ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE? Netanyahu, in apparent stumble, calls Israel ‘nuclear power.’
You get a lot more from a kind word and a not-so-secret nuclear arsenal than from a kind word alone.
(Hat tip, Amelia Hamilton on Facebook.)
Author Archive: Stephen Green
January 6, 2020
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Suppose They Threw World War III and Nobody Came? “By any measure, Trump’s daring call to eliminate Suleimani hasn’t brought us any closer to war with Iran, because we’ve been at war for a very long time. It hasn’t brought us any closer to World War III, because there’s no Iranian coalition, and far from being a global power, Iran is an overextended regional player. If anything, as both Fernandez and Codevilla made plain, the Suleimani assassination sets the stage, however unlikely, for a potential peace.”
This one is just for our VIP members, and if you’ve been considering becoming a supporter the promo code VODKAPUNDIT is still good for a nice little discount.
I tried to make this one (lengthy) column worth your entire month’s membership.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for January 6, 2020. “Castro drops Out, Williamson lays everybody off, Q4 fundraising numbers drop, Biden tells coal miners to start slinging code, Klobuchar talks UFOs, and a three way tie for first in Iowa.”
AID, COMFORT, WHATEVS: Actor George Lopez Supports Iran’s Bounty for Trump’s Assassination, ‘We’ll Do It for Half.’
IF YOU LIKE THE LAW YOU PASSED, YOU CAN KEEP IT! Democrats’ worries grow as ObamaCare court fight drags on.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS (1991 EDITION): What Is NATO Good For?
It isn’t that NATO is entirely useless, it’s that NATO expansion has fed Russian paranoia while increasing NATO’s responsibilities — but without increasing NATO’s military capabilities. That’s a recipe for failure, or at the very least for ongoing frustration and resentment.
My feeling about NATO when the Soviet Union dissolved was that the alliance should have thrown itself one hell of a victory party, and then dissolved itself, too. That’s not to say we’d have abandoned Europe. Almost certainly some sort of unwritten entente cordiale would have continued between us and our former allies, but the discontinuation of NATO may have forced leaders in Berlin et al. to take more seriously their own defense.
But that’s all water under the bridge now, and faced with renewed Russian aggression I suppose we have to wage peace with the alliance we have.
IT’S WHAT THEY DO: Wokescolds Return to ‘Fake News’ Smear Against Hilarious Satire Site.
I’m just barely old enough to remember when leftism was supposed to be the fun alternative to stodgy old conservatism, and I’m 50.
CHINA: Bloody Harvest — How Everyone Ignored the Crime of the Century.
In June of this year the China Tribunal delivered its Final Judgement and Summary Report. An independent committee composed of lawyers, human rights experts, and a transplant surgeon, the Tribunal was established to investigate forced organ harvesting on the Chinese mainland. These rumours have haunted the country for years—lurid tales of the fate suffered by members of the banned Falun Gong religion after being taken into police custody. Their organs, so the rumours go, are cut from their bodies while they are still alive, and then transplanted into waiting patients.
The Tribunal examined these claims, extending the group of victims to include Uyghur Muslims (among others), and its findings were unambiguous. “On the basis of all direct and indirect evidence, the Tribunal concludes with certainty that forced organ harvesting has happened in multiple places in the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and on multiple occasions for a period of at least twenty years and continues to this day.” Further to this, “the PRC and its leaders actively incited the persecution, the imprisonment, murder, torture, and the humiliation of Falun Gong practitioners with the sole purpose of eliminating the practice of, and belief in, the value of Falun Gong.” The Tribunal was also able to conclude, “with certainty,” that the Communist Party has been responsible for acts of torture inflicted on Uyghurs. These acts were found to constitute crimes against humanity.
The Falun Gong religious group was outlawed in China twenty years ago, with President Jiang Zemin apparently deciding that the group’s expansion was a potential threat to his power—a competitor for the loyalties of the Chinese people. He branded the group an ‘evil cult’. The ensuing imprisonment and disappearance of large numbers of practitioners coincided with an enormous, unexplained provision of transplant hospitals, and a flood of new laboratories. Research into immunosuppressant drugs suddenly accelerated. China did not actually have a formal organ donation scheme until 2013, but this has presented no obstacle to the country’s transplant surgeons. They have been charging ahead with an estimated 69,300 transplants per year. Even the formal voluntary donors that now exist cannot hope to match this number: in 2017 the total number of eligible donors in the country was a paltry 5,146.
Typical leftism: You will be made to care.
Much more at the link, which I found well worth my time.
JACOB SULLUM: Fiscal Analysis of Colorado’s New ‘Red Flag’ Law Assumes Gun Confiscation Orders Will Be Granted 95% of the Time. “Such a high approval rate reflects the due process problems with red flag laws, which take away people’s Second Amendment rights for a year or more based on vague standards and dubious evidence that judges are not inclined to question because they worry about the potentially deadly consequences of rejecting petitions.”
Due process is never circumvented for the sake of the accused.
MURICA: Another New Record for Gun Sale Background Checks. “What’s driving record gun sales in a year like 2019, with no presidential or congressional election, Donald Trump ensconced in the White House (lame impeachment threat aside), and control of Congress safely divided?”
THAT SUMS IT UP: Iran Ends Commitment to Nuclear Deal It Never Abided By in The First Place.
Obama’s deal with Iran gave the Mullahs almost everything they wanted up front, in exchange for weak promises to do a better job of hiding their nuclear ambitions in the future.
Related: Iran Ending Nuclear Deal Commitments – Why It Doesn’t Matter.
BUT ALL THE VERY BEST PEOPLE ASSURED ME IT WAS WWIII OR SOMETHING: Top commander’s assassination leaves Iran with very few options to retaliate.
MAYBE THOSE TAX INCENTIVES FOR BUYING EVS WEREN’T SUCH A HOT IDEA: To replace gas taxes, Oregon and Utah ask EVs to pay for road use.
“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Ricky Gervais Saves the Entertainment Industry From Itself. “Gervais’s monologue was reminiscent of the old Dean Martin roast days, when Hollywood celebrities were able to laugh at themselves. The leftist infection in the entertainment industry has made most movie and television stars feel too self-important to ever be self-effacing.”
I just finished watching the monolog at the link, and Kruiser isn’t exaggerating.
YOU DON’T SAY: Wolf reintroduction to Colorado a mistake says former wildlife commissioner Rick Enstrom. “You only have to look at what happened to the Wyoming elk population. Their herds have been knocked back to 10 percent of what it was.”
WELL, GOOD: Terry Gilliam Is Tired Of Social Justice Warrior Bullshit. “Suggesting that women are not helpless victims, and might have moral agency of their own, is pretty close to heresy in feminist circles these days.”
Because Grrrl Power.
VENEZUELA: Maduro Claims Control of National Assembly, Consolidating Grip on Power. “The National Assembly was the last political institution still in the opposition’s hands, and by seizing its leadership, President Nicolás Maduro’s supporters move closer to total control of the state.”
In a chaotic session in which security forces surrounded the National Assembly building, intimidating members of the opposition who tried to enter, supporters of Mr. Maduro blocked the re-election of Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader, as the body’s head, and named another legislator instead.
Members of the Venezuelan opposition immediately denounced the effort, calling it a “parliamentary coup d’état” and saying there had been no quorum to call the vote.
The Maduro administration’s plunges the country’s already turbulent political situation further into chaos, raising questions about who controls the assembly and whether Mr. Guaidó can continue to assert that he is the Venezuela’s interim president, in a direct challenge to Mr. Maduro.
Given that the Assembly was Venezuela’s last public institution enjoying anything like public approval, you have to wonder if Maduro has bitten off more than he can chew.
FLASHBACK: A F-22 Raptor Snuck Right Underneath an Iranian Fighter Jet.
The March 2013 episode happened only a few months after a two Sukhoi Su-25 attack planes operated by the Pasdaran (the informal name of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards) attempted to shoot down an American MQ-1 flying a routine surveillance flight in international airspace some 16 miles off Iran.
After this attempted interception, the Pentagon decided to escort drones involved in reconnaissance missions with fighter jets: either F-18 Hornets embarked on the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, currently in the U.S. Fifth Fleet area of responsibility, or F-22 Raptors like those deployed to Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates.
New details about the latest episode were recently disclosed by Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh at an annual conference of the Air Force Association. On Sept. 17, the general not only confirmed that the escorting fighters were F-22 stealth fighters but also said that: “He [the Raptor pilot] flew under their aircraft [the F-4s] to check out their weapons load without them knowing that he was there, and then pulled up on their left wing and then called them and said ‘you really ought to go home.’”
Solid advice.
HOPEFULLY SULEIMANI’S SUCCESSOR HAS A BETTER IDEA OF WHERE HIS SELF-INTEREST LIES: Trump Threatens Iran on Twitter: ‘We’ll Hit Them Harder Than They’ve Ever Been Hit Before.’
January 3, 2020
HANGING’S TOO GOOD FOR HIM: Former Green Party Candidate Claimed to Be Jesus While Killing His Dog With a Hammer.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: It’s a very special New Year’s edition of Florida Man Friday, in which we don’t cheap out by recapping a bunch of old news items from last year.
Also just up at VodkaPundit: President Hillary Clinton Orders Drone Strike on Terror Mastermind, World Rejoices. “‘This strike was not an escalation; it was the culmination of years of dangerous intelligence work and swift action by our military,’ Clinton White House Press Secretary Jennifer Palmieri told smiling reporters gathered at the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room this morning. Palmieri also noted that this was Clinton’s first drone strike outside the United States since successfully securing the nation’s northern border against ‘shirkers and saboteurs attempting to escape to Canada’.”
That one is just for our VIP members. If you’ve been thinking of becoming a member, the promo code VODKAPUNDIT is still good for a nice little discount.