John Kerry, Secret Agent?

Perhaps for the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps?

If what Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif said, in what he thought was a secret interview intended for posterity’s sake and to be held by an Iranian Presidency think tank, is true, maybe.

Buried in a leak of three hours’ worth of a seven hour interview was this bit:

Former Secretary of State John Kerry informed him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times, to his astonishment, Mr Zarif said.

I sure hope Zarif is dissembling again. But he’s talking, he thinks, in secret, and none of what he said in the leak is particularly self-aggrandizing, so his motive for lying is unclear at best.

Of course, it also could be the case that Kerry isn’t a foreign agent. It’s at least as likely that it was Kerry’s self-absorbed superiority complex that led him to betray Israel and our nation. Zarif’s astonishment would certainly be a nearly addictive ego stroke for a man like Kerry.

Is “systemic racism” really behind every tragic shooting?

That’s the question a Wall Street Journal editorial subheadline asks. This is how President Joe Biden (D) answered the question, using his Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s mouth:

We know that police violence disproportionately impacts black and Latino people in communities and that black women and girls, like black men and boys, experience higher rates of police violence.

Indeed. How systemically racist it is for a white cop to save the lives of one or two black girls who were under knife attack by another black girl. That’s the Biden line.

Because, I suppose, saving those two black lives was just the act of a Great White Savior.

Consider, also: that life-saving shooting happened fully 24 hours before Biden trotted Psaki out to speak his lines. He knew the situation full well. He knew the circumstances of the shooting full well. He knew that one of those black girls was under proximate attack, knife raised in the hand of her (black) attacker to strike at the time the (white) cop fired.

To answer the question, then, yes, systemic racism is behind every tragic shooting. But only in the minds of the racists who manufacture their racist beefs out of the empty æther. Or in the minds of Progressive-Democrats.

The Basis for Denying/Accepting Admittance to Statehood

In the current debate over whether the District of Columbia should be admitted as a State, Congressman Jamie Raskin (D, MD) made this claim.

All that they [Republicans] see is two new liberal Democrat senators, but that cuts against everything that we believe in about American democracy. We do not deny people the right to vote based on our expectation of how they will vote.

What the Democratic Party and its politicians do, though—until the Civil War they forced over their demand to keep slaves—is demand that any State admitted to the United States as a Free State be balanced by the admission of another State as a Slave State—so that those Senators could be voted for by slaveholders.

Raskin knows the history of his Progressive-Democratic Party full well. Of course the move to admit DC as a State is all about getting two more of his Progressive-Democratic Party Senators. His Party has been pushing for voters who will vote for his Party in particular throughout its history.

Were the move centered on getting DC residents the right to vote in Federal elections, it would be straightforward enough to return the ex-Maryland portion of DC to Maryland (the ex-Virginia portion having already been returned), where they would have full representation. Straightforward, that is, were the Progressive-Democrats not in the way that simple granting of the Federal franchise.

The Relevance of Constitutionality

The Wall Street Journal had an editorial Wednesday that decried Progressive-Democrats’ (my term; the editors wrote only of “Democrats”) DC statehood “gambit.” In their piece, the editors made the case that the move, as designed by Congressional Progressive-Democrats, was unconstitutional.

One part of their writing jumped out at me.

But the impetus behind both measures [Supreme Court packing and DC “statehood”] is the same—to tilt the constitutional playing field and consolidate liberal power.

Indeed. It’s important to keep in mind that today’s liberals, far from being classically liberal, are 18th century monarchist, Big Government Knows All/Controls All proponents. For such as these, our Constitution is whatever they say it is—if it has any value at all. Their own hero, Woodrow Wilson, insisted that our Constitution is obsolete and ought be done away with altogether.

Today’s monarchist liberals are bent on the same aim, this time by simply ignoring it.

Foxconn’s New Deal

In 2017, Foxconn signed a deal with Wisconsin to invest $10 billion, build an electronics manufacturing plant in the State, and hire 13,000 people by the year 2032.

Now, Foxconn has renegotiated the deal and will invest as much as $672 million and create 1,454 jobs by the year 2025.

What’s changed?

A number of things, but two in particular are the Republican Governor and Republican President in 2017, and the Progressive-Democrat Governor and the Progressive-Democrat President today.

It’s also true that the negotiated incentives are considerably less per job created under the new deal than under the old, but what does that matter to the 11,500 folks who won’t get any of those new jobs? What does that matter to the businesses—and their employees and prospective new hires—who won’t get the business associated with that earlier and much larger investment?

But hey, collateral damage happens. Nor does that damage matter to Progressive-Democrats; all they want is the look-good-in-the-shower headlines.