Tag Archives: politics

How is this Possible?

Posted on by
Reply

Personal information of 7.6 million AT&T customers and of 65 million former AT&T customers have appeared on the dark web in the last two weeks. Stuff happens, even egregiously bad stuff. What makes this stuff especially egregiously bad, though, is AT&T‘s claim that the data appear[] to have come from 2019 or earlier.

That especially bad status flows from some questions:

Why wasn’t the data breach discovered those 5 or more years earlier; why did AT&T not know of the breach of its own systems until they saw the results of the breach just recently?

If AT&T did know of the breach those years ago, why did they sit on the information all this time?

If AT&T did discover the data breach promptly, and the data that appeared on the dark web only happened to be from 2019 and prior, what were the safe guards in place—or not—for what would have been archived data? What are the safeguards for data from 5 years ago through to the present? How does AT&T know those data haven’t been penetrated and stolen, also?

Pay Their Fair Share

Posted on by
Reply

Progressive-President Joe Biden is busily trying to raise taxes in his never ending effort to get the Evil Rich to Pay Their Fair Share™.

Here are some numbers and a couple of graphs, via The Wall Street Journal‘s editors:

…for 2021 show that the top 1% of Americans reported 26.3% of the country’s adjusted gross income, while paying 45.8% of total income taxes.

This graph shows the trend of taxes paid and who pays them over the course of this century:

Yet Biden, Progressive-Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY), Progressive-Democrat Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (IL), and the rest of Biden’s Party syndicate, individually and as a group, flat refuse to say what they believe that fair share should be. Plainly, that’s because they’ve already defined among themselves, that fair share to be All of It.

This is illustrated by the tax increases that Biden is actively pushing this year. Per a Tax Foundation analysis,

The tax increases would substantially increase marginal tax rates on investment, saving, and work, reducing economic output by 2.2% in the long run, wages by 1.6%, and employment by 788,000 full-time equivalent jobs. On a gross basis, we estimate Biden’s FY 2025 budget would increase taxes by about $4.4 trillion over that period [of 2024 to 2034]. After taking various credits into account, the increase would be about $3.4 trillion[.]
[Biden’s] tax changes…include “additional taxes on high earners, higher taxes on US businesses—including increasing taxes that Biden enacted with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) —and more tax credits for a variety of taxpayers and activities[.]

As the WSJ editors asked,

Is this not a “fair share” to Mr Biden? Then what would be?

Plainly what would be to Biden and his Party syndicate All of It.

This is the central plank of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s platform this season. And they won’t stop with the Evil Rich as they define down what constitutes “rich” behind their DEI smokescreen.

Dithering Is as Dithering Does

Posted on by
Reply

No Labels, the political organization pretending to want to field a President/Vice President ticket in the upcoming race, is having trouble finding candidates to take them seriously.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie…indicated he didn’t plan to run with No Labels, which had been encouraging him to lead a “unity” presidential campaign….

So have Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Larry Hogan, and Joe Manchin.

And: former Republican North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, No Labels co-chair, resigned from the organization earlier this month.

No Labels began its “campaign” this season by announcing proudly that it wouldn’t run a slate if that slate were to be a spoiler—of which main party candidate they declined to say. That announcement demonstrated its unseriousness, demonstrating as it did, that the organization wasn’t prepared to run seriously, not even as seriously as Ross Perot, or even the Republican Party of the 1850s. So began its pretense.

Then the organization dithered for months over in which States they’d try to get on the ballot first, whether or not they had a ticket.

Then the organization dithered for months after that over which potential candidates they’d approach for joining their ticket.

Then, with all that dithering and unseriousness, when they started actually talking to candidates, all those folks said no.

This is not an organization that’s ready for prime time. Or even for AA ball.

Illegal Aliens

Posted on by
Reply

Do illegal aliens have rights under our 14th Amendment? Here’s what that Amendment says on the matter:

No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The question hinges on “jurisdiction.” In that sense, some illegal aliens do have rights under our 14th Amendment: those who enter illegally but then submit to arrest and handling in accordance with our laws. They’re still eligible for deportation over their illegal entry, and they should be, but the decision to deport must follow due process.

On the other hand, those illegal aliens who evade arrest, whether as gotaways or as having successfully penetrated our border without detection, I submit have no rights under our 14th Amendment. These folks, by their evasion of arrest, have consciously and deliberately held themselves outside of our laws, and thereby held themselves outside of our, or any State’s, jurisdiction. They should be deported immediately upon being caught—no due process required, they do not need to pass Go, they need to go directly to the other side of our borders.

Attrition War

Posted on by
Reply

Seth Cropsey wrote in his Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed that the US and Israel should fight an attrition war against Iran. He then disparaged the view of attrition war held by us and by Israel:

Attrition is a dirty word in American and Israeli strategic circles. In America, it evokes the Western Front’s brutal stalemate from 1914 to 1918, during which millions were sent to their deaths, and tens of thousands wounded and crippled, for no territorial gains. …

He omitted, though, that Israel is already in exactly that type of attrition war, the one inflicted by Hamas over the last decade and more, and an attrition exacerbated by Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s incessant pressure on Israel to agree a ceasefire right damn now, and never mind that that would leave Hamas bloodied but unbowed—and undefeated.

Cropsey, though, wants a broader version of attrition war:

…cumulative effect of pressure applied over time and in many contexts. The North African, Sicilian, and Italian campaigns that preceded the invasion of Normandy are examples. The US has seldom fought wars it can win with a single maneuver campaign, making attrition a coherent strategy.

Those “attritive” campaigns, though, were possible only by a massively superior industrial power engaging a tightly circumscribed industrial power where the engagement flowed from one side being able to replace battlefield losses by far larger margins than could the other. That situation doesn’t obtain today for Israel or—shockingly—even for the US.

Cropsey fleshed out, some, his version of attrition strategy:

Israel and the US need to put Iran’s strengths at risk. …
Iran provides financial backing to its Axis partners, and in Syria and Lebanon to the states themselves. …
Israel and the US have the tools to strike Iranian military capacity in Syria and Lebanon.

Strike. Not destroy. On a limited field in a limited way. Never mind, either, that those kinetic means would not touch Iran’s financial capability.

On the contrary, it’s time to get out of Israel’s way and actually help them to destroy Hamas utterly.

Then, get after Hezbollah, and destroy that terrorist organization utterly.

In parallel with that, it’s time for the US to stop being timid in the Middle East, and destroy the Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq, and in Houthi-occupied Yemen.

Stop responding to Iranian actions, and force Iran to respond to Israel’s and ours, shorn of its proxies.

That’s an attrition war worth supporting and executing.