Thailand. I'm really not happy with the king and military there. But we have had a long relationship with Thailand. The insincere moves to restore democracy were enough for us to have a new military relationship agreement. I hope for the best.
"Yellow vest" protests continue in France, although the media is largely bored of the contest of wills. A little more violence now is what it takes to make the news over here, anyway. One wonders if the Chinese Communist Party will try to pull back from violence and let the democracy protests in Hong Kong--and interest in reporting on it--peter out on their own, until the then-smaller protests can be crushed with less notice. Of course, China's rulers have to think not only of the Hong Kong situation but how it will look to their subjects on the mainland if defiance is allowed to continue.
Russia staged a made-for-television "takeover" of a small abandoned American base in northern Syria. It makes little sense (to me) for Russia to expand their military presence there, once the footage is in the can. I hope the Russians enjoy the job of restraining the Turks.
I don't know enough about the cases in question to say if Trump's pardons undermine discipline in the military or serve justice, but I do know that I don't like some of Obama's pardons.
Prince Andrew conducted an interview with the BBC that ended up being an amazing display of multiple shots to his own foot:“That was a plane crashing into an oil tanker, causing a tsunami, triggering a nuclear explosion level bad.” Thank God royalty doesn't govern over there. Could we make Hillary Clinton a royal? Could the British do us a solid and do it? It would be great to have an excuse to completely ignore her on anything related to politics.
The Resistance is what is crippling our rule of law. As I've said, they are why I will vote for Trump. Trump may be a poor champion of conservatism. But he is who we have at this moment. Rule of law demands nothing less than voting for his re-election. And for Democrats, you will not like the ability of conservative judges who play by the new rules you established for nationwide court injunctions against a Democratic administration.
And yes, from the link above, the Boumediene decision is an abomination on war-making powers. It was a slow-motion train wreck that I watched as it approached with horror. And for the record, I did not get bent out of shape over Obama's drone "kill list." But I'm a knuckle-dragger, allegedly.
Actual resistance in Hong Kong to Chinese communist tyranny is getting more firebomby. Although they are mostly used for optics and to deter police charges, it seems, rather than dropping them from windows into the middle of police formations in the streets.
Just a reminder that since 9/11, America has focused on killing and capturing actual jihadis on the battlefield and gets slammed for being "anti-Islamic." That despite the help we get from Moslem countries to kill jihadis, in part because non-jihadi Moslems are the main target of jihadi terrorists. China on the other hand imprisons a million Moslems, calling them a terrorist threat, and the sound of crickets is deafening in the world reaction. And sure, the Chinese say all those Moslems are in "vocational training centers," but when China's communist rulers consider job one of any of their subjects to be shutting the ef up and obeying orders, don't the Chinese thug rulers have a point?
More American weapons for Ukraine--ex Coast Guard cutters.
A story about the US detaining mostly migrant children was a big deal until the reporters discovered that the numbers were actually from when Obama was in office. So the story was removed rather than corrected. If it doesn't slam Trump, putting kids in cages in 2015 didn't happen, I guess. This is as clear as you can get in seeing that politics play a role both in what stories are covered and what stories are not covered. Tips to Instapundit.
After serial efforts to find an actual crime to impeach or remove Trump through other farcically applied legal means (and the related question of what the Heck happened to Max Boot?), and after expressing hopes of a military coup or assassination, the Resistance is reduced to hoping the president gets too sick to remain president. Sad.
JEDI data fusion for a true networked and joint force. Fingers crossed.
As of mid-week, Amnesty International says at least 106 Iranians have died in protests sparked by gasoline price increases. Protesters seem to have turned against the rulers more broadly rather rapidly.
What happened in Bolivia, whose deposed leftist thuggish president who tried to remain in office contrary to their constitution went into exile in Mexico where he likely plots to return to office by hook or crook.
Yeah, I have little respect for Vindman. He hid behind his uniform to be a partisan in a political battle over policy. Only people who don't appreciate the duties of being a soldier under civilian command swooned at his testimony, in my opinion.Tip to Instapundit.
We are bombing the Taliban a lot in Afghanistan, but the enemy still believes we will abandon our allies. So our enemies persist. We need to convince our enemies we will help our allies no matter our presence level. And we need to get our allies on the offensive and not just help them hold on to existing territory while it is whittled away by ceding the initiative to the Taliban. I've been waiting quite a while for our guys to scrape up an offensive force and seize the initiative.
It does seem obvious that a lot of religious fervor is poured into political and environmental issues, letting people wail that the "end is nigh" without the distasteful God part.
Trump was right to want an investigation into what happened in Ukraine in 2016 given Democratic-Ukrainian collusion to influence our 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton. And keep in mind that Trump has armed Ukraine--which Obama did not do--despite their government's efforts to defeat him in 2016.
The Navy is finally getting its LCS deployed to Singapore for South China Sea missions that deny that China controls the sea. Good. That version of the LCS looks cool as Hell yet if lost in a bolt-from-the-blue Chinese attack isn't a major hit to our naval capabilities. Sorry to be callous about the crew--I'm not--but the reality is we can choose to risk an LCS or a carrier or destroyer ,and I choose the former.
We are having problems designing and building new surface warships, but at least we are still capable of upgrading our proven Burke hulls. But that option will end eventually if we want state-of-the-art ships capable of controlling the seas against opposition.
But I've been told that socialism means "caring." Or, government is just the crimes we are complicit in together, I suppose. A monstrous system compels people to do monstrous things. Young people truly have no idea what they claim to like. Let's hope their ignorance is just stupidity that will pass with age. Tip to Instapundit.
Yes, the "administrative state" at least was a better term than the "deep state" to describe how the permanent bureaucracy can act as a virtual fourth branch of government that undermines the formal branches in our Constitution. That arcane topic was one of my areas when I worked in the state legislature. The administrative rules process has legitimate uses--as long as the legislature makes sure that the technical rules drafted by the executive follow the intent of the statutes the legislature passed. Sadly, in Michigan, that oversight was crippled by the courts that decided that the old process constituted a legislative veto on the executive. Anyway, as useful as it is, it has gone too far. And the fervor of Trump opponents in that administrative state over the last three years may actually have created a "deep state." It became self aware, so to speak, of its power to obstruct and do damage. And it lost its inhibitions about using that power to undermine our lawful election of 2016, simply because they didn't like the result and talked themselves into the fantasy that they are "saving" the republic. This would be the right point to note that false patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel--which I recognized early on. A lot of people from the bureaucracy need to be fired and lose their pensions, in my opinion, to nip this in the bud. And shrink the federal government by returning powers to the states so the federal administrative state can be greatly reduced, of course.
Japan is seriously upgrading its fighter aircraft fleet.
Alert the mirror-gazing prima donna Jim Acosta: actual assault on freedom of the press. But hey, at least the Chinese thug rulers didn't order all CCP functionaries to cancel their subscription to The Epoch Times!
More and more our highly educated elites look like idiots who simply let their hatred of America warp their brains. Sure, these morons with credentials are a minority, I'm reasonably (hopefully) sure. But the morons don't even need to use "dog whistles" for their prattle. Rather than get push-back from colleagues, these morons seem to thrive.
Strategypage looks at Iran's problems waging war on Israel. Related there is this: "The 'Pay for Slay' program is very popular among Palestinians because it makes the losses they suffer for carrying out these attacks easier to tolerate." This refers to payments to families of killed or imprisoned terrorists. I'm so old that I remember when leftists condemned America for paying bonuses to soldiers as if money meant that the troops were "mercenaries" who don't believe in the cause the way our enemies do. Uh huh. I await the leftist outrage at pay for slay.
Maybe a real "bombshell" will come out of the impeachment-like inquiry, but after being promised smoking guns for over 3 years I'm starting to think these people are leading with their fantasies and not facts.
Russian troops will get their first Armata tank. The Armata will never be the main tank of the Russian army. Even if they work out likely teething problems, the Russians can't afford it.
Is "Emperor" Xi facing serious internal opposition in China for mishandling important policies?
I wonder if the number of Democrats believing this fantasy has increased or decreased in the last year?
Hey, is this post-2016 trend getting fun yet for the left now that conservatives are using it? Democrats are truly dolts to have normalized the "sanctuary" movement of defying federal law on the issue of illegal immigration. After all, Democrats are the party of big federal government and so rely more on a habit of accepting that authority. Tip to Instapundit.
Not news. Why report and obsess on it when the right people can't be blamed?
Wow. For some strange reason powerful people and nations lost interest in fighting intestinal illness in the Third World once Hillary lost all hope of being in a position of power. Odd, no?
China has a full plate what with terrorizing the Uighers in Xinjiang, battering Hong Kongers, and a trade war-ish thing with America just as China's economy is ending its growth phase. But their communist rulers aren't too busy dealing with multiple internal problems to hold back from threatening Taiwan over their dangerous tendencies to be free and democratic outside of Peking's loving embrace. I'll say it again, Taiwan should host a League of Democracies.
So ... if those State Department officials in the impeachment-ish inquiry were so concerned about Ukraine, why were they silent during the Obama administration when our policy was far less helpful to Ukraine than it is under Trump?
Bernie Sanders would make a perfectly efficient gulag commissar, wouldn't he? Tip to Instapundit.
Sanity prevailed in South Korea as it decided to keep an intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan. This whole thing astounded me. Score one for American diplomacy.
Russia is moving into an area that risks conflict with American troops in Syria. Why would Russia want to do that? Seriously, that just doesn't make sense.
I'm not hoping for pro-democracy Russians to move into positions of power. But I am hoping that Russians who lack the paranoid focus on the non-existent Western threat will replace the people like Putin who fixate on NATO while ignoring real threats from China on their Asian borders.
Grant me that this is funny.
Russia is having more success building small surface warships. But I'll be shocked if any of them are actually equipped with a working scramjet hyper-sonic missile, as the Russians claim.
Is the impeachment inquiry designed to fail? The process does seem ridiculous. Maybe Speaker Pelosi didn't give in to her woke caucus by approving this odd little spectacle. Maybe she set them up to fail by letting them dress up as orange dragon slayers and have their little impeachment play date in the House intelligence committee. And once they fail, Pelosi can return to her business.
NATO took an important step in creating multi-national networked missile defense at sea. There was also a simulated shore-based Aegis missile system involved. This will aid NATO ships operating in the Baltic Sea and off of Russia's Kola Peninsula base area on the Barents Sea.
BTW, what the Hell happened to Jennifer Rubin?
You can certainly say that Ukrainian efforts to interfere in our 2016 election pale in comparison to Russia's, but simply denying it happened is memory-holing already published stories about that interference. And clicking over to one of the Twitter feeds and reading some of the Trump Hysteria Condition-addled commenters is just depressing, and makes me glad I an not on that rollercoaster of ignorance and certitude. Tip to Instapundit.
Well yeah there was a risk of war with the nuclear-armed USSR when the Berlin Wall collapsed. Which is why I've always given great credit to Bush 41 for skillfully navigating that threat while unifying Germany within NATO.
The Navy's 4 Ohio-class SSGNs converted from SSBNs were designed to be more than Tomahawk trucks and special forces delivery platforms. They could gather and manage situational awareness and intelligence to carry out their missions. I always assumed our subs had these kinds of resources given that in Red Storm Rising I recall that the American subs in Clancy's novel had cruise missiles fitted out as ECM drones to mess with the Soviet weapons and sensors. We are adding launch tubes to new blocks of the Virginia-class SSN to replace the Tomahawk arsenal we will lose with the eventual retirement of those 4 SSGNs. But what will replace their other capabilities? Perhaps, as the article suggest, the Navy will build a version of the new SSBN it is designing to be an SSGN from the start.
This (recycled) article notes that the Chinese J-20 has air-to-air missiles with a far longer reach than our missiles. Is this decisive? The Chinese plane is designed with frontal stealth so it can dash in, fire missiles at our support planes (AWACS and refueling planes) and then dash away from our fully stealthed fighters. I don't know whether China's approach is a fight-winning combination. But if we put long-range air-to-air missiles on an AABONE, that would throw a monkey into their wrench, I think.
From the "big if true" files, I suppose. I'll be generous and assume insufficiently militarized auto-correct.
This is an interesting take on the direction of China, noting that the Chinese Communist Party tries to control the narrative of the past, the present, and even what is possible in the future--plus information that comes from outside China, as I've noted--in order to secure CCP control of China. Of course, I've also noted that when it comes to a country that is as large as China, all directions are possible at once in China.
Endorsed (via Power Line Blog):
Lenin said the West would sell Russians the rope to hang the West with. While in theory that was correct, the USSR lacked the ability to make enough money to buy enough rope. China figured out how to do that. So let's stop doing that.
Of course Trump will want to destroy the civil service. He should. Have you seen what they're doing? The civil service was created to replace the spoils system in which the victor of elections staffed the bureaucracy. The civil service was supposed to create a nonpartisan permanent group of experts in operating the government. It has clearly failed so of course it has to be destroyed and replaced with something else. What, I don't know. But rules have to change, and people need to be fired and some of those should lose their pensions as a warning to others. Tip to Instapundit.
Vice President Pence went to Iraq to see our troops and support Iraqi independence from Iranian influence. Good. I don't think the situation is bad enough to park him there permanently the way I wanted Obama to send Biden there six months before the June 2014 catastrophe. But it is good enough for now.
Well, the Australians are going to be busy digging out Chinese spies with this "trove of information." I assume the rest of the Five Eyes will eagerly help. I know America is more busy on this front lately. A lot of countries need to be more busy on this front.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Tip to Instapundit.
For all the outrageous charges that Republicans are racists and bigots (and everything else up to and including Nazis--without the good environmental impulses of the Nazis),remember that Yang is complaining about left-wing Democrat-supporting reporters. At this point Yang must be wishing he only faced "dog whistles."
I don't really follow Israeli politics, but Netanyahu looks to be in deep doo doo over corruption charges. I will maintain my position on Middle Eastern politics that support for rule of law is more important than support for any individual politician.
South Korea is already facing a labor shortage from a birth rate seemingly in free fall. It will get much worse. Is immigration the answer? Surely it is one answer. I'm assuming raising the birth rate is probably a futile effort that would provide only marginal results--and take time to achieve that. But would immigration take the form of bringing in people from the region and even around the world? Or would it best be done by bringing in North Koreans in a unified Korean state? Or would robotics or even human cloning be the route South Korea must follow? Or all of the above, I suppose.
Hong Kong voter turnout in their local election appears to be huge. How will that look to the Chinese people on the mainland who are being told by their thug rulers that the protesters are the thugs and sponsored by America?
In related news, Iran's thug rulers claim the recent protests were the result of "mercenaries" and not real public anger at the ruling class that has screwed up their country.
This sounds about right. Honestly, we'd be letting down the children if we listened to the panicked rantings of a troubled teenager horribly exploited by adults who would ruin her life and the future she could have.
