Tag Archives: politics

Couple Thoughts re Newsom and Progressive-Democrats

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California’s Progressive-Democrat governor, Gavin Newsom, is looking to improve his standing among Conservatives. He’s even taken to hosting right-leaning and extreme-right guests (vis., Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, respectively) on his new podcast (which strikes me as nothing more than an attempt to manage his image).

As Newsom prepared to launch his new podcast, the governor told his team one of the themes he wanted to explore was how Republicans have been able to beat Democrats on messaging and win the White House.

What is the Progressive-Democratic Party doing, that it loses elections lately, and what must Party do to win. That seems to be Newsom’s thrust.

Then there’s this:

[Progressive-]Democrats are struggling to unite around a strategy to take on Trump and the GOP, which has complete control of power in Washington.

What is Party doing, that it loses elections to Trump and Trump supporters, and what must Party do to regain power in Washington.

Notice the common theme here. Newsom and Party, separately and together, are not the least bit interested in what’s good for our nation; neither is the least bit interested in looking to us average Americans and finding ways to satisfy our needs and wants.

Party—Newsom serves for the moment as Party’s canonical example of this theme—are interested only in its members holding high office and in holding personal political power.

The Potential Deportation of Khalil

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Mahmoud Khalil is the Columbia University Hamas terrorist- and Palestinian-supporter currently in ICE custody in Louisiana with a view to formally revoking his student visa and green card and deporting him. Matthew Hennesey, in his Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed, is mostly correct in his piece regarding Khalil and others of his ilk who come to our nation ostensibly to better their own lot but in actuality to push their hatred of America and try to damage us from within.

However, he had this in his piece’s endgame:

With all that in mind, what’s the big rush [to deport Khalil]? The man’s wife is evidently eight months pregnant.

This is utterly irrelevant. The woman knew what she was doing when she married him, and she married him entirely voluntarily. She also can freely choose to go with her husband, if he winds up being deported. If she (equally freely) chooses to stay, there are a number of American agencies—governmental, non-governmental, charity—that provide support for single perinatal women and single mothers with babies (and older children) to care for.

The Jewish students whom Khalil so broadly and deeply harmed with the pro-terrorist “protests” he helped organize—group actions that prevented them from getting to their classes, overtly threatened them, seized and vandalized buildings with Nazi-oriented graffiti specifically targeted at them—had no choice in the matter. The Jewish students were carefully targeted, and separately as the Columbia management team still is demonstrating, those students have no support facilities.

Circular Pseudo-Logic

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William Galston had this bit of circularity in his Tuesday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal:

Economists studying past tariffs have found that their effects endured even after the tariffs were removed. … Further, the Federal Reserve Board is concerned about Americans’ increased inflation expectations, which could trigger a damaging price spiral.
The American people smell a rat. In a recent poll by the Economist/YouGov, 68% said that higher tariffs mean higher prices and that consumers will bear a large share of the burden.
They’re right. Tariffs are import taxes paid in the importing nation.

It couldn’t possibly be that we Americans poll that way because that’s what we’re told by a steady stream of news writers, including a plethora of them who cite “economists” or who cite named economists without also citing those economists’ data.

Instead, these news writers just make their bald, unsubstantiated claims, providing no data at all.

It may well be true that tariffs, by their nature, are inflationary. That certainly seems plausible. However, plausibility isn’t fact, and it would be good to see the evidence—including evidence indicating how inflationary tariffs are, if they are, and under what circumstances.

Who Really Needs Security Clearances?

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors have got their panties in a twist because President Donald Trump (R) has withdrawn Perkins-Coie’s Federal security clearances among other actions regarding the law firm. The editors claim it’s all about Trumpian retribution:

That’s the only way to read his extraordinary executive orders targeting big Washington law firms for federal punishment and investigation. Mr. Trump’s decision to use government power to punish firms for representing clients breaks a cornerstone principle of American justice going back to John Adams and the Founders.

Perhaps. But that’s the editors’ spin, and they present it, in typical news opinionator fashion, as if it were fact and the only possible fact of the matter.

On the other hand, it’s also true that Perkins-Coie, other big Washington law firms, and the individual lawyers in those organizations have no need whatsoever for blanket, routinely extant, Federal security clearances just because. Those should be granted on a case-by-case basis, centered on the lawyers directly involved needing access to classified material in order to defend a client. Furthermore, as soon as that defense is concluded, or as soon as the lawyers in question are no longer involved, those clearances should be canceled; they’d no longer be needed.

Neither should a law firm itself have any security clearance at all. Only those lawyers directly involved in a case needing classified access should have the associated clearance.

These editors would do well to get their angst back under control.

Signaling

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors want President Donald Trump (R) to stand strong against Iran vis-à-vis Iran’s push to develop nuclear weapons and the requisite delivery systems (which aren’t limited to ballistic missiles, even though news writers, herd-like, focus only on those). That add this, though, in their missive:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent expressed confidence Thursday that sanctions on Iran can “collapse its already buckling economy.” Now he needs the green light to cut off Iran’s oil exports to China. Mr Trump could also let a few Israeli pilots train on US strategic bombers. That would send a message.

No. Iran (and northern Korea and Russia, come to that) has been economically “buckling” for years and years. They’re nowhere near collapse. Sanctions are Critical Items, but they’re far from sufficient. Sending messages by letting foreign pilots train on US aircraft is similarly useless when we’re…messaging…enemy nations that don’t care a fig about the cost to themselves in achieving their destruction of us or our friends.

No.

Iran has shown again and again since 1979 that it wants to spread revolution rather than join and build a prosperous Middle East.

The time for signaling is long past; it never worked anyway: signaling only signals the signaler’s weakness and/or timidity. Trump has sent all the signal that’s necessary in the form of his letter to Khamenei.

The deadline for a serious Iranian response should be a very few days, not weeks or months. The next signal needs to be kinetic, with the complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear and nuclear-related sites, including its uranium storage sites; its air defense facilities; its naval and “commercial” shipping at sea; and its ports on the Persian Gulf and the Persian Sea.

Israel certainly should play the major role in that—they’re Iran’s first target for extermination—but the US should play a major role, as well, from refueling support to participating the bombing and missile attacks.