What's in the Democrats' relief bill? All their fondest dreams to beat Trump

If it is possible to find anyone as economically stupid as a Dem politician, I cannot imagine who that might be.

Furthermore, they know that the Reps will never agree to it, which means they really just want to use this list as a club to beat Trump with.

That their own traditional electorate will suffer the consequences of no bill passing means nothing to them. Schumer and Pelosi and the rest really do think that when they blame Trump, those folks will automatically believe them. And even knowing that Americans will suffer because of them, "Well, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."

Getting back and then maintaining their own power is the only thing they actually want.

Meanwhile:

Update: Then there is this:
 

The coming crash and what it portends

If we continue on the present course, we will enter a depression that might make the 1930s a distant competitor. The number of jobless Americans could reach tens of millions.

WSJ: Rethinking the Coronavirus Shutdown:

Yet the costs of this national shutdown are growing by the hour, and we don’t mean federal spending. We mean a tsunami of economic destruction that will cause tens of millions to lose their jobs as commerce and production simply cease. Many large companies can withstand a few weeks without revenue but that isn’t true of millions of small and mid-sized firms. ...

The deadweight loss in production will be profound and take years to rebuild. In a normal recession the U.S. loses about 5% of national output over the course of a year or so. In this case we may lose that much, or twice as much, in a month.

Our friend Ed Hyman, the Wall Street economist, on Thursday adjusted his estimate for the second quarter to an annual rate loss in GDP of minus-20%. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s assertion on Fox Business Thursday that the economy will power through all this is happy talk if this continues for much longer.

This is the first time ever that the US Government has deliberately shut the economy down, and the idea that it can just be turned back on like flipping a switch is delusional.

Consider: We will never be able to determine how many lives were saved from the virus. But we will easily know how many people died because of the economic crash to come - just count increased suicides and even some homicides, to say nothing of untold numbers of people thrown into permanent poverty.

The lockdowns and stay-at-home orders are saving lives now. But if they continue much longer, they will cost lives later and cause economic, literal suffering for years and years to come.

Also, The Atlantic, "Suicide and the Economy."

On April 12, 1937, the express train to New York roared across the New Jersey countryside. The train, a Pennsy Railroad electric locomotive the color of bull’s blood, usually passed through the station at Elizabeth at about 50 miles per hour. On this particular morning, it came to an unanticipated stop. As the express rounded the curve, my great-grandfather jumped down from the platform, where witnesses reported he had been pacing for 10 minutes, and lay down across the tracks.

When the engineer was finally able to halt the train 100 feet past the platform, Roy Humphrey had disappeared beneath its wheels. His last act: raising his head to look at the oncoming train.

Roy was one of at least 40,000 Americans who took their own lives that year and the next, the two-year span that suicide rate spiked to its highest recorded level ever: more than 150 per 1 million annually. 

Update: "US unemployment could surge to 30% next quarter and GDP might plunge 50%, Fed's Bullard warns"

Also relevant: "The luxury of apocalypticism -- The elites want us to panic about Covid-19 – we must absolutely refuse to do so."

The point is, there is such a thing as doing too little and also such a thing as doing too much. Doing too little against Covid-19 would be perverse and nihilistic. Society ought to devote a huge amount of resources, even if they must be commandeered from the private sector, to the protection of human life. But doing too much, or acting under the pressure to act rather than under the aim of coherently fighting disease and protecting people’s livelihoods, is potentially destructive, too. People need jobs, security, meaning, connection. They need a sense of worth, a sense of social solidarity, a sense of belonging. To threaten those things as part of a performative ‘war’ against what ought to be treated as a health challenge rather than as an End Times event would be self-defeating and utterly antithetical to the broader aim of protecting our societies from this novel new threat. To decimate the stuff of human life in the name of saving human life is a questionable moral approach.

Why health care is not a human right

I first wrote this in 2009, but it seems relevant to today as well; I have updated it.

Is health care a human right, as the United Methodist Church says? I don't see how. Human rights, as Americans have always understood them (beginning with Thomas Jefferson and the other Founders) are a fact of nature that cannot be rescinded by human beings. Rights are immutable, indeed, unalienable ("Not to be separated, given away, or taken away" Dictionary.com, as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence.)  As a precursor to his Declaration theology that unalienable human rights are a endowment by God, Jefferson wrote in his pre-revolution essay, Summary View of the Rights of British America, " The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force may disjoin, but cannot destroy them."

Since his day, and certainly preceding it, the historic American understanding of human rights is the exercise of individual freedom, especially in the political realm, for both public and personal good. We have historically never understood our rights as encompassing access to services or commodities.

Rights are inherent in each individual equally, they are not divisible. Take the Declaration's famous insistence that among human rights is "the pursuit of happiness." Note that it is the pursuit of happiness that is a right, not the achievement of it. Nor is one person more entitled to pursue happiness than another, no matter one’s station in life. Besides, happiness (what Jefferson meant was not happiness as we use the word today, but a state of contentment in life and possessions) is not something that can be given us, it is something we have to create.

It does sound all high-minded to say that, like rights, health care should be equal for everybody, which I suppose is why clergy are so susceptible to say so. It's more than obvious that no one in the Congress or the White House believed it in 2009 when Obamacare was enacted. If they had, the act would have required members of Congress and the rest of the federal government to fall under the "public option" along with the rest of us proles. But they’ve protected their turf completely and much better turf is theirs than ours. I’ll believe that equal access and care for everyone is a moral imperative when the people who say it is a moral imperative place themselves under the same imperative.

The presumption that health care is a right, and therefore must be equal for everyone, is founded on two critical errors of understanding. The first is that health care is a resource that is simply available for those who need it, or that can be made equally available through proper legislation and regulation. The second error is that medical care and access to it can be rationed by command more equally, economically, and fairly than by demand.

Health care is not a resource to be exploited

Medical facilities and doctors are not phenomena of nature, like water or petroleum are. Hospitals don’t just appear. They are produced. Medical care is not a resource that can be "mined" through more regulation to be more plentiful. Medical care is a service. 

Specifically, it is a contracted service, in much the same way that legal assistance, automotive maintenance or pastoral care are services. Why? Because men and women choose of their own accord to get medical training. Once graduated, doctors, nurses, paramedics and technicians of various kinds reasonably expect that they will be compensated at a rate greater than their costs to enter the profession, greater than their extremely high overhead to run the practice, and enough to make their grueling hours materially worthwhile for themselves and their families.

This fact has very direct consequences under the Medicare and Medicaid systems we have today. The Atlantic's business journalist Meg McArdle explains:

[W]e have a comprehensive national health care plan for seniors. Yet we have a shortage of geriatricians, the one specialty that you would think would be booming. Why? Because Medicare sets a single price for the services of geriatricians, and it is low. Since the field is not particularly enticing (though arguably it really should be, since geriatricians have extremely high job satisfaction compared to many more popular specialties), very few people go into it. It's one of relatively few specialties that consistently has most of its slots and fellowships unfilled.

Moreover, the skills and equipment a doctor or hospital possess are their individual property, not the property, even partially, of the state or public. (There are publicly-owned facilities such as VA hospitals, but in operation there is no difference to the general public between them and private facilities). No one has a natural right to someone else's property. To think we do directly violates the Tenth Commandment. As McArdle says, "People have no obligation to perform labor for others. I may not [justly or legally] force a surgeon to save my mother at gunpoint."

That means that to receive a doctor's services, the doctor and a patient must come to a mutually-agreeable arrangement of what medical care will be provided in exchange for a specified fee. This is a commercial transaction no different in type than hiring a plumber, cab driver or lawyer. That medical services may be life critical does not change the fundamental nature of the contract.

We have access to medical care only as long as a doctor is willing to provide it. No one has to become a doctor or continue in medical practice. If any "reform" of the present health care system reduces the rewards of practicing medicine or complicates the practice, fewer men and women will so choose, as in Britain today (see below). Access will then go down for everyone and costs will inevitably rise, no matter what the rate-payment of the public option is, because access or its lack is itself a cost and also drives other costs.

Health care is a service

As Michael Keehn explains, health care is a service but not a community service. Police and fire departments provide community services. That seems obvious enough, but consider: fire departments do not protect your home individually. The fire chief definitely will let it burn to the ground if firefighting needs are greater elsewhere in the town. Just look at what is happening near Los Angeles as of the date of this post. Police and fire protection are in fact rationed to protect the lives and property of the greatest number of people possible with the resources available. But when the resources (manpower, equipment or money) run out, individuals are exposed to greater danger or loss though the community at large may still be protected.

Individual residents of a city do not contract for their community’s police or fire protection. When you call 9-1-1 because someone broke into your home while you were in bed, you don’t have to sign a contract with the police when they arrive, specifying the actions you want them to take and how much you are going to pay.

In contrast, medical care is an individual service. Doctors do not provide their services to the community as a whole, but to individuals. Because of that, each patient enters into a contract with his/her doctor specifying the medical services to be received and how much it will cost. This is mostly mediated through insurance companies, of course, which greatly simplifies the contracting process. The result is that a patient 's health is protected in a way that their safety or homes are not protected by the police or fire departments.

Interestingly, the Roman Catholic Church rejects the idea that health care is a human right. The Most Reverend R. Walker Nickless, bishop of the Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa, explains.

[T]he Catholic Church does not teach that “health care” as such, without distinction, is a natural right.

The “natural right” of health care is the divine bounty of food, water, and air without which all of us quickly die. This bounty comes from God directly. None of us own it, and none of us can morally withhold it from others. The remainder of health care is a political, not a natural, right, because it comes from our human efforts, creativity, and compassion.

Like any human endeavor, health care is finite. It can be properly understood only as such. Any reform that treats medical care as if it can be made infinitely available is a product of cloud-cuckoo land. Medical care, like every other finite thing, must be allocated. The current buzzword for that is "rationed." That’s the foundation of the second critical mistake people are making about health care, that medical care and access to it can be rationed by the government more equally, economically and fairly than by consumers. 

Philip Barlow, Consultant neurosurgeon at Southern General Hospital, Glasgow, explains why "Health care is not a human right." 

Update, March 2020: In 2009. Philip Niles wrote that the real question is not whether health care is a human right, but "How much health care is a human right?" His essay is no no longer online. It is a good question because since medical care is finite. He says, 

With all of the emotional and financial investment in health care, it is important to address the situation with an actionable approach - not an ideologic one.  My suggestion is to quantify just HOW MUCH health care we believe is "right" to provide, recognize that we should cap public health care spending, and focus the moral/fiscal debate on how high that cap should be set.  Let's achieve our ambitions of providing access for the uninsured with the most likely way of succeeding: by haggling about the price.

There is always a price to be paid, one way or another. What politicians seeking votes seem to do is ignore that price (paid by the consumer) and cost (borne by the provider) are not the same. When a political candidate promises free health care for everyone, they conveniently ignore that free care is simply, literally impossible. 

Look at it this way: as I write, we are in the midst of the coronavirus concerns, with a few thousand died from it worldwide and several in the US, where cases are rising. Now imagine you are a government-employee administrator for Medicare For All the next time such a potential pandemic arises -- and most assuredly there will be a next time. 

You have to choose between funding two heart-replacement surgeries plus rehab routines or funding the testing of 50,000 potential virus infectees for the illness. You do not have the funds to do both. 

Which do you choose? Why? And how do you respond when the untreated persons demand it anyway because it is a human right? 

There is always this question: Who pays and in what coin? One candidate this year had either the temerity (or carelessness) to tell his audience the day before the S.C. primary, "Your taxes are going to be raised" to pay for Medicare For All. How much will taxes be raised? He did not say, but presumably they will raised an amount corresponding to the cost of providing the medical care to the population. In other words, everyone will still pay an insurance premium now called taxes, and the tax rate will never go anywhere but up. Why? Because every other nation with "free" health care finds it over-utilized and under-resourced. 

Take Canada, for example, which many politicos say can be a model for us. In reality ...

... Canadians' out-of-pocket health costs are nearly identical to what Americans pay—a difference of roughly $15 per month. In return, Canadians pay up to 50% more in taxes than Americans, with government health costs alone accounting for $9,000 in additional taxes per year. This comes to roughly $50 in additional taxes per dollar saved in out-of-pocket costs.  Keep in mind these are only the beginning of the financial hit from "Medicare for All." 

Canada's public system does not cover many large health costs, from pharmaceuticals to nursing homes to dental and vision. As a result, public health spending in Canada accounts for only 70% of total health spending. In contrast, Medicare for All proposals promise 100% coverage. This suggests the financial burdens on Americans, and distortions to care, would be far greater than what Canadians already suffer. ...  

More serious than the financial burdens is what happens to quality of care in a government-run system. Canada's total health costs are about one-third cheaper than the U.S. as a percent of GDP, but this is achieved by undesirable cost-control practices. For example, care is ruthlessly rationed, with waiting lists running into months or years. The system also cuts corners by using older and cheaper drugs and skimping on modern equipment. Canada today has fewer MRI units per capita than Turkey or Latvia. 

Moreover, underinvestment in facilities and staff has reached the point where Canadians are being treated in hospital hallways. Predictably, Canada's emergency rooms are packed. In the province of Quebec, wait-times average over four hours, leading many patients to just give up, go home and hope for the best.

The piper must always be paid. And so it shall be for us, but both in currency and in other than money. Medical care is always rationed. Always. And the rationing takes place within three areas:

1. Price to the consumer, presently mediated through 
1. insurance premiums and co-pays, and
2. Medicare and co-pays and Medicaid.
3. Under MFA, those will be taxes and the Dept. of Health and Human Services.
    
2. Quality of the care provided, mediated through 
1. the training of the physicians, nurses, and other medical staff
2. the quality and availability of medical supplies and equipment.
3. costs of the providers as related to price to the consumers.
    
3. Availability of the care, mediated 
1. always through the number of practitioners and where they work, and that is almost always mediated through compensation,
2. and by what medical specialties they practice, noting that this is heavily related to compensation also (see Megan McArdles' observation above). 
3. by limiting or even eliminating medical for some demographics, say by age, as now-suspended presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg said explicitly.

What we are falling into in this debate is the "Do something!" fallacy: 

1. The status quo is deficient, so something must be done!
2. This is something.
3. Therefore, this must be done. 

Absolutely anything can be justified by that template - and is being justified. But remember: medical care is always rationed, either by price and cost, or by quality, or by availability. When we go to the polls in November, we will not be voting for free health care for everyone. We will be voting only for how we want health care rationed in the coming years, and we will be merely hoping without any evidence anywhere in the world that it will be better than what we have now. 
  

Finally, The New York Times in 2009: "Why We Must Ration Health Care."

Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another. In the United States, most health care is privately financed, and so most rationing is by price: you get what you, or your employer, can afford to insure you for. But our current system of employer-financed health insurance exists only because the federal government encouraged it by making the premiums tax deductible. That is, in effect, a more than $200 billion government subsidy for health care. In the public sector, primarily Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, health care is rationed by long waits, high patient copayment requirements, low payments to doctors that discourage some from serving public patients and limits on payments to hospitals.

The case for explicit health care rationing in the United States starts with the difficulty of thinking of any other way in which we can continue to provide adequate health care to people on Medicaid and Medicare, let alone extend coverage to those who do not now have it.

This is not where are now except for the VA. Which should tell us something.

Forbes covered the way health care works (well, doesn't work) in Britain: "Britain's Version Of 'Medicare For All' Is Struggling With Long Waits For Care."

Consider how long it takes to get care at the emergency room in Britain. Government data show that hospitals in England only saw 84.2% of patients within four hours in February. That's well below the country's goal of treating 95% of patients within four hours -- a target the NHS hasn't hit since 2015. Now, instead of cutting wait times, the NHS is looking to scrap the goal. ...  

The NHS also routinely denies patients access to treatment. More than half of NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups, which plan and commission health services within their local regions, are rationing cataract surgery. They call it a procedure of "limited clinical value." It's hard to see how a surgery that can prevent blindness is of limited clinical value. Delaying surgery can cause patients' vision to worsen -- and thus put them at risk of falls or being unable to conduct basic daily activities.  

"It's shocking that access to this life-changing surgery is being unnecessarily restricted," said Helen Lee, a health policy manager at the Royal National Institute of Blind People.  

Many Clinical Commissioning Groups are also rationing hip and knee replacements, glucose monitors for diabetes patients, and hernia surgery by placing the same "limited clinical value" label on them. Patients face long wait times and rationing of care in part because the NHS can't attract nearly enough medical professionals to meet demand. At the end of 2018, more than 39,000 nursing spots were unfilled. That's a vacancy rate of more than 10%. Among medical staff, nearly 9,000 posts were unoccupied.

But don't worry. We will be promised that we will do it different. But there is zero reason to believe that American politicians and bureaucrats are magically more generous, more compassionate or smarter than Britain's. 

Or for that matter, Canada's, where the government determines medical care, and so uses that power to favor selected constituencies. In Canada, rare but expensive medical treatments go grossly underfunded while the government spends enormous sums on cheap treatments and meds that vast numbers of voters use. Like this:

A girl who died of leukemia was given a final send off after her friends signed her casket with loving messages on January 30.  

[…]Laura might have experienced a few more milestones if a Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, hospital had been able to accommodate a bone marrow transplant for the young woman. Numerous donors were a match with Laura and ready to donate, but Hamilton’s Juravinski Hospital didn’t have enough beds in high-air-pressure rooms for the procedure. Hospital staff told her they had about 30 patients with potential donors, but the means to only do about five transplants a month.  

[…]Dr. Ralph Meyer, Juravinski’s vice-president of oncology and palliative care, told Ontario’s TheStar.com there are plenty of others facing the same situation as Laura in Canada.

Free birth control immediately? Check. Free needles to inject illegal narcotics? Check. Free condoms? Check. Free abortions on demand? Check. Life-saving operation for a single leukemia patient? Not a chance. Leukemia patients are too few to form a voting block, so let 'em die. 

Then there is the Catholic-run hospice in Canada that the government is requiring closure because it refuses to kill its patients. 

A hospice in Canada has lost its funding and is being forced to close after refusing to offer and perform medically assisted suicides. The Irene Thomas Hospice in Delta, British Columbia, will lose $1.5 million in funding and will no longer be permitted to operate as a hospice as of February 25, 2021. 

Fraser Health Authority, one of the six public health care authorities in the province, announced on Tuesday that it would be ending its relationship with the hospice over its refusal to provide medically assisted deaths to its patients.

Anyone who thinks that none of this can happen under Medicare For All is living on a different planet than the rest of us. The only way the Democrat party thinks of goods and services is by in-groups and out-groups. And that is where they will allocate funds, spending bite-size on as many people as they can, because the real purpose of Medicare For All is not medical care. It is to enhance and keep political power. 

Censure instead of impeachment?

Politico reports, "Small group of Democrats floats censure instead of impeachment."

A small group of vulnerable House Democrats is floating the longshot idea of censuring President Donald Trump instead of impeaching him, according to multiple lawmakers familiar with the conversations.

Those Democrats, all representing districts that Trump won in 2016, huddled on Monday afternoon in an 11th-hour bid to weigh additional — though unlikely — options to punish the president for his role in the Ukraine scandal as the House speeds toward an impeachment vote next week.

The group of about 10 Trump-district lawmakers included Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.), and Ben McAdams (D-Utah.).

The Constitution specifically grants authority to the House and the Senate to impeach and remove from office a president. There is no mention of "censure" anywhere in the Constitution. The Senate and the House have used censure since the 1800s to call to account members of their own bodies, such power being granted by Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2, which says that “each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.”

Although "censure" is not there, the clause cannot be reasonably said to exclude it. However, it unambiguously limits each chamber's punitive authority and power to its own members, except for impeachment of a president or other member of the executive or legislative branches, authorized by Article 1, Sections 2 and 3 of the Constitution.

The Constitution Center reports of the first attempt to censure a president, done by the Senate in 1832 against President Andrew Jackson.

These facts weren’t lost on President Andrew Jackson in 1834 when he faced the first-ever censure motion against a sitting President. Jackson was locked in a fierce battle against Henry Clay and the Whigs over the Second Bank of the United States.

In 1832, Jackson vetoed a congressional move to re-charter the bank; the Whig-controlled Senate and Clay asked Jackson to supply notes from his Cabinet meeting about the veto decision and Jackson refused to supply the documents. Clay then led the censure motion, which passed by a 26-20 vote.

“Resolved, That the President, in the late Executive proceedings in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both,” the motion read.

Jackson’s response was quite longer.

“I thus find myself charged on the records of the Senate, and in a form hitherto unknown in our history, with the high crime of violating the laws and Constitution of my country,” he wrote in a letter to the Senate.

“The resolution of the Senate is wholly unauthorized by the Constitution, and in derogation of its entire spirit. It assumes that a single branch of the legislative department may for the purposes of a public censure, and without any view to legislation or impeachment, take up, consider, and decide upon the official acts of the Executive. But in no part of the Constitution is the President subjected to any such responsibility, and in no part of that instrument is any such power conferred on either branch of the Legislature,” Jackson added.

If the House does try to censure President Trump, I hope he tells them to stuff it, that they can impeach him or just live with it. For the Constitution gives them no other power.

Lt. Col. Vindman is a tool

I mean that Army Lt. Col. and National Security Council staffer Alexander Vindman is being used as a tool by House Democrats, not that he is trying to do so - although the evidence that he is trying is not absent, see below.

The impeachers are accusing Republicans of attacking Vindman's service and patriotism. Funny thing is, I have not seen any such attacks, I have seen only Democrats' accusations of them. But let's humor them:

Pick the one, single officer whose patriotism is off limits to any possible criticism.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
Maj. Tulsi Gabbard

But back to Vindman. I have some pointed comments about him and his testimony yesterday to Congress. I will only offer my own bio as a founding for what I am writing here.

Today the AP reports, Colonel testifies he raised concerns about Ukraine, Trump. And in the first paragraph (my boldface):

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defying White House orders, an Army officer serving with President Donald Trump’s National Security Council testified to impeachment investigators Tuesday that he twice raised concerns over the administration’s push to have Ukraine investigate Democrats and Joe Biden.

That alone shatters his credibility with me. Officers do not get a choice of what orders they get to obey. The Supreme Court of the United States wrote in Parker v. Levy, 1974, “An army is not a deliberative body. It is an executive arm. Its law is that of obedience. No question can be left open as to the right of command in the officer, or the duty of obedience in the soldier.”

The armed forces' Manual for Court Martial, the instruction of how to implement the statutes of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, states plainly, “the dictates of a person’s conscience, religion, or personal philosophy cannot justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise lawful order.”

The Manual also puts a soldier's obligation to obey this way: "An order requiring the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate."

Yet Vindman disobeyed his order not to appear before Congress simply because he wanted to. His entire credibility is utterly shattered and his willful disobedience reveals him as a partisan hack in uniform.

This officer is being hailed as a hero because he placed country above Trump etc. etc. as required by his oath of commissioning in which swore to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." His advocates skip right over the part where he also swore, "I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter...."

I took the same oath of commissioning that Vindman took, and in my view he clearly violated it in doing what he did. The "duties of the office" absolutely include obedience to the orders of the President and officers within his chain of command, unless they are clearly and unarguably illegal. Difference of opinion does not count.

According to the AP report of his testimony, not once - not. one. time. - did he raise any Constitutional issue with the phone call or ever claim  - again: not. one. time. - that Trump's conversation ever constituted an illegal order to him that he had no choice but to refuse.

All of Vindman's dissent with the content of the phone call is over policy.

“I was concerned by the call,” Vindman said, according to prepared remarks obtained by The Associated Press. “I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine.”

He has no authority as a military officer or as an NSC staffer to assess whether a policy position of the president is "proper." He has absolutely zero authority to oppose a president's position regarding US support of Ukraine or any other nation. Foreign policy belongs solely within the White House as advised by the State Dept. The NSC has no charter - and therefore neither does Vindman - for original formulation of US foreign policy.

Vindman, or any other military officer, is completely free to disagree privately with administration policy or the orders he is given, I encountered that myself many times in my military career. But that means exactly bupkus. The "duties of the office" remain unchanged: to execute directives and orders and to carry out policy to the best of an officer's ability.

He [Vindman] wrote, “I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security.”

That is of course pure speculation. And even if entirely correct, it is irrelevant to the discharge of his duties. Let me emphasize again: Lieutenant-colonels do not set policy and absolutely have no business even considering "partisan politics" in the performance of their duties. That is literally not his problem.

BTW, I can read his ribbons, too, and this is by no means a "highly decorated" lieutenant colonel. He holds the Combat Infantry Badge, signifying that he served at least 30 days in a designated combat theater occupying an infantry personnel slot. Which one would expect since he is an infantry officer, but the CIB is awarded for being physically present in theater, not for seeing actual combat. That he also holds the Purple Heart (for IED wound in 2004, when he would have been a junior-grade officer) would indicate that he did see combat. He also was awarded the Ranger tab, which is not a decoration but an achievement (and a very difficult one, too). So his creds are no better than ordinary for an infantry LTC.

The top two ribbons in his photo in the AP article are, viewer's left to right, the Purple Heart and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal. In the second row are a single Army Meritorious Service Medal, then Army Commendation Medal. After that a series of "place" ribbons, denoting service in certain deployment areas of the world, but not linked to doing anything there but getting off the plane. Literally, if you show up you will get the ribbon. (I have some of them, too.)

But there is not one combat decoration there except the Purple Heart. The MSM is not very impressive, actually. I have three myself; they are normally awarded at the end of a tour as a "thanks for being here" award, sometimes though rarely for outstanding achievement. I am sort of curious why he has only one Army MSM; the single Defense MSM would come from service on a joint-service assignment. (I have a different joint-service ribbon.)

That said, dummies do not get assigned to either joint staffs or the NSC. So he is unquestionably a smart man, but IMO he definitely went outside his lane in his reaction to the phone call. And definitely  in appearing before the committee.

Update: Here is Lt. Col. Vindman's opening statement to the committee. IMO, it's a nothing burger. And with the actual transcript of the call made public a month ago, what did Vindman tell Congress that they didn't already know? Nuthin'.

Update: A retired officer who knows Vindman personally has some choice words.

And a retired Army lieutenant colonel explains why he had Vindman, then a major, step outside for some private, one-way counseling of what professional conduct means, during a Combined US-Russian exercise in Germany.

Update: Alex Vindman’s Impeachment Testimony Completely Rested On His Personal Opinions

Four Several impeachment reads (updated)

A list of valuable links.

Impeachment is regime suicide
The ruling class still believes in a consensus that doesn’t exist. Their legitimacy is vanishing

We're in a permanent coup
The author is a Rolling Stone writer, but the article appears on his own site.

Anti-Trump Psychodrama 10.0? by Victor Davis Hanson

Our Constitution Is Clear on Powers, and We Really Should Read It

The Cultural Civil War and Trump Derangement Syndrome
And what happens when politics becomes culture.

It's Not All About the Bidens: Why Trump Has Ukraine on the Brain

Was Mueller senile? Or deliberately faking it?

Democrats suffer anxiety attacks over Robert Mueller testimony, and blame him rather than themselves

What Mueller Was Trying to Hide (WSJ)
His investigation was about protecting the actual miscreants in the collusion hoax.

Robert Mueller isn't senile; he was a dirty cop forced to take the witness stand

The investigators need to be investigated

Mueller collapse raises more questions

Democrats Turn to Conspiracy Theories for Dud Mueller Performance

Rolling Stone, "The Myth Of Robert Mueller, Exploded:"

... Democrats have repeatedly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in one improbable face-plant after another. This is just the latest disaster. They hyped Robert Mueller for two years as an all-conquering hero, only to have him show up under oath like a man wandering in traffic. Incredible. The losses continue.

7 Times Robert Mueller Played Dumb Before Congress For Partisan Advantage -- he was senile and memory-challenged only when he needed to be.

1,000 words on the Mueller testimony

The confused minds of Nazi accusers

Remember when US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that the immigrant-detention camps that temporarily house illegal immigrants were the same as Nazi concentration camps?

Now she says this:

She left unmentioned that some of those holding areas went up under President Barack Obama, because the unprecedented wave of “undocumenteds” from Central America started hitting on his watch.

Nor did she address the fact that the White House has asked for emergency funding precisely to address the “dehumanizing conditions” in the camps, a bill that has zero funds for The Wall — but Democrats refuse to even vote on it. This, when no less than The New York Times has now editorialized twice urging passage on basic humanitarian grounds.

Remember, this is the woman who went on 60 Minutes on Jan. 6 and said, “There's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right" (video at the link).

But back to her latest fact-free assertion that only Nazis, who run concentration camps for illegal aliens, also oppose open borders. It goes like this:

Since we are Nazis, our detention centers are concentration camps. But in order to be detained, foreigners have to cross our border first. Also since we are Nazis, we want to close the borders to make it impossible for them to cross - because, I guess, as Nazis, we love to run concentration camps but we also want to make sure no one ever gets into one. Because we are Nazis.

Now I need a nap.

Reparations truth

NFL Legend Burgess Owens testified before a Senate committee on the topic of national reparations to black Americans because of slavery.

Wow, Burgess Owens just stunned everyone:

“I used to be a Democrat until I did my history and found out the misery that that party brought to my race... Let's pay restitution. How about the Democratic Party pay for all the misery brought to my race..." pic.twitter.com/ZXuwncFreV

— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) June 19, 2019

Remember: if reparations becomes a reality, the number of back Americans will triple or more. After all, that which is subsidized, increases - it's the oldest law of economics. Therefore, "If Congress votes reparations, everybody will be black."

Update: Coleman Hughes: The Moment You Give Someone Reparations, You've Made Them Into A Victim -- "Columnist Coleman Hughes expressed his opposition to reparations for slavery at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday. Hughes, a writer for 'Quillette,' said the moment one is given reparations they are made a victim without their consent."

COLEMAN HUGHES: Black people don’t need another apology. We need safer neighborhoods and better schools. We need a less punitive criminal justice system. We need affordable health care. And none of these things can be achieved through reparations for slavery...

Reparations by definition are only given to victims, so the moment you give me reparations, you’ve made me into a victim without my consent. Not just that, you’ve made 1/3 of black Americans who poll against reparations into victims without their consent, and black Americans have fought too long for the right to define themselves to be spoken for in such a condescending manner.

Update: Whitewashing the Democratic Party’s History, by Mona Charen. "Rather than acknowledge their sorry history, modern Democrats have rewritten it."

Bob Mueller translated

The deliberate destruction of women's sports

This track meet was in Connecticut in February:

>

The story:

Two male runners from Connecticut continue to dominate the field in high school girls’ track competition.

Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood are juniors in high school. Both are biological males who identify as transgender females. And, according to a report by the Associated Press, they took first and second place in the recent Connecticut open indoor track girl’s championships held on February 16.

One of their fellow athletes, high school junior Selina Soule, told the AP it isn’t fair that female runners have to compete against male runners. Soule missed qualifying for the New England regionals by just two spots.

“We all know the outcome of the race before it even starts; it’s demoralizing,” said Soule. “I fully support and am happy for these athletes for being true to themselves. They should have the right to express themselves in school, but athletics have always had extra rules to keep the competition fair.”

As someone remarked elsewhere, "Men - better at being women than women!"

It also needs to be noted that neither of these transgender runners' times would distinguish them at all compared to the times of other male runners. They would be decidedly middle of the pack.

If the door is opened full-wide to boys in public schools declaring themselves female and entering girls' sports events, then it will mean the end of women's sports. Instead, there will simply be two categories of men's sports.

And that is exactly what seems to be the goal of some House Democrats:

Understand that "allow" is the wrong word here. Schools across the country will not have the option to "allow." They will be compelled to admit. The photo here, btw, shows a high school girl "transitioning" to male by taking high doses of testosterone. But she still competes on in the girls' events, where she has never lost. So it works only one way, really: boys who want to compete against only girls can do so, but girls taking male-strength drugs still get to compete against girls.

As for girls who want to remain girls and compete against only girls? Sorry, no can do. Because equality and fairness, comrades!

A large number of Democrat politicians in Congress want to take away the power of local schools to make their own rules, regarding gender and sports. House Democrats overwhelmingly voted for a bill on Wednesday, that would force all schools to allow boys who claim to be transgender, to compete against natural-born female competitors.

All but one of the 235 members of the Democrat caucus along with two left-wing Republicans are co-sponsoring a bill they are calling the “Equality Act.” The bill would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to force schools to allow transgenders to play on school sports teams that correspond to their “chosen” gender.

 Once again, we will learn that everything that Leftism touches, it destroys. On purpose.

Update: PJ Media, "Transgender Privilege: Why Must We All Be Forced to Bow to It?"

Update: "Trans 'Woman' Demolishes World Records; Olympian Decries 'Pointless, Unfair Playing Field' "

Update: And now it has come to this: "BIOLOGICAL MALE IS TOP-RANKED NCAA WOMEN’S TRACK STAR"

Robert Mueller hangs it up

Special Counsel Robert Mueller released the report of his two-year investigation this afternoon. According to a "senior DOJ official," there are no additional indictments recommended by the report. Both Senators McConnell and Schumer have called for the complete report to be released to the public. Developing story, obviously.

Update:

Read the whole thing of each:
‘Shame’: Victor Davis Hanson delivers scathing indictment of failed ‘coup’
The American Media Destroyed Themselves over the Mueller Investigation
Democrat Freak-Out: Reaction To Mueller Report Brings Tears And Jeers
Progressive Strategy for 2020: Change the Rules of Engagement
And a humor break; THE WEEK IN PICTURES: MUELLER TIME AT LAST!

How Pelosi just killed the Green New Deal

The headline explains it fully: "Pelosi Stacks Climate Committee with Dems Backed by Energy Interests."

The appalling fantasy of the Green New Deal

Well, when the Left has lost New York Magazine...

With the announcement and publication of the Green New Deal, released to much fanfare by the socialist "It" girl, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D.- Twilight Zone, the GND's principal designer, Sean McElwee, has gleefully announced that, “The Green New Deal is what it means to be progressive."

So the curtain has been pulled back and it ain't pretty. NY Mag's Jonathan Chait, who is not exactly a charter member of the VRWC, went straight for the jugular: "Democrats Need an Ambitious Climate Plan. The Green New Deal Isn’t It."

The operating principle behind the Green New Deal is a no-enemies-to-the-left spirit of fostering unity among every faction of the progressive movement. Thus, at the same time, the plan avoids taking stances that are absolutely vital to reduce carbon emissions, it embraces policies that have nothing to do with climate change whatsoever. The Green New Deal includes the following non-climate provisions:

–A job with family-sustaining wages, family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security

–High-quality education, including higher education and trade schools

–High-quality health care

–Safe, affordable, adequate housing

–An economic environment free of monopolies

–Economic security to all who are unable or unwilling to work.

Let all that sink in while we return to Sean McElwee, "a socialist organizer with a penchant for colorfully threatening to destroy his enemies," who --

... designed the Green New Deal as a framework to encompass every maximal demand of the left. “The Green New Deal is what it means to be progressive. Clean air, clean water, decarbonizing, green jobs, a just transition, and environmental justice are what it means to a progressive,” he tells Vox. “By definition that means politicians who don’t support those goals aren’t progressive. We need to hold that line. Get on the GND train or choo-choo, [expletive] we’re going to go right past you.”

And then Mr. Chait grossly understates:

It is difficult to see how the task of finding 218 votes in the House and 50 in the Senate is made any easier by attaching a plan to such goals as economic security for people who are "unwilling to work.”

Gee, yuh think?

Alas, I just do not have the time for disassembling the parts of the GND of which I could write with some expertise. But the GND and its proponents seem to me to betray a fundamental fallacy that progressives/Leftists/liberals/socialists (all the same thing these days) share: they seriously seem to think that the masses chafe and suffer under the present order and eagerly await their liberation at the hands of the enlightened, oh-so-altruistic progressives/Leftists/liberals/socialists who will make a new day dawn and inaugurate a political, social, and economic Age of Aquarius. As I explained back in 2010 in, "Where Obama dropped his molasses jug,"

I think that the Democrats' most fundamental mistake is twofold. First, they did not understand that "Hope and Change" was a catchy campaign slogan but can never be a governing philosophy. Second, they made the most common Leftist mistake there is: they really believed that "unwashed middle" America (in Katie Couric's eloquent phrase) truly wants statist control of their daily lives.

The former first. Barack Obama did not understand that people say they want change but almost never actually mean it. Anyone who has become the chairperson of a volunteer organization, whether a civic club, the county chapter of a political party or, say (cough) pastor of a church, soon learns that what people say they want and what they will actually support are extremely divergent.

What they really mean is that they want change to affect other people but not themselves: "change for thee, but not for me." Each wants more of what he already has with no adversity in his personal situation.

One quick point of the GND's utter buffonery -- it wants its goals accomplished by 2030, including this:

Totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high- speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle.

Wikipedia says there are presently 263 million cars and trucks in the United States. Statista adds,

However, of the 68.6 million passenger cars produced worldwide in 2016, less than four million automobiles were produced in the U.S. 

So at present rates of production it will take more than 65 years of domestic production to replace the cars and trucks on the road - but remember, GND does not want to replace the present fleet with better versions but with electric vehicles that use no petroleum fuel at all.

Where, exactly, will the industrial base to do that come from? Out of thin air, apparently, just like everything else in the GND. And an electric-vehicle industry exists less overseas than it does in the US, so don't count on foreign manufacturers to make up the shortfall.

But we can have this just because we want it, right?

What makes this appalling is that to accomplish even a small fraction of these goals means a government the micromanages every person of the country. Every economic decision of even marginal significance, including family finances and spending, comes under the socialist thumb.

What of any consequence would remain beyond the state’s reach? Not wages, working conditions, or labor-management relations; not health care; not money, banking, or financial services; not personal privacy; not transportation or communication; not education or scientific research; not farming or food supply; not nutrition or food quality; not marriage or divorce; not child care; not provision for retirement; not recreation; not insurance of any kind; not smoking or drinking; not gambling; not political campaign funding or publicity; not real estate development, house construction, or housing finance; not international travel, trade, or finance; not a thousand other areas and aspects of social life.

Sean McElwee is correct: this is the stark reality of progressivism unmasked in its undiluted form. What cannot be discussed honestly and succinctly is couched in lies and fraud, and then sold to the public as benevolence and compassion and saving the world. In the end, all that matters is that the leftist agenda, of which this document is now the cornerstone, incrementally becomes the law of the land.

That's progressivism, comrades, in all its fully-revealed horror. Here are links, see for yourself.

The actual text of the GND.

The authors' own FAQs.

How does air travel become "unnecessary"?

The real political goals

The 10 greatest insanities of the GND

OTOH, maybe AOC is really a covert Republican plant whose mission is simply to ridicularize the Democrat party! I mean, look who she roped in!

Update: Tom Maguire writes,

But this proposal, and especially the accompanying (and withdrawn) fact sheet isn’t merely ludicrously ambitious and devoid of common sense (Eliminate air travel?!? Retrofit “every” building in America?!?). It also reveals a stunning absence of basic knowledge of history and public finance.

One wonders whether Ms. AOC actually has the time and temperament to collaborate with experts and study an issue (yet another reason she is the Trump of the left!). Or did Democratic leadership cut her loose and send the real Washington hands off on other projects? Let her primary herself!

On to specifics. This passage on how the extreme environmental makeover might be financed may have sounded great in a college dorm. A freshman dorm. But this is a frightening level of ignorance about the structure, legal authorities, independence and role of the Federal Reserve when it comes from a Congressperson as part of a legislative package.

To which law Prof. Glenn Reynolds accurately appends, "She wasn’t elected for her knowledge or her competence."

And remember history's main lesson about socialism: