Tag Archives: politics

What, Exactly, Are You Doing?

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken, through his Press Secretary Ned Price, is insisting two things.

One is that the (not so) dearly departed JCPOA

is [sic!] the most effective means by which to permanently and verifiably ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.

This has been shown to be a straight up lie almost since its parameters became public. All the JCPOA did was permit limited inspections—but not of Iranian military facilities where most of the nuclear weapons development and uranium enrichment process were occurring—and the JCPOA had an expiration date, upon which all sanctions would be lifted and all limits on Iran’s nuclear weapons program would expire.

The other is the State Department views Iran’s nuclear potential as an overriding threat. Nevertheless,

We are doing everything we can not only to support the human rights and the aspirations for greater freedom of the Iranian people, but also to hold accountable those within the Iranian system that are responsible for…violence against the Iranian people[.]

But still,

When it comes to Iran, though…there would be no greater challenge to the United States, to our partners, and to the broader international system than an Iran with a nuclear weapon.

That last might—might—be a valid priority in a cynical, long-term, Machiavellian sort of perspective. It does the Iranian people who are being imprisoned, or killed, or both today for their protesting against their current condition no good at all, though.

Which raises the question: what, exactly are you doing, Mr SecState, to support the human rights and the aspirations for greater freedom of the Iranian people? Lay it out in concrete, measurable terms—no glittering generalities, not fatuous claims of “everything we can.” What fills out this “everything” of which you speak?

Sack Them

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Now the USAF Academy has torn it apart.

A diversity and inclusion training by the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado instructs cadets to use words that “include all genders” and to refrain from saying things like “mom” and “dad.”

And

“Some families are headed by single parents, grandparents, foster parents, two moms, two dads, etc.: consider ‘parent or caregiver’ instead of ‘mom and dad,'” the presentation states. “Use words that include all genders​: ‘Folks’ or ‘Y’all’ instead of ‘guys’; ‘partner’ vs. ‘boyfriend or girlfriend.'”
“Not ‘Colorblind’ or ‘I don’t see color,’ but Color Conscious,” it adds. “We see Color/Patterns AND VALUE people for their uniqueness.”

This is openly racist and sexist spew, it’s unacceptable anywhere in our nation, it’s especially unacceptable in those institutions where we train our military leaders—and it’s deliberately designed to keep our military personnel segregated, in a number of senses of that term, one from another.

This has gone ‘way too far. It’s time to sack SecDef Lloyd Austin, CJCS General Mark Milley, and to reassign all of the Pentagon’s current military staff who are focused on academic “training” and the military Academies’ Command and Staff personnel, to the combatant commands—in theater, not to command headquarters. Send the associated civilians back to the private sector.

It’s time these worthies lived in the destruction they’re seeking to wreak.

Well-Established Constitutional Rights

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In a Wednesday Letter, University of Maryland School of Law Professor Robert Percival wrote in defense of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s move to politicize the Supreme Court—a move which he denies.

But what drew my attention was this statement regarding Roe v Wade and his concept of constitutional rights:

Justice White opposed creating new constitutional rights, but he didn’t think the court should take back rights once they were well-established.

What Percival has chosen to ignore here is the distinction between “well-established” and “long extant.”

The decision of Roe lasted a long time, but the equally long fight against abortion at various stages of pregnancy, in parallel with the equally long fight to reverse Roe, demonstrates that the “constitutional right” was not at all well established.

Right Idea, but…

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…details in the implementation will matter, also. Competition always drives costs to a level approaching the cost of production, and that’s to the good, not only of consumers but for competitors and others looking to enter the market, as well.

However.

On Monday, [Congresswoman and MD Mariannette (R, IA)] Miller-Meeks along with three of her colleagues introduced a bill titled the “Biologics Competition Act,” which seeks “to evaluate the process by which interchangeable biological products are approved to be used in pharmaceuticals.”
“So in essence, what we’re trying to get is biosimilar drugs that are the same chemically—that they have an equivalency to let those be prescribed as generic drugs, which would bring down the cost of medication[.]”

There’s a reason generics, in general, are delayed in getting authorization to be marketed: to allow the drug’s initial developer(s) time to recoup the costs of development and to begin realizing profit, and thereby encourage further drug development.

Such permission delays would need to apply to the biosimilar drugs, too. With a fillip: defining how much change is necessary while remaining biosimilar without leaving the required change so trivial that the new drug is an outright plagiary with only a token item grafted on.

That may well be the eye of a needle—passable, but with difficulty, especially when trying to write down a specific law. Worth going for, though, absolutely.

The Press Censors

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And it tries to whitewash history, pretending what it’s censoring never happened.

The latest example is provided by NBC. That press outlet tweeted this, saying that Hispanic illegal aliens were just trash:

Now, as Molly Hemingway, Federalist Editor-in-Chief, has noted, NBC has cravenly deleted their tweet.

NBC didn’t—doesn’t—have the integrity or moral courage to leave the tweet in the public’s history with a note acknowledging its error. No, the press outlet has chosen instead to cower away, hide its tweet, and try to gaslight us average Americans into believing that the bigoted tweet never occurred at all.

Hemingway is being generous, too. NBC and its allies don’t just look horrific. They are horrific in the depths of their racist bigotry.