About a dozen pro-ceasefire protesters were arrested Tuesday after repeatedly interrupting Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee with chants such as “From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go!”
Read More
Multiple U.S. states, ultimately seeing little action from the federal government on the matter, have taken it upon themselves to roll out solutions for combatting the ongoing flow of deadly fentanyl into the United States.
As reported by ABC News, two major methods have emerged from the handful of states that are directly addressing this issue: One camp seeks to reduce the risks to drug-users while also imposing steeper penalties for dealing fentanyl, while the other approach involved calling for more federal intervention, with some of these states taking it upon themselves to guard the southern border and prevent the trafficking of fentanyl into the country from Mexico.
Read More
So how did that work when Joe Biden announced that Vladmir Putin is a “butcher” who “cannot remain in power” only for Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to follow up with a pay-no-attention-to-the angry-old-guy-shouting-at-the-clouds correction. According to Blinken, the United States does not “have a strategy of regime change in Russia or anywhere else.”
Well, that’s a relief. Otherwise Putin might get the idea that U.S. and NATO involvement in Ukraine poses an existential threat that would prompt him to do something really crazy like use tactical nukes or chemical or biological weapons to win at all costs. Because, after all, if the U.S. and NATO are trying to topple his government, then what does he have to lose?
Read More
Because of increasing specialization, most of today’s top government officials have spent their entire lives in government service. They lack the gentleman-amateur chops of a Dean Acheson or the business background of someone like Donald Trump. The results are not encouraging.
One thing you learn in business is that bluffing is dangerous. It’s easier to make promises than to keep them, and that often it’s better to be ambiguous, to say nothing, or, if necessary, to communicate only in private.
Read More
Day by day, as the Biden Administration crashes into utter shambles and a cloud of dust reminiscent of 9/11, the Bidenization of America becomes more stark and horrifying.
I can remember no more pitiful words from a senior American government official in 65 years than Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s complaint that the Taliban government in Kabul was disappointing in its lack of “inclusiveness.” (To be sure, that is not all it lacks, and that could hardly have been a surprise.)
Nor can I think of any diplomatic initiative by a senior American government official more certainly doomed to ludicrous failure than environment ambassador John Kerry’s recent trip to China requesting the collaboration of the People’s Republic in this administration’s hell-bent-for-leather assault on what it is trying to identify as climate change.
Read More
Wisconsin Representative Bryan Steil (R-01-WI) is questioning why the Biden Administration shuttered the Trump era Contingency and Crisis Response (CCR) Bureau prior to withdrawing from Afghanistan. Steil co-wrote a letter to the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken with another Representative, saying that he believes that the decision to shut down the CCR made the Afghanistan situation worse.
Read More
In the “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle has a lot to say about the activity of choice and its place in securing “eudaimonia,” that “good-spiritedness” that is synonymous with human fulfillment.
Choice is critical in the metabolism of virtue. But, Aristotle points out, it is possible for someone, through bad choices, to put himself in a situation from which choice cannot rescue him.
Read More
President Joe Biden warned a bipartisan group of Senators Thursday that China “will eat our lunch” after speaking with Xi Jinping on Wednesday night, Reuters reported.
Biden discussed a range of issues with the Chinese leader, from “coercive and unfair” trade practices to reported human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang and pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong as well as Taiwan, Reuters reported. U.S. and Chinese leaders have not spoken in over 11 months with the last call occurring on March 27 under the Trump administration.
Read More