Tag Archives: politics

A Letter Writer Asks

Posted on by
Reply

In Thursday’s Letters section of The Wall Street Journal, a correspondent asked What Does Democracy Mean to the Lincoln Project?

He then offered three examples of the Lincoln Project‘s apparent ideology that underlie his question:

  1. It has been acceptable throughout American history for advocates outside the two-party system to obtain qualifying voter signatures to get on the ballot. But for No Labels to employ that method now should offend our sense of fairness.
  2. Even though the two parties have arcane rules for candidate selection that restrict voter autonomy, adding qualified competitors to the general-election ballot will limit voter choice.
  3. Anyone with the temerity to view Presidents Biden and Trump as sufficiently inadequate choices to propose a third option is a “threat to American democracy” and beneath contempt.

For that, I suggest an answer: All within the Project, nothing outside the Project, nothing against the Project.

Overly Complex

Posted on by
Reply

It’s also too limiting. Congressman Greg Steube (R, FL) and Senator Tommy Tuberville (R, AL) are introducing a bicameral bill, The Protection of Women in Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, that would bar biological males from participating in Olympic events intended for women. Good idea, bad execution.

The bill defines a female as

an individual who has, had, will have—or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident—the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes eggs for fertilization.

The bill defines a male as

an individual who has, had, will have—or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident—the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes sperm for fertilization.

That’s way too complex, and it allows for too much weasel-wording interpretation. Much more straightforward definitions are these:

Female: a human with XX chromosomes.
Male: a human with XY chromosomes.

Maybe add inclusion as Female those with XXY chromosomes and Male those with XYY chromosomes. Those combinations are exceedingly rare, though, and likely would be better handled on a case-by-case basis.

The bill is too limiting, unless a companion bill also is put forward. There’s no room for transgender athletes in this or any other bills under consideration or in effect. That’s a deficiency that’s easy enough to correct other than politically. Simply amend Title IX to require Federally funded sports programs to include substantially equal programs for transgender athletes as a separate category, in the same way substantially equal programs currently are required for male and female athletes as separate categories. That also would obviate the need to play games with whether an athlete is a member of a particular sex simply on that athlete’s say-so.

Lies of a Progressive-Democrat President

Posted on by
Reply

This batch centers on our southern border and the flooding illegal alien crisis (which includes an unknown number of violent criminals; drug and sex-trafficking mules; and worse, terrorists and enemy nations’ special operations soldiers). Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden:

I’ve done all I can do. Just give me the power. I’ve asked from the very day I got into office[.]

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) exposed Biden’s lies.

President Biden said  “I’ve done all I can do” with executive authority to secure the border. That is simply untrue. He’s either lying or misinformed.
Here are just a few of the authorities at his disposal – if only he would use them:
• Presidential Authority to Restrict Entry 212(f)
• Expedited Removal 235(b)(1)
• Discretionary Detention Authority 236(a)
• Mandatory Detention 236(c)
No more excuses.

Johnson went on:

Immigration and Nationality Act coupled with recent Supreme Court precedent give [Biden] “ample authority” to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

Biden also canceled the prior administration’s Remain in Mexico agreement with Mexico, which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while waiting for their cases to be adjudicated. Since Biden did his cancelation via his Executive Order, he can reinstate it via his Executive Order, although that would require renegotiation with Mexico (and both Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken have shown themselves unable to conduct serious, productive negotiations.

He rescinded all of former President Donald Trump’s (R) Executive Orders that helped close our border via his own EOs. Biden can, by EO, reinstate those prior EOs or write new EOs to achieve substantially the same thing.

Biden had more:

Give me the border patrol.
Give me the judges.
Give me the people who can stop this and make it work.

The “people” he wants are more bureaucrats to process those illegal aliens that get caught into our nation’s interior on untracked personal “parole.” The judges he wants are to speed up the initial processing and unfettered release. The border patrol he wants are for doing the paperwork for the processing. He wants none of those border patrol, judges, or people actually to seal our border and send the illegals back out of our nation. The “it” he wants so badly to “make work” are that release of all comers at our vaporous border promptly into our interior.

This is yet another example of Party politicians insulting our intelligence, this insult being the blatant lies that Biden thinks we’re too stupid to recognize.

This is what we’ll be facing in November.

Deal Breaker

Posted on by
Reply

Apparently, there’s a complicated, multi-phase “ceasefire” that involves staged releases of terrorist-held hostages and Israeli-held terrorist prisoners that’s being developed. Among the criteria being discussed is Israel ceasing, in the first, six-week, phase, all drone surveillance operations.

Above all else, ceasing drone surveillance must be an absolute deal breaker.

Trust the terrorists not to reposition, including infiltrating back into the central and northern parts of the Strip; or to refit; or to rearm during the ceasefire?

Of course they will, and six weeks is an eternity for accomplishing that, but Israel willfully blinding itself to the movements and resupply efforts would be monumentally stupid and hugely expensive in Israeli blood.

This is a deal that shouldn’t be getting any words at all beyond, “No.”

Israel is winning this Hamas war, if grindingly; now is not the time to call a halt, even temporarily. Now is the time to pile on—and for the Biden administration to get out of the way and join the piling on, at least by covering Israel’s flanks by eliminating the Iranian proxies’ combat sites and weapons caches in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

Good That Something is Kicking Them in the Behind

Posted on by
Reply

European nations are getting worried about another Donald Trump Presidency. That worry is

prompting some of America’s staunchest allies in Europe to push their neighbors that are more reluctant to spend into further action on defense and security.

To the extent that’s accurate and, if so, it bears serious fruit, that would be good, and ample justification for reelecting Trump.

In a sign that European officials are starting to address their armaments shortages, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on January 23 announced a $1.2 billion multicountry contract for 200,000 155-millimeter artillery shells, a type being heavily used in Ukraine. The shells will be produced in France and Germany and purchased by Spain, Belgium, and Lithuania.

That’s an insultingly puny step that, by itself, can’t be anything more than cynical virtue-signaling. Those 200k shells are a just a day-and-a-half expenditures by both sides combined at Verdun. Verdun was an extreme usage, certainly, but the Ukrainians are facing a much better equipped barbarian army today than the German army was that the French faced then. Those 200k shells might last a week or 10 days on defense; it’s not enough to sustain an offensive.

And what else are the European NATO nations doing?

European leaders are struggling to align against what many see as a severe potential threat to the postwar order and the prosperity that Washington’s security umbrella has brought to the continent. NATO, which turns 75 in April, has allowed Europeans to focus on economic development, confident that the US would repel threats from Moscow or elsewhere.

And

Despite increased European military spending [miniscule as it is—ed.], high-level talks are failing to deliver big results in part because the cost of shifting from US-backed security to a more independent stance would be enormous.

Translation: the European NATO nations are doing little more than continued empty yapping.

And this:

Many European NATO countries say their increases in military spending were prompted more by Russia’s initial 2014 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent hostility than by Trump’s threats. Last year, nine of NATO’s 29 European members met the alliance’s target of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense by 2024, compared with just two in 2014 when NATO set the threshold. About half are expected to hit the target this year.

That’s just disingenuous. Of those seven since 2014 who increased their spending, five of them came during the Trump administration or immediately after, with their budgets already set in the last Trump year. And at that, Germany promptly welched and redid its military spending budget downward. Only two acted in response to Russia’s “subsequent hostility”—itself a cynical euphemism for the barbarian’s 1922 invasion of Ukraine.

These nations’ failure to date is their betrayal of their fellow NATO members—they’re holding themselves incapable of responding materially to an attack on a fellow member. Their failure to date is a betrayal of their own citizens—they’re holding themselves incapable of responding to an attack on themselves.