New York City’s Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams says he’s down with raising New Yorker’s already sky high taxes along with firing city employees, including cops—[Asked “where the layoffs would begin,” Adams only repeated, “Everything’s on the table”]—and he’s blaming the Federal government for his budget failures. His statement on that last is the tell-all:
Our insurance policy was the federal government. They’re not paying us[.]
It doesn’t get any clearer than this.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R, TN) is bent on impeaching DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his palpable, and dangerous, failure to perform. This is, at best, a fool’s errand since the votes don’t exist in the Senate to get even a serious trial, much less a conviction.
I have a better idea, because of course I do.
Instead of wasting time on impeaching Mayorkas, Green, and the House at large, should exercise the House’s Constitutional control over government spending and move to cancel all funding for much of the Department of Homeland Security until Mayorkas and his Deputy and Assistant Secretaries are gone and the Department has materially improved its performance related to keeping illegal aliens from entering our nation.
Specific DHS agencies that should receive full, if not increased, funding include these:
All the other agencies—and there are 16 more of them, including such strongly overlapping agencies as the Management Directorate, the Office of Legislative Affairs, the Office of Partnership and Engagement, and the Office of Public Affairs (there’s a hint there regarding how bloated the Department has become)—should have their funding zeroed out.
Further, the House should refuse to pass any DHS-related bill that does not include these funding reductions.
In the wake of repeated Houthi terrorists’ rocket, missile, and drone attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden approaches to the Sea, BP has decided to abandon (BP is saying it’s a “pause”) this shorter and cheaper route and instead to go around Africa altogether to get to the Mediterranean Sea and to ports in Europe. Maersk has already made that decision; other shippers will follow, I predict.
BP’s statement, in part:
The safety and security of our people and those working on our behalf is BP’s priority. We will keep this precautionary pause under ongoing review, subject to circumstances as they evolve in the region.
The safety and security of commercial shipping in international shipping lanes also is the claimed purpose of the US Navy’s Freedom of Navigation operations, wherein our Navy often sails the sea lines of communication, often explicitly sailing contested routing through international waters. Simply sailing through, though, without doing anything other than being momentarily present, doesn’t accomplish much, as the terrorists’ actions in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are so clearly demonstrating.
Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is pretending to be trying to establish a coalition to protect trade through the Red Sea, but in the meantime, he’s not allowing the Navy to do anything more than shooting at those rockets, missiles, and drones that a couple of its ships can reach after those weapons already have been fired. Biden is not allowing our Navy to take overt and aggressive action to prevent those weapons from being launched in the first place. He’s not, for instance, allowing our Navy to destroy the Houthi’s launch sites throughout Houthi occupied Yemen, much less respond reactively to destroy those facilities involved in a particular attack.
Nor is he allowing our Navy to destroy Iran’s Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman ports, thereby seriously limiting Iran’s ability to supply the terrorists in Yemen.
Regarding his pretend coalition effort, Biden isn’t even working with Saudi Arabia in their effort to defeat the Houthi terrorists and restore the government of Yemen, which currently is resident in Saudi Arabia.
For those who object to the US acting as, spending treasure and equipment to be, the world’s policeman, what’s going on in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is a clear and present demonstration of what happens with a President too timid to act, of what happens when we stop being the world’s policeman.
The US needs to act, whether other nations have the courage to do so or not. If we act, they will follow, or if they don’t, we still will have acted. And we don’t have to extend as much support as we do to those nations happy to freeload off our efforts or too timid to act themselves, even in concert with us. The spending on that support can be reallocated to our policeman role.
Arizona’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs is pretending to distance herself from her fellow Progressive-Democrat, President Joe Biden. She’s complaining that he’s not doing enough regarding our southern border—Arizona’s in particular—and so she has called out her State’s National Guard to send them to Arizona’s border with Mexico. At the same time, she wants more Federal aid—because all solutions to all problems consist of more money in the minds of Progressive-Democrats.
[W]e can’t stand alone, she says,
Arizona needs resources and manpower to reopen the Lukeville crossing; manage the flow of migrants; and maintain a secure, orderly, and humane border….
She doesn’t want to close Arizona’s border to illegal aliens—she can’t tell the difference between migrants and illegal aliens any better than can Biden—she simply wants to “manage” their flow into our nation. Since that’s at the core of Biden’s policy, also, Hobbs’ complaining is simply to draw attention to her own precious self.
A bunch of Republican Congressmen object to the increasing cost of the US’ support for Ukraine’s fight against the Russian barbarian, and barbaric, invasion.
From the WSJ‘s front page teaser to the article:
Some lawmakers and a growing share of the American public are skeptical about how much US taxpayers should continue to fund Ukraine’s defense.
It’s a valid concern, but those Republicans are missing the larger problem. The cost has been, to a very large extent, artificially inflated by the Biden administration’s conscious decision to slow-walk, and on too many occasions to outright bar, delivery of the weapons Ukraine needs at the time the Armed Forces of Ukraine needs them and in the amounts the AFU needs them so they could defeat the Russian invasion and drive the barbarian back out much more promptly.
Dragging the war out, the way Biden has done and continues to do, not only runs up the financial cost, it runs up the casualty count of Ukrainian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians.
And it’s been dragged out—those weapons deliveries hold-ups—for two reasons. One is Biden’s timidity: he’s terrified of provoking Putin.
Here is General Philip Breedlove, former SACEUR Commander, quoted by Edward Hunter Christie:
Modern manoeuvre warfare, just like we taught the Ukrainians, starts with battlefield air superiority. Have we given Ukraine what they need to establish battlefield air superiority? No. No, we have not. And so you can be critical all you want, you just sort of demonstrate your lack of understanding of what manoeuvre warfare is and how it begins, and so let me just add one other big example. Manoeuvre warfare, and I would tell you especially American commanders, counts on long-range precise fire. We fight to hold the the enemy at risk before [stresses], before he brings his force to bear on us. We use long range precision strikes to strike them and then if they still persist in attacking, to strike them in depth. In depth and to strike them all along their lines of communication and supply lines before they can actually meet us, even after they begin an attack. And then we use long range precise strike to hold all the transhipment points, airfields and everything else, at risk when the fight is going on. Have we given Ukraine the ability to do that? The answer is no, we have not, and worse yet we in the West have forbidden Ukraine from using any of the kit that we give them to strike deeply and to hit the enemy before the enemy can bring his forces to bear on Ukraine. We have built sanctuary all the way around Ukraine. On the map, from Belarus in the Northwest all the way around through the East into Russia, all the way into the South, into the Black Sea, we have forbidden Ukraine from using our kit to strike into Russia and so [it] amazes me that people expect them to do manoeuvre warfare under that. So here’s my answer that was all to set the stage for my answer: we should give Ukraine what we would take to the battlefield. We should give Ukraine what it needs to set conditions on the battlefield like we would set conditions on the battlefield. We’re expecting Ukraine to fight a world superpower shorthanded and certainly demonstratively short of the kind of kit that we would use to fight that superpower.
I think, though, that Christie is being generous: this administration failure isn’t so much do to any ivory tower theoriticals so much as it’s due to Biden’s terror of Putin’s harsh rhetoric.
The other is arrogantly stupid: DoD Know Betters insist they know what Ukraine needs better than the AFU does, even though the AFU is the force actually in field facing the barbarian. These Wonders of the Puzzle Palace, comfortable and safe in their summer and winter climate-controled offices, are so full of their precious theories–Christie is correct to this point–that they have no contact with the realities of the battlefield inflicted on the Ukrainians by the barbarian.
Ukraine might not survive another year of Biden’s timidity or of Republicans’ misapprehension of the problem.
That’s the true cost.