Saturday, December 3, 2016

Saturday roundup

Still need convincing that the EPA is a poisonous body that needs to be dismantled pronto? Look at it this way:


The new implementation of EPA rules on heavy trucks has boosted the 10-year regulatory burden on America past $1 trillion, 75 percent of which have been imposed by the Obama administration.
That amounts to a one-time charge of $3,080 per person, or an annual cost of $540, according to a new analysis from American Action Forum.
LITD wrote Sarah Palin off last year as one of those Squirrel-Hair Kool-Aid guzzlers like Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Conrad Black, Wayne Allen Root, Ann Coulter - you know the crowd I'm talking about - and it's hard to imagine any such people ever being able to redeem themselves. But Palin just may have made a first step with an op-ed in which she says that the Carrier deal, in its details, had better not  be a one-time package of sweetheart incentives to one particular company, or it's crony capitalism rather than free-market economics.

Walter Hudson at PJ Media offers an argument that is at least worthy of consideration: that conservatives should stop talking about equality of opportunity:

We cannot guarantee equal opportunity for the same reason that we cannot guarantee equal results. Opportunities emerge from a vast array of circumstances, many of which government has no rightful ability to control. If your father is rich, and mine is poor, how can we be born to equal opportunity? What must be done, in practical terms, to equalize those circumstances? It takes us full circle, doesn't it? To provide children with equal opportunity, you must redistribute their parents' wealth. It's the same effect as if mandating equal results, just applied at a different point in the process. Thus, every time conservatives talk about "equal opportunity," they provide rhetorical ammunition to the left. Like results, opportunities are not equal and never will be.
Consider the concept of "white privilege." The complaint regarding privilege is that certain people are afforded unequal opportunity on account of factors beyond merit. If you're a white heterosexual male, you will generally have an easier go than a black lesbian. We often get stuck arguing whether or not such generalizations prove true. But that's the wrong argument.
The real question is: Why does privilege matter? Why should we care whether certain people have it easier than others? Does the mere presence of unequal opportunity present a problem that needs to be solved?

It matters not whether people proceed from unequal opportunity. What matters is why opportunities prove unequal. If the inequality manifests from accidents of nature and the exercise of rights, then there is nothing which government should do about it. Being born to a rich father should not be a crime. Neither should being rich and having a child. People should not be penalized because they were born white, or straight, or with the genes for height or beauty. They should not be punished for having means which others lack, unless it came through force or fraud. Nor should they be punished for being something which others are not. Existing is not a crime.

Is it true then that "all men are created equal?" Yes, but only in the true sense which Jefferson actually meant. Jefferson was not implying an equality of attribute. The equality he noted was legal. Each man should be treated the same under the law, not be made the same by the law. All men have equal right to their life, not the lives of others.

Elliot Abrams, writing at The Weekly Standard, offers, for my money, the best summing-up of the arc of Fidel Castro's evil career, as well as the motivation behind the Left's adoration of him over these past 57 years.

John Hawkins, writing at Townhall, gets a parlor game going in my head. He lists five reasons why the Most Equal Comrade will be viewed as one of the worst presidents of all time. He admits in his opening paragraph that "compiling [such] a list . . . seems like a project for a book rather than a column." Which leaves readers free to come up with additions. Still, his five are biggies that belong on any compilation: nearly doubling the national debt, unleashing the genie from the nuclear weapons bottle in the Middle East, facilitating illegal immigration, encouraging racial polarization, and losing a war we had already won in Iraq.

Seems to me that taking a crowbar to the American health-care system would be the next addition to the list. And then imposing tyranny in the name of an utter fiction (anthropogenic climate change).




21 comments:

  1. We had 8 years of peace with Obama and I suspect the ole preemptors will be blaming their "clean up" wars on him and maybe the BIg One they'll claim they're defending.

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  2. Peace? Tell it to those killed & wounded in Benghazi, Ft Hood, San Bernardino and Boston. To the humiliated sailors captured by Iran last winter

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  3. Those are wars now? My fear is that the like will be rationales to shock and awe again. Exactly what the terrorists want. Maybe the winna Trump will have them all licking his boots but you'll never find me doing that.

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  4. Pray tell what country or countries we declared war against over the past 8 years? I look at Trump's cabinet and see 1970.

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  5. Iran. North Korea.

    And they each have a powerful adversary of ours behind them: Russia and China, respectively. And then, of course, at least a couple of non-state actors: ISIS and al-Qaeda.

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  6. I must have missed those declarations of war vs Iran & North Korea during the last 8 years of what your ilk calls intentional decline. It's no secret we have engaged in a war vs. terrorism since the Reagan administration, if not before. Get cracking to kick Royal A with Donald Trumps war{s?)

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  7. IRGC commander brags about all the valuable documents seized from US sailors in the January incident:

    http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13950704001022

    31 incidents from January through September this year:

    http://thehill.com/policy/defense/295256-us-military-iranian-behavior-getting-worse-in-persian-gulf

    Threat to shut off the Strait of Hormuz:

    http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-threatens-to-shut-off-strait-of-hormuz/

    Cheating on the "agreement":

    https://www.ft.com/content/9739d5c0-4449-11e6-9b66-0712b3873ae1#axzz4Dol7dl5c

    Missile tests:

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-fires-two-ballistic-missiles-test-state-media-072209934.html?ref=gs

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  8. IRGC commander brags about all the valuable documents seized from US sailors in the January incident:

    http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13950704001022

    31 incidents from January through September this year:

    http://thehill.com/policy/defense/295256-us-military-iranian-behavior-getting-worse-in-persian-gulf

    Threat to shut off the Strait of Hormuz:

    http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-threatens-to-shut-off-strait-of-hormuz/

    Cheating on the "agreement":

    https://www.ft.com/content/9739d5c0-4449-11e6-9b66-0712b3873ae1#axzz4Dol7dl5c

    Missile tests:

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-fires-two-ballistic-missiles-test-state-media-072209934.html?ref=gs

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  9. North Korea's five strategic aims:

    http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/11/north-koreas-missile-madness-show-of-force-or-serious-strategy-video/

    Fifth nuclear test:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-conducts-fifth-nuclear-test-as-regime-celebrates-national-holiday/2016/09/08/9332c01d-6921-4fe3-8f68-c611dc59f5a9_story.html?utm_term=.61218d7cd9ae

    Ballistic missile tests:

    http://barney-quick.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-fruits-of-1953s-inconclusiveness.html

    Propaganda video:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/world/asia/north-korea-propaganda-video-nuclear-strike.html

    "North Korea released a propaganda video on Saturday that depicts a nuclear strike on Washington, along with a warning to “American imperialists” not to provoke the North.
    The four-minute video clip, titled “Last Chance,” uses computer animation to show what looks like an intercontinental ballistic missile flying through the earth’s atmosphere before slamming into Washington, near what appears to be the Lincoln Memorial. A nuclear explosion follows.
    “If the American imperialists provoke us a bit, we will not hesitate to slap them with a pre-emptive nuclear strike,” read the Korean subtitles in the video, which was uploaded to the YouTube channel of D.P.R.K. Today, a North Korean website. 'The United States must choose! It’s up to you whether the nation called the United States exists on this planet or not.'"

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  10. John Podhoretz on the basic timeline of North Korea getting a nuclear arsenal:

    North Korea spent nearly two decades conning other countries into providing free stuff and strengthening its strategic hand in exchange for restraining its nuclear ambitions. To show just how audacious its efforts were, the first country it conned was the Soviet Union, its fellow Stalinist anti-paradise.
    This was in 1985. The Soviets, worried about the North Korean leader’s nutjob grandfather getting his hands on nukes, agreed to build two graphite reactors if North Korea signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. Grandpa did — and screwed the Soviets by preventing nuclear inspectors from entering the country.
    In 1991, Grandpa gets another of his wishes granted when the first Bush administration pulls America’s short-range nuclear weapons off the Korean peninsula in exchange for agreeing to “denuclearization” efforts.
    That worked well: Three years later, North Korea pulls out of the non-proliferation treaty and the world learns it had built a working reactor at Yongbyon for the purpose of enriching uranium to make it bomb-grade.
    The Clinton administration goes into negotiation mode and comes up with the “Agreed Framework.” It was a payoff, plain and simple. Two light nuclear reactors to replace the Soviet-era graphite reactors. And food and fuel in a package deal worth something like $4 billion (almost $7 billion in today’s money).
    Problem solved! Except in 1998 North Korea fires and detonates a giant missile over Japan. Outraged, the United States swings into action. Let nuclear inspectors into the country, the Clinton administration raged. Then it sent more food aid, about $500 million worth.
    “I feel very good about what we’ve done,” said Clinton as he left office. Then, in 2002, the North Koreans officially went nuclear. In 2003, they were harvesting weapons-grade plutonium.
    Then — in the wake of the Iraq war, when nuclear nations briefly were frightened by the prospect of getting attacked by the United States — they said they had stopped. Then they said they would start again in 2008, so the Bush administration actually took North Korea off the list of terrorist nations to appease them and get them to the negotiating table. Talks collapsed immediately, and the following year North Korea did a second nuclear test.
    In 2012, Kim Jong-un’s father dies, and he takes office. The first thing he does is agree to suspend the nuclear program in exchange for — you guessed it — food aid from the United States. The person who announced the deal was Hillary Clinton. “It is our hope that the new leadership will choose to guide their nation onto the path of peace by living up to its obligations,” she said.
    Bzzzt! Sorry, Hillary! In the years since, our intelligence agencies say North Korea now has a small nuclear device that can be loaded onto a missile. And it now claims to have achieved fusion — an order of danger higher than its previous bomb strength. And it has tested various missiles, including ones that could reach the United States.

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  11. Yes, we know all about the threats, but until Trump gets Congress to approve a war, I don't think there has been any declaration. Trump's War(s) will require Congressional approval. Help from God will surely be sought. May the best side win!

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  12. The point is that we are beset by an array of grave threats. We are nowhere near a state of stable peace.

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  13. And I hope that any response will have some substance to it, and not just be something like, "Well, we'll see if Trump can do any better." I should hope that what we're having here is an expiration of actually workable strategies for dealing with these issues.

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  14. Don't ask me, ask China. You know where I stand with statecraft vs. war. But, thank you professor. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/12/05/in-message-to-trump-china-iran-say-nuclear-deal-must-stand.html

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  15. And the fact remains, we did not declare war under Obama. We tried statecraft and he always got a raft of crap from your ilk. You got the powa, go roll....

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  16. "Tried statecraft," which has upped the danger level alarmingly. But Freedom-Haters always expect to get points for "trying."

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  17. "Tried statecraft," which has upped the danger level alarmingly. But Freedom-Haters always expect to get points for "trying."

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  18. Well, of course. But let's not go telling our enemies and adversaries "You folks are as great as those who are our allies. Whatever you want to do, no problem!"

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