Insincerity

Former House Judiciary Chief Counsel Julian Epstein laments the alleged hijacking of the Progressive-Democratic Party (my label, not Epstein’s) by the far Left, and the supposed lack of courage of Progressive-Democratic President Joe Biden and his staff to say “No” to that supposed far Left.

I speak to Democrats about this all the time. They lament the fact that the intersectional left, the far-left, has overtaken the party. They’ve hijacked the party. …the far-left has commandeered policy-making under the Biden administration, and they haven’t had the guts to say no to them and to say, we’re going to tack towards the political center where majority of the voters are going to go to voters. ….

I disagree with each of the claims. “Hijacking” and “commandeering” each says that it was a takeover and the takeover was done against the will of Party. No, Party is a construct only and has no will to go with or against. Party is populated, though, with grown, adult human beings who do have will to go with or against. The far-Left didn’t takeover Party in any way, shape, or form. Party managers and members openly, whole heartedly, and of their own volition embrace the ideology and have gone toward the Left deliberately and consciously. The far-Left has been absorbed by Party and Party’s core is far-Left.

Then there’s Epstein’s lament that the Biden administration politicians won’t say that they’re going to tack towards [sic] the political center. The problem here is Epstein’s motive for why Party should so tack: that’s where the voters are, and (sotto voce) that’s the path to election wins and continued political power. Party should tack toward the middle because Party’s managers and members think that would be the right thing to do for the good of our nation. Tack this way or that for the political power of the moment. That’s the nature of sincerity in the minds of Progressive-Democrats.

The IAEA Grows Some…Independence

Even after the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iran had, in violation of its own claims as well as actual agreements, had enough enriched uranium to produce one bomb within a week and enough to produce nearly eight over a month, Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden pushed the Agency to look the other way and do nothing.

The IAEA did not look the other way.

The International Atomic Energy Agency passed a formal censure of Iran on Wednesday[.]

It’s good that this organization has stopped taking our unserious President seriously. Our nation’s enemies already don’t.

Idiotic

Only Progressive-Democrats could come up with such an idiotic idea, and then demand to spend taxpayer—average American—money on it.

California Assembly Bill 2586 has been passed by the State’s Progressive-Democrat-run Assembly, and it would

mandate[] that illegal immigrants with no US work authorization should be given access to apply for and take jobs provided through taxpayer-funded universities run by the state government.

It now sits in the State’s Progressive-Democrat-run Senate.

This is yet another example of Progressive-Democratic Party politicians’ utter contempt for us average Americans.

Pushed into Buying?

Hunter Biden’s defense attorneys in his Delaware trial over whether he falsified gun purchasing papers pursuant to purchasing a gun are now claiming that Biden was pushed into buying a lethal weapon.

The defense team also tried to paint gun store employee Gordon Cleveland as a pushy salesman who wanted Hunter to walk out with a firearm that day.
…
“A sale is a sale and that was their goal that day,” [lead defense attorney Abbe] Lowell said. “They wanted it done quickly.”

This is so obviously a crock that it seems to me Lowell already is setting up grounds for an incompetent counsel appeal.

Hunter Biden is, and he was at the time, a fully grown, rational human being. He wasn’t even high on drugs at the time he chose to buy the gun, Lowell insists. (That latter business about not being high would seem to be irrelevant, since the presiding judge already has ruled that the prosecution does not need to prove Biden was high at the time of his purchase.)

No one stuck a gun in Biden’s ear and forced him to make the buy. Whether the salesman was a high pressure salesman doesn’t matter. Countless Americans face high pressure salesmen countless times in countless venues, and the vast majority of them aren’t persuaded.

No, Hunter Biden acted on his own initiative to make the purchase. When he crossed the street to enter the gun store in the first place, he already was disposed to buy a gun.

Minimum Wage Law Consequence

Recall that California has enacted one of the highest minimum wage laws in the nation, a $20/hr minimum wage inflicted on fast food restaurants operating in the State.

Now come the consequences, which any schoolboy limited to an allowance could have predicted.

Rubio’s Coastal Grill, a California Mexican restaurant chain, announced the closure of 48 restaurants in the Golden State amid rising business costs.

That’s one-third of the chain’s total operational restaurants in the Southwest, including a few left in California.

Earlier, in anticipation of the labor cost explosion, Red Lobster auctioned off—moved out of—5 California locations, albeit these were among a total of 50 nationwide of which the chain was divesting itself.

In other moves to cut labor costs, Pizza Hut franchises, especially Southern California Pizza Co, has discontinued most delivery services from its California-based restaurants, laying off nearly a thousand drivers.

Can Progressive-Democrats anywhere understand that a high minimum wage requirement—or a requirement at any level—prices unskilled job holders and unskilled job seekers out of those jobs? Can they understand that a wage at any level is vastly superior to no wage at all?

Or is it that Progressive-Democrats are cynical enough to seek to transfer unskilled workers out of jobs where they can gain experience, skills, second incomes, and upward economic mobility and into dependency on Government welfare—where they would represent votes to keep the handouts coming?