The View from Right Field

Real Life Beats Dave Barry – Again

Dave Barry is out with his annual “Year in Review”, and as usual, it is hilarious.  Also, as usual, almost no matter how absurd and outlandish Dave is, real life is more absurd.  In this year’s edition, Dave says this about January:

“In government news, the Pentagon is harshly criticized for taking more than three days to notify the White House that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had been hospitalized. This prompts the administration to check up on the rest of the Cabinet, only to discover that at least four other secretaries are missing and the secretary of commerce apparently died three years ago.”

We Should Not Be Inaugurating Donald Trump as President on January 20

As the title of this post says, we should not be inaugurating Donald Trump as President on January 20, 2025, because … well, let me explain.

First, if it wasn’t for FBI Director James Comey and his totally bizarre decision to re-open the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server just eleven days before the 2016 election, it is entirely probable she would have won the election.¹  I am not sure Mr. Comey’s decision to do this has ever been adequately explained.  Even though Mr. Comey said, nine days later, on November 6, that nothing new was found, the damage was done.  By resurrecting the issue at the last minute of a very close election, Mr. Comey very probably swung the election to Donald Trump. 

What Christmas Is All About

My annual Christmas Eve post:

Charlie Brown:  "Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?"

Linus: "Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about.  Lights, please?

"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them.  And they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you.  Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.’  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men.’

"That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

How Green Is China? And Why?

When it comes to politics – or government, a good rule to follow, when trying to figure why a candidate – or a government – is doing something is to follow the money or, perhaps even more importantly, to follow the power.  Which brings me to the question of “How green is China”?

Some “climateers” think China is great because it is building more electric vehicles than any other country, it is the world’s leading producer of solar batteries, etc.  But, look at a couple of other things.  China is, by far, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and it has promised to start reducing its emission of greenhouse gases only in 2030.  China is also building coal-powered electricity generating plants, far more than the rest of the world combined.

Pardon for Hunter. Pardons for All?

With Hunter Biden pardoned, news reports are now telling us that the Biden administration is considering pardons for lots more people.  The rationale is that Donald Trump has threatened to go after numerous people once he gets in office, so the Biden administration has to give pardons to these people to protect them against persecution by the incoming Trump administration. 

While I understand the Biden administration’s theory, I hope they don’t do it.  First, I note that, even though Donald Trump said on the campaign trail in 2016 that he would go after Hillary Clinton, he never did so.  More importantly, however, giving blanket pardons to all of the people being mentioned would create a precedent that I don’t think anybody knows the consequences of. 

Remember Covid? Well, We Need To.

Remember just four years ago:  We didn’t have an approved vaccine for Covid.  Many schools were closed.  Lots of people were working from home.  Those who couldn’t work from home worried as they went to their jobs.  It was a scary time.  Lots of different policies were tried.  Some of them worked well.  Others, not so well.  Which is the point here.

New Zealand is in the middle of a Royal Commission into its response to Covid: what it did and what it didn’t do; what worked and what didn’t work.  The first part of the Commission’s report has been published¹, and more is to come.  Other countries are doing similar things.

But I haven’t seen anything like this in the US.  Obviously, we can’t have a Royal Commission; we fought a revolution to get rid of royals.  But we haven’t had any broad-based commission or other review trying to identify what worked and what didn’t work in our responses to Covid.  A lot of that may be because Covid became so politicized.  Which is unfortunate.  In one way, we were really lucky with Covid.  It was bad, but it could have been so much worse.  If the fatality rate had been higher, we could have had many times the number of people dying.  What we had was bad; what could have happened, and what could happen next time, could be much worse.  Which is why we need to learn the lessons of Covid; so we have a better idea of what to do next time.

Hunter Biden. Grifter.

I wrote all I needed to write about Hunter Biden, and his grifting, ten years ago when it was disclosed that Hunter was getting paid by a Ukrainian gas company controlled by a top official in the former government of a pro-Russian president of Ukraine.  At the time, both the White House press office and Vice President Biden’s office said that Hunter Biden's activities were those of a private citizen and didn’t involve the U.S. government. 

It may have been true that what Hunter Biden was doing back then wasn’t illegal, but it was wrong.  The children of Presidents and Vice Presidents shouldn’t be getting paid by foreign governments or their affiliates, whether current or former.  I realize that it can be tough for children of famous/important people, but I can think of lots of children and grandchildren of presidents who haven’t needed to grift for a living.

It would have been better if, in 2014, somebody had told Hunter to knock it off.  If then-Vice President Biden couldn’t do it, and he apparently couldn't, it’s too bad somebody in the Obama administration didn’t do it for him.