Tag Archives: politics

Be Fair, Guys

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Even Jonathan Turley is misunderstanding President Joe Biden’s (D) Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s situation.

It is increasingly painful to watch Karine Jean-Pierre as she argues that they have been “transparent” by being transparently unwilling to answer any questions.

White House Press Secretaries are not free agents. Jean-Pierre is only saying what she’s been instructed beforehand to say by her boss. Her own failing, significant as it is and disqualifying as it should be, is that she stands up there and repeats her boss’ lies rather than have the moral strength of character to resign in lieu of repeating them.

It’s Time to Move Away…

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…from any reliance on Germany as a weapons supplier to allies. Or as an ally.

Germany is continuing to stonewall sending serious weapons to Ukraine and is openly blocking its fellow NATO members from sending those weapons they bought from Germany to Ukraine.

Germany won’t allow Poland and other allies to give those tanks [Leopard tanks that Germany sold Poland and so many others] until Washington agrees to provide Ukraine with a US-made equivalent, specifically M1 Abrams, aides to Mr Scholz said.

This is Scholz still terrified of Vladimir Putin looking angrily at him. It’s time for the rest of us to move on from the German arms industry. German weapons, no matter how good they might seem on the training grounds, are worthless if they cannot be passed on to those who need them in war. It’s time to move on from Germany as an ally. Skilled, industrious, and technologically and economically advanced as they are, they’re of no use in an alliance when those factors are not available to the rest of us, or to a nation fighting for its very existence on the German border.

Japan has a very excellent and skilled work force with a modern industrial base that can be plussed up to produce and sell modern, capable weapons systems for itself and allies and for nations like Ukraine and the Republic of China.

The Republic of Korea has a similarly excellent work force and modern industrial base. It also can ramp up and produce and sell modern, capable weapons systems. It’s also fully capable of developing its own nuclear weapons systems, and it’s starting to think seriously about that in light of Baby Kim’s rhetoric and weapons testing.

The Republic of China has an even greater technological capability to go with its own highly capable industrial capability.

Closer to the current front, Great Britain has extant the industrial and technological base and already is offering alternatives to the German Leopard to Ukraine.

Poland has an industrial base and labor force on which to build easily.

Any of the Baltic States have the technological chops to meld with Poland’s industrial production.

American arms are very good, but they’re overpriced—see the F-35 and F-22, especially vs the newly developing F-15EX. They’re also very fragile, with excessively extensive maintenance tails—see the M1 Abrams tank.

Germany can’t be taken seriously as an arms supplier or an ally, and it can’t be taken seriously under any guise vis-à-vis Russia (or the People’s Republic of China, come to that). It’s time to walk away from them.

The Failure of the Trump Tax Cuts

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They failed to live down to the claims of the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians who’ve decried them since their enactment. They’ve also exceeded the expectations of the CBO.

The government collected a record $4.9 trillion in revenue last year, according to the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency. That’s nearly $500 billion higher than what the CBO had projected.

In particular, those Left-hated reductions in corporate taxes didn’t yield the Left-promised drop in Federal revenue:

Receipts from corporate income taxes, meanwhile, were $425 billion, exceeding CBO’s projection by 25%….

Regarding that disastrous tax cut that was only for the rich:

…receipts from individual income taxes were $2.6 trillion, exceeding CBO’s projection by 11%.

With all that money rolling in, it doesn’t seem like any particular group of Americans got any special breaks. But the Feds did, from the increased economic activity that resulted from all that pre-2017 tax cut money staying in the hands of private citizens, who know better than our Government Betters where and how to spend our dollars.

That greater money-handling wisdom is illustrated by these tidbits:

…business investment increases spiked by the end of 2019 by 9.4% compared to the pre-tax cut trend…. For corporations, real investment was up by as much as 14.2%

This is what the Progressive-Democratic Party wants to put an end to with Party politicians’ demands to tax ever more, spend ever more, and unconditionally raise the debt ceiling so as to potentiate their addiction to ever-increasing spending.

They’re trying to get their mojo—and our dollars—back.

Sounds Like a Personal Problem

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) is having a crying jag over the influx of illegal aliens arriving in his city.

We are at our breaking point. Based off our projections, we anticipate being unable to continue sheltering arriving asylum seekers on our own….

That overwhelming inflow? “More than” 3,100 “asylum seekers” in the past week, with 835 “last Thursday alone.” By his own estimate, his sanctuary city has received around 40,000 asylum seekers since the spring of 2022.

New York City is proudly a sanctuary city, and Mayor Adams is just as proud of his city’s status as a sanctuary city. Yet he both beefs about being taken at his word with illegal aliens sent—with the illegals’ prior written permission—to his city for the promised sanctuary, and he has chosen to do nothing since his accession to the Mayor’s Mansion (notice that: his mansion) to prepare his sanctuary city to receive sanctuary seekers.

Meanwhile, the cities and towns along our southern border, from western Arizona to Texas’ Gulf Coast, are inundated with millions of illegal aliens per year and nearly 48,000 just in the first three weeks of this year, not in the 10 or so months since the spring of 2022. These cities and towns truly are overwhelmed.

For Adams and his staffers that works out—if my third-grade arithmetic serves me well—to nearly 16,000 illegal aliens per week so far just this month. Again, for the benefit of Adams and his staffers, and again if my third-grade arithmetic serves me, that’s nearly five times the inflow that New York City has been experiencing. And not for just the few months that Adams’ team has been facing, but for the last two-plus years.

Adams has a personal problem, centered on his virtue-signaling hypocrisy and his squalling about being held to his word. Us average Americans are getting fed up with his whiny attitude.

A Few Questions

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Then-Vice President Joe Biden (D) retained an (unknown and still growing) number of classified documents, taking them with him when he vacated his Vice Presidency in January 2017. I have some questions. In no particular order,

  • he signed the documents out of their secure storage, or he had a staffer sign them out for him. Where are the sign-out logs showing what document(s) were signed out and who signed them out—including for whom if it wasn’t the actual user of the docs?
  • when were the documents signed out?
  • what is the level of classification of the documents?
  • What is the subject matter (in general terms) of the classified documents Biden had (and still has?) squirreled away?
  • what is the nature of the documents?
    • were they finished products?
    • drafts?
    • notes for a draft or taken during meetings that were then classified by the note-taker?
    • some combination of the three?
  • what was Biden using these classified documents for or intending to use them for when he took them with him as he left office?
  • where is the documentation that the National Archives receives that identifies Executive Branch classified documents as they’re created?
  • when did the National Archives receive that documentation?
  • when do National Archive logs indicate the National Archives received the classified documents themselves, as listed on that prior documentation?
  • from whom do those logs indicate the National Archives received the documents?
  • when did the National Archives start asking questions about the classified documents it knew had been created but had not yet received?
  • where are the certifications the National Archives receives that the classified documents it received are the only copies of those documents?
  • who signed those certifications?

In the end, it’s clear that Biden, despite his claims to the contrary, knew and knows full well that he had those documents and has kept them all this time. He’s the one who signed them out or had a staffer sign them out for him. He’s the one who didn’t return them and sign them in when he was through or had a staffer do so in his name. He’s the one who moved those classified documents, or authorized an assistant to move them, from his VP offices to…someplace…between the time he had them in his VP offices and the time the Penn Biden Center was created. He’s the one moved those classified documents, or authorized an assistant to move them, from their ad hoc location variously to the Penn Biden Center and to his residence-cum-classified storage facility.

Finally, as Vice President, he had no declassification authority whatsoever beyond the authority of anyone with a clearance to declassify the notes he took and classified at the time he took them.

One more Finally: Biden says (now through his Presidential staffers) that he has no visitor logs for the building he occupies in Delaware and in which he garages his Corvette because, he claims, that’s his residence. This is nonsense. As soon as Biden moved those classified documents into his garage and a room in that building adjacent to his garage, that building ceased being his residence and became a classified storage facility. Visitors are required to be logged in and out of classified storage facilities, regardless of who lives there, and any of those visitors or Biden himself who viewed or removed from storage for viewing those classified documents are required to log them out and back in. The lack of logs is illegal.

One last Finally: Biden claims he advised the National Archives promptly as soon as his uncleared personal lawyers noticed he still had them. Promptly? He’s known for the last six years that he had these documents. What took him so long to get around to “promptly?”