Tag Archives: responsibilities

“The lady should always walk on the inside.”

Posted on by
Reply

Like nearly all blanket, all-encompassing rules, this one is just dumba*. A letter writer recounted an anecdote from early in his relationship with his wife.

My wife and I were walking down 5th Ave. in Manhattan with her on the outside closer to the street while I was on the inside…. We passed a man who promptly chastised me: “The lady should always walk on the inside.”

The letter writer meekly complied, and he was wrong to do so; although, his error was not in his timidity in the face of the officious, self-important accoster.

When my wife and I go for our walks, significant parts of the walks are along a greenbelt frequented by bobcats and, occasionally, coyotes. The bobcats mostly leave humans alone, though they want watching with the same caution with which they watch us. Coyotes, though, are much more aggressive and often attack the humans they encounter.

When we’re along those greenbelts, we cross, and my wife walks on the outside, the street side, while I switch to the inside, the side toward the danger. That danger is small, but it’s larger than the danger from the street.

The letter writer should have similarly assessed the relative dangers and adjusted their walking sides accordingly. In an earlier time, the lady generally walked on the gentleman’s left so he could keep his sword hand free in order to draw promptly against a brigand. That sort of danger obtains today, also, even if it isn’t a sword that the gentleman, or the lady, is carrying.

Saudis Want Negotiations

Posted on by
Reply

Saudia Arabia is worried that the Houthis, a terrorist client of Iran, will close the Bab al-Mandeb and thereby block Saudi oil shipments from leaving the southern end of the Red Sea enroute to India, Asia, and points east. They fear an Iranian push on the Houthis in response to President Donald Trump’s (R) move to block the Strait of Hormuz against Iranian oil leaving, ships entering with a view to loading up on Iranian oil, and ships exiting that have paid the Iranian protection money.

Never mind that ships leaving with non-Iranian oil or other cargo—including the Saudis’ oil—and that have not paid the protection vig are free of the Trumpian blockade.

Against all that, the Saudis want Trump to go back to negotiating with the Iranian terrorists. Negotiate, the Saudis want, anything, anything to keep the Bab al-Mandeb open. Please.

No. Trump’s blockade must stay in place, and the destruction of the IRGC’s small boat fleet must resume forthwith, along with the resumed destruction of Iranian missiles and rockets and their launchers, along with the destruction of Iran’s drone inventory, launchers, and ability to manufacture any weapons of any type. It’s not possible to have meaningful negotiations with terrorists.

If the Saudis really are that married to negotiations and attendant terrorist accommodations, let them reach their own accommodation with the Houthi terrorists. Alternatively, the Saudis could get serious about fighting and destroying the Houthis themselves in place of their years of desultory, perfunctory potshots at the occasional Houthi enclave.

Misreading

Posted on by
Reply

In his letter in The Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section, the Reverand Carmen Mele decried the deaths of more than 100 children at an Iranian school that occurred as a result of our country’s armed forces‘ bombing as a violation of just war principles.

This is a misreading of the situation. What the highly intelligent and learned man of the cloth chose to omit is that the school was adjacent to the military target, an adjacency that the Iranian regime deliberately chose in an effort to use those children as shields for its military, a common practice by terrorists.

The deaths of those children are deeply regrettable, but the responsibility for those deaths lies on the backs of those terrorists who so badly abused those children. This is well understood by any serious student of just war concepts.

Big Brother’s Nanny Sister

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump (R) wants to let businesses allow private equity investments be included in their 401(k) Plans so employees can invest in them with their retirement savings. After all, unions, those voting bloc and funders for the Progressive-Democratic Party do, with enthusiasm.

Nope, say those same Progressive-Democratic Party politicians. We get to do it. You others don’t. Just look at those collapsing private equity funds now. Besides, the Labor Department is only letting those 401(k)s have risky investments that could include Trump meme coins.

Labor says otherwise.

The Labor Department is proposing to clarify that employers don’t violate their fiduciary duty merely by incorporating private equity, real estate and other “alternative” investments in 401(k) fund options.

Nothing else.

I agree that private equity is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad investment. However, that’s a matter for the individual investor to decide. It should not be a matter for Nanny Statists like Party politicians to actively bar, nor should it be a matter for Republicans of any stripe to passively bar by not permitting.

Caveat emptor, and caveat collocator.

Any Excuse To Not Participate

Posted on by
Reply

On the matter of reopening the Strait of Hormuz, we get this from Europe’s government men and women:

Naval escorts for tankers through such a narrow waterway in a war zone would be nearly impossible, say allied officials and military experts. Reopening the strait would more likely come after a cease-fire and through international pressure on Iran, they say.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron made the claim explicit:

“It would take forever and would expose all those crossing the strait to risks” of Iranian attack[.]

Never mind the far greater risks to Europe’s (and Asia’s) economies from letting Iran keep the Strait closed while the chattering classes of politicians yap and arf with Iran’s surviving mullahs.

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper:

Iran is trying to hold the global economy hostage in the Strait of Hormuz[.]

NSS. But, international pressure? Who will feel that the most? The short answer is Europe and Asia. Iran has already named its terms: pay us a toll and stop supporting the US in any way, and your ships may pass. Tribute by any name….

Stalin’s question regarding the Pope has relevance today, rephrased by me: how many ships do Europe’s navies have? Embarrassingly for those nations’ governing men and women, the answer is virtually none. Farzin Nadimi, Washington Institute Senior Fellow, on the matter of dealing with Iran’s small fast attack boats blocking the Strait:

Such vessels can largely be deterred by the US dominant air power, but “European powers will not be able, and probably not willing, to replace that capability[.]”

This sort of…shortfall…both in physical capability and mental toughness is the result of those governments’ conscious decisions, through generations of governments, to not bother with their own defense establishments and instead to freeload off rely on American defenses, blood, and treasure.

Now they’re hiding from that simple fact and bleating that military action won’t open the Strait. Which of course is true enough absent American participation. Those nations don’t have any military establishment worthy of the name, much less one capable of the task of reopening and holding open the Strait so the oil and natural gas they need far more than we do can flow freely and without humiliating tribute paid Iran.