China is backing off of its pandemic aggressiveness abroad: "'There's a reflection that we should not let nationalism or hotheadedness somehow kidnap our foreign policy,' Xu Quinduo, a commentator for state-run broadcaster China Radio International, told the Times. 'Tough rhetoric should not replace rational diplomacy.'" Riding the nationalist tiger is dangerous. But has China really decided to ease off or is this a pause before spurring the tiger on? And if so, how bad is it inside China?
I guess I don't understand why there is such an outcry among non-Native Americans about the Washington football team's "Redskins" name. Does anybody imagine that the team named itself in order to provide fans a name that denigrates or insults the team? Obviously, the team was named to inspire pride in fans. Life is funny.
Don't get me started on the unforgivable 2018 Democratic/media attempt to smear Kavanaugh. Yeah, that outrage is not forgotten and it is not forgiven. That ended my willingness to vote for Democrats at lower levels of government. If my drains work, I once thought, why not reelect the Democratic drain commissioner? After Kavanaugh? Screw 'em. I decided I'd never vote for any Democrat again. For anything.
Jesus was not a socialist. But if you really think he was a socialist, aren't you admitting that socialism requires the Son of God who can perform miracles? Short of that, just who is capable of implementing that "true" socialism that supposedly hasn't yet been tried based on the evidence of all of them failing? Tip to Instapundit.
A war of nerves between American and Syrian forces in northeast Syria continues--with an American helicopter strike to make a point. Funny, it seems just like yesterday that people were going insane wrongly claiming America had abandoned the Kurds there. But I still think we have to decide exactly what we are doing there.
Around the world people understand that mass mail voting is vulnerable to fraud. Do Democrats here not understand that problem or understand it all too well? It's almost as if Democrats don't actually believe Trump is a dictator who would be the one to take advantage of opportunities for voter fraud, eh? Tip to Instapundit.
Democracy dies in vagueness (or how to spin a banana into an apple). Plus outright distortion. High ranking people need long prison terms for the Russia collusion hoax and much of the media deserves bankruptcy as penance for their dishonest role. Tip to Instapundit.
How weird is 2020 getting? Did I just loop into the Flintstones universe?
Yawn. Why I yawn.
Just when you think Democrats have run out of insane Trump conspiracies to believe in. They're nuts. Babbling loony tune crazy take-away-sharp-objects people. I'm honestly stunned at this fantasy world hallucinating. You just know this will be a reason for Pelosi to start new impeachment proceedings right after Trump wins reelection.
The Iraqi prime minister says Iraq still needs America, as Iraq battles ISIL and Iranian-controlled militias. And we need to help Iraq do those things--and to push them to rule of law. I hope talk of reducing American troops in Iraq doesn't lead to a withdrawal like in 2011. On the other hand, it would be nice to leverage our presence into firmer efforts by Iraq to rein in the pro-Iran militias.
Recall what the Democrats have done so far to get rid of Trump: "There was the first impeachment effort, the Beltway punditry in early 2017 calling for his removal by coup if necessary, the voting machine suits, the Clinton-Obama-Steele subversion of the Trump campaign and transition, the Hollywood assassination chic, the effort to take out former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, the farce of the 25th Amendment that included the bathos of high federal officials contemplating wearing wires in private conservations (sic) with the president to the psychodrama of Professor Bandy Lee testifying before Congress about Trump’s mental state, the silly Emolument Clause gambit (Trump has lost over $1 billion while in office and taking no salary), the subversion of the FISA courts, the Russian hoax, Robert Mueller’s two-year long and $35 million witch hunt, the fabricated Steele dossier implanted in the bowels of the Obama government and media, the one-phone-call impeachment circus, the revolt of the retired generals, and what has rightly lately been called 'coup porn'” the hysteria over Ukraine and the caricaturing of Trump in 2020 as Typhoid Mary, Herbert Hoover, and Bull Connor as the Left weaponized the contagion, quarantine, and rioting." And that impressive list leaves out the effort to get Electors to violate their oaths and refuse to vote for Trump in the Electoral College and swing the vote to Clinton. Now tell me that exploiting security flaws in all-mail voting to commit voter fraud is the one thing they won't do to get their Great Orange Whale.
China is not involved in all South China Sea disputes.
Thank goodness a tyrant doesn't have that kind of power.
Can we admit that locking down has consequences as the issue of re-locking down all across America is raised for the fall? "'It’s a re-traumatization, really,' said east Tennessee therapist Allysen Efferson, who emphasized that the 'ever-evolving criteria' for re-opening would only hammer at the nation’s already shattered psyche. The nation quickly went from '14 days to slow the spread' in March to 'lock everything down until there’s a vaccine,' except for ignored calls for social distancing with a historic breakout of civil unrest." We've had over 5 months to prepare to cope. That's a different situation than in March when so much was unknown and nobody knew what was happening or whether we'd have time to produce what we need to cope. We have to trust people and also admit that a lot can't be trusted. Which means I will continue to operate carefully because I am not young and because I have a mother I don't want to infect. But I'm not everyone. And at some point the entire country can't be made to pay the price that only some of us should pay.
The X-37B program was honored. I honestly don't know why it isn't a Space Force asset.
I've read that African Americans could vote for Trump based on pretty good polling numbers about him. This election would be a good time for African Americans to deny Democrats an automatic vote in every election. Remember, and this isn't my observation, "The worst place for a black person to live in America is a Democrat-controlled city." Maybe Democrats wouldn't take them for granted in the future and maybe Republicans would think it isn't futile to pursue African-American votes.
The Syrian multi-war lingers on with 10 or so killed per day in it. The post says Iraq was bloodier but the context indicates that was written in error. Syria has been bloodier than Iraq.
Cyber war goes on all around us and a large part of it is done by private entities and companies.
Why yes, yes we have lost our minds over this Xi Jinping Flu pandemic. The overreaction was understandable when you consider the unknowns of March and April. Now we need to deal with this a little more narrowly with threatened populations without destroying our economy, which is how we pay for coping with the pandemic. Consider this chart and tell me if our media has been educating us or trying to panic us:
Honestly, the demanded universal lockdown reaction feels like it is being done in the name of penance for vague sins by America more than public health.
Knee cracking without pain is likely no problem. That fits with my experience. It's funny. When I'm feeling good I ignore it. But if I feel sick or blah for some reason, I wonder if the knee-cracking is a sign of some deeper problem. It isn't. Woo!
The times that Republicans were challenged on whether they are "natural born citizens."
A PSA by The Dignified Rant to Democrats: What we have in New York City harbor is the Statue of Liberty and not the Statue of Unrestricted Immigration. It celebrates our Declaration of Independence and Revolution and not open borders. You're welcome. I'm glad I can clear that up.
The United States will sell more advanced versions of the F-16 to Taiwan.
I am horrified at the fantasies that Democrats believe, as represented by their convention speakers. Reality-based party, indeed. Do the speakers really believe their entire party is made up of the Twitter universe of fanatics they apparently cater to?
I have long opposed non-law enforcement agencies having their own armed forces. I'm not overly worried that the Obama administration could have passed those weapons on to leftists. Although inventory sloppiness and theft isn't out of bounds to check on. But the basic problem remains. Maybe Democrats will now agree given their insane talk of Trump's private army. Hey, let's make their insanity work for a smaller more limited federal government for once! Tip to Instapundit.
Another f*ck was added to the clusterf*ck that present-day Mali represents. The president dissolved parliament and resigned under that pressure. The coup troops promise a new election. While it might improve things, this will just stir the cluster a bit and set the precedent of future coups which could be for good or bad reasons. No lasting good will come of this, I think.
Just ... wow.
The Democratic Party officially nominated Biden to run for president. All that's left to prove is whether their voters really will vote for a ham sandwich with a (D) after its name.
Terrorism hasn't taken time off for social distancing in Germany, it seems: "An Iraqi-born man deliberately drove his car into motorcycles along a stretch of Berlin highway, leaving at least one person in life-threatening condition in what German officials said Wednesday was a terror attack." No good deed goes unpunished.
Peak Stupid is pushed ever higher.
Well, that's not how "tramp stamps" work on me. But perhaps I've shared too much.
How awful is our media? After 5 months our media has still failed to inform the public accurately about the pandemic. On the bright side, the media has been too busy failing on the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic issue to maintain the panic over climate change. And perhaps the media will have a little patience to see how things work out in totality before judging responses to the pandemic. We have a way to go before judging, don't we? What I'm really impressed with is the ability of Sweden to have stayed the course despite universal condemnation over many months.
Convictions like this are more valuable for reducing jihadi cooperation out of fear of being nailed by counter-terrorism operations.
So far I'm doing fine without network TV. I know there will be some shows I'll miss from network TV when they revive. But I'll get over it. And maybe if sports had more interest to me--but my teams aren't or won't be playing any time soon--that would be different, despite woke sports turning me off. As for my already limited television news (I cut down greatly this last year to escape the insanity), I'm getting by with audio podcasts and YouTube. So there you go.
I'm hoping that bigger fish will face prison time after Clinesmith, but I'm assuming they'll get away with it. I'm sad I feel that way but rule of law has failed so far and I don't think I can count on it being restored. I hope I'm too cynical.
If Trump wins in November I think it is safe to assume that Pelosi will immediately begin impeachment proceedings for the insane Mailboxgate.
An American destroyer sailed through the Taiwan Strait in a maneuver designed--and seen--as supporting Taiwan against Chinese threats. Not that the strait would be the place American warships would stand their ground if shooting started.
And that would be different than Antifa's violence the last four years and BLM's violent activities the last few months ... how? To be fair, the way the media and their Democratic allies have been stoking division, there is reason to worry about violence around the election. God help us all. May calm prevail.
Seeking vengeance for 2016, Hillary Clinton burns down the Democratic National Convention with her speech time.
Last week I mentioned the jihadi takeover of a Mozambique port. Strategypage has more. Mozambique is corrupt and poor. The military is weak. And the Russian mercenaries the government has hired just guard natural gas fields. On the bright side, the jihadis have a small base of support there. Still, the Ansar al-Sunna jihadis hold the port.
Putin may lead a paranoid and ramshackle crumbling empire made worse by delusions of grandeur, but never forget the old KGB man is pretty much evil as news of another poisoning of a prominent Putin critic, Alexei Navalny, has taken place. It's Putin's weapon of choice.
Teacher unions are holding American kids hostage. I've noticed the prominence of communist groups in school reopening protests that take place around Detroit which the local media doesn't understand. Blue collar workers who provide the teachers the things they need to live have to work; but teachers won't provide the education that the blue collar workers' children need to move up the economic ladder. I hope voters remember that at school millage voting time. I know I will. Tip to Instapundit.
China isn't playing well with others under our phase one trade deal, and America should react accordingly.
I believe the proper response by parents to that school district request is "Sod off, wanker!" And then sue the district. Although funny enough, this whole distance-learning could really backfire badly on the teacher-industrial complex if a lot of people see exactly what their children are being taught. Perhaps I've been hasty in promoting in-school learning wherever possible. Heck, maybe when teachers go back to school they should have body cams just like police have to wear. Tip to Instapundit.
Have we run out of Confederate statues already? To be fair, the protesters are morons ignorant of history.
Obama said that Trump shouldn't use the military as "props?" Given that President Obama ordered a surge of troops in Afghanistan resulting in much higher American casualties all to make good on a campaign promise only to abandon the surge prior to victory in order to support a campaign reelection narrative, that charge is obscene.
The stupidity is stunning.
Is anybody really surprised that Saudi Arabia might want nuclear weapons if Iran looks like it might get them? The Saudis have long had a small force of ballistic missiles that could have been equipped with Pakistani warheads if the Pakistanis agreed. One of the reasons I was strongly against the Iran nuclear deal is that I believed it would inevitably lead to nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. People who think it stopped Iran are so wrong that it hurts my spleen. Until the mullah regime is gone, that threat remains.
The United States thinks that China is secretly expanding its nuclear arsenal. Certainly, there is little transparency in Peking. Have a super sparkly day.
Will Sirte be the westernmost part of Egypt-backed East Libya (Cyrenaica) while Turkey-backed West Libya (Tripolitania) lies beyond that? Of course, the West Libya faction--possibly deterred from attacking Sirte by Egypt's warnings--want to make Sirte the DMZ.
I'm not sure why Californians are complaining about rolling electricity blackouts. They're getting what they asked for over many decades and so should simply lie back and think of Gaia.
"Chinese officials in Wuhan Province hid important information about coronavirus from the country’s central government, even as the virus spread rapidly, according to a Wednesday report. ... The intelligence report also maintains that high ranking Chinese Communist Party officials in Beijing withheld coronavirus information from the world and the World Health Organization (WHO) as they tried to gather more data from Wuhan, the Times reported." There is almost no news coming out of China. Because the CCP doesn't want news coming out of China. I don't assume no news is good news.
"Germany welcomed military aircraft from Israel to its airspace on Thursday in their first joint combat exercises in German territory as both air forces praised the intensive cooperation between the two countries." Joint combat exercises? That's amazing! Who knew Germany had a military?
I strongly disagree with Trump that it was a mistake to liberate Iraq.
Democrats have spent four years screaming hate at Trump supporters and telling their own supporters to fear Trump supporters, and Biden has the nerve to say Trump should be defeated to end the hate, fear, and division of the last four years? Non-leftists won't be fooled by this, will they?
Extreme pattern recognition.
The Navy needs to get to the bottom of this. Good Lord.
The United States is trying to purge America of Chinese malware and malgear. Good. I've long worried about that as a threat to our carriers. But the threat is much broader.
It's an interesting presidential election. Republicans have to persuade undecideds and persuadables that Trump has impulse control; while Democrats have to persuade those voters that Biden has brain impulses. Is it me or has Trump been rather restrained the last couple months in public appearances? Two efforts by "journalists" to bait Trump with outlandish "questions" failed to provoke an angry lashing as it would have any time in the previous 4 years. To me, the restraint was noticeable.
Democratic leaders display that they understand that unruly protests are bad when it affects them. Baby steps, people. Baby steps. Yeah, I am the optimist.
AI pilots did pretty good in simple air combat scenarios. AI pilots don't need to be better than human pilots. Just good enough to inflict sufficient attrition on human pilots who require a lot of money and years of practice to get good at their skills. Do that and eventually, the manufactured AI pilots will have an average skill level better than the humans. The Japanese experienced that (without AI, of course) in World War II.
Woke privilege, eh?
Mean girl.
I assume Iranian agents are behind these killings inside Iraq.
I say California should go for it! They're smart enough to get "true socialism" right!
Can you even imagine the outrage that the media would deploy if Republicans removed the Libertarian Party from the ballot?!
The UAE and Greece decided to exercise their aircraft together on Crete, in a sign of unity against Turkey.
I see that Maduro is learning much from his Iranian friends: "The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is blocking U.S. citizens in the country from leaving, rebuffing efforts by Washington to arrange humanitarian evacuation flights, a State Department spokeswoman said on Thursday."
Good idea, although without Hezbollah to set it off the urgency might not be as great.
Huh (link fixed) .And that was for a city council seat. How much more of this will we see from people who think they are literally saving America from Hitler?
I wish this was satire:
So, did China screw the pooch when building their South China Sea artificial island runways which make them too dangerous for high performance fighter aircraft?
Hahahahah! The scumball a-holes are too proud of their violence to think about OPSEC:
Of course, jihadis also like to film their atrocities and terrorism to recruit more nutballs. But here, we have the legal system to make that dangerous for the "recruiters." Round them up and prosecute them while they are careless. Tip to Instapundit.
The Army future warfare science fiction collection. This was my entry that didn't make the cut.
The Orange Man Bad virtual convention ended. They made history by naming the first person of color non-Trump to the VP slot.
I prefer to ignore the BS, but given that so many people believe the BS it is good that someone is willing to expose the BS. "Perhaps the most interesting question raised by these books is why, when they are so badly written, self-indulgent, and intellectually nugatory, when they are so plainly written in the spirit of what Karl Popper called reinforced dogmatism, they should be so popular among the Western intelligentsia. Let us hope that this is not a question for an Edward Gibbon of the next millennium to answer." Smart people can be really stupid. Via Instapundit.
Turkey says it discovered natural gas in the Black Sea. Who knows how much is recoverable and how ling it will take to bring on line.
Even if every blue mailbox in America is removed, anybody who wants to mail a ballot could do it from wherever they pick up their incoming mail. Worst. Voter. Suppression. Effort. Ever.
Pakistan is forced to do the right thing. And now Pakistan's heartfelt struggle to get around their paper commitment begins.
This would be hilarious if the paranoid morons didn't believe it was true:
One death is a tragedy, but 33,000 is a sweet book deal. Via Instapundit.
If the IAEA is given access to those suspected Iranian nuclear facilities it will only be because the Iranians have moved prohibited material and scrubbed the site.
If the NCAA hadn't nuked college football this news might be significant.
How "fact checks" work. Democrats did cut out "under God" at their convention but since it was not done at all the recitations of the pledge Trump is called out for error. Had a Democrat made a similar charge about Republicans, the "fact check" would have called Democrats accurate because some Republicans did something. Ef the "fact checkers."
The Charlottesville "fine people" hoax, as long as Biden has made that lie the central focus of his campaign.
Illegal immigrant who was featured at the Democratic convention to further the Orange Man Bad theme was ordered deported by two Democratic presidents. Huh.
I have a bad feeling about this. Tip to Instapundit.
Last summer I figured that if the Democrats nominated Biden it was a signal that the Democrats were assuming Trump would win reelection and that the Democrats didn't want to waste a viable candidate on a Viking funeral ride. Warren stayed in the race as a loyal Democrat to deny socialist Bernie the chance to take over the Democratic Party. Then the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic struck and gave Democrats a chance to tank the economy and they took it (Fifteen days to bend the curve? Screw that! Lock it down!). Sadly they still had Biden. Did the Democrats screw up big time by nominating Biden--the candidate of losing--when a once-in-a-century pandemic actually gave Democrats a chance?
"Sophia Banks, a plant-based chef[.]" Big, if true. I am Groot.
American charged with spying for Russia. As a former Army captain, wouldn't it be better to recall him to service in order to face the military justice system?
Inconvenient reality.
Did China's Houston consulate--the one we shut down--really send riot tips to BLM?
Standing with Taiwan to commemorate their defense of their independence. And since then, Taiwan has become a free democracy with a larger claim to help from the West to defend themselves from Chinese aggression.
The Army successfully tested an integrated air defense system.
