Tag Archives: morality

Exaggeration?

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No, it’s worse than that.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY), in his continuing ducking of responsibility for his Progressive-Democratic Party’s decision to shut down the Federal government, frequently makes this…claim:

A party that controls the House, the Senate, and the presidency would rather sit back and point fingers of blame than roll up their sleeves and govern.

No, this is no petty exaggeration; it’s just another example of Schumer’s dishonesty. Neither party controls the Senate unless it has a 60-vote majority.  That makes governing impossible when the minority party in the Senate refuses to negotiate in good faith, when the minority party puts its collective ego ahead the nation’s weal.  Schumer knows these things.

This would be OBE with the end of the Progressive-Democrats’ shutdown of the government, but for the durability of Schumer’s disingenuosity.

True Colors

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The Progressive-Democrats, especially those in the Senate, have shown their true colors as they voted last Friday to shut down the Federal government, voting to block a temporary funding agreement that would have kept the government open for another month.  I wrote earlier about that shutdown’s practical effects.

Here’s what the Progressive-Democrats voted to kill: six years of funding for CHIP, so now some millions of children in our poverty-level families will have no access to health insurance.  DACA reform so that those illegal immigrant children could have some hope for their future.

CHIP funding was in the stop-gap bill, but now there’s no funding for it, and the program has expired.

DACA reform was not in the bill, having nothing to do with funding, but the Progressive-Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) demanded it be included or there would be no votes from his Party (in the event, five Progressive-Democrats from Republican States whose seats are in jeopardy in this fall’s elections, knowing their Party would kill the funding, cynically cast their meaningless votes for the bill).  It didn’t matter to these worthies that DACA had until early March to be negotiated or that there already exists bipartisan agreement on the outline and substance of a DACA proposal that could have been debated and voted up by the end of January in a separate bill.  Schumer and his Party cronies demanded their DACA right damn now.  Their attitude has badly poisoned any future DACA negotiations, perhaps fatally.

It gets worse.  There was nothing in the bill to which Progressive-Democrats actually objected.  It funded the government for a time, which the Prog-Dems claim they want.  It funded CHIP, which the Prog-Dems claim they want.  It funded defense, which even Prog-Dems claim they want.  The clean funding bill just didn’t have all the other, unrelated, things the Prog-Dems also demanded.

When Schumer went to the White House late Friday before the vote to deal personally with President Trump, he went with a Christmas tree of Progressive-Democrat demands beyond just DACA for inclusion in the stop-gap bill, including for instance, bailing out public union pension funds, added spending on opoid programs, and on and on.  That Christmas tree is what Schumer was talking about when he said after the meeting that progress had been made, but “we still have a good number of disagreements.”  All of these extras also could have been negotiated and voted on in the ensuing period.

Not good enough.  The Progressive-Democrats voted to shut down the government because the stop-gap didn’t have DACA and Schumer’s Christmas tree.  Party ego before national weal.

Remember this next fall.

Update: The Senate, on another cloture vote later this morning, voted 81-18 to end the filibuster and bring the bill to the floor for an up or down vote. The bill is changed trivially–the funding period is good for three weeks instead of four–but otherwise, it’s the same bill.  Because of that period change, though, it has to go back to the House, where I expect it’ll be voted up forthwith and sent to the President for prompt signing.

In return, Senate Republicans promised negotiations on DACA and on immigration and a vote on DACA. The DACA debate has been going on, all along, as noted above.

The Party Wants No Deal

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The Progressive-Democrats in Congress don’t want a deal, neither on the budget nor on DACA.  They want the Federal government shut down so they can blame the Republicans for it during this fall’s elections.  They also want to keep the DACA situation and immigration in general alive as a debating question for those same elections.

Democrats said Mr Trump’s dismissal of “shithole countries” in Africa in a closed meeting last week with lawmakers positioned him as the person who upset the negotiations.

Notice that.  The Progressive-Democrats are doing two things here: masquerading a claim of certain words being spoken as a fact that those words were spoken, and then using those words as an excuse to refuse to deal on DACA rather than actually dealing on DACA.

That the Progressive-Democrats do not want a DACA deal at all is illustrated by a third thing to notice, a matter that’s being carefully ignored by both those Progressive-Democrats and the NLMSM.  Such words spoken publicly would be damaging to our national reputation; on that we’re all agreed.  What’s ignored is that, having been said in that closed meeting (if they were said), no one outside the meeting would know about them and no damage would be done—but for a meeting participant (Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) comes to mind) running screaming to the press as soon as the meeting broke up to bruit about those words.  This is a deliberate move to blow up any DACA negotiations.

Nor is a DACA agreement needed in the current budget debate.  President Donald Trump’s rescission of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) DHS memorandum gave Congress, where such a matter belongs, until next March to enact a DACA program legislatively, or explicitly decline to do so, before Trump’s rescission takes effect.  The lack of urgency is further well-known to the Progressive-Democrats: a Federal judge has blocked Trump’s order.  Demanding a DACA deal in the current budget debate is simply a mechanism to block a budget deal.

Too, the Progressive-Democratic Party must come before children.  That Party is more important than children is demonstrated by two outcomes of the Progressive-Democrats’ obstructionism.  The DACA children will get nothing from any government shutdown.  The Progressive-Democrats’ rejection of a budget deal also will reject the CHIP program, whose funding is renewed for six years, in the deal on offer.  Millions of children will be denied access to health insurance.

Remember that in the coming elections.

The Obama White House, the Obama DoJ, and Hezbollah

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Recall the Politico report on how then-President Barack Obama (D) and his Department of Justice killed an investigation into Hezbollah’s drug dealing because Obama was so desperate for a nuclear weapons deal—any nuclear weapons deal—for his legacy.

Now we’re seeing that Derek Maltz, ex-Special Agent-in-Charge of the DEA’s Special Operations Division, had briefed Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, on Hezbollah’s performance and on the depth of their drug empire’s penetration in the US.  Maltz said that Holder was “very alarmed” by the briefing, and Maltz also said that Holder “promised to set up meetings with national security officials and was almost always ‘supportive’ of his investigations”—and nothing happened.  There was no followup.

Maybe Maltz misinterpreted Holder’s alarm, degree of support, and the nature of his promises to follow up.

The investigation into Hezbollah was spiked some time after that briefing.  Maybe Holder’s alarm was over how much was being found out about Hezbollah’s drug dealing and the extent of its drug empire in the US.  Maybe Holder’s support for the investigations was so he could keep abreast of how much was being learned about Hezbollah’s drug operations.  Maybe there was followup on Maltz’ briefing: that killing of the investigation.

Legacy matters, after all.  And maybe the true nature of a particular legacy is coming to light.

Porch Dogs

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Some of you may be aware of the protests in Iran, protests that are growing in size and becoming subject to increasingly violent attempts at suppression by the Iranian government.  “Some of you” because the NLMSM isn’t talking much about the protests.

It turns out that Iranian women are playing a prominent leading role in those protests.

  • a young Iranian woman standing atop a container and shedding her hijab…while simultaneously waving it as a flag
  • a woman confronting security forces and proclaiming “Death to Khamenei” while crowds around her join in
  • Another woman was seen on tape declaring “You raised your fists and ruined our lives. Now we raise our fists. Be men, join us. I as a woman will stand in front and protect you. Come represent your country.”

And on and on.  These women are risking their freedom, such as it is in Iran, risking arrest, beatings, perhaps their lives just to be in these protests, much less to lead many of them.

But, where are the Western “feminists” who were willing—anxious, even—to protest loudly against the inauguration of a President of whom they disapprove, protest against the perceived evils of Civil War heroes of the Confederacy, against sexism and sexual harassment and assault in the halls of Hollywood and Congress?

Never mind that these protests all were conducted wholly within the safety of a nation that proudly protects the freedom to speak one’s mind, to protest against government or any other ill, real or imagined.

Where, now, are Linda Sarsour?  Elizabeth Warren?  Nancy Pelosi?  Kathy Griffin?  Kamala Harris?  Kirsten Gillibrand?  Amy Klobuchar?  Debbie Stabenow?  Debbie Dingell?  Madonna?  Amy Poehler?

Others, like Catherine Ray, Federica Mogherini’s spokesman, has uttered only bland platitudes about rights to peaceful protest and free speech.  The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy herself has chosen, so far, not to speak at all in her own voice.

What are these women, safe and sound in the bosom of the United States and Europe, saying and doing in support of those Iranian women?  Not much.

Susan Rice, ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) National Security Advisor and UN Ambassador, says the timidity is proper:

Stephen Miller, the author of the piece at the link, wants to know why these modern “feminists” don’t speak up or act concretely in support of those Iranian women.  I have a different bit of advice: stay up on the porch, ladies.  It’s safe there.  Real women are taking action.

Even porch dogs yap, though.