Foolish Social Conservatives

Some are as foolish as the Republicans’ House Chaos Caucus in their all-or-nothing positions. A case in point is Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and its supporting cohorts. These entities are, quite properly, anti-abortion, but their tactics are, at best, suboptimal.

The activists’ warning was simple: extending subsidies without such limits [no funding for abortions] was a line Republicans must not cross to keep social conservative support in next year’s midterm elections.

Withholding support for Republican candidates in 2026 over their not being anti-abortion enough to suit them will guarantee a Progressive-Democratic Party majority in the House—and those politicians absolutely will not stay with the status quo; they will enthusiastically and loudly expand access to abortion and make all of us taxpayers—including members of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, et al.—pay for those abortions.

Better would be, for the near term, to push a concrete (not merely conceptual) plan for using the putative subsidy funding instead as vouchers for us citizens to use to fund our HSAs and FSAs, with limits on annual contributions to those eliminated. An additional improvement to HSAs in particular would be eliminating the requirement to have a particular kind of health coverage policy (so-called high-deductible policies) in order to have an HSA. Any citizen should be able to set up and fund an HSA regardless of the kind of policy or no policy at all that he has. Allowing unused FSA funds to be rolled over into subsequent years would be a useful step toward rolling FSA accounts into HSAs, eliminating the quasi-duplication.

Retarded or Crooked?

President Donald Trump (R) has called Minnesota’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Tim Walz retarded. Having watched this Party politician stumble and mumble his way through a failed campaign for Vice President, and especially during the only Vice President debate in which he was willing to participate, I’m forced to conclude that the characterization (which is rude, but Karens notwithstanding, it’s no slur) isn’t entirely inaccurate.

But wait….

Minnesota’s Department of Human Service Employees has more.

[T]he Minnesota DHS, wrote on X that Walz is “100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota.”
“We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response. Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. In addition to retaliating against whistleblower[s], Tim Walz disempowered the Office of the Legislative Auditor, allowing agencies to disregard their audit findings and guidance.”

This comes in relation to the massive Wuhan Virus fraud in which Minnesota was an enthusiastic participant and which Walz had been permitting that participation despite those warnings.

[T]he Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, which prosecutors say involved more than $250 million in stolen funds from a federally-funded child nutrition program and has already resulted in over 50 convictions. Many of the individuals charged come from Minnesota’s Somali community.

It’s hard to see how such large fraud could continue for so long unless the governor, at best, cavalierly turned a blind eye to it.

Thus: retarded or crooked? Maybe both.

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.