Tag Archives: responsibilities

Again I Ask

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I asked over the weekend where in the world is President Joe Biden (D).

I ask again on a related matter. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in Ukraine again last Friday, this time to meet with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy regarding, among other things, a proposal to train large numbers of Ukrainian soldiers.

The training operation would instruct up to 10,000 Ukrainian servicemen for three weeks every 120 days “using battle-proven British Army expertise.”
The program is intended to help Kyiv “accelerate their deployment, rebuild their forces, and scale-up their resistance as they continue to defend their nation’s sovereignty against Russian invaders.”
International partners would also be invited to take part in the training program.

It’s true enough we have small numbers of special forces types in eastern Europe training small units of Ukrainian soldiers and others in Poland training Ukrainian soldiers on the equipment we’re sending in dribs and drabs to Ukraine. That’s critical training, too.

But the Brits have gone all in, working with Zelenskyy to set up a training program that will turn out roughly a division of Ukrainian soldiers every four months.

Where is Biden on this sort of large-scale support? Why isn’t he having his SecState and SecDef working with Ukraine’s Defense Minister to set up something like this—together with serious amounts of equipment?

Johnson’s statement:

My visit today, in the depths of this war, is to send a clear and simple message to the Ukrainian people: the UK is with you, and we will be with you until you ultimately prevail. As Ukrainian soldiers fire UK missiles in defense of your nation’s sovereignty, they do so also in defense of the very freedoms we take for granted.

I ask where is Joe Biden? His direct remarks are deafeningly silent, and his remarks through his Press Secretary, his Secretary of State, his Secretary of Defense are just so much wishy-washy word kale.

And again: why isn’t Biden going over there to talk face-to-face with Zelenskyy, walk the streets of Kyiv and Bucha and Novyi and Staryi Bykiv, even as far east as Kharkiv and Kramatorsk to see first hand the destruction being wreaked by the barbarian in Ukraine?

And this, regarding Zelenskyy himself two weeks ago:

Overnight it emerged that Zelenskiy had visited nearby frontlines on Sunday to raise soldiers’ morale. The president revealed he had taken a risky trip to Lysychansk and nearby Soledar that at one point took him a couple of kilometres from Russian positions.

But Biden won’t go anywhere near Ukraine. Why is that?

Shortchanging

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And piecemeal, at that.

Recall that President Joe Biden (D) and his administration has sent to Ukraine Poland for Ukraine four multiple-launch rocket artillery systems. These HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) weapons are shoot and scoot weapons that are capable of launching rockets with very high precision onto targets as far away as 190 miles, but Biden has provided the systems with rockets that only can reach a bit under 45 miles. Biden doesn’t mind that at those ranges, the systems are still outranged by the Russian systems the barbarian is using in Ukraine.

Four of them. They’re in Poland, not Ukraine, because they’re being used to train Ukrainian soldiers. The systems won’t arrive in Ukraine until the end of the month.

Why can’t Ukraine have the longer range rockets for the HIMARS? Because, even though the Ukrainians have promised to use the systems for defense and not to attack targets inside Russia—a promise Biden extracted even for the shorter-range HIMARS—because Biden wants Russia, the invader, to be a sanctuary country, safe against counterattack by the nation the invader has invaded. Even though Russian forces are firing from within Russia as well as from within Ukraine, and even though Russian forces stage troops, weapons, ammunition, fuel, food, and other consumables in Russia a short distance from Ukraine.

Why can’t Ukraine have the longer range rockets? Also because Biden plainly doesn’t trust Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to keep his word—which gravely insults the leader of the nation whose existence is in the wind and whose nation is fighting so staunchly for survival.

What Ukraine needs: Oleksiy Arestovych, a military advisor on Zelenskyy’s Chief of Staff staff, says Ukraine needs 60 of this sort of weapons system.

If we get 60 of these systems then the Russians will lose all ability to advance anywhere, they will be stopped dead in their tracks. If we get 40 they will advance, albeit very slowly with heavy casualties; with 20 they will continue to advance with higher casualties than now[.]

And

“The fewer we get, the worse our situation will be. Our troops will continue to die and we will continue to lose ground,” Arestovych said, particularly if countries with dozens of systems only “decide to donate four or five.”

Why can’t Ukraine have more than four HIMARS systems?

Because Biden doesn’t care. He’s satisfied with virtue-signaling.

It’s not just piecemeal. It’s casually destructive.

The Putin Producer Price Inflation

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More evidence of President Joe Biden’s (D) fantasy of a time travel weapon possessed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. This time, the evidence is the Producer Price Index, as published by the US Labor Department and printed by The Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ‘s graph is constructed from data released by Labor. The monthly data in the graph are hard to read, but the WSJ‘s rendition allows mouse-over readings. What those readings illustrate is instructive.

In January 2021, when Biden took office, the year-on-year PPI was 1.6%. By the next month, it had risen to 3%. A year later, January 2022, the PPI had gone to 10.1% year-on-year. In February 2022—Putin didn’t invade Ukraine until the end of that month—the PPI was 10.4%. By May it was 10.8%.

My third-grade arithmetic says that fully 96% of the PPI’s increase had occurred before Putin’s invasion.

Plainly, for Biden’s blame-shifting assertions to be true, he has to be, once again, insisting that Putin’s regime has succeeded in developing time travel and is using it to wage economic war against us while he wages murderously killing war against Ukraine.

Oh, and one more thing. Given the lags inherent in economic forces as they move through a real-world economy, these producer-level data essentially baked in even the consumer inflation outcomes following Putin’s invasion. That shows even more clearly how fantastical Biden’s assertions are.

Speaking of Rule of Law….

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At any rate, I am, even if our Attorney General disdains to, or even to operate under it.

Federal US code 1507, states that any individual who “pickets or parades” with the “intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer” near a US court or “near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer” will be fined, or “imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”

Never mind that the avowed purpose of the protesters is to influenc[e] any judge while protesting near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge. Indeed, the purpose of any protest is to influence the target of the protest.

Yet Attorney General Merrick Garland refuses to take any action at all regarding such protestors, much less arrest them and hale them into criminal court to stand trial for their actions. This, even after the Justices’ home addresses were made public, even after one Justice became the target of a murder attempt, even after the children of another Justice became targets of the…protesters. Or in an atmosphere created by a Progressive-Democratic Party Senator openly threatening two Justices by name.

Again, I say: we dodged a bullet—one of President Joe Biden’s (D) hated large caliber 9mm ones that he’s so desperate to ban—when we didn’t get Garland on our Supreme Court.

On the Matter of the Capital Police…

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…officer entering a Republican Congressman’s Capital Building offices and photographing his writings on his office white board. There’s this from the Capital Police Department Inspector General:

The officer reported that during a routine patrol he found the door to [Congressman Troy (R, TX] Nehls’ office was wide open and “nothing was being used to prop the door open.” The officer said he entered to ensure there was no danger, then discovered the writings on the white board and photographed them because he considered them suspicious.
But the inspector general reviewed the doors to Nehls’ office and could not replicate keeping any of the congressman’s office doors open without having them propped by an item.
“All three doors only opened inward into the office suite and would close automatically when released,” the IG noted. “All three doors also automatically locked when closed during the examination.
“The only method of keeping one of these doors open on its own would be to prop it open with an object or to set the lock bolt in place when the door was open, in which case the door would only partially close due to the lock bolt preventing the door from fully closing.”

The officer personally considered what was written on the white board—legislative plans, according to Nehls—”suspicious.” And he lied about the door being wide open and unpropped.

Hmm….