Reality Check

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and ex-Vice President under ex-President Barack Obama (D) has made another “gaffe.”  Recall that Biden said that in the runup to that successful raid, Biden advised Obama not to go through with it:

Mr President, my suggestion is, don’t go—we have to do two more things to see if he’s there[.]

Now Biden has denied he did that in an exchange with Fox News‘ Peter Doocy.

Republican National Committee Rapid Response Director Steve Guest thinks Biden is lying with that denial.  I think it’s more insidious and dangerous than that.  Biden has a long history of gaffes, but they’re coming more frequently in his current campaign. These seem the more serious after this denial.

It’s beginning to look like Biden’s contact with reality is starting to become tenuous. We can’t afford that in the White House.

What She Said

The historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, who died last Monday, had some thoughts on morals and society in her 1995 Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Liberals and conservatives, radicals and socialists, disagreed about specific policies, but they were agreed on the principle that any measure of relief, for example (or charity, for that matter), had to justify itself by showing that it would promote the moral as well as the material well-being of the recipients….
… This principle stipulated that the condition of the “able-bodied pauper” (it did not apply to the sick, aged or children) be less “eligible”—that is, less desirable, less favorable—than the condition of the independent laborer. And “less-eligibility” meant not only that the pauper receive less by way of relief than the laborer did from his wages, but also that he receive it in such a way as to make pauperism less respectable than work—to “stigmatize” it….
In the past few decades we have deliberately divorced poor relief from moral principles, sanctions or incentives. This reflects in part the theory that society is responsible for all social problems and should therefore assume the task of solving them. …
The divorce of social policy from moral principles—the de-moralization of social policy—also reflects the spirit of relativism that is so pervasive in our time.

Absolutely, what she said. Now we’re at the start of a new year. It’s a good time to set about correcting that moral failure.

RTWT.

Contemptible Average Americans

It’s well-known that the Left and its political organ, the Progressive-Democratic Party, have nothing but contempt for the rest of us, from the NLMSM referring to Tea Partiers as tea baggers, through Barack Obama’s dismissal of Middle Americans as Bible- and gun-clingers (bitter ones, at that), through Hillary Clinton’s irredeemable and deplorable slur.  We also get House Progressive-Democrats loudly questioning the integrity of House Republicans who don’t agree with them on impeachment.  The list is interminable.

Here’s one of the latest, this one from Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator (D, MA) Elizabeth Warren:

[T]he Republicans in Congress have turned into fawning, spineless defenders of his [President Donald Trump] crimes.

So, because Republicans disagree with her, they’re contemptible.  And—which she knows she’s doing, words being her stock in trade—she’s slandering all of us Americans who support this or that Republican or the Republican Party in general.

Oh, and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden told his New Hampshire audience that there are some really decent Republicans that are out there still.

Right.  Biden harkened back to a “compliment” with which persons of his (and my) generation are well familiar: those Republicans are a credit to their…party.

This is the arrogance of the Left, and the contempt for us average Americans in which the Left and its Progressive-Democratic Party politicians hold us.

Remember this in the fall.

Only Progressive-Democrats

“Iowa nice:” what Iowans have a reputation for doing—being willing to go out of their way to help a struggling neighbor, a visitor, or a stranded motorist.  It’s a practice for which Iowa citizens have a deserved reputation. And so do the citizens of Texas, Utah, all across the South; indeed, in most regions of the US. We Americans, in the main, just try to help each other.

Yet, this, during the runup to the Progressive-Democratic Party primary campaign Iowa caucus:

As [Progressive-]Democratic presidential candidates crisscross this state ahead of the Feb 3 caucuses that start the nomination process, they are trying to balance distinguishing themselves from each other with respecting that Iowa tradition.

Only Progressive-Democrats would consider Iowa nice and candidate distinctions to be competing interests requiring “balance.”

Hmm….

Countering Interference

The Republic of China has passed a law aimed at blocking the People’s Republic of China’s efforts at interfering with the RoC’s elections, which will occur 11 Jan.

Passage gained urgency after RoC opposition parties—especially the KMT—nominated candidates who openly and enthusiastically support “reunification” with the PRC and after the PRC’s influence over RoC media companies became overt.  The PRC has been

providing campaign funds and even mobilized support on social media for candidates from the main opposition Nationalist Party (KMT)….

These elections, with President Tsai Ing-wen expected to be reelected despite PRC interference, make this an especially fragile time for the nation.

It would be good if the rest of us openly supported the RoC’s efforts at maintaining its freedom: talking freely in support of the RoC, sailing navy flotillas through the Taiwan Strait with port calls along the way, increasing economic ties and restoring diplomatic ties, sailing close to and overflying PRC-occupied islands in the South China Sea, and on and on.