Saturday, August 31, 2024
Job Description
And let’s be clear, in this race, I’m the only person who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations who traffic in guns, drugs and human beings. I’m the only person in this race who actually served a border state as attorney general to enforce our laws.
She knows Trump was president, right?
Fight
Harris expects to be elected on the basis of her identity and her "joy." And that's all she's prepared to engage on. What does that say about what kind of president she will make -- especially on foreign policy? If she won't fight for herself and her "values," why would anyone expect her to fight for America and its interests?
And that's it. That's the election in a nutshell. We have one candidate who won't fight, and another candidate whose first instincts are to run to a fight. It makes me wonder whether Harris and her campaign really plan to show up for the debate on September 10. If they do, they'd better find a fighting spirit, or it may turn out worse for Harris than the previous debate turned out for Joe Biden.
Zero
Our government, and a number of other Western governments, are committed to a goal of “net zero.” That is, our countries will add nothing further to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Any emissions of CO2 (e.g., breathing) will be balanced by absorption of CO2 by, e.g., plants. Various dates are specified in these aspirational statements, none of them realistic. And of course, the world’s main sources of atmospheric CO2 (China and India now account for most of the world’s CO2 emissions) have no intention of cutting their CO2 emissions, let alone cutting them to net zero.
But suppose we did it. Suppose we spent countless trillions, destroyed our electric grid and reduced our standard of living to a pre-industrial level. How much would an American “net zero” affect global temperatures?
Economic Illiterate
First, price controls (notably, price controls on groceries) have a long history, extending back 2,000 years. They always fail, without exception. If price controls worked, every country would have started using them centuries ago. As Milton Friedman demonstrated, and as virtually everyone now acknowledges, inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. It is caused by governments; in this case, the Biden/Harris administration. Groceries have increased in price, like everything else, due to Bidenflation.Ed Morrissey:
Second, when it comes to prices, there is really only one instance of “gouging.” Companies compete for our business by offering the best products they can, at the best price (for them) that consumers will pay. Competition keeps prices down and quality up; no company can just “gouge.” If it charges too much, consumers will buy somewhere else, or something else.
The exception, of course, is when a company has a monopoly and there is no effective competition. This is why we have Section 2 of the Sherman Act. But there is one monopoly that never goes away, and isn’t subject to antitrust liability: government. At the state level, there is some degree of competition. Thus, if a state charges prices—taxes—that are too high, or offers products—government services—that are of low quality, some residents (but not all) can leave for better-run states. That is exactly what is happening now, as people flee blue states for red states.
But the federal government has no competition. It can engage in price gouging and provide lousy services, and, unless you are willing to move to Costa Rica or Switzerland, there is little you can do about it.
And the federal government’s price gouging includes more than taxes that are way too high. Because the federal government engages in deficit spending for political reasons—what a deal, to give some Americans money without having to tax other Americans to pay for it!—it borrows trillions of dollars, which causes inflation. So it is the federal government’s price gouging, not that of anyone in the food supply chain, that has driven recent increases in grocery prices.
Kamala Harris is one of the premier price gougers of our time.
Kamala Harris doesn't grasp economics well enough to even know its terminology. As Carlson points out, Harris went on obliviously after this error, on a theme her campaign wants to emphasize as its main economic message. It's not us - it's all the price gauging!
How incompetent does one have to be to not stop and correct one's self after misspeaking in this manner?
Grifters Without Borders
I, for one, am excited that in the midst of a U.S.-funded war with Russia, Ukraine has committed to spend $20 billion it doesn't have to green up its energy sector.
Will all that diesel fuel being expended to run tanks and transport trucks, the country really has to offset its carbon emissions.
What I don't yet know is whether Ukraine will close down farms, transition to insect protein, and build 15-minute cities to save planet Earth as Ukrainians get slaughtered on the battlefield.
Perhaps announcements regarding these other Gaia-friendly measures will come soon. Or, perhaps they can go all Soylent Green on us using battlefield casualties.
This is, of course, totally insane. Imagine how easy it would be to destroy an entire field of solar panels with a few artillery shells, not to mention the problem of having to build backup power plants to run when the wind doesn't blow, and the sun doesn't shine. Green energy projects ALWAYS require backup generating capacity, and given how vulnerable solar panels are in particular, it is inconceivable that the total cost of providing this energy [won't] be astronomical and wasted.
Ukraine can do this, though, in the midst of an existential war because they have the unlimited resources of the United States government behind them. There is no way that this wasn't instigated by Biden's people, nor could it be done without US funding.
No doubt a lot of money will be made by Biden allies as well, and of course, that is the real point of all this. It is laughable to think that Ukraine's greatest use of billions of dollars is reducing its carbon footprint, but as long as everybody says it with a straight face the aid keeps flowing, the profiteering continues, and taxpayers foot the bill.
Addition is Hard!
I already know what those on the left will say about this, assuming they say anything at all. They'll say there's no evidence that illegal immigrants commit more crime than Americans born here. Even if that were true, it doesn't change the fact that this particular migrant has raped two people in 20 months. And again, that's a minimum. For all we know he's attacked other homeless women but wasn't caught.
There is simply no reason this person should be in this country. He should have been deported after the first attack, regardless of whether or not the victim testified. Once he agreed to a plea deal, he should have been on a plane or bus back to Nicaragua. Why didn't that happen? Probably because New York City refused to cooperate with ICE and ensured this guy would remain on the street to commit another attack. I don't know that for certain but it has definitely happened before.
I've heard progressive morons from Juan Williams to Jerry Nadler make this argument over the years that the crime rate among illegal aliens is lower than among native-born Americans. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that's correct. So what? Some fraction of illegal aliens commit crimes (beyond entering the country illegally). All of the crimes committed by illegal aliens are in addition to the crimes committed by citizens and those here legally. We're not replacing one population with another, we get both, or all three if we separate out legal immigrants. Do leftists think the presence of millions of illegal aliens somehow decreases the total number of crimes committed compared to the number of crimes that would occur with just the native-born population. It's not about the crime rate among each population, it's about the crime sum. The only acceptable crime rate among illegal aliens is zero.
