Amy Klobuchar Withdraws

…because sexist racism!?

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D, MN) has taken herself out of consideration for the Progressive-Democratic Party’s nomination for Vice President alongside Joe Biden.

Klobuchar told MSNBC‘s Lawrence O’Donnell she called Biden Wednesday evening with her decision, saying she believes “this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket.”

First, Biden showed appalling sexism with his insistence that he’ll have a woman Vice President candidate because she’s a woman, not because the most meritorious candidate happens to be a woman.

Now Klobuchar is showing appalling racism by saying Biden’s Vice President woman candidate should be a “woman of color” because she’d be a woman of color, not the most meritorious candidate happens to be a woman and a person of color.

It’s getting disgusting in the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Tough on Crime?

Not Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden.

A Critical Item in dealing with crime is that the criminals need to be punished. And that punishment must be meted out swiftly, consistently, and commensurate with the crime.  Joe Biden?

However.

A Critical Item in dealing with criminal behavior is rehabilitation of the criminal and opportunities for his redemption. Absent those, the criminals will repeat their criminal behavior, others will see less, if not in absolute terms, little incentive not to do the crime.  Joe Biden?

Here’s Joe Biden’s position on those two Critical Items (patience; it takes a bit for Alphabet’s YouTube to grunt through their errors and load the video).  This is Senator Joe Biden:

It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re the victims of society. The end result is that they’re about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe, shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons. So I don’t want to ask, “What made them do this?” They must. be taken. off. the streets.

Indeed, he favored—has long favored—increased and broad incarceration.

You must take back the streets. And you take back the streets by more cops, more prisons, more physical protection for the people.

Here is Joe Biden explicitly on rehabilitation;

So you cannot make rehabilitation a condition for release. I don’t care why someone is a malefactor in society, I don’t care why someone is antisocial, I don’t care why they’ve become a sociopath. We have an obligation to cordon them off from the rest of society.

With Joe Biden explicitly rejecting one Critical Item in dealing with crime and with criminal behavior, he cannot truly be supportive of the other Critical Item: the two stand or fall together.

Joe Biden’s claim that rehab can’t be a criterion for release is a cynically offered non sequitur. Whether prisons or separate facilities are the optimal place for rehab and for opportunities for redemption is a separate question entirely, and one that he will not even consider. Joe Biden does not believe in the ability of a man to rehabilitate or to be rehabilitated, and he rejects the possibility of redemption.

Joe Biden cannot be tough on crime because he cannot accept rehabilitation or redemption. He cannot support programs that reduce recidivism, that enable a criminal, once punished, to find a legitimate place in society.

Joe Biden’s current “evolution” in his thinking and his pious calls for criminal system reform are nothing more than insulting pandering to blacks and Hispanics and insults to the intelligence of all of us Americans of any skin color or gender.

 

H/t OANN.

Borderline….

According to Johns Hopkins’ CSSE data, the US has suffered 116,000 deaths from the Wuhan Virus as of 16 June. That’s not the whole story, though, and the raw number overstates the case along one critical dimension.

The US death toll from [Wuhan Virus] in nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities has topped 50,000….

That’s 43% of all our virus fatalities occurring in those old folks homes.

Those same CSSE data indicate that the US has some 2,100,000 cases—of which 250,000 have occurred in those facilities. That’s 12% of all our virus infections concentrated in those old folks homes, and a 20% fatality rate for our old folks, given infection in our old folks homes. Which compares with a 3% fatality rate outside those facilities.

Unfortunately (or conveniently, depending on perspective), many States don’t disaggregate cases effectively, so that old folks home death rate actually maybe be understated to some degree.

New York, for example, doesn’t include cases in which nursing-home residents died in a hospital….

Some States—New York and New Jersey come to mind—badly exacerbated this death toll concentration and infection disportionality by actually requiring nursing homes and the like to accept into their midst Wuhan Virus-infected patients simply because those facilities had empty beds.

Borderline? It’s right next door to criminal.

Troops in Germany

President Donald Trump has said he intends to reduce the number of American soldiers in Germany.

Germany, he said, is not meeting its commitment to spend 2% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defense as required by the NATO alliance. Member nations had pledged to reach the 2% threshold by 2024. Germany has said it hopes to reach the target by 2031.

Which is a cynical commitment by Germany, since there will be several generations of German governments over the intervening 11 years.

But here’s the kicker, from Emily Haber, Germany’s Ambassador to the US:

US troops…are not there to defend Germany. They are there to defend the trans-Atlantic security. They are also there to project American power in Africa, in Asia[.]

If that’s true—or if it’s the case that Germany is dictating to us our purpose in keeping troops stationed there (not so outlandish; Germany is, after all a sovereign nation, not a post-war occupied one)—there’s even less reason to keep troops stationed there.

We can defend trans-Atlantic security much more efficiently from any of a number of other European, and Atlantic, nations. We can project power “in Africa” much more efficiently from any of a number of other European, African, Western Asian nations. We can project power “in Asia” much more efficiently from any of a number of Pacific nations.

And we would be doing those power projections much more securely than by putting all of our security eggs in a single German basket.

We also can fulfill our own NATO commitments much more effectively and overtly with those German-stationed troops redeployed to northern and eastern European nations, nations who still care about their own and their mutual defense, nations who still remember an existence under Soviet Russian occupation.

In the end, as I wrote earlier, Germany’s angst has nothing to do with defense—about which the nation seems to have little interest—and has much to do with the potential loss of all of those millions of American dollars spent on the German economy by tens of thousands of American military family members and by the soldiers themselves.

Were Germany interested in anything else, it would meet its voluntarily entered into commitment of 2% of its GDP for defense without any of its…delays.