Killing jihadis and trying to make sure only actual soldiers who kill jihadis are paid: Somalia version.
Baltimore has the raw material to score big with this development.
So why is AOC such a climate science denier? Twelve years, indeed. Eighteen months or it is all over, people!!! Don't worry--or curl up in a fetal position--we've missed "deadlines" before.
Let's set aside the issue of it being wrong for Hollywood to self-censor to appease a communist dictatorship. It is wrong and it is a longstanding problem. But consider that Hollywood has no problem alienating the majority of Americans who are conservative with repeated box office bombs that attack conservatives. Why won't Hollywood challenge actual thug rulers who oppress their own people?
Russia uses the Russian Orthodox Church as a tool of government legitimacy and for expansion where there are Orthodox faithful. Ukraine, as I noted at the time, struck a blow at Russia by separating their own church from Russian domination. Explain to me again how brilliant the "frozen" conflict in Russian-occupied Donbas is.
One of the problems of an all-powerful federal government is that too many governors and mayors believe they are too important to improve mere local services. Instead of addressing crime or roads or garbage collection, these officials see their post as a stepping stone to national office--or at least a national stage where Twitter likes from distant allies are more important than local votes. If the federal government was cut back in scope, maybe local mayors would take pride in controlling rats.
Good advice and cautions from the left that expired the moment Trump won.
They think they made this choice to save the planet. But they are really saving the gene pool.
This is basically the Heavyweight Victimhood Championship. Tip to Instapundit.
The achievement is in getting leftists to come to Venezuela and--contrary to their lying eyes--believe that socialism has triumphed in making people's lives better.
This author draws lessons from the World War II Guadalcanal campaign. Yes, tactical defense on strategic offense is nice work when you can get it. I took my own stab at lessons in this AUSA Land Warfare Paper.
False wokeness is the last refuge of a racist scoundrel. Seriously, explain to me why dividing up people by races and other categories in their dorm, theme house, caucus, safe space, or graduation ceremony isn't something that segregationists, bigots, and even slave holders would celebrate? Smells like woke spirit to me.
American defense spending is not a crushing burden on America's economy. The idea that defense spending accounts for 60% of our budget as the dishonest Jessica Mathews (her name rang alarm bells for her past despite not hearing of her for quite a while) asserts is wrong. It requires you to neglect the massive entitlement portion of our budget. With that massive category, defense spending is 15% of our budget. And as I've written, our budget needs to train, pay, and equip our troops and then get them to the fight and sustain them. And you have to consider that we spend money to lower the price in blood. And that price in blood includes innocents caught in the middle as the war rages. Is that a bad bargain? And apparently Fareed Zakaria praised the essay. But Zakaria couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal, if you ask me on most days.
If Democrats try to promote this insane stupidity from campuses to government, they will be easily defeated in 2020.
One problem the Democrats will have in 2020 is that despite their frantic turn-it-to-11 panic about Trump, voters can see that he didn't establish a dictatorship. All the fears of an unknown were way overblown as I said at the time--despite my long history of not liking Trump at all--but the worries at least did have a foundation of uncertainty in 2016. Now? Other than the fanatics left behind in their
Iraq and Iran are building up to a showdown over Iran's PMF militias. And as that struggle goes on at a low level, ISIL rebuilds with the lack of focus on them by the Iraqi government and the Iranian PMF. But at least other Arab governments--despite the Shia-Sunni divide--are finally reaching out to Shia Iraq to resist Shia but Persian Iran.
Obstruction of justice.
Corruption valued more than victory. If the locals weren't prone to letting jihadis set up shop, I'd be happy to let them enjoy their societal dysfunction for another century or so until they get tired of it.
That's not funny, you haters! Tip to Instapundit.
False civil rights are the last refuge of vote-stealing scoundrels. Tip to Instapundit.
The fact that most civilians die because of allied firepower in Afghanistan does not mean the allies are to blame for most civilian casualties. If civilians die from allied firepower because insurgents and terrorists hide among civilians, the responsibility for those deaths falls on the insurgents and terrorists who put civilians at risk.
Deepfake videos put a premium on the public's trust of our news media to sift the fake from the real just as the media is throwing their trustworthiness on huge bonfires of deep partisanship. Expect our enemies to use this a lot to undermine America by driving more of us to prefer the deepfakes that reinforce our existing biases rather than try to figure out what is real or fake.
If I understand the new rules, if a foreign hostile power works to undermine an American presidential candidate, all Americans must rally around that targeted candidate.
You'd think that if Germany sees the need to be able to nuke somebody that Germany would support building armed forces capable of defeating such a nuke-worthy foe without needing to use nuclear weapons. But that's not how a disarmed Germany rolls. So this German decision to stay out of the Persian Gulf was not hard to predict.
The dark curtain of Islamophobia is always descending on America, if you listen to the left. But it only seems to land overseas. Like in China, for example. Well, reasonably enlightened rulers can do no wrong, right? Alert Tom Friedman.
The X-37. Tip to Instapundit. I've been waiting for something to come out of this space plane program for a long time.
Will the "graduates" of this idiotic social justice high school be able to sue the University of Michigan and the Detroit Public School system for wrecking their lives? Tell me again how bad public school academies (charter schools) are. Tip to Instapundit.
Taiwan fired a lot of missiles in military exercises. Well, all the cool kids fire missiles to get concessions.
Putin calls for the army to fight Siberian forest fires. Which means half the trees will be killed and another 20% will be driven into exile in China. But the remaining 30% will be too shaken and demoralized to burn for a generation.
So Bernie Sanders says health care shouldn't be a business? Check out what happened to Venezuela's oil industry when the inept socialist thug rulers stopped treating that like a business. Socialists can eff up a wet dream.
Just as I bitterly complain about the budget deficits under Trump, the Democratic candidates say "Hold my beer."
If Trump is recklessly risking war why was there so little time devoted to the actual issues--just a bit of time in the second debate. I'm not surprised that Democrats are against the Afghanistan War. What is surprising is that they agree with Trump. I don't want Afghanistan to be a threat to America again (remember 9/11?). Explain to me how a withdrawal achieves that? And what about Russia? Where were the Democratic plans to confront Russia? It is hard not to see the two Democratic debates as anything other than continued benefits from Russia's 2016 effort to sow chaos and divisions inside America. Politics don't have to be another form of civil war.
Yes, our diplomats should be working hard to separate South Korea and Japan, and get them to work against common threats instead of against each other.
China has doubled their nuclear arsenal in the last decade and is expected to double it in the next decade. Although secrecy means the level is actually rather unclear. So I don't know how those "doubling" conclusions were reached.
The United States has paid to upgrade two of Ukraine's ports to handle American and NATO warships. Congratulations to Putin for drawing NATO into the Black Sea!
I'm glad Pompeo stated that there is no plan to pull American troops out of Afghanistan (and allied troops would beat us out the door) before the next election. Withdrew when we can. Stay until we can. If we leave too soon, the situation could get too bad for local allies to handle with our minimal support.
The formal end of the INF treaty will not lead to a Russian-American nuclear arms race, despite what Russia claims. Russia can't afford to buy pistols let alone a lot more short-range nuclear missiles. This fear also ignores that the real issue in America getting out of the INF treaty is that we want to match China's theater missiles which are not limited by a treaty between America and Russia. A treaty Russia wasn't abiding by anyway. Anyway, if you want to worry about a nuclear arms race, look to China and not Russia. I think we simply want a treaty that covers China, too.
I recently found an interesting fact in Why the Allies Won (page 321 in case I ever need that) that I had desperately tried to find in college: America devoted 85% of its World War II war effort to defeat Germany in Europe and 15% to defeating Japan. I'd already read that Japan had 1/10 to 1/8 of America's GDP at the start of the war. And Japan devoted a lot of resources to the Asian continent (perhaps half, based on some actual thinking that I won't go into), that small American effort still gave America probably a 2.5:1 edge in resources over Japan in the Pacific.
Only if we have orbiting lasers that can flash carve fire breaks around the forest fires. But it was a nice offer.
Spawn of Satan killed.
The Congo quagmire. I was never hopeful that a single UN combat brigade that was allowed to fight would be more noticeable than spitting in the ocean.
China has replaced the USSR as a major gatherer of naval electronic surveillance at sea. Australia is not amused.
I don't know how this college financial aid scam can work given that when I got independent student status in college, I actually was and had to prove it with bills and paychecks--a full year of it. Does the school not dare check any more? Tip to Instapundit.
Huh.
What is wrong with these people? Tip to Instapundit.
The Asian century really didn't get going. I've long said don't count America out yet. The USSR, Europe, Japan, and then China were all supposed to pass us by. I was no more convinced China would do the job than any of the others.
No, it is not a good idea to go back to declarations of war. Yes, the use of force is a complicated thing under American law. But a declaration of war triggers all kinds of presidential powers that we might not want to confer short of all-out great power war with our survival on the line.
This author, writing about whether we need a grand strategy (and I think he may be right about not needing one), pops off with this gem of revisionist nonsense: " The Bush administration manufactured Iraqi links to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction to justify an unnecessary war." Manufactured? That is bull. Saddam had ties to terrorists and supported terrorism and had the ability to resume production of WMD relatively quickly given past extensive production and use of chemical weapons and missiles. Further, Saddam was a conventional threat to the region and to his own people. How someone can write something like that is beyond me. He lost a lot of credibility with me with one sentence. Maybe we desperately do need a grand strategy.
Lasers that project words in perhaps five years? I thought we already had stuff like that, although not based on lasers. I definitely recall reading about our Navy using them in the Gulf region and freaking out Iranian Revolutionary Guard sailors because it sounded to them like there were voices inside their head. Tip to Instapundit.
Strategypage addresses the end of the INF treaty and more.
Al Qaeda still operates in Yemen. Defeating Iran's effort to keep the fighting going in Yemen would allow more focused efforts to defeat those jihadis.
Heh.
The Storm Area 51 effort has not considered the logistics of that plan.
The Air Force is practicing naval missions in cooperation with the Navy in the Persian Gulf. I have long wondered why land-based Navy planes can't substitute for carriers there (and elsewhere). And getting the Air Force involved in sea control should be a no-brainer.
Australia's Talisman Sabre exercise added Japanese amphibious troops to the tool bag of American and Australian troops who could capture islands in the South China Sea.
An escort mission in the Persian Gulf is envisioned as almost entirely an allied endeavor. As I said, allies and local friends have the incentive and assets to escort tankers as long as the American hammer is in the Arabian Sea and on land.
Could AFRICOM help African nations prevent over-fishing in African waters? If so, The Fisheries Queen modularized
In the Democratic debates in July Bernie Sanders got (even more?) riled up over attacks on his government-run health care plan, and rejected a claim he didn't really understand it himself. He famously objected “I wrote the damn bill.” But the senator doth protest too much. Bernie did not in fact write the bill. He sponsored it. He told the people who wrote it what he wants in the bill in general terms. But I assure you a team of lawyers working for Congress, the Democratic party, and friendly lobbyists actually wrote the bill. The United States Code is far too large and complicated for any legislator to actually sit up late at night with candle light and write an actual bill.
Women need to shut up and enjoy the rules the left wrote for you--because the left doesn't need women who don't have women voices. And the left has decided what a woman's voice is. Tip to Instapundit.
We see our own problems in the West all too clearly; but our autocratic foes like China and Russia (and let's toss in North Korea, Iran, and Turkey, too) have problems, too.
China faces increased opposition--both externally and even internally--across a wide spectrum of Chinese actions because China basically only has rogue states as allies. Which helps America.
Biden saw a lot of people thrown under the bus by Obama during 8 years in the White House, but I guess Biden never thought he'd be under-bussed, too.
Why is China happy to kill Americans with fentanyl despite promises to shut down the exports?
Oh FFS! Someone actually claimed white robots in movies and in the real world are racist? Tell me that you don't firmly know that if real and fictional robots were mostly black that the exact same authors would claim that it is "problematic" that subservient robots designed to do dangerous or menial tasks are darker. And I'm sure that someone will be triggered by the fact that I used an uncapitalized "black" when describing the color of inanimate objects.
Is this killer a white supremacist or Islamist fanboy?
A Russian recon plane entered our Air Defense Identification Zone near Alaska. Remember that the ADIZ is not the same as our territorial air space. It is simply a zone that we established to identify potential threats coming toward American territory. And we did not intercept it and give the plane a chance to suck up all the data that our planes emit (or don't emit!).
The Air Force remains reluctant to support forces on the ground. Which is why I wanted the Air Force to aim high and become the Space Force, while letting the Army have the funding and responsibility for ground support (bombs and recon). Eventually I settled on renaming that refocused Air Force the Aerospace Force. I got my name. But Space Force as it has been designed kind of screws up my idea. Now there are two organizations high up--one in the "blue" skies and one in the black "skies" of space--with no interest in the "brown" skies close to the ground troops. I used that formulation of the types of skies in this Army magazine article on Army air defense drones.
Oh, now I get it. Iran has seized a third tanker for smuggling. This had confused me. Why would Iran of all countries crack down on smuggling? But now I get it. The ships were smuggling refined fuel--not oil--out of Iran. Iran subsidizes the fuel which means smugglers can buy it cheap inside Iran and sell it at a profit abroad at world prices. Which is kind of funny. For decades Iranians have smuggled banned items into Iran. And now that skill set is being used against Iran.
It's easy to forget, but even the now-hated populism was okay when doused in the soothing balms of Hope and Change. I have never been a populist. Rule of law is my thing. Thanks Obama! Tip to Instapundit.
Mass murderers should be quickly executed and have their bodies dumped at sea. Call it the Osama bin Laden option.
The fact that Democratic candidates for the presidency all want massive power for the presidency would seem to indicate that they don't actually believe Trump has established a dictatorship. But I will caution everyone, whether you support or hate Trump: The power to give you everything you want is also the power to take away everything you have. That's not a new observation by me, of course.
I'm open to suggestions for new gun laws that could prevent haters from killing people in large numbers. I doubt that any gun law can prevent hateful scum from finding other ways to kill if any particular means are banned. But by all means make your case. It is even conceivable that a pointless bill should be passed if it gives the illusion of safety. TSA is a case in point. All I know is that nobody will suggest banning or restricting cars despite the Texas killer driving 10 hours to the murder site in El Paso.
In related news, this man is a hero and I commend him. But I do worry that police responding to an active shooter killing spree will mistake a man with a gun trying to protect people for the actual shooter and kill the good guy with a gun. I don't know how you fix that either.Tip to Instapundit.
Houthi rebels backed by Iran in Yemen have agreed to let humanitarian aid through without stealing it. Wait, didn't the rebels agree to allow aid back at the end of last year? Yeah, don't tell me about how the Saudis are at fault for the humanitarian crisis.
Michael Yon is in Hong Kong reporting on events. I wish the Hong Kongers well in their quest for freedom. But I have a bad feeling about this and suspect the only way it works out for Hong Kong is if the mainland has a revolution for freedom.
It's easy not to notice another pile of anti-American BS coming out of our colleges, but the Chinese Confucius Institutes are an arm of Chinese espionage and propaganda and I'm shocked they are allowed. You'd know of these things if you followed The Dignified Rant.
