Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Biden’s Escalation Echoes LBJ’s Mistake

Biden’s Escalation Echoes LBJ’s Mistake

 

Joe “don't know much about history” Biden, as the song goes, escalates U.S. involvement in the no-win war in the Ukraine, in an echo of how a similar no-win escalation in Vietnam ended the political career of Democrat President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) in 1968. By surprisingly visiting Kyiv on Monday and promising increased American financial support for a corrupt regime on Russia's border, Biden is directly provoking the mighty Russian bear. 

Russia’s President Putin has already responded by suspending Russia’s participation in the New START nuclear arms treaty, which is the only remaining major nuclear treaty between Russia and the U.S. Putin’s linking of nuclear weapons to Biden’s actions is a chilling reminder of the growing risks of Biden’s reckless intervention in that hopeless conflict. 

Biden imperils the United States even worse than LBJ did because Russia has far greater military firepower than North Vietnam ever had. Russia has long-range missiles that could easily reach unprotected American targets, and so does its new ally China, which reportedly sent a high-level delegation to Moscow on Tuesday to increase ties between those former antagonists. 

Congress has not authorized this war, and the American people have never been asked to approve it. Public support for sending American weapons to Ukraine has dropped from 60% last year to less than 50% last week, according to a new poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.  

An NBC News poll last month showed that merely 41% of Americans approve Biden’s approach to this war. Young voters are more opposed to this entanglement, and they are a key swing demographic in elections.

One of the few Republicans who did well in a swing state last November was the one who spoke out against continued American involvement in this war. JD Vance won by a near-landslide with that campaign position in Ohio, where there are many immigrants from Ukraine. 

Democrats should take a history lesson in how the Vietnam War issue took down LBJ in 1968, when he was at the peak of his political power and younger than age 60. He appeared invincible for reelection against a weak Republican opponent, the twice-defeated retread Richard Nixon, who had been humiliated by a 5-point loss for governor of his home state of California. 

But then an unfunded, obscure senator-poet from Minnesota named Gene McCarthy, not the anti-communist Joe McCarthy from Wisconsin, challenged LBJ in the first presidential primary in New Hampshire. Resistance to LBJ’s pro-war stance enabled McCarthy to embarrass the incumbent by denying him a majority. 

LBJ departed the race by the end of the month, and his vice president Hubert Humphrey was ultimately nominated by Democrats for what became a tight contest that fall. Then, as now, young voters were less pro-war than the Democrat politicians, and Nixon appealed to young voters by promising to bring an end to America’s involvement in Vietnam.   

Polls today show that only a tiny percentage of voters are undecided as to which of the two major parties they will support in the next election. Republicans would do well, as Nixon did in 1968 and JD Vance did last year, to focus on young voters who do not support perpetual war. 

The two ends of the political spectrum, the Right and Left, align against the middle on this issue of escalating the war in Ukraine. Moderate Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who relies on globalist support to cling to his power as the leader of Senate Republicans, is hurting our country and his party by siding with Biden on Ukraine. 

While Mitch McConnell is working with his fellow octogenarian Joe Biden to push the wrong war at the wrong time, younger conservative Republicans in both chambers of Congress are speaking out sharply against it. “They can keep him,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) stated in outrage about Biden’s prioritizing a war halfway around the world over the crisis at our southern border and the toxic train wreck catastrophe in Ohio. 

As tweeted by freshman Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO), who was elected with the support of Trump, “If you want to understand why so many Americans are frustrated right now: Biden is in Ukraine before Ohio.” 

Yet globalists who profit from perpetual war in distant lands expect to win this issue in the Swamp. McConnell’s continuing support of the war gives Biden less to be worried about in his reelection campaign for president if Democrats renominate him. 

On Saturday, at the globalist Munich Security Conference in Germany, where Kamala Harris made a fool of herself last year, the prime minister of the United Kingdom recklessly vowed to provide long-range weaponry that would enable Ukraine to attack targets inside Russia. Europeans should be told not to expect U.S. help if Russia or China retaliate against them.

https://townhall.com/columnists/johnandandyschlafly/2023/02/22/bidens-escalation-echoes-lbjs-mistake-n2619807?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=15803c7fc8c68b6fd1f0a5e7f4b59fc49df45d48335d4339ad60f7b0a0c7404d&recip=28668535

No, Trump’s deregulation didn’t cause the East Palestine train disaster

 No, Trump’s deregulation didn’t cause the East Palestine train disaster

Trump East Palestine Ohio train derailment
Former President Donald Trump speaks at East Palestine Fire Department during a visit on Feb. 22 to East Palestine, Ohio, following the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern freight train derailment.
(Jabin BotsfordThe Washington Post via Getty Images)

Facts are stubborn things. So, the best way for Democrats to push a good partisan narrative is to ignore them entirely.

That’s what many on the Left are doing right now in the aftermath of a disastrous train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. They’re attempting to pin the blame for the ensuing chemical disaster on former President Donald Trump and “deregulation” more broadly, arguing that the Trump administration repealed an Obama-era safety rule that could’ve prevented this tragic accident.

Progressive voices ranging from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the White House to the popular “Pod Save America” hosts and huge liberal social media pages such as Occupy Democrats have made this accusation or insinuation.

There’s just one problem: It’s complete nonsense. We can debate the pros and cons of that regulation, but it has nothing to do with the current controversy. As a simple matter of fact, it would not have applied to the train that derailed in East Palestine.

You don’t have to take my word for it; take it from the New York Times, hardly a pro-Trump or anti-regulation source.

“Since the Feb. 3 derailment in Ohio, some lawmakers and activists have pointed to a 2015 safety regulation adopted by the Obama administration as an example of the changes that they say are needed to make railroads safer. … But after lobbying by the railroad industry, the Trump administration repealed the rule in 2018,” the New York Times reports . Yet it goes on to admit that: “Had the rule remained in effect, it would not have applied to the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine.”

The New York Times's source for this is Jennifer Homendy, a Democrat and head of the National Transportation Safety Board.

“Anyone speculating about what happened, didn’t happen, or should've happened is misleading a suffering community — PLEASE STOP SPREADING MISINFORMATION,” Homendy said in a Twitter thread . “For example … Some are saying the ECP (electronically controlled pneumatic) brake rule, if implemented, would’ve prevented this derailment. FALSE — here’s why.”

“The ECP braking rule would’ve applied ONLY to HIGH HAZARD FLAMMABLE TRAINS,” she explained. “The train that derailed in East Palestine was a MIXED FREIGHT TRAIN. This means even if the rule had gone into effect, this train wouldn't have had ECP brakes.”

And, what’s more, even if the train had had ECP brakes, it still wouldn’t have prevented the disaster, Homendy says.

So, it’s simply factually bankrupt to push the narrative that blame for this disaster lies at Republicans’ feet for their deregulation. It may well be that the company messed up big-time here. It’s entirely possible that some hypothetical regulation could’ve prevented it. But it’s also possible that it’s a freak accident no one could’ve prevented or that the company messed up in ways already contrary to current rules and regulations.

We simply don’t know.

The rush to find someone to blame or a preexisting ideological narrative to superimpose this incident onto is deeply counterproductive. On that front, it’s also worth noting that, while their response can certainly be criticized, this disaster wasn’t caused by President Joe Biden or Buttigieg, either.

Everyone involved should focus less on finding a partisan scapegoat and more on helping the victims of this disaster.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/no-trumps-deregulation-didnt-cause-the-east-palestine-train-disaster

Don's Tuesday Column

      THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   2/28/2023

Trump Derangement Writ Large


Nearly 180 million saw the coverage of Donald Trump’s visit to East Palestine, OH (144 million social media users, 34 million traditional viewers) vs. 20 million viewers of Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech. We watched both online recordings and network clips; numbers are fungible but true.


Transportation honcho, “America’s (upward-failing) Mayor,” Pete Buttigieg, did little to reverse his established caricature: Alfred E. Newman’s “What, me worry?” persona. Apropos white construction helmet, bright orange/yellow “safety vest,” and spiffy dress boots.


Trump is both loved and revered by roughly half of America’s electorate, having received the largest increase in votes for his reelection of any president running for a second term. His position videos posted on Truthsocial.com are worth watching even for his opponents, critics and enemies; at least be able to object to what he actually says and proposes.


His most recent one outlines solid steps to reduce crime in our cities and nation. He addresses the roles played by drugs, fatherless families, anti-cop sentiment, and the “defund police” movement. Lax enforcement, by ideologically-leftist D.A.s and prosecutors, shows a misguided racial-equity obsession to release suspects and criminals for fewer minorities (i.e. Black men) in prisons.


Americans have been subjected to leftist propaganda, genuine misinformation, fabrications and knowing lies by White House Occupant Joe Biden, his mouthpieces and flacks; and the delusion-enabling sycophants in cable and network “news” outlets. Progressive Marxists rule most of education.


They bear much of the blame for our nation’s irreconcilable divisions dwarfing those that preceded the Civil War. Both sides—while divided to the point of violence over slavery—shared a common Christian faith, reverence for our Founding Fathers, love for America’s sovereignty; and the primacy of a free enterprise economy free of “royal” ruling classes.


Slavery was, by Constitutional means, limited and forbidden for America’s expansion—and for importation from abroad—even as it flourished elsewhere. Slavery did not “build this country,” as the Disney-created cartoon of angry kids spouting racist theories would have you believe. Barely one quarter of Southerners owned slaves; the South’s economy was a fraction of America’s economy. The North’s economy owed nothing to slavery, though some wealthy urban elites used domestic slaves.


The Democrat/Socialist movement is anti-freedom of expression, anti-rule of law, anti-Americanism, pro-sexual libertine-ism and perversion as a way of life, and forced allegiance—by citizens in businesses, corporations, universities, non-profits, artistic and media circles—to “woke” progressive ideology. Those veering in word, deed, contributions, or lifestyle from that cult-like thought-control can be subjected to “re-education,” sanctions, boycotts, harassment out of homes and jobs, and even legal persecution.


Trump “derangement” has driven Biden’s agenda from his first proclamations, executive orders, bureaucratic initiatives, and Democrat legislation. To paraphrase the Groucho Marx ditty, “Whatever it is, I’m against it,” the Biden-crat motto was “Whatever Trump did, we’ll reverse it.” The results are plain unless you believe the bloviations from Biden et al over your own “lying eyes”:


1) A literal invasion, from Central American and other nations, of law-defying “aliens” (federal code term) flooding every corner of America, enabled by Biden’s “open borders” policies and refusal to complete Trump’s border wall. The unspoken agenda: use hard-earned taxes paid by workers, redistributed for entitlements and benefits to future Democrat voters expecting to get fast-tracked to citizenship. Sick, crass, illegal.


2) The designed-diminishment of your purchasing power, lifestyle and future retirement via government-spending-induced inflation. Trump’s inflation=1.4 percent; Biden’s inflation=6.6 to 8+ percent over the last 2 years. Do the math—$5 trillion in pandemic spending (and “Build Back Broker”) is about one-sixth of our national debt of $30+ trillion, which is about a 16 percent reduction of your money’s value.


“Why the latest inflation report sent stocks tumbling” (Spencer Brown, townhall.com), puts to rest the delusional happy talk from Biden and Veep Harris. The “personal consumption expenditures” (PCE) price index, used by the Fed to gauge inflation, rose above expectations. January’s PCE was 0.6 (vs. 0.4 expected) percent month-over-month inflation—that’s an annual rate of over 7 percent (even though the official year-over-year rate was 5.4 percent, above expected 5.0 percent).


You’ve noticed the double-digit inflation for stuff you buy and use every day; it never happened under Trump. “Electricity prices surged 14.3% in 2022, double overall inflation: US report” (utilitydive.com). Kamala Harris’ scratchy-voiced lies: “We have reduced heating and electricity bills so folks have more money in their pocket…”


3) On the East Palestine, OH, train derailment, it’s a special level of political sickness—“Trump derangement syndrome” writ large—to twist the record, policies, rail company malfeasance, and plain logic into “Trump’s fault,” years after he left office. Lies about Republicans dismantling rail safety, and selling out to rail industry lobbyists, don’t stand up to scrutiny.


Unions opposed technology, preferring dues-paying employees; environmental opposition to train transport of fossil fuels factored in; that train already had heat sensor alarms going off; it also had 3 people on the train. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy: “the derailment would have occurred…even with ECP brakes…because the wheel bearing failed on car 23.” Facts matter.


I doubt that local Democrats are so hateful as to agree with The View’s Joy Behar that East Palestine deserved that tragedy because they voted for Trump.

GOP Attacks Over Pete Buttigieg's Incompetence Triggers His Aides

GOP Attacks Over Pete Buttigieg's Incompetence Triggers His Aides

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Yeah, it’s ‘dump on Pete’ Friday, and he has earned every penny. Yet, I will say there have been many instances regarding Mayor Pete’s visit to Ohio where better word choice could have been considered. When answering questions from the media, Buttigieg apologized for “losing his train of thought.” East Palestine, Ohio, is the site of a toxic train crash earlier this month. It took two weeks for the Biden White House to sign off on the Federal Emergency Management Agency distributing disaster aid. It took longer for Pete to address the crash, which could rapidly become an environmental fiasco; the clean-up could take years.

Residents are rightfully reticent to drink the water after hearing mixed messages from federal officials regarding safety. In many ways, the people of East Palestine are on their own. While Biden has been criticized for his lethargic response to the crash, Buttigieg taking the most heat recently, which had chipped away at the transportation secretary’s saint-like patience. Politico had an unintentionally hilarious piece about how the aides of the besieged Biden official are equally annoyed with the attacks against their boss, declaring that Pete is taking an “unfair pounding” over the disaster (via Politico): 

This month’s toxic derailment in a small Ohio village has put Pete Buttigieg under pressure like never before — leaving him scrambling to contain a public health and transportation crisis only partially under his purview while absorbing the brunt of attacks from the Biden administration’s adversaries. 

Publicly and privately, signs are growing that the Transportation secretary’s usual Eagle Scout patience is giving way to frustration. 

He has gotten into Twitter spats with U.S. senators. His curt brush-off of a Daily Caller reporter who ambushed him during a walk turned into a viral video that has drawn more than 3 million views since Tuesday night. And on Wednesday, Buttigieg’s allies were complaining that he’s taking an unfair pounding over the disaster — all because of his perceived ambitions as a one-time and future presidential hopeful. 

“Pete Buttigieg has taken a lot of bullets for the president on this,” one senior Democrat said Wednesday, insisting on anonymity to talk about a crisis that the person was not authorized to discuss.

Still, Buttigieg acknowledged in a CBS News interview Tuesday that he “could have spoken sooner about how strongly I felt about this incident, and that’s a lesson learned for me.”

For Buttigieg, a former Indiana mayor and one of the Biden administration’s most avid political communicators, what began as a rail and ecological calamity has mushroomed in just 20 days into his most serious test yet as leader of the sprawling Department of Transportation. 

He hasn’t managed it well, which is a grade that could be applied to his handling of the supply chain crisis, for which he bolted his duties for paternity leave. Pete also failed to clean up the aviation travel nightmare that crippled scores of families over Christmas. Like Biden, he’s a ‘go through the motions' type of government worker, which doesn’t cut it.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/02/24/politico-says-buttigiegs-aides-are-triggered-by-the-gop-attacks-over-their-boss-incompetence-n2619917?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&recip=28668535

Monday, February 27, 2023

Some Basic Questions Democrats Can’t (Or Won’t) Answer

Some Basic Questions Democrats Can’t (Or Won’t) Answer

Derek Hunter

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Remember science? Not the way it is now with the absolute obedience to progressive politics over evidence and common sense, but the way it was back when you were a kid and science was the embraced questioning of everything; remember that? Questioning is no longer allowed, unless it’s of your sexuality after being inundated with left-wing propaganda about how being gender non-binary is not only somehow enlightened, but a real thing. It is not. Most, in fact, of what Democrats inflict on the world are not real things, and even though questioning is no longer acceptable, I have some questions I’m going to ask anyway.

On “climate change” I have to ask how it is we’re supposed to take you seriously when nothing you’ve predicted has come to pass? We’re well past 30 years of 10-year predictions of coastal flooding, yet Florida still exists. In fact, all the 10-year predictions of doom and gloom haven’t happened. 

If you were the leader of a cult who told their followers the world would come to an end on Sunday, come Monday morning you’re going to have some serious explaining to do. With the climate change cult there is no similar question, all they’ve done is stop making 10-year predictions and now make 100-year predictions. This isn’t because the data they have is somehow more accurate the further away from its collection you go, it’s because everyone who heard the prediction will be dead when it doesn’t happen. 

A 10-year prediction isn’t provable, but it will come to pass in most people’s life. A 100-year prediction isn’t provable, but it’s also not disprovable since it will be long forgotten by the time it doesn’t come to pass. It’s brilliant, actually, if your desire is to simply scare the hell out of people to force them to act. If you’re at all interested in the truth…less so. 

So, if we haven’t acted on climate change and the “polluting” countries are still pumping out CO2 like it’s a sport, why haven’t your predictions come true? Why didn’t you try to save Barack Obama millions when he bought his mega-estate on Martha’s Vineyard? 

On the trans issue, how did all of you lose every bit of life experience and knowledge you’d accumulated over your lifetime inside of about 15 minutes? You don’t really believe the person next to you at a urinal is a woman simply because they peek-a-boo their privates behind thigh fat, do you?

If trans women are every bit as much women and real women, why do they need the prefix “trans”? If trans women are real women why is it that zero straight elected Democrats have ever dated one? Wouldn’t Bill Clinton have gotten what he got from Monica from one by now? Wouldn’t Hunter Biden, who filmed himself having sex with what sure came off as human trafficked, forced prostitutes have filmed himself having sex with a tucked partner, if only by accident? When the chips are down it sure seems like Democrats do, in fact, know what a woman is. Why is that?

I know you think the LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ “community” are “marginalized” and, therefore, are in desperate need of coddling (bit of a white savior complex you have going), but the definition of the word “marginalized” is “placed in a position of little or no importance, influence, or power,” according to dictionary.com (at least until some leftist realizes that’s the definition and they order it changed). Why are the people who have all the protections of cancel culture, who are seemingly every third character on television, tenured academia, and a fascistic political party constantly policing speech on their side “marginalized”? Aren’t we normal people, the ones marginalized by being forced to deny reality?

On the border, I’ll make this quick: Why do you call illegal aliens “migrants”? “Migrants” migrate, it’s right there in their name. The millions of people flooding across the southern border at your invitation and urging aren’t planning on going anywhere; if they aren’t deported, they’ll never leave. They, therefore, are illegal aliens. 

Words matter, or so you people who call everyone a bigot who refers to a guy in a dress as “he,” so why don’t they matter at the border? Migrants enter the country for specific work, generally the harvesting of crops, then go home after completion with their pay. Illegal aliens stay, avail themselves of our social safety net – clog emergency rooms, slow down the education process of American kids while costing the system an untold fortune, receive welfare benefits, etc. – and will never, short of a mega lottery win, be a net benefit to society, even if they were made legal. 

I guess my question for you is how can people, unable to communicate in our language and largely illiterate in their own, ever contribute as much (forget more) than they take from our country? Why is the fact that their country sucks our responsibility? Shouldn’t they try to fix their own country rather than be allowed to be a drain on ours? And why do Democrats actively seek to implement in this country the very economic system they marched thousands of miles to escape? (That last one is a bit of a trick question, I know, because you’re convinced that, even though it never has anywhere it’s ever been tried, YOU will be the people to finally implement socialism/communism successfully. You won’t.)

I have more questions, of course, but these are just a few I have for those Democrats out there living their lives looking down their noses at those of us who simply won’t obey them. (We never will.) I don’t expect leftists to answer because the answers are obvious, but to know them would require curiosity and the ability to think critically for themselves, and Democrats simply lack the tools.

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2023/02/26/some-basic-questions-democrats-cant-or-wont-answer-n2619966?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=15803c7fc8c68b6fd1f0a5e7f4b59fc49df45d48335d4339ad60f7b0a0c7404d&recip=28668535

I’ll Pass on Celebrating Diversity

I’ll Pass on Celebrating Diversity

 

AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

There was a time, believe it or not, when leftists said “Celebrate Diversity” and meant it; when it was largely a slogan on a bumper sticker. Now it’s an order: “CELEBRATE DIVERSITY…OR ELSE!” Sorry, I’m not interested. 

I’ve always had a natural inclination to push back against anything I was forced to do – insist I’m supposed to care about something and the odds that I won’t increase exponentially. Take, for example, US soccer. During the World Cup all the ads were about “We’re going to do this” or whatever their slogan was. The American public simply doesn’t care about soccer and the US sucks at it compared to the rest of the world, but these corporate sponsors had to do something. It made me root against them, which was easy because I knew they’d lose.

Women’s soccer is much more annoying, by the way, they’re little leftists with purity tests demanding obedience. I’m not interested in cheering for people who hate this country while demanding they be cheered. Hard pass.

When it comes to “diversity,” I have the same attitude. Skin color or who you sleep with are the least interesting parts of what anyone is or does. If that defines you it tells me you’re not bringing anything substantive to the table and I’m not interested. 

I’m tall, 6 feet 5 inches; should I demand high fives over that? No. I didn’t have anything to do with it. Hell, I smoked for a long time, so I tried to stunt it. 

Yet, we now have a political party that insists the differences be celebrated, exclusively. That people be treated differently based on their skin color. We used to have a word for that, didn’t we?

What I find even more bizarre are the leftists who buy into it and make it individual. Hearing some Democrat in a town hall or whatever talk about how they’re a “diverse individual” is incredibly odd and, honestly, stupid. But we are dealing with Democrats here…

I want nothing to do with it. Not because I care what these people do, I honestly don’t – if whatever they do is done with other adults who are willing, I couldn’t care less. The problem comes in when they seek to force their will on children.

How many graphically sexual books targeting children need to be highlighted before Democrats think, “Hmm, maybe explicit sex between adults and kids isn’t really something that will help kids learn to read or write?” How about just thinking that things Hustler would’ve edited out of their letter section might not belong in school libraries might not be a good thing?

Democrats, rather than deal with the reality they support for grooming purposes (political grooming mostly, though there is little doubt there’s a lot of the other kind too), simply ignore it when they can. Yet, they also demand the sentiments behind it be celebrated. 

What kind of creep would “celebrate” a drag queen grinding their genitals in front of little kids? Democrats. 

Celebrate diversity…except when it’s a joke you don’t like. Tiger Woods can be attacked over a tampon joke by white ladies because why not? Oddly, these people immediately reverted back to knowing what a woman is when they could take offense at something. 

Kamala Harris MUST be celebrated not only because she’s black, but because she’s also Indian (though she rarely mentions that outside of speaking to Indian or Asian women’s groups, weirdly), but Nikki Haley must be attacked for not being Indian enough because she’s a Republican (both of which were done by NBC News, by the way).

Meanwhile, Harris can tweet out, “My message to Black women and girls everywhere: Never ask for permission to lead.” Are women and girls with other skin colors supposed to wait for permission to lead? By the way, what is a woman?

Nothing that comes out of the mouths of Democrats makes any sense or is remotely intellectually honest in any way. They don’t deserve your respect, they have earned your contempt. Don’t play their game. 

I will celebrate accomplishments, that’s it, and not even all of those. I will choose which accomplishments I deem worthy of celebration and I can promise you that none of those things will have anything do with what people had nothing do with.

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2023/02/21/ill-pass-on-celebrating-diversity-n2619765?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=15803c7fc8c68b6fd1f0a5e7f4b59fc49df45d48335d4339ad60f7b0a0c7404d&recip=28668535