain specified nations.  (In aside, I emphasize that calling the EO a “Muslim ban” is dishonest. It presents an impermanent moratorium on entry from nations representing a bare 10% of the world’s Muslims, and it presents the same impermanent moratorium on non-Muslim countries, like northern Korea.)

Lower courts have invoked campaign rhetoric, the clumsiness of the rollout of the first EO on the matter, a made-up permanence of the moratorium, and on and on, to create a court-manufactured policy determination that the EO was somehow prejudiced in some way.  With that fantasy, those lower courts have struck the EOs, one after another.

The lower courts have been imposing their own prejudices.

What’s in the text of the Executive Order? Is the EO itself legal? These are the only questions legitimately before the Justices. Campaign rhetoric is not in the EO, and so cannot be considered. The clumsiness of the rollout of the first EO had nothing to do with the EO—or with the one presently before the Justices—and so cannot be considered by the Justices.  The duration of the moratorium is a political decision, and so cannot be considered.

In Connecticut National Bank v Germain, the Supremes held

…time and again that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there.

The concept plainly holds for EOs as well.  If it’s not in the EO, the EO doesn’t say it.

Whether the EO’s moratorium on entry into the US from a selected set of nations is good or bad policy is certainly worthy of debate, but it’s strictly and solely a political debate to be had by We the People, and through us, our elected representatives. Politics and associated policy decisions are beyond the ken of courts.

The Comey Memos

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The memos can be read here.  Aside from all the commentary on the memos’ content, a couple of other things jump out at me.

One is the level of classification: SECRET/NOFORN.  Comey noted at their start that he was unsure of the memos’ classification, so he marked them SECRET and invited his addressees to correct that as required.  One or more of them considered NOFORN—nor for foreign viewing, even if otherwise cleared to the level of secrecy; this is an addendum that gets added to unclassified material, too, on occasion—to be a suitable addition.  Reading around the redactions, this seems an obvious need.

The bigger deal though, is the amount of redaction that actually was done.  Out of 15 total pages of memos, some 34 lines had something redacted, and most of that was just a couple of words or a short phrase.  That little bit didn’t take all this time and the threat of a subpoena to get the memos marked and released to the House committees demanding them.  That emphasizes the question of what the FBI was trying to hide with its intransigence in stonewalling the release.

And that raises another question in my pea brain: having read the memos, there’s nothing in them that should have caused embarrassment to the FBI.  So: what else is the FBI hiding, what is it holding back that we haven’t heard about?