This author argues that deploying U.S. Army heavy forces to Taiwan would help deter China. The author rightly notes that China would consider this an escalation. If the Chinese are to be believed, it might actually trigger a Chinese invasion. This complements my essay in that Military Review issue on deploying heavy counter-attack forces to Taiwan.
Is China putting Mongolia on the hit list to recover? If so, that puts Russia's Far East holding further east in great danger of being interdicted by Chinese forces. Which might be important if the Chinese decide that they would get more bang for the buck by hammering Russia.
So who was colluding with the Russians in the 2016 election? "Useful idiots" doesn't begin to describe the relationship. The Resistance can be so proud of their record. Let's hope that the record includes a criminal record before this is over.
Huh, the New York Times finds no hidden Trump-Russian financial ties and oddly doesn't highlight that. Honestly, I thought that the idea that Trump's taxes would show crimes was ridiculous given that the hidden records were controlled by the IRS. Wouldn't crimes have already been prosecuted or leaked? So we're told that the long-awaited evidence of crimes is actually just evidence that Trump followed IRS rules that would benefit Trump. The horror. As I've said, we're going down the scandal curve so fast that by the time we hit November, Democrats will be outraged that Trump ends sentences with a preposition.
Libya continues to be a mess with implications for NATO divisions, Erdogan's Ottoman ambitions. and Turkish-Russian conflict. When do Turkish-backed forces attack LNA-held Sirte?
Saluting and carrying out their instructions, it seems. Pay no attention to the party behind the curtain! Although I suppose you can't rule out the possibility that mediocre partisan minds think alike.
I find it amazing that white people as a group are capable of achieving any nefarious or world-destroying objective--but it would be "problematic" to credit them for any good things. I hate race-based ideology. Everyone should.
For the proto-imperial European Union, state control is a feature and not a bug: "In her first annual “state of the union” address this month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confirmed that the European Union, with its Green Deal, has committed itself to a new and pervasive form of government intervention in the economy. Apparently, the bureaucrats in Brussels think that they – and only they – know which technological pathways are best for building a sustainable future." Sure, pervasive state control over your life is for a good green cause. No worries! But that power won't be limited to the environment--even if it was a good idea to do so. Eventually the EU will knock off that prefix and become a true multi-ethnic empire that crushes freedom for all people in Europe. Once national governments are mere imperial provinces, direct control of every individual from the imperial capital will be routine.
So ... Biden did not in fact attend a historically Black college. I'm beginning to think that rather than representing lying or forgetting that these Biden incidents represent desperate Democratic efforts to bring in replacement Bidens from alternative timelines to substitute for our timeline's Biden who is completely out of it. Sadly, no alternate timeline is exactly the same as ours and anomalies creep in. Just be glad we don't live in the "bleeding eye" timeline.
I don't understand how liberals can be claiming they must leave America if Trump wins reelection. Didn't they all leave after his 2016 election to avoid being rounded up by the Trumptatorship?
Hahahaha! Well, the images of the Kavanaugh hearing have faded from most people's memories. Not mine, mind you. But for others a reminder of the depths to which Democrats will violate norms will be useful.
So ... voter fraud on a significant scale, it seems.
In related news--and how often this needs to be said for people to understand, I don't know--absentee voting is not the same as mass mailing by the government of mail-in ballots. The former have to be requested by registered voters and may require a valid reason. The latter are just sent out and Lord knows who gets them, fills them out, and returns them. People are pretending they don't understand the difference for political advantage, right? I really don't want to believe people can't understand the difference.
I'm not sure what to make of the context of Biden's apparent insult, but it sounds stupid and he's no Patton. But is this issue--real or not--hiding the real issue of whether Biden's claim to have been in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan that many times is true?
Huh. Votes for Trump from overseas military personnel were found dumped in the trash in Pennsylvania. To be fair, just 9 were found. But we don't know how many more undiscovered there were. I'm sure that isn't something that could happen much more this election.
Huh, the EU helped Taiwan get a win in Communist China's cancel culture war against Taiwan. Well, good. I'm shocked. But good.
The Marines are right that the American ground force focus on the Korean peninsula must give way to a broader horizon across INDOPACOM. I explicitly argued for that change for the Army in Military Review and my suggestion for distributed and disaggregated Marine Corps amphibious warfare role in Proceedings matches that.
The final words on the liberal-rage Trump tax story: "As a former accountant, please allow me to explain why all of today’s newly formed tax experts are fucking morons, and we should metaphorically put a brick in a sock and beat them over the head with it until they shut up." People are not required to refrain from taking advantage of tax-reduction provisions in the tax code that Congress passed and presidents signed over the years. Note that the latest "bombshell" report was known in 2016. So just stop. Via Instapundit.
Oh FFS! Seriously? Really? I reported on that satire in the last data dump. People are just stupid.
This is good news. Really. Via Instapundit.
Saudi Arabia isn't a very good place--yet there is hope--but Iran-inspired chaos would make it worse. So it is good that the Saudis arrested those men.
The EU says Britain is part of an "arc of instability" around the EU. Which is pretty rich coming from the EU which has spent four years trying to destabilize Britain by punishing it for daring to want to leave the EU.
This aside is a good point on the now-ancient Trump "crime" of playing down the pandemic in the spring: “'Is Trump trying to play it down?' she asks. 'Yeah. But when this first started, the news media was saying that millions of people were going to die. And look at it: 200,000, compared to the population.'” I'd kind of forgotten that angle. Trump took many concrete actions that showed he took the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic seriously. But given the media near-panic (after their own downplaying very early) over millions of dead Americans based on BS models, America needed some "playing down" of the virus if we were to avoid needless and counterproductive national panic.
"North Korea and Iran have been exchanging tech and components for missiles and nuclear weapons for decades and that trade continues despite both nations subject to trade sanctions." I've long said that North Korea is a gaping hole in any effort--whether diplomatic or military--to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Even if Iran is hammered to set back their nuclear program, North Korea could represent a nuclear "restore point" for Iran.
Over one million voters have cast ballots already. I'll ask again, at what point do these already-cast votes make it impossible for Democrats to successfully replace Biden before the election? I assume that most of those votes are for Biden. But if Biden is replaced, those voters might as well have written in "Mickey Mouse" for president for all the good it will do, right?
Liquid salt water under the Martian south pole?
Hahahahaha! One doesn't often get such comedy gold responses to stupidity from federal agencies.
China's helicopter fleet lags in numbers and technology.
India took a step toward importing weapons more easily. This is good but reforming their dysfunctional and corrupt domestic arms industry would be better in the long run. Perhaps competition will help with that problem.
China is aggressively pressuring Taiwan at their aerial "border."
Are you, or have you ever been, a Trump supporter?
Armenia and Azerbaijan have renewed their hostilities:
And here is more. Could Russia and Turkey wage a proxy war there?
Did Turkey shoot down an Armenian jet?
That allegation of Democratic voter fraud that is horrible if true. We'll see if the man releases his claimed evidence.
I won't say that a warming climate hasn't had an effect on California's fires. I will say that climate effects are minor compared to how badly California's forests have been mismanaged. Although you can understand the appeal of blaming a BS reason when their hands are dirty from their own stupidity.
Good Lord, how deeply involved in the Russia collusion "coup" was Hillary Clinton? We'll see, I suppose. I'll need more.
So like Obama, Biden was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his presumed potential. Tip to Instapundit.
I stand corrected that Biden would not show for the first debate. He was adequate. I don't know what they pumped him full of to improve on so many of his recent public appearances, but I'm reasonably sure it is illegal in at least 39 states. Or, those early end of his September campaign days (calling a "lid") leading up to the debate were all about adjusting Biden's sleep schedule so that the debate would begin not long after he wakes up rather than being a late-night event. That alone would make a big difference in his performance. Do Democrats risk another debate after getting through the first one? Maybe. Trump was adequate. His behavior was ... distressing. Although as an aside, a format that allows for no responses--incentivizing interruptions--was odd. I'm no more happy about that kind of style than I was with Biden's in 2012. Oddly the media celebrated that style of debate then. (Question: Is Biden mentally incapable of that kind of aggressiveness now?) But it is quite possible that without Trump's behavior Biden would have looked a lot better than adequate given how the debate was tilted to Biden. If this was the worst moderator for Biden, God help Trump in the next two.
Wow, anything at all can be racist and problematic. The professor's groveling apology is Cultural Revolution struggle session humiliation stuff that won't end until professors refuse to buckle to the woke mobs. This is revolting. Tip to Instapundit.
China is leveraging its pandemic aid to the Philippines to get Manila to shut up about Chinese encroachment on Filipino territory. Talk about chutzpah! The Xi Jinping Flu came from China, escaped because of Chinese Communist Party secrecy and denial, and now China pressures the Philippines to survive the virus. Nice guys, eh?
Another thought on the debate. It really is tiring to have Trump as our president. But most of the drama (and violence) is caused by the Democrats and their unrelenting and unhinged turn-it-to-eleven Resistance. And the antics and likely crimes of Democrats in undermining Trump's legitimacy must be punished by reelecting Trump rather than rewarding Democratic obstruction. IMO.
Interesting that having Neanderthal gene cluster is a risk factor for a severe form of the Xi Jinping Flu virus.
Ethiopia is unwilling to offer binding assurances to Egypt and Sudan that Ethiopia's massive GERD Nile River dam won't harm the downriver states that rely on the river for water. Egypt especially is vulnerable for its very existence and life of its people on the Nile providing sufficient water.
We have met the enemy and they is us. Even if there isn't anything dangerously wrong with our surface Navy, it is certainly giving the Chinese the impression there is.
Are the Turks sending Syrian mercenaries to support Azerbaijan in the fighting with Armenia? Russia supports Armenia and has troops there. Turkey and Russia are already on opposite sides in Syria and Libya where Turkish-paid Syrians fight. Turkey is in a confrontation with fellow NATO member Greece at sea, And Turkey has pushed away once-ally Israel as well as alienating America enough to lose the F-35. Just how much foreign trouble does Erdogan want? And can Erdogan cover the checks he is writing?
What "riots?" I trust the media to be truly awful and biased. Does that count?
Afghanistan is still quite the clusterfuck and progress is slow: "Since 2001 the economy continues to grow and corruption slowly declines. The reality is that getting Afghanistan into the 20th century, much less the 21st, will take several decades of effort and since 2001 there have been barely two decades of changes." I'm only aiming for getting Afghanistan to 19th century levels. The progress is obscured by the distance Afghanistan needs to go. Whatever the level Afghanistan can achieve, I'd rather have an Afghanistan that kills jihadis every day rather than a nominal country that hosts jihadis who launch terror attacks on America. My objectives have never been very high.
It's only bad when Trump does legal things with his tax liabilities. Via Instapundit. The tax code is way too complicated. Complication favors the wealthy who can hire attorneys and accountants to exploit those tax provisions. The same is true for any laws, including campaign finance laws. Simplification should be the first thing you do if you want fairness.
The Treaty of Versailles wasn't nearly as bad as people think. Hell, I think it wasn't harsh enough.
Trump has condemned white supremacists before and did during the debate although he made a mistake by not using the exact words that simple minds require to comprehend meaning: "After he said 'sure' I think he should have expanded on the answer. But you cannot change the definition of 'sure.' Chris Wallace asked Trump if he was willing to condemn white supremacy. Trump said 'sure.' Then Trump said, 'Yes, I am willing to do it.' Trump said 'sure' and 'yes.' Therefore he answered the question. Should he have gone further? Yes. But do not misinform people about his answer. Saying 'willing' does not mean Trump 'refused' to condemn white supremacy. The left's and the media’s interpretation of Trump’s 'stand back and stand by' comment about the Proud Boys is not a fact. I can see how they could interpret his statement as an encouragement to the Proud Boys. Trump probably should have stopped at 'stand back' but he did not. But again, their perception is not fact." I'll add that given that Proud Boys--who are not white supremacists--are facing off against rioting communist Antifa who are not standing back one bit, why shouldn't Trump add "stand by" when some Democratic leaders are refusing to let their police control Antifa? [Note that I eliminated paragraph formatting in the above quote to fit in the data dump format.]
Well, yeah, the threat to democracy and rule of law comes from the left and not from Trump.
Stamping out the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic is hard. Europe has not done it any more than America has done it. Wait until this is over to compare. And make sure the definitions of who has gotten the virus and who has died from the virus are corrected and national factors addressed (for example, America has a lot of overweight people) to make a proper comparison. As long as I'm wishing, it would be nice to address deaths and problems caused by the lockdowns, which would help adjust for how much different countries shut down their economies and induced artificial poverty, lost medical care, and suicides.
Don't forget the logistics tail to sustain the F-35 in extended campaigns.
The long Marine move from Okinawa to Guam is finally getting real.
The EastMed Gas Forum of Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus, Greece and Italy will be a mechanism to block Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. More on the gas field maneuvering in the eastern Mediterranean.
Is India preparing for war with China? I don't think so. I think that India is preparing to block China's strategy of grabbing small chunks of unguarded disputed territory and then counting on local military superiority to hold the gains. A "war" requires India to expand to a naval war in the Indian Ocean, I think.
How California became the lavatory of democracy. Via Instapundit.
Even Governor Cuomo can see how badly Mayor De Blasio is running New York City.
As the Trump administration pulls back from Germany, Iraq, and Afghanistan I'll repeat my hope that America doesn't pull back so much that we risk defeats. As I warned early in the Obama administration, if you retreat from enemies you can mistake the subsequent period of relative quiet as "peace" when in reality it is just a pause during the time it takes a pursuing enemy to catch up.
In 2012 the media and Democrats praised Biden's debate rudeness and interruptions.
China has rebooted their J-20 frontal-stealth-only fighter.
A power supply for a true Space Navy?
Uh oh. Luckily Xi Jinping Flu therapeutics are much better now, so best wishes to the president and first lady. Assuming Trump recovers, this could benefit him because the Twitterverse Left will not be able to resist demonstrating their glee that he and his wife have come down with this, repulsing many people on the fence. To her credit, Rachel Maddow rejected the worst instincts of some of the vile Twitterverse.
No New York Woke Times reporters staged a revolt over this op-ed defending China's control of Hong Kong and repression of freedom protesters. China tolerates no dissent.
Are people convinced that a civil war is brewing in America? Honestly, I think the worry is overblown and reliant on over-estimating the influence of the relatively few but high-profile Twitter fanatics and the numbers of Antifa a-holes. I assume there will be post-election localized violence in areas that have already proven friendly to "mostly peaceful" riots and arson. Still, I don't blame people for worrying that their own local area could be a site of such violence. Also note that the polling data is more complicated than first glance would indicate. A lot of people are preparing for disruptions from a second wave of the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic. Less than a quarter are preparing for unrest because of fear of post-election violence. So calm down.
An MSNBC panel advocates for a commission to screen presidential candidates to keep candidates they don't like from being nominated. I suppose we could call it the Guardian Council. The Democrats have gone nuts.
Trump's covid19 infection could provide an interesting experiment on whether Trump's appeal would go up if he remained out of sight for a while. Assuming he turns out fine, of course. May he and the First Lady--and others around them--get better soon.
About the 1957 and 1968 pandemics: "Why were things so different back then? Was it because we had no fear-reinforcing 24/7 cable news, no Twitter, and no incessant and instant case-and-death tickers on all our electronic screens? Or is it we ourselves who have changed, by valuing recurrent but infrequent risks differently?" Tip to Instapundit.
For the eighth consecutive year Japan will set a record for defense spending.
Well I didn't see that take coming.
The Russian threat prompted Norway to roll out the welcome mat for American submarines.
Aside from the really vile hatred that followed Trump's (and his wife's) diagnosis of having the Xi Jinping Flu virus, the reaction of the media is sad. No, Trump's illness is not the result of his "cavalier" treatment of the pandemic. He shut down our economy and mobilized industry to deal with it. That speaks to taking it seriously. Just because he wants to open up the economy in recognition that we have to afford our reaction to the plague and because lockdown harms people, too, does not mean he has a cavalier attitude toward Covid19. It means he is modeling his position that we need to get on with our lives while coping with reality of the virus. He got the virus while doing his job. He took a risk, yes. But life is risk. We all can't figuratively stay in our basements and expect the world around us to work. That extreme remedy should be reserved for those most at risk.
As inconceivable as it is to me that people might support Biden, I worry that Trump supporters have too much invested in the idea that the polls are wrong. I thought that in 2012. Perhaps the polls are wrong today because it makes sense in the current hate-filled environment of demonizing Trump supporters for Trump supporters to lie to pollsters. I hope a decisive number of voters are preparing a giant FU to the media-Democratic Borg. But I thought I had reasons in 2012 to believe the polls were wrong. We'll see. It is possible that the horrible Democratic campaign to sow chaos and violence to blackmail Americans into voting for them to get peace will work. Which is shameful. But it doesn't mean the effort will fail.
If Trump took a needless risk with his campaigning, does that mean that Biden's recent decision to leave his basement to campaign in public a needless risk, too?
I will say that during the lockdown I've managed to reach my target weight (again--after doing that about a decade ago and then slowly losing a bit of ground) and I have not drank more than my weekly allotment. I managed a number of home improvement projects and kind of restarted writing. I have better furnace filters for coping with the Xi Jinping Flu over the winter and now I'm building an actual bar collection of liquor and tools. So all good. Hope all is good with you, too.
More peace in Sudan is good. But it isn't all of it. And what about the genocidal efforts over decades to murder people in Darfur?
Four years after the Brexit vote the European Union still tries to treat Britain like a mere province. Well, that's kind of like the War of 1812, a.k.a. the Second War of (American) Independence. Keep fighting, Britain! You aren't fully out yet. Don't go wobbly.
What is baffling about it? AOC sides with their enemies.
I don't pretend to understand how this is possible, but ... good.
Mistakes, death, and deception in New York.
I'm pretty confident that Trump will recover from the Xi Jinping Flu just fine. It's not like he caught the man cold:
Unhinged and frankly evil Resistance types who inhabit Twitter are wishing death on Trump after he was infected with the Xi Jinping Flu virus. Will this view into leftist thoughts remind people of how unfairly Trump has been treated for four years? The so-called "Melania tapes" that liberals think are game-changing bombshells but actually just show a decent woman betrayed by a "friend" and exploited by a partisan and mean media empire are likely to add to that sense, no? Via Instapundit.
Are Turkey and Russia presiding over a new age of mercenary warfare? Could be. America hired lots of mercenaries for support roles at the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, and that trend went back to the 1990s--perhaps more properly called "contractors" in that context. This is an issue I've been on here at TDR, and I collected a number of posts with additional commentary in this publication available on Amazon for just 99 cents! I intended this to be the first of a series but it was way more work than I thought it would be. And even if I wanted to, Blogger's internal search function limits severely how far back I can search. So, that glorious experiment ended at number one. Anyway, the Russians and Turks are pushing this reborn trend even further by using mercenaries as the primary ground forces for foreign interventions. Of course, the supply of fighters for hire has exploded over the last decade.
Just where is the white supremacists street violence taking place which Democrats bizarrely claim is the real threat rather than the Antifa/BLM revolutionaries we've seen on the streets for years? Remember, of course Black lives matter. But BLM the organization is a Marxist threat that should be shunned.
I'm not sure what to make of the "average of polls" approach these days. Originally when polls could suffer from randomness or errors in methodology, the averaging approach was useful to cut out the extremes of honest problems in polling and get closer to the reality. But when partisans know that their deliberately skewed polling results will be lumped into the polling averages as if the partisan poll is just one more real poll with expected types of errors, doesn't that spoil the average of polls approach? Don't partisans know that they can game the system for political advantage?
Is Sweden in the clear from the pandemic after front-loading their suffering? I wouldn't say America should have followed that example. Our circumstances are too different, I imagine. But it will be an interesting case to study in contrast to other approaches. Tip to Instapundit.
At least the Xi Jinping Flu lockdowns will spare lots of Americans from enduring their insufferable woke relatives who arrive at Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings with their talking points about why the rest of the family is evil. I really am an optimist, aren't I?
Did our early lockdowns have negligible effect on the spread of the Xi Jinping Flu virus? I suppose it is possible that a 100% and harshly enforce lockdown in certain areas could have worked. But were we willing to take measures that Communist China could take to contain the spread in China?
So herd immunity isn't even possible?? How long does post-infection immunity have to last to achieve that? Via Instapundit.
Trump seems more active with Covid-19 than Biden is healthy.
I don't care how much math they know. When you divide it all by "woke" you get zero. Via Instapundit.
Will subsidized city recycling programs fall to budget realities or will virtue signaling save them? The suspense is killing me. Via Instapundit.
