The Rough, Tough, Costuming of Rep. Gallagher

Gallagher (R-Oshkosh Truck) repeated Mark Levin's blather about 'not letting Putin blackmail the US', simply inverting it to 'we must frighten Putin.'

Apparently the PR firm managing the WARWARWAR demands issued its new script.

But what's really cute is Gallagher's costuming for the teeeeeveeee interview on WARWARFox.  He gets out some olive drab UnderArmor and pastes on a full-dress USMC logo.

Because .......because...........it looks tough.  Scares Putin.

Really, Congressman?

Now you're demanding escalation of the US' commitment to preserve the government of a totalitarian who just made opposition parties illegal?   

Next thing, you'll be telling us that it's for "Democracy."

P.S.  How're things on the US border with Mexico, tough guy??

Levin: "Let's Repeat the Error of Iraq!!!!"

Levin is pretty good at whipping WAR WAR WAR noises

Here, he says that Putin will NOT use his nukes if the US moves a new arsenal into Ukraine.

He has to say something.   He never articulated America's vital national interest in Ukraine.

That's because we don't have one.

Ukraine is run by a corruptocrat totalitarian, just like Russia is.  

Even more curious, Levin brings in Netanyahu to lecture the US about this.  Well, if it's so damned important to Benji, then why isn't Israel shipping weapons to Ukraine?

Very curious, this war-mongering.

WW3 Nearer? Or Another State Department Lie??

News flash--yet unconfirmed--is that the Russkies sent an SU jet over Polish territory following Polish statement that they would send 'peacekeepers' into Ukraine.

Yuri Butusov has informed 15 min ago tgst Russian SU has flew over Ukrainian Volyn region and entered Poland. The information is confirmed by Ukrainian radars and Polish radars. The incident happened right after Poland gas announced possibility to send peacekeeping forces to Ukraine.

During his visit to Poland on March 25, Biden will discuss the issue of sending peacekeepers to Ukraine The United States is not going to send troops, but it does not rule out that another NATO country may do so, said US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield. “I cannot predict what decisions will be made at the NATO conference and how NATO will react to Poland’s offer to bring peacekeepers to Ukraine. What I can say is that there will be no American troops in Ukraine yet. The President made this clear. But other NATO countries may decide that they want to bring troops into Ukraine, “said Thomas Greenfield.

Poland during the NATO summit and the meeting in the European Council plans to raise the issue of a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine. The plan is that the peacekeepers should not enter into direct conflict with the Russian Federation, but should be deployed in settlements that were not affected by the war, “to send a clear signal that we do not agree with war crimes.”...

First off, we know that US Ambassadors lie like Hell about other countries' intentions.  So we do not know that 'Poland offered peacekeeper troops.'  What we DO know is that a State Department employee says so.

Big difference.

There is also the question of whether such a mission will be manipulated to bring about the McConnell/Graham/Fox News/Hannity/Levin Wet Dream:  World War III.

Don't bet against it.

Digital Currency Is a Trap

Peter finds the good stuff.  This poster is NOT the only warning.  More important?  Digital currency can and will be controlled by some 'governing agency.' 

Which one?  Read Peter's entry here.

Come To Think of It Ukraine Edition

Beattie's observation rings true.

...When the stakes are Ukrainian sovereignty, Republicans are firm, united, and even fanatical. When the stakes are the gradual, explicit transformation of their own voters into fifth-class citizens, unity and enthusiasm evaporate.

In 2022 America, it is far easier for Republicans to demand World War 3 than it is for them to demand that their voters not be replaced from abroad, targeted with race hate propaganda in schools, or be herded off to prison for attending the wrong protest.

For the right, war is a permanent crutch, a way to ignore real issues (the issues where they are losing) and live in a comforting fantasy world of easy moral clarity and absolute American dominance. Demanding escalation in Eastern Europe is a way for Republicans to feel tough when they have totally lost control of their own country. In this darkly ironic fashion, Republicans actually do have something in common with the Ukrainians they wish to save: they are both patriotic to a country that they have no control over in the first place....

Rep. Fitzgerald dances on the question of providing MiGs to Ukraine, and cites his military training to bulk up his creds.  It would be nice if he would simply say "NOT OUR BUSINESS," but that would take guts.

Maybe he thinks the outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan are just fine and dandy, based on his military training and all.

Thomas More Complaint: Election Bribery in Wisconsin

Somehow not reported in the local rag.....

The complaints follow on Judge Gableman's report concerning the Fraud of '20 in Wisconsin.

The mayor and city clerk of Madison, Wisconsin, are being accused of election bribery in a complaint filed March 17, 2022, in the State of Wisconsin before the Elections Commission. Thomas More Society attorneys acted on behalf of a Madison, Wisconsin, voter to levy allegations against Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, stating that these officials acted in violation of Wisconsin’s election bribery law, Statute § 12.11, by accepting private money from the Center for Tech and Civic Life in order to facilitate in-person and absentee voting....

 ...The Madison complaint contends that Rhodes-Conway and Witzel-Behl entered into an agreement with the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a partisan, special interest organization, to accept more than $1.2 million to facilitate in-person and absentee voting in the city, which is a violation of Wisconsin law....

 ...This latest complaint before the commission follows a previous complaint against Kenosha, which asserted violations of election law and bribery of election officials by the Center for Tech and Civic Life. Additionally, the first round of Wisconsin Election Commission complaints filed by Thomas More Society attorneys representing groups of private citizens also included allegations against Kenosha, Racine, Green Bay, and Milwaukee....

Since the Democrat Election Machine Wisconsin Election Commission is split 3-3, you can expect a 'no decision,' regardless of the merits of the case.  

The local Pravda will then report that the complaint 'lacked merit.'

McConnell Wants WAR, Dammit!

McConnell's been told what to do.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (U-DC) appears on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.  McConnell notes “there may be a few lonely voices off to the side” in congress that are against a war with Russia; however, according to his perspective the “vast majority of the republican party” overwhelming supports additional measures to increase U.S. involvement in Ukraine....

Happy to sent YOUR children off to war against the country with the largest nuke arsenal in the world.  After all, it's been damn near 1 year since the Republicans have enjoyed war spectacles on their office teeeveees.

The Proper Question: Where Is Christianity?

The essay here argues that Vermeule's "common good Constitutionalism" is really an effort to subvert 'freedom' with a natural-law Christian Ordo Seclorum.

...He illuminates the dependence of the American political order on principles of justice nowhere explicitly laid out in the Constitution but clarified in classical works of political philosophy, jurisprudence, and theology. All the while, however, he obfuscates the modern tradition of freedom, which decisively shapes the political morality that gave birth to and sustains the Constitution. It is one thing to argue that we have diminished our moral resources by abandoning America’s classical and biblical heritage. It is quite another to banish to the shadows of the American tradition the political morality of limited government and its cornerstone conviction that human beings are by nature free and equal—a distinctive interpretation of the dignity inherent in our humanity linked to, but not asserted by, the classical philosophers or the Bible....

The better question is this:  What happened to Christianity's shaping of citizen morality?  

The essay's Libertarian twist is very comfortable with Court decisions allowing child-murder, queer "marriage," and 'limited' porn (whatever that might be) because...........because.......James Madison said so?

Regardless of that silliness, Vermeule's concern is more properly addressed to churches of the Christian persuasion.  The American Catholic church's flaccid objection to queer "marriage," her See-No/Hear-No/Speak-No position on abortion, her ridiculous non-position vis-a-vis foreign invasion (and her assistance of same), not to mention her apparent decision to forget all about subsidiarity and the place of the Church in welfare-related decisions..........Hello!!!???  All that for tax preference?  Wales, anyone????

Perhaps the Baptists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Lutherans are just as absent.  If so, their 'leadership' also needs a reminder of what patriotism really means.

Sad that it has to come to this, no?

Is Blackstone PRC's Bitch?

The Chinese Communists have invested a LOT of money in Schwarzman's Blackstone.

...Schwarzman said it was Leung who was by his side when he first met with Xi Jinping during the future president’s short stint as party secretary of Shanghai in 2007, and it was Leung who helped arrange for $3 billion in funding for Blackstone’s June 2007 IPO from China Investment Corp (CIC), a sovereign wealth fund created by the CCP.

“When we were going public in 2007, we were planning a $4 billion IPO and the government of China came in and asked can we buy $3 billion of the $4 billion IPO?” Schwarzman told The Economic Times in 2020. “This was sort of a shock because I have not been to China since 1990 and nobody buys three quarters of an IPO.”

“So, what we did is, we just increased it to $7 billion and we became the world’s second largest IPO of the decade after Google,” Schwarzman told The Economic Times. “As a result of this, it was for the first time China had bought an equity interest in a public company outside of China, since modern China was established in 1949.”...

How very sweet of them!

We're certain that Schwarzman's activities have NEVER been influenced by the ChiComs ever since, of course.

More "New Theo" From Pp Francis

In another adventure in FrancisTheology, we learn this:

...“A war is always — always! — the defeat of humanity, always,” he said. “There is no such thing as a just war: they do not exist!”...

Aside from the flat-out contradiction of Thomas Aquinas' teaching--never before contradicted--this poses a wider problem:

The concept of 'just war' is tightly intertwined with the use of deadly force in self-defense.

A. It is called by a sovereign authority.
B. It has a just cause.
C. The combatants have morally right intentions (not vengeance or profit – see below).
D. Qualifying Conditions (from the theory of double-effect on his justification of killing in self-defense: ST II-II, 64, 7):
Cannot intend intrinsically evil actions.
A good action, or at least a morally neutral action, will have two effects: a good intended, and an evil, not intended, but tolerated.
Proportionality: the good to be achieved outweighs the evil of war

Declaring that there is 'no such thing as a just war' indirectly puts into question section (D) above, which justifies deadly force in self-defense.

Given Francis' inclination to mouth extremist positions, we are entitled to ask if Francis also proposes that there is 'no such thing as licit self-defense utilizing deadly force'.

(Let's not.  He's likely to answer erroneously.)

 

Come to Think of It, Teacher Edition

We read a lot these days about teachers who really, really, want to ......well...........

Perhaps the "normal" is gone from the old "normal school."  In Elmbrook District, things are getting pretty close to what this meme addresses.

The Thought of President Putin

This documentary was made several years ago (2016) and is about an hour long.  It's worth your time to watch all of it, but if you want to cut to the core, start at minute 49 or so.  Stone makes an ass of himself with aggressive statement-questions which are clearly designed to rile up Putin.

It doesn't work, at all.

It's embedded at Wauck's place.  If  you see a 'subscribe' request, click on 'let me try it first.'

Putin should not have gone into Ukraine with military force.  But on the other hand, US Presidents since Barky have pinned Every Evil On Earth on "RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA!!!"  His position?  Certainly not the one portrayed by the Democrat regimes here.

Trump understood Putin very well.

The Democrats choose NOT to understand him--nor Russia.  So who--exactly--is 'making war'?

Then: He Defeated Corn-Pop. Now: On To China!!

Biden🤡 spent two hours on the phone "warning" Xi of "consequences" if Red China were to help Putin.

Notice that the "press" never mentioned what those "consequences" would be?

Not one word.

But the ChiComs had something to say about it:

...NATO's eastward expansion is the root cause of Russia's anger and military operation in Ukraine. It's the US that should put out the fire it lit in Ukraine. Ridiculously, it is demanding Beijing to do this job at the cost of damaging China-Russia relations. This is unreasonable and insidious. By pushing China to denounce Russia and asking China to bear the responsibility for the fatal strategic mistake the US and NATO made in the construction of so-called European security, Washington has no intention of hiding its desire to sow discord between China and Russia.  

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Monday that China could use its unique relationship to bring an end to Russia's actions against Ukraine. What nonsense. Russia is an independent major power and China has no ability to exert influence on Russia's decision on the Ukraine issue which it deems as a "life-and-death" matter. 

If China really pressures Russia in a way that is inconsistent with the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, it will only undermine the China-Russia relationship and sabotage mutual trust, which will be a huge strategic loss to both sides. This is what the US is eager and happy to see. ...

Shorter version:  Stick it where the sun don't shine, PoopyPants.

Good Question!!