Tag Archives: politics

“Dude-Bro”

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We’ve got some dude-bro politicians on the hustings, that being the new In Thing for politicians and politician wannabes. Most of them have no particular substance, though, trading on their dude-i-ness for the most part. The news writer defined dude-bro as this (though I question the first criterion as truly bro-ish or dude-ish, let alone in combination):

  • accusation of sexual misconduct or marital infidelity
  • voluntary or involuntary association with any of the following:
    • Tucker Carlson, Hasan Piker, or Joe Rogan
    • use of a racial slur in a public appearance or online post
    • publicly brawling or picking a fight

Here some of those dude-bro politicians, though they’re mostly just wannabes:

  • Graham Platner, of PTSD-sourced (he claims) misogyny, abuse, and bigotry infamy
  • Spencer Pratt, a Palisades Fire phoenix who burned down anew in his class war and Never Bass campaign
  • Brandon Herrera, who makes his own guns and refers to a particular German gun as “the original ghetto blaster”

Their platforms? Read the above again. Those are their platforms. They have nothing (had nothing in Pratts case, he’s already lost his election) substantial, only those sort-of tough guy images.

Here’s another dude-bro; he has substance, though, if highly dangerous. He even satisfies the Tucker Carlson criterion, and he’s put into action his bigotry regarding all things Ukrainian. And his fight-picking….

At least he’s wearing pants instead of a towel.

Naïve Foolishness

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors did it this time. In their editorial regarding FISA, they had this:

The law lets the intelligence community gather information from foreigners overseas and store it in a database. That database can then be searched for communications on matters of national security. If Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon start texting a New Jersey phone number, the New Jersey number is worth a follow-up.
All information in the database is legally gathered, and in 2024 Congress added safeguards against abuse. All queries for American information need prior bureaucratic approval and receive regular audits.

Safeguards. Queries for Americans’ information need bureaucratic approval? How is this any sort of safeguard? Any administration’s bureaucrats can easily approve searches for bureaucrat/administration disapproved Americans. Those bureaucrats are primarily senior FBI officials. To see how well this will work, it’s only necessary to recall AG Eric Holder’s promise to be then-President Barack Obama’s (D) wingman, rather than keeping DoJ independent. Recall further, those FBI senior officials. The FBI works for the AG. The Holders of the world will be back, and folks already are disdaining acting AG Todd Blanche of being no more than President Donald Trump’s (R) man.

Then there’s the FISA court, a by-design secret Star Chamber court where only administration-approved persons get to know the proceedings. That’s bad enough, but even when the Star Chamber was confronted with falsified search warrant requests, it chose not to take any serious corrective, much less punitive, action.

The Star Chamber needs to be abolished. Article III courts are fully capable of issuing sealed warrants that become public only on their being served. That also would apply enforceable safeguards on warrant issuance—they would be issued only by those Article III courts; there would be no recourse to a secret court.

They Knew…

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…or they did not. Regarding the massive welfare fraud going on in Minnesota, a (Republican-led) House Oversight and Accountability Committee report says that Minnesota’s Progressive-Democratic Party governor, Tim Walz, and the State’s Progressive-Democratic Party Attorney General, Keith Ellison, knew all about it from early on and made the conscious decision to do nothing about it, instead choosing to punish those officials rude enough to object to the fraud.

There are two possibilities here. One is for Walz and Ellison to deny all knowledge, either directly or via weasel-word deflections. In this case, the two would be lying through their teeth.

The other possibility is that they wouldn’t be lying in denials, and they really didn’t know about all that fraud occurring under that not so watchful eyes. In this case, they would be confessing their incompetence and unfitness for senior (or any other) government position.

With either possibility and with the Progressive-Democratic Party’s continued support for them or for either of them, Party will be demonstrating its general unfitness for any leading role in our government.

Dominic Green Asked

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In his lede, Green asked

Which is worse, a young Englishman bleeding out in handcuffs while police ignore his cries for help, or the vice president of the United States expressing his opinion about it?

What JD Vance, the supposedly miscreant Vice President, said was this:

Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies, abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, through his spokesman (apparently because Starmer is too timid to speak for himself on this),:

accus[ed] unnamed foreigners of “trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets….”

How does Green’s question even exist? Given the naked bigotry demonstrated by the British police and by the government that created that police department, there can be no question of relative morality here. The one is an accurate commentary; the other is naked, state-sanctioned, and this time murderous, bigotry.

Nor was Vance’s statement in any way an interference in British democracy. There was no push for the British to do anything differently, only an objection to what that government has chosen to allow on its streets. If there was any pressure from Vance’s remarks, it was only because his words struck hard into what passes for a conscience in that government’s collective mind.

There’s a hint on the whole interfere in our democracy matter, though:

The administration-adjacent Elon Musk, whose X website outflanks Britain’s speech laws, told his 28.5 million followers to share the Nowak footage “to everyone you know,” so that all can see how the police “cravenly kowtowed to his murderer.”

Outflanks Britain’s speech laws. Maybe the nation that increasingly restricts what is permissible speech and that increasingly shrivels religious freedom is becoming less and less a democracy in the first place.

A Time for Choosing

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New York’s Congressional 10th District is a microcosm of the choices we face. The Progressive-Democratic Party primary features two far Left candidates. One is Dan Goldman, who is a virulent Never Trumper, to the point his Congressional votes are based on that rather than on any real policy objections, and an increasingly strident anti-Israel politician, to the point of working with ex-President Joe Biden (D) to deny Israel’s access to some of the weapons needed to defend itself against Hamas.

The other is  Brad Lander, former New York City Comptroller and an open, enthusiastic supporter of Progressive-Democrat Mayor Zohan Mamdani. Lander shares Mamdani’s naked antipathy for Israel and is openly antisemitic.

The choices come down to this. Progressive-Democrats must choose between a Never Trumper and anti-Israel politician and a candidate who, far beyond being merely anti-Israel, is both antisemitic and pro-Palestinian, the latter with no distinction between Palestinian civilians and the Palestinian terrorists epitomized by Hamas.

After primary season, we Americans in general must choose between a Republican party whose small-government positions are eroding but still leaning that way and a Progressive-Democratic Party that is rapidly strengthening its big, intrusive government ideology; is increasingly incapable of working with Trump or anything Republican; and that is, in this context, increasingly opposed to the only Middle East democracy and staunch US ally while actively strengthening its antisemitic bigotry.