Arrogance of a Progressive-Democratic Party Politician

Congressman Adam Smith (D, WA) is the only Party politician, so far, to claim to know of and to identify illegal orders issued by President Donald Trump (R).

Yeah, I think the order to blow up those boats in the Caribbean without any, you know, actual probable cause, national security justification, or any declaration of war or armed conflict by the US Congress, I think it is illegal. That’s a legitimate opinion to hold, and it’s a legitimate opinion to express.

With that, he gives the game away.

It is a legitimate opinion to hold, and it is an opinion legitimately expressed by most American citizens. Military members must get over a much higher bar in order to express their opinions of an order’s legality with a view to disobeying it or encouraging their fellows to disobey it.

The order must be adjudicated illegal, and the military member must be prepared to suffer the consequences of disobedience or of fomenting disobedience should a court determine the order legal. On the other hand, all of us citizens, all of our politicians, can yap away at will without consequence.

Smith’s opinion that an order is illegal does not make it so. That he does not recognize that in the context of the Six’ video those politicians are potentially seeking to foment disorder explicitly in the military ranks—which would be seditious—not in the political ranks, is demonstrative of Smith’s self-important arrogance.

Consolidating Bigotry

That’s what Progressive-Democrat and Socialist Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s Mayor-elect, is moving rapidly to do. By naming Tamika Mallory to his Committee on Community Safety, set up to transition NYC to his governance, Mamdani is consciously bringing antisemitic and racist bigotry into his city government.

Mallory is a Black Lives Matter activist, a Louis Farrakhan acolyte, and a close ally of Linda Sarsour. BLM is well-known for its racist and identity politics bigotry. (Its ties to communism strongly supports Mamdani’s socialism, also.) Farrakhan likens Jews to cockroaches and considers them evil incarnate. Sarsour is infamous for her trashing of Israel because of its Jewish nature and for her more general antisemitic bigotry.

NYC residents are about to reap what they’ve sown. For the next four years they are going to live in interesting times. In spades.

Cards on the Table?

That’s the breakthrough being touted by Just the News regarding “peace” talks between Ukraine and Russia.

This week for the first time, Kiev and Moscow articulated specific visions for a peace deal. And while they remain apart on big issues like land borders and NATO membership, the two sides have a meaningful framework that eluded past negotiations and presidents.

This is inaccurate. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been clear on Ukraine’s vision for peace, and equally specific the requirements for achieving one from the outset following the barbarian’s renewed invasion of his nation four years ago. He has demanded Russia’s departure from Ukraine and specific, material mechanisms for guaranteeing his nation’s sovereignty against renewed barbarian invasion.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has been equally clear on his requirements for peace. He has demanded recognition of his occupation of Crimea as a Russian oblast, the ceding of all of the Donbas to Russia as additional Russian oblasts, disarmament of Ukraine, and guarantees that NATO will never accept Ukraine.

It’s hard to get any more specific than these; the two sides’ cards have been on the table all along.

There’s this bit of foolishness, also, from Congressman Andy Biggs (R, AZ):

If you’ve ever negotiated anything, and virtually everybody has, if you don’t understand what you want and what the other side wants, you can never get to yes.

This operates from the false premise that “yes” by Ukraine is in any way useful or would be at all reliable given to whom and to what Ukraine would be saying “yes.” It’s not possible to say “yes” to a barbarian that routinely welches on each of its commitments, including, during its present invasion, its universal violation of every cease fire to which it has pretended to agree. That’s local. More universal is the barbarian’s routine violation of international law, particularly including the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of civilians in occupied territories and the targeting of civilians in the course of a campaign. Russia’s atrocities—rape and butchery of women and children in occupied Ukrainian cities and its targeting hospitals, churches, residential neighborhoods, and children’s schools during repeated attacks are well documented.

The real breakthrough, the only breakthrough with any security or moral validity, is to transfer to Ukraine the weapons, ammunition, and logistics it says it needs; in the numbers it says it needs them; and on the schedule it says it needs them. The UA has shown its superiority these last four years over the barbarian hordes, despite the barbarian’s superiority in numbers. The only advantage the barbarian has is that it’s far better supported by its allies, Iran and the People’s Republic of China. Ukraine could win the barbarian’s war decisively were the West, led badly by the US, to find some spine and set about supplying Ukraine at least as effectively as are the barbarians’ benefactors supplying the barbarian.

Globalism

New York City Mayor-elect and Progressive-Democrat and Socialist Zohran Mamdani has laid it out quite clearly. In his renewed statement that he would uphold an International Criminal Court (to which the US is not signatory) arrest warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mamdani said this:

I’ve said time and again that I believe this is a city of international law, and being a city of international law means looking to uphold international law[.]

No. New York City is an American city, and so it is bound by American law. And that means that at the city level (at the State level, come to that), international law is irrelevant. In the case of the ICC, this is doubly so. With the US not being a part of the ICC or the treaty that created it, neither the ICC nor any of its warrants or rulings have any standing in the US.

Whatever one thinks of globalism, this is globalism run amok. This is how far to the left the Progressive-Democratic Party has gone.

A Thought on Marjorie Taylor Greene

The editors of The Wall Street Journal have one take on the Republican Congresswoman from Georgia, and they’re not far wrong.

Consider this riff in the video she taped to announce her early retirement in the New Year: “If I am cast aside by the President and the MAGA political machine and replaced by Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can never, ever relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well.”
There you have the full anti-business, isolationist wing of the MAGA movement in all its efflorescence. Corporations are nefarious and must be politically controlled. Advocates for more defense spending are war profiteers. Donors to the GOP, at least those who don’t donate to her, aren’t real Americans.
And the rest of the world is something to be avoided.

The editors missed one characteristic of Greene, though. She claims she’s resigning from Congress with effect 5 January 2026 in order to avoid inflicting on her “sweet district” a costly and debilitating 2026 primary contest for the Republican Party’s nomination for her district’s Representative.

[I] do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election….

Greene could just as easily could have avoided that hurtful and hateful primary by announcing that she would not run for reelection while she would finish her current term in the House. She chose not to do that.

Greene also is a political coward.