Tag Archives: morality

Obsessive-Compulsive

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Progressive-Democratic Party politicians are beating each other up over who should hold sway over Party—socialists or Establishment Democrats. Their serious policy differences and the power struggle that otherwise would fracture Party, though, are not stopping them from linking arms in order to go against President Donald Trump (R). Consider the just concluded Party primary election in Michigan to determine who should represent Party in the US Senate. Democratic Socialist of America member Abdul el-Sayed edged Establishment Democrat Haley Stevens. El-Dayed’s campaign was marked by vitriol toward Stevens. However,

Ms Stevens, who spent the campaign avoiding the subject of Mr El-Sayed’s not-quite-spoken animus, last week ventured a diagonal allusion to it. “You want to blame all your problems on Jewish Americans,” she said in an online post. But she also vowed to support him in the general election—a paradox that nicely captures her party’s pusillanimity on the Jewish question.

Hours after her defeat, Stevens posted on X:

I love Michigan and am so proud to have put up my hand to serve. I spoke with Abdul a few moments ago to offer him my full support as we work to defeat Mike Rogers this November. Thank you, Michigan.

She loves Michigan, or she hates President Donald Trump (R) and/or Jews that much? Trump, not Rogers, since both el-Sayed and Stevens, were running against Trump, not Rogers. Jews, since el-Sayed never hid his antisemitic bigotry under a bushel, while Stevens tacitly agreed with his bigotry through her silence on that.

And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) endorsement of el-Sayed within hours of his primary victory. The Jewish Party mucky-muck looked past el-Sayed’s hatred of him and his religious confreres to make his endorsement explicitly about his own hatred of Trump.

Democrats are united by a common purpose: putting a check on Donald Trump by defeating his Republican enablers and taking back the Senate. We look forward to working with Abdul….

Progressive-Democratic Party politicians are so deeply immersed in their anti-Trump obsession that they’re compulsively supporting the candidate whom they so deeply despised before the Primary and who has such strong contempt for them and such raw hatred of so many Americans.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party our nation is facing in the fall mid-terms. Weak-kneed on honesty, lacking entirely the courage to denounce bigotry, embracing the destructive policies of the Democratic Socialists of America, accepting violence-embracing, if not outright inciting, rhetoric (you put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message).

Still Just Love Taps

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In response to Iran’s “surprise” attacks on US forces in Jordan, the US answered with a powerful response.

US forces carried out a “heavy wave” of strikes, attacking dozens of targets, including military command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance and defense sites, and maritime capabilities, said US Central Command after the strikes were completed. “The strikes aimed to further diminish threats posed by Iran and its proxies to American forces, commercial shipping, and neighboring Gulf countries,” the command said.

And President Donald Trump (R):

We are going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn.

This is nothing but a few wholly inadequate love taps, though, to use Trump’s on phrase. His dislike for the killing and destruction war causes is well known, but here he’s letting it cloud his judgment.

The only way to diminish threats posed by Iran and its proxies to American forces is to destroy those threats’ physical capability to act on their enmity. If we know where those targets, those command centers, missile and drone facilities,… are, we need to hit and destroy all of them, in rapid sequence if not simultaneously, not just bang some of them in onesies and twosies strikes. The terrorists must be completely disarmed, as many of their—now IRGC—leadership killed as we can reach, and the surviving leadership blinded by eliminating their command centers, surveillance facilities, military radar systems.

Worse from Trump’s perspective (were he to get better advice from his civilian advisors), the tit-for-tat that is this turn-taking foolishness only runs up, for the mid- and long-term, the casualty count and the physical destruction.

It’s time to be serious. Hit Iran with continuous waves of strikes strong enough actually to be worthy of being called “heavy.” Diplomacy can easily and straightforwardly be carried out while these strikes are ongoing rather than during pauses, which are strongly beneficial to the terrorists: safe passage to a meeting site can easily be granted and enforced for Iranian decision makers’ travel.

Foolish Move

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Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R, SC) has introduced legislation that would make illegal formation of House caucuses organized around race, ethnicity, or national origin.

If adopted, the measure would effectively force the dissolution of Democrat-aligned groups, including the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.
The proposal could also affect GOP-affiliated organizations, including the Black Republican Congressional Staff Association, the GOP Latino Staff Association, and the Republican Asian American Staff Association.

It’s a nice idea, blocking race-based organizations and the like in the House. Mace’s argument is straightforward and entirely legitimate.

Race-based caucuses are not diversity. They are federally sanctioned segregation. You do not get to lecture America about inclusion while running an organization which checks your skin color at the door. The hypocrisy ends now.
It is time to end taxpayer-funded discrimination in this institution[.]

There is, though, no way to enforce the intent of the thing, even were the legislation to pass. The caucuses won’t disappear. The groups will just continue to meet informally in glorified coffee klatches and therewith continue to coordinate legislative proposal and votes. Nothing material will change.

Are They Not Working Americans?

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The news writers in The Wall Street Journal note, correctly, that

IRAs and workplace retirement accounts were created to help working Americans save for old age by providing tax incentives for doing so.

Then they spent more than 2,700 words decrying some who have had more success at that than others, as though those with that success do not deserve that success while claiming that such success is a mark of dysfunction of those IRAs and workplace retirement accounts and the associated incentives.

But how did these successful ones achieve the growth of their retirement-oriented accounts? One example:

Gregory Baszucki’s [IRA] holds at least $68 million—and possibly a whole lot more.
Baszucki, 61 years old, is one of hundreds of people who bought stakes in promising startups when the shares were worth peanuts, stashing them in retirement accounts and watching their values balloon to eight figures or more. What they are getting, essentially, is the mother of all tax breaks.

That’s wrong how, exactly? Baszucki did what he was encouraged to do by financial planning experts and by Government through its design of the retirement savings programs. He stashed away some stock shares in his IRA so their value could grow tax deferred, or tax free if he put them in a Roth IRA, th latter which is designed explicitly to allow retirement savers to set aside already taxed monies to grow and be free of taxes on withdrawal. What these news writers carefully ignore is the broadly chancy—extremely so—nature of startups: most of them fail. Baszucki could easily have lost all of his stakes in their entirety. That he has been better than most of us in choosing startups for his investment money, or luckier, is an outcome to be celebrated by the rest of us and an outcome which we all can achieve with our own skill and/or luck.

And this from the article:

Those entrepreneurs and their financial backers are increasingly using that strategy to pile up giant retirement-account balances, all subsidized by US taxpayers….

This is plain wrong, to the point of deliberately offered disinformation. Of course none of that is subsidized by taxpayers. The government simply isn’t getting the tax revenue from those giant retirement-account balances; no one else is paying in that revenue in the place of those account holders.

Steven Rosenthal, a retired tax lawyer lately of the Tax Policy Center:

We aren’t talking about saving enough for your needs in retirement. This isn’t keeping you off the dole in old age. This is yacht financing or dynasty building.

And

Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR) and Congressman Richard Neal (D, MA) plan to introduce a bill this week that would require annual withdrawals from accounts over $10 million for individuals of any age. The planned legislation stemmed in part from long-running concerns that some investors might circumvent annual contribution limits on retirement accounts by undervaluing shares in companies that aren’t public, “thus substantially increasing their tax benefits,” the Government Accountability Office wrote in 2014.
“This is an egregious loophole we’ve got to close,” Wyden said. “Congress created tax-advantaged retirement accounts to help more Americans save for a dignified retirement, not to help the ultrawealthy dodge taxes on insider deals and build titanic fortunes.”

The Progressive-Democrats’ position less obtusely stated: “Give us the damn money, already. It’s not yours, it’s Government’s.”

This is the arrogance of those presuming to determine what the needs of others are; this is the resentment of those who don’t have presuming to determine the legitimacy of the wants of those who do have. And dynasty building? There’s something wrong with parents looking to leave their children better off than they are? To these resentful ones, yes: success must be capped, and the children must be knee-capped of their inheritances.

Are the Baszuckis of our nation not working Americans? Of course they are. This is nothing more than a naked drive to punish those who have been more successful than others by taking away their success and redistributing it to those favored by Know Betters. It’s what the Progressive-Democratic Party wants; it’s what the Democratic Socialist of America party, a core constituent of the Progressive-Democratic Party has as its explicit goal; and it’s what the fundamentally mendacious press is pushing.

A fundamental question that Know Betters and Redistributionists must answer is this: what’s their limiting principle defining how much success is too much? What’s the basis for their claimed principle—should they have the integrity to name one?

No point in waiting for an answer. It’s a an amorphous, generalized claim born nakedly of covetousness, it’s wrong, and it’s anti-American.

“Did That…?

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Minnesota’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Tim Walz posed three questions after he pardoned convicted child molester Tou Lue Vang and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had him immediately deported.

Did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?

Ex-Los Angeles Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt responded in his own way:

If you find yourself defending a child molester, saying: “WE can’t be judged by OUR worst day,” you probably need to have your hard drives checked.

I answer Walz’ in my own way.

Absolutely, kicking that child molester out of our nation made us safer.

Absolutely, it made the children left behind vey much more stable, with the threat from that molester gone from their lives.

The idea that we can’t be judged by our worst day is a cynically offered red herring and nothing else. It is, though, a mark of Walz’ awesome self-importance that he thinks that question is in any way substantive.

Sadly, dangerously, Walz’ attempted cover up plaint and softness toward child abuse and abusers are an all too typical example of Party’s general softness on crime, especially those committed by illegal aliens.