Tag Archives: politics

National Independence and Military Capability

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Joe Biden (D) has strange ideas regarding this relationship, expressed most plainly in his plans for our nuclear weapons arsenal.

Mr Bidens campaign pledge to narrow the role that nuclear weapons play…stating that their “sole purpose” should be to deter or respond to a nuclear attack.

Biden is willing to have us forced to surrender after being beaten in a conventional or cyberwar, rather than have nuclear weapons available or usable to preserve our existence—and that of our friends—as independent, unconquered polities.

Mr Biden has said that he wants to extend the New START treaty with Russia….

Because extending a nuclear weapons treaty with an enemy nation that routinely violates treaties with us is a good idea. It’s especially sensible after he unilaterally disarms us doctrinally.

No. Neither Biden nor his handlers can possibly be that naive; this can only be a deliberate weakening of our military security. Gives new meaning to Biden’s push for international “cooperation.”

Missiles based in underground silos have long been considered a destabilizing system by arms-control groups….

No, what’s destabilizing is surrendering military superiority—cyber, conventional, or nuclear—to our enemies.

A Thought on Section 230

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Rick White, Republican Representative from Washington at the end of the last century, had a thought on Section 230—he wants to repair it rather than eliminate it—and so (of course) do I. He began with this:

…some saying it allows big tech companies to censor political views, and others saying it enables the spread of disinformation.

What far too many who should know better miss, though, is that both of these are true; it’s not a matter being mutually exclusive, or even a matter of one or the other.

What those worthies also miss is that only one of them is of any concern at all. Regardless of the bleatings of the Know Betters in the press and in our political elites, ordinary Americans are fully capable of discriminating (uncensored) disinformation from (uncensored) misinformation from (uncensored) information.

One idea that White suggested in lieu of eliminating Section 230 was this, and he was serious about it:

We could also establish a plan for self-regulation by the online industry.

It’s hard to see how White could be so naive or so…misinformed. The online industry isn’t the problem. The small cartel of social media is the problem. And we’re already seeing what Jack Dorsey’s, Mark Zuckerberg’s, and Sundar Pichai’s self-regulation looks like.

Section 230 is beyond repair; the conditions extant when it was written no longer obtain. Pipelines don’t manage the information flowing through them. Publishers do.

The Section needs repeal.

“Good Union Jobs”

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That was Joe Biden’s mantra all through his campaign.  Now Karl Zinsmeister, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed asks this question: Will Biden’s Education Nominee Stand for Students or for Unions?

Supposedly, his nominee, Miguel Cardona, is pro-student:

Dacia Toll, CEO of the Achievement First charter-school network that operates in Connecticut, says of Mr Cardona: “I haven’t found him to be driven by ideology and politics. He is more focused on making sure every kid gets an excellent education than the type of school they go to.”

Zinsmeister hopes Cardona is made of stern stuff and will resist the pressure he’ll get from the unionists in his administration, elsewhere in his Cabinet, and in Congress.

I’m not that sanguine. Who has this good union man, Joe Biden, nominated? At best, a token offered as a sop to all those in Congress who are to the right of the radical left progressives (but I repeat myself) who are the Progressive-Democratic Party. More likely, a shiny object cynically offered to distract those worthies from the far more broadly insidious policies of the Progressive-Democrats.

The Most Important Criterion for Office

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…is race, according to too many members of the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Recall that California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has named his Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, to fill Kamala Harris’ (D) seat in the Senate on her assumption of the office of Vice President of the United States. The press has been making a big deal out of Padilla being the first (!) Latino to be a California Senator—as if his brown skin actually matters.

Apparently, though, skin hue does matter to many in Party. San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D):

Definitely, this is a real blow to the African-American community[.]
It’s an unfortunate situation as we are trying to move this country forward and making sure that Black lives truly matter and that African-Americans have a seat at the table, especially African-American women, after what was done in this race on a national level, definitely is unfortunate.

Congresswoman Karen Bass (D):

I will tell you that I do believe that there should be an African American woman in the Congress. When Senator Harris is sworn in as the Vice President, there will be one African American Democrat, one African American Republican, no African American women.

Being qualified for the office, being an American-American, doesn’t matter. The first qualifying criterion is race, and the second criterion is gender.

This is part and parcel with Joe Biden and his Progressive-Democratic Party having selected Harris for his Vice President based first and foremost on her race and gender. It’s an extension of Biden’s empirically demonstrated primary criteria for his Cabinet desires.

The bigotry stinks.

Overreach

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Alphabet strikes again.

Google informs children when their parents are monitoring their account activity, the tech giant confirmed this month, with the company claiming that doing so is a way of balancing the interests of both parents and children.

Such “balancing” is not Google’s call. It’s not the decision anyone or any enterprise can make in place of the parents, with the narrowly bounded exception of a child’s endangerment—which in the present context is what parental monitoring is for. More broadly, the degree of privacy a child has—is accorded—while growing up is a parental decision and no one or no thing else’s. Full stop.

Alphabet, in commenting, pointed to both the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the recently passed UK Age Appropriate Design Code as examples of child-privacy advocacy to which it adheres. This is cynically disingenuous (my deliberate redundancy): Alphabet is not a UN agency, nor is it an arm of the British government. Nor is Alphabet subject to UN proscriptions anywhere or to British law outside of Great Britain.

It’s time to rein in this company. It’s intruded too far into the lives of ordinary Americans, this time unconscionably presuming to take the role of parents, usurping that from a child’s true parents.