Smart Talk #14
Arizona’s Republican Governor Doug Ducey has had enough of the illegal migrant surge coming across his own state’s border. He intends to close the 1,000-foot gap in the yet-to-be-completed Trump border wall near Yuma. And do so in a quick-fix, inventive, and given the time-frame, very smart way: Using multiple shipping containers, stacked and side-by-side, and topped with barbed wire! Said the Governor: “We can’t wait any longer. The Biden administration’s lack of urgency on border security is a dereliction of duty.” The make-shift “solution” to Arizona border incursions will cost the state $6-million. Yuma has become a very active sector for migrant intruders. In fact, “it has seen the third highest number of ‘encounters’ this year, beaten only by Del Rio and the Rio Grande sectors, both in Texas.”
Big city crime, as all thinking Americans well know, is a mega-problem, and sadly, a still-growing one, particularly within Democrat-led municipalities. Job Creators Network CEO Alfredo Ortiz spoke about the issue recently on “Fox & Friends,” regarding its impact on his small business members. Said Ortiz, in part: “The issue is really about local leadership … (crime) is just rampant amongst the Democrat leadership. We really do see the contrast, especially over the last two years, between Republican leadership and Democrat leadership. Crime impacts all of our small businesses across the country. This is a major, major concern. Safety is one of the major issues that we highlight in this campaign.” Ortiz makes the smart and correct contrast in political leadership, when it comes to the obvious issue of simply, it appears, ideology-wise, simply permitting crime to fester, with its negative impact on local businesses, local citizens, and the difficulty in many areas of recruiting replacement police officers to ultimately improve the safety equation.
Here’s some excellent and needed enlightenment, putting into words what we’ve all perceived was really going on in the Leftist, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do, world. This interpretation from the on-line smart site, powerlineblog.com: “One of the definitions in Power Line’s lexicon of modern leftist terms is: Diversity: Where everyone looks different, but thinks the same.” Hence, the leftist ‘diversity’ comes from perhaps looking differently and/or coming from different geographies, but, regardless of the external window dressing, on the inside, all must share the same political ideology (i.e., Progressive Socialism where the selectively-beneficent central government rules). Put another way by Power Line: “The trouble is that for some people, ethnic and racial diversity count only when combined with a particular point of view. Virtually every (university) office of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ is a Soviet-style ideological enforcement bureau, a campus Stasi.” Thus, it only counts for leftists as legitimate, when, while there may be diversity of manner allowed, there must be strict singularity of thought. Diversity has no place in a world of alternative thought. There simply can be no divergent points of view, in order for diversity to qualify!
Commentator Daniel Greenfield has written a smart piece about redistributing wealth vs. fighting inflation, with reference to Mr. Biden’s strange (mis-leading) “Inflation Reduction Act” ‘celebration’ at the WH recently, while inflation continues to, seemingly, blaze ever higher. Said Greenfield: “The Inflation Reduction Act is a lie. It doesn’t reduce inflation; it actually gooses it. Raise inflation rates with inflationary spending and transfer some of the wealth over to welfare voters. That’s what the White House was really celebrating.” Greenfield goes on to note: “The Biden administration is not here to ‘save’ the economy. The formular has always been really simple: create the crisis, worsen it, and then exploit it. Biden is pretending that he’s a firefighter, when he’s actually an arsonist. Inflation is one of the fires being fed to justify tighter government controls and interventions that reduce economic independence and redistribute wealth. Inflation is not the administration’s enemy. It’s the best tool for wrecking what’s left of free enterprise.”
Daniel Greenfield has put together an excellent interpretation of what’s really going on at the core of insatiable, power-thirsty D.C., with policies & directives aimed at effectively hampering capitalism (private enterprise) in favor of increasing central-government regulation and control, with advantages, profits, and power reserved for the chosen elite. Redistribution of wealth is the proven pathway to achieving citizen obedience (especially among the economically struggling) and ultimate acceptance of centralized administrative authority.
Continuing on this theme, FOX business host Larry Kudlow has some targeted thoughts about how Mr. Biden has dramatically changed the growth track of our economy, by effectively reversing it. Or in Daniel Greenfield’s thoughts about our financial mess, perhaps even doing so on purpose, for partisan political gain. Said Larry Kudlow: “Mr. Biden took a booming economy without inflation and turned it into a high-inflation bust in a little more than a year. His war on fossil fuels has driven gasoline, oil, natural gas and coal prices sky high – ditto for food prices on grocery shelves. He has spent massively, raised taxes, and launched the biggest regulatory assault on business we have ever seen. He is obsessed with climate change, without ever providing any alternative replacement. He is similarly maniacal about repealing all the successful Trump tax cuts that gave us the lowest poverty and highest family wages in 50-years.”
Between Greenfield and Kudlow, that pretty well wraps up the comparative disaster bestowed upon us by Mr. Biden and whomever is calling the economic shots behind the WH curtain. For the sake of yourselves, your children, and your nation, all under extreme stress right now, please do vote Republican in November. Our economic, cultural, and national security future, literally, depends on it.
Writer Sasha Stone authored an interesting, extended, and instructive article very recently in the New York Post, entitled This is the moment I gave up on Joe Biden. Her reference is to Mr. Biden’s fire-and-brimstone speech a couple of weeks ago, within that blood-red-lighted setting, with two Marines standing in the background (totally improper for a Republican bashing speech). Wrote Ms. Stone, in part: “Gone was the empathy guy. Gone was the unity guy. Gone was the moderate guy. Be mean, Joe. Get them, Joe. Get tough, Joe. Tell them their participation in democracy is a threat to … democracy. Tell the ‘MAGA Republicans’ they’re not welcome in their own country. Tell them that you (Joe), and you alone, ARE America, and any threat to your power is a threat to the State, because that, (of course) is not fascism at all.”
Stone continued, in part, with her well-expressed and reasoned transitional political journey: “I might have been able to stay with the Democrats. But when they began dehumanizing the Trump supporters … I could no longer stand alongside them. The 2020 election was even further proof, at least to me, that the Democrats had now become corrupt, that they had way too much power and wealth, such that we might never have a free and fair election again. They’ve become a religious movement fighting what they consider a religious was, a war of ideology. We might not be able to purge this madness from our culture. But we can certainly purge it from our government by voting.”
Until such time that Democrats, if realistically, ever, can make structural & cultural changes, as she inferred: “I will never (again) vote blue, no matter who.” A great, truth-telling column! I’ve highlighted her major points, but only in part, so if you’re interested in understanding her fuller argument (there’s much more), you can read her fine article in its entirety on-line at (New York Post, 9-14-22).
Appropriately closing out this edition of Smart Talk, now comes another example of an awakening, if only a partial one, but we conservatives will certainly and readily take it! In the face of the Biden administration’s absolute and completely wrong-headed refusal to encourage increased oil and natural gas drilling/production from our own, literally, generations-worth of resources in the ground, our own ground, long-time New York Times columnist, Tom Friedman, a liberal, recently surprised everyone, particularly Republican conservatives, by coming out in favor of increased access to our own plentiful oil and gas resources!! And it was Putin’s invasion of Ukraine that produced this political and economic realization. Wrote Mr. Friedman, in part: “I wish I could write that Putin will regret his tactics, because they will eventually transform Russia from the energy czar of Europe to an energy colony of China, where Putin is now selling a lot of his oil at a deep discount to overcome his loss of Western markets. But I can’t, not unless the U.S. and its Western allies stop living in a green fantasy world that says we can go from dirty fossil fuels to clean renewable energy by just flipping a switch.”
Friedman continues: “We (must) accelerate clean energy production – call it our ‘Energy Triad’ – (with) a transition plan that balances climate security, energy security, and economic security.” And here’s the real key to making this possible domestically, writes Friedman: “The most important factor for quickly expanding our exploitation of oil, gas, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro or nuclear energy is giving the companies that pursue them (and the banks that fund them) the regulatory certainly that if they invest billions, the government will help them (companies) to quickly build the transmission lines and pipelines to get their energy to market.”
How unexpected and totally refusing to have a traditional liberal intellect, with national journalistic standing, despite being on the other side(!), devote column space to call for the increased production of our domestic oil and gas resources, both for American use, as well as to help supply our allies in Western Europe, now largely cut-off from the Russian supply lines, and with winter coming on. Of course, he couldn’t help but include solar & wind, which are unreliable resources that will never substitute for, nor certainly replace, our traditional, reliable, cost-effective, and abundant-in-supply fossil fuels. He was savvy enough to include nuclear as a renewable which no sight-and-wisdom-impaired liberal (perhaps, redundant) will ever do. Which is unfortunate, since it is the only renewable, currently viable, that really can take on the load of providing energy to America, alongside oil and gas. And nuclear reactors are now being constructed in modular size (no longer the huge structures occupying much land, but even then, nowhere near as much land as is being literally absorbed and wasted on gigantic wind and solar ‘farms’!
As for Mr. Friedman, again, so very refreshing to see an accurate prediction of what is needed domestically (vastly increased oil and gas prospecting & production) for the long-term good of America’s energy needs, as well as those of many of our allies. Sometimes, such as this case, though still far too rarely, wisdom actually can over-ride foolishly restrictive ideology. Which is especially welcome at a time of critical national power-resources need, which America’s private energy companies can readily supply, once governmentally unleashed, as opposed to the security-stupidity of continually draining, and thus, damaging, our nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve!
Arizona shipping container border solution via dailymail.com, Harriet Alexander, 8-134-22; Ortiz quote via breitbart.com, Pam Key, 9-16-22; Diversity of thought is prohibited via powerlineblog.com, Steven Hayward, 9-20-22; Greenfield on inflation and wealth redistribution via frontpagemag.com, Daniel Greenfield, 9-19-22; Kudlow quotes via foxbusiness.com, Larry Kudlow, 9-7-22; Sasha Stone quotes via nypost.com, Sasha Stone, 9-14-22; Friedman quotes via powerlineblog.com, Steven Hayward, 9-15-22).