Category: Politics

Trying not to start the public floggings

More Reasons

Foreign Affairs, Marxists

Following yesterday’s post about China (and Xi), I see that I’m not the only one who considers them the enemy, for a different reason:

Even if Chinese technological theft is less frequent in Europe than in the United States —there is far less technology to steal from Europe than from the US — it is nevertheless all too present.

The practice follows what the current director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, long ago called the business model of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): “Rob, Replicate, Replace.” They steal the technology and know-how for a product, copy it, then flood it back into the marketplace at a far lower price, thereby putting the product’s original manufacturers out of business. When the CCP believes its hold on the market share has been consolidated into something resembling a monopoly, the prices go back up.

And there it is:  implacably hostile, amoral, brutal and intent on spreading Marxism (and their control) over the entire world.

As New Wife would put it:  Not our kind, dear.  Even their “Three Rs” aren’t the same as ours.

False Expectations

Foreign Affairs, Politics

I saw this headline a couple-three days ago:

What to Expect from Trump’s Summit with Xi

…and I have to say, I think there’s little point in actually meeting with anyone from CommieChina, let alone with this little egomaniacal dictator.

I mean, seriously:  whatever Xi says, it’s going to be non-committal at best, but mostly it’s going to be a series of outright lies, or else some promises that he has not the slightest intention of keeping.

So what’s the point?  I know:  “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war” (W.S. Churchill).  Didn’t really achieve much with his predecessor at Munich in 1938, and I have the feeling that were Xi to say that the Spratley Islands are his last territorial demand (cf. our friend Adolf re: the Sudetenland), his promise would have about the same degree of credibility.

Ditto any reassurances from Xi that his regime will stop meddling in our internal politics (i.e. our elections, funding subversive organizations and so on).  He might say something acceptable, but will it stop?  Of course not.

I don’t have any good ideas about what to do with this asshole regime, other than waiting for Xi and his cronies to overstep — let him invade his Poland, so to speak — and then unleash hell on his ass.

The only problem, however, is that most of our brimstone has been emptied into Iran — not that this is necessarily a Bad Thing, mind you — but it does mean that any threats or bluster coming from Trump would be pointless.

We’re not even capable of waging economic warfare on China, mostly because our Treasury is not only empty, but in debt.

Like I said, I’m all out of ideas.  But having some kind of meaningless “summit” is a bad one.

Oppression By Bureaucracy

Anti-Gun Nannies, Foreign Affairs, Rights, Shootin' Time, The Gun Thing

It’s not often I get an email that creates both sadness and almost-ungovernable rage, but Reader Bruce sent me this:

Last week, on one of the saddest days of my life, I went to a local police station and handed over my three rifles for destruction by the “Commissioner of Police”.

They were nothing special: a B/A Savage 320D in .22 Hornet; an Anschutz .22RF 1451 Sporter (with custom fibreglass stock); a Savage Model 12 .223 Varmint heavy barrel (in a custom fibreglass stock). But they were MINE! to me, they represented something: that society had accepted me as a responsible human being. I obsessively hand loaded for the Hornet and .223, seeking the best performance each was capable of.

So why did I do the unthinkable?

Firstly, my wife and I “downsized”. We moved from a suburban 4 x 2 on a huge lot into a 3 x 2 apartment close to the river. And then came the first cruncher. By law, my firearms had to be kept in an approved gun safe, bolted into brick or concrete on two surfaces. And the only place for that in our new abode was in the lock-up roller door garage. Uh-uh … the law says it has to “be under the main roof” … and it isn’t. My safe was “grandfathered” anyway. Had I bought another firearm or had one of mine rebarrelled, I would have been compelled to buy a new “approved” and vastly more expensive safe. So I had nowhere to store my guns (or ammo, for that matter).

Secondly, I have been a competitive target shooter for 51 years, from air pistol to pistol to full-bore to rimfire. I am nationally qualified as a Range Officer. I was, until I let it lapse, a qualified Commonwealth Shooting Coach. I have been able to use my rifles competitively and for hunting, quite legally. Not so now. If I want to use them competitively, I have to get “another” licence category for them, and compete a regulated number of times per year. Once they are so classified, I can no longer use them for hunting or vermin control. The reason? Our the Minister for Police declared that target firearms are likely to have lightened triggers and are not “safe” to use off a range.

My dilemma. Give up plinking or bunny busting or fox shooting, or give up competition. OK, so I’ll just use them for the former and forego competition. Problem. I can only shoot on “approved” properties. My friend has a farm. I can shoot there, provided he registers me every year on an internet portal with the police department. If his neighbour wants me to shoot a few foxes on his property, I am not allowed to unless he also registers me electronically. Oh, and calibres are limited by the size of the property you have permission to shoot on.

And so I handed them in. I have owned a firearm (or more than one) since 1967. I’m pleased to say I’ve never done anything dangerous or even vaguely illegal with any of them. And to now be told that I can’t have them unless I jump through bureaucratic hoops hurts. Deeply.

My point? DON’T GIVE YOURS UP! Fight the bastards until you can fight no longer.

Note that gun ownership can be ended simply by incremental “reasonable” gun control regulation — e.g. guns must be stored in a safe —–> safes must be encased in brick walls (an almost impossible condition to meet for most people, which is the point of such bastardy).

Bruce, my friend:  if you ever make it to Texas, I’ll organize a Schutzenfest for you with some of my fellow Texans, at a place where we can bang away all day without fear or apprehension.  As for guns… let’s just say you’d be overwhelmed by choice.

Certainty

Lies and Untruths, Marxists

There’s not much certainty about life nowadays, but there is one thing that is:  when Bill Clinton opens his mouth to speak, what will come out is either a lie, an obfuscation, exaggeration or misdirection.

Hence this:

Hours before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, former President Bill Clinton told an audience in Australia about his missed chance to kill attack mastermind Osama bin Laden, according to audio released this week.

Clinton was speaking at a business meeting in Melbourne when the topic turned to terrorism.

“I’m just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden … He’s a very smart guy. I spent a lot of time thinking about him. And I nearly got him once,” Clinton said in the audio, which was recorded by former Liberal Party head Michael Kroger and aired by Sky News.

“I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have had to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him.

“And so I didn’t do it.”

I leave it to you to decide which of the above four characterizations apply.

Incidentally, what happened to that TV show that (I think) ABC aired about this very topic?  Shown once, never been seen since.

I wonder why that is?

I guess we’ll never know.

Bribe Not Needed

Budgets, Politics

So The Donald wants to give us $5,000 after the November midterm elections:

“If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our… tremendous economic success, like in history we’ve never had anything like what’s happening, but because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” Trump said on night one of the convention, comparing the move to “a successful company” that does a “cash distribution to its shareholders.”

I know what I’d do if I were a shareholder in a company drowning in debt and unfulfilled obligations and the CEO stated that he wanted to pay a cash dividend because of a recent short-term upturn in sales.  I’d tell him to do something better with the company’s money, like retire some of the debt the company has been incurring under his stewardship — firstly, from 2015 to 2019, and likewise from 2025 until today.

Failing that I have a question:  how, exactly, is he going to fund this so-called “dividend”?

Look, it’s all very well to dress up this little bit of voter bribery in corporate-speak, but the fact remains that it’s essentially a political action, and therefore it’s going to be paid by the Treasury.

Memo to the President:  what you really need to do, Mr. President, if you want to offer us a bribe, is not offer us cash — cash which, by the way, we’ll have to pay taxes on — but instead promise us to pass a permanent cut in the tax rates (all brackets) after the mid-terms.  Drop the top rate (37%) to 25%, and by similar percentages all the way down the line.  (The DSA Communists want to increase our taxes; make the Republican point of difference to lower taxes.  See which one works better come election time.)

If you thought the economy was doing well before, see what happens after that.

And when the tax revenues increase hugely as a result — and they will, of course —  use that growth in income to pay down the debt, buy back T-bills from foreign investors (like China), or use at least some of it to fund the terminations of federal employees.  (I know you’ve been doing okay so far in terms of the latter activity, but you need to do better.  Try to get the non-Defense federal workforce to fall to the equivalent levels of, say, the Coolidge Administration.)

On that topic, feel free to get rid of the busybody government departments — you know, the ones that have crippled industry and innovation by adding more and more federal regulations.  (And on that topic:  FFS, why are the Dept of Education and ATF still in existence?)

Anyway, to return to the main point:

Don’t give us a cheap “dividend” that is only valuable until it’s spent;  give us lasting relief through lower taxes.

We’ve been doing our bit to help you by eliminating ur-Democrats and RINOs like that Cornyn weasel in the Republican primaries.  When Ken Paxton gets to D.C., he’s going to be on your side, I promise you.  He’s not the best we Texans might have done, by the way, but he sure as hell is going to be a better MAGA Senator than Cornyn.  And he sure as hell will be a “yes” vote on lower tax rates when that legislation come up for a vote in the Senate.

We’ll do our best in November to get you the Congressmen and Senators that you’ll need in 2027 and onwards;  do your best to lower taxes and get government off our backs.

That would be a real dividend for us.

Hidden Motive, Hidden Enemy

Foreign Affairs

Over among the Big Brains at American Thinker, John DiLeo has a take on the current trade blowup with Canuckistan that I hadn’t considered:

A more important fact to remember, though, is that Canada is far more dependent upon American goods than the USA is on Canadian goods. The USA is the origin of somewhere between a third and a half of Canada’s global imports. Canada cannot win a trade war with the USA. By having a trade war with us at all, Canada loses, no matter what.

So the question would seem to be, why did Carney start this?

We know where Carney is getting his advice. A longtime central banker who was not in electoral politics before being selected as Canada’s PM last year, he has hired American Democrat activists (yes, that’s USA Democrats) as key advisors, including as his chief of staff, to assist him in planning policies that will hurt President Trump and the Republican party in the midterms this fall.

That much, I’d figured out already.  Then this:

In his first year and a half on the job, Carney has signed new deals with Mainland China, committing to increase Canada’s already considerable linkage with the CCP economy. He’s basically committing Canada to be a willing vassal in China’s notorious “Belt and Road Initiative.”

So the old law-and-order question comes:  “Cui bono?”  (who benefits) from this rather unnecessary trade war?  Why would “the Canadians walk away from a trade agreement to which their negotiators had already agreed, when Prime Minister Mark Carney recalled them specifically to create a fight”?

DiLeo spells it out:

Trump Administration trade negotiations are designed not just to get more manufacturing here in the USA, but also to get more manufacturing in Canada, and more in Mexico, and more in the UK, and more in the EU.

As we watch these battles, we see that the governments of some of those countries are kicking and screaming at the prospect. Amazingly, they don’t want to protect the jobs of their own citizens; they want to leave the status quo in place, watching their own manufacturing sectors continue to be hollowed out, watching China continue to fill the vacuum.

And:

The Chinese remain what they have been for decades: a dishonest partner, practicing every trade crime from Uyghur slave labor to currency manipulation, from material dumping to intellectual property theft.

Yup.  China is asshoe, and worse:  they’ve become our sworn enemy, just as much as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.

And they have more allies in the West than we do.