Tag Archives: politics

In Which Biden Has the Right of It

Posted on by
Reply

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden is taking heat for his position on legalizing marijuana at the Federal level.  No less a light than Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) objects to Biden’s hesitation:

Marijuana should be legalized, and drug consumption should be decriminalized. These are matters of public health.

And Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT):

Too many lives were ruined due to the disastrous criminalization of marijuana[.]

Biden, though, doesn’t see the need for the rush:

I want a lot more [data] before I legalize it nationally. I want to make sure we know a lot more about the science behind it.

On this one, Biden is right, even if his version of the science is centered on whether marijuana is a gateway drug. There’s better science that argues for reluctance to legalize, and if we do so, to legalize only under very narrow circumstances.

There is considerable evidence that THC, the chemical putatively of interest, in uncontrolled use damages brains. There is, also, considerable evidence that various chemicals, including THC, and chemical combinations in marijuana can have beneficial medicinal effect.

Research needs to be done to identify with clarity those chemicals and chemical combinations. If the research bears out, then growing marijuana for the production of medically beneficial chemicals and chemical combinations can be licensed—just as is done with heroin into morphine and related chemicals.

Then, as with morphine, controlled doses of those chemicals/chemical combinations, with their known side effects and trade-offs, can be prescribed pursuant to useful treatment regimes.

The Coming End to the Crisis in Hong Kong

Posted on by
Reply

The Wall Street Journal, in its piece on the latest and bloodiest overreaction by the People’s Republic of China’s President Xi Jiping to the protests in Hong Kong, asked how “the Hong Kong crisis can be deescalated.”

It will be in the same way that the Tiananmen Square crisis was deescalated; this is made clear by Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Wu Qian. The WSJ cited him as saying that [emphasis added]

[President Xi Jinping] gave “the highest direction of the central government” to end violence and restore order in Hong Kong. He called it the army’s most pressing task in Hong Kong.

Look for the tanks to roll in the not-to-distant future.

A Thought on a Tweet

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump, during Friday’s “impeachment” hearing with erstwhile US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, tweeted in his inimitable style a critique of her job performance over the years.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump · Nov 15
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.

Some are suggesting that Yovanovitch wouldn’t have known about the tweet had not House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA) read it out to her during her testimony, and so there couldn’t possibly be any intimidation.  Others argue the so what aspect of that; Trump’s tweet would serve to intimidate future witnesses and to intimidate Yovanovitch were she to return for additional testimony.

Especially damning, Yovanovitch testified—under oath—in answer to Schiff’s question about the tweet, that she found it intimidating.

But damning to whom?

Yovanovitch, at the time of her ambassadorship in Ukraine (and elsewhere), was a high-level US Government representative, and she still is by extension from her “plum job” at Georgetown. Her confessing to being intimidated by petty (in several senses) criticism of her job performance tells other governments, including those of our enemies, that our government can easily be pushed around.

That emboldens our enemies to act overtly against our interests, even against us.  It tells our friends and allies that we’ll fold in a crunch, including theirs.

That’s a threat to our national security.

California’s Progressive-Democrats

Posted on by
1

They have a homeless problem, and they seem oblivious to it.

Oakland has seen a 47% jump in homelessness—one of the largest surges of any California city, according to a one-night street count released in July. The count, which used federal guidelines, showed Oakland had 4,071 homeless people in 2019, up from 2,761 in 2017. The increase puts the city’s per capita homeless rate higher than neighboring San Francisco and Berkeley and comes at a time when several West Coast cities are struggling with a homeless crisis that’s being driven by rising rents, drug addiction, mental illness and pushback from progressives.

San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Los Angeles—the list goes on—have a severe homeless crisis.

One could almost get the impression that Congress’ Progressive-Democratic Party politicians from California just don’t care about the plight of their constituents.

It’s not just California’s Progressive-Democrat-run cities, either.  San Antonio has one so bad that the State has had to move in and try to clean the streets and under-bridge areas for them.  Seattle is just as bad.  Chicago and New York City have the same thing, although they’re less publicized, and their respective State governments—Progressive-Democrat-run—don’t provide, or even offer, any help.  Baltimore is infamous for its terrible neighborhoods.

This is what those Progressive-Democrats in Congress should be working on instead of their smear sham impeachment election year campaign.  These folks are their constituents, not the lobbyists, pressmen, and reflectors in their DC echo chamber.

One could almost get the impression that Congress’ Progressive-Democratic Party politicians everywhere just don’t care about the plight of their constituents.

US Olympic Committee

Posted on by
Reply

Now styled US Olympic & Paralympic Committee, the body objects to being held accountable for its abominable handling of the sexual abuse of so many of its athletes for so long—indeed for its active suppression of complaints about those abuses.  The Senate Commerce Committee voted to send to the floor for debate and vote a bill that would authorize

Congress to vote to dissolve [the USOPC] board of directors and terminate any national governing body, which run specific sports within the U.S.

USOPC Chief Executive Sarah Hirshland had sent the Committee a letter threatening objecting to that:

[USOPC Chief Executive Sarah] Hirshland had told members of the Senate Commerce Committee: “The International Olympic Committee has made clear that Congress assuming the power to dissolve the USOPC board would violate the Olympic Charter and endanger our recognition by the IOC as a National Olympic Committee.”

Hirschland had gone further:

The International Olympic Committee has made clear that Congress assuming the power to dissolve the USOPC board would violate the Olympic Charter and endanger our recognition by the IOC as a National Olympic Committee.

In the end, the Committee called her bluff.

One of Hirschland’s few supporters, though, was Senator Mike Lee (R, UT) who made his usual libertarian-esque argument that

Washington had no right to act as judge, jury and executioner over the committee…and that the US should hold itself to higher standards than China in the operation of its Olympic movement. He also said that passing the bill would heighten IOC scrutiny on the US committee.

Because the IOC is such a paragon of virtue, too.

I often agree with Lee, but here, he’s mistaken. The protection of our children from predators is one area where the Federal government must play a role, albeit not exclusive of the States’ equally necessary role. I do agree with him, though, that we should hold ourselves to higher standards than those the People’s Republic of China employs in the operation of its Olympic movement.  This bill is a step in that direction.