Could it get worse? Really.

 

I wonder if the "objective...nonpartisan...only interested in the facts" Time rag, err mag, will put out a cover with Putin and his glasses on, showing a crumbling senile old man named Biden?

 

I am recalling the words of Reagan during the 1980 election. When someone asked him about then President Carter's statement that he made America more “liked” in the world, Rawhide's response, "Mr. President, I always believed it was more important to be respected than liked." God that miss that man.

 

However, as far as international relations go, one more question. Which is more important, being respected, or being feared? Being feared. Putin has no respect for Biden, nor his puppet master pulling his strings or mouth, Obama. Nor does he fear them. God help us, this is going to be ugly.

 

Something else to remember, our nation’s word is becoming more worthless as each Democratic administration comes and goes. During the Bubba Clinton years, we negotiated with Ukraine and Russia to eliminate Kiev’s nuclear weapons. We, the US, promised we would protect their territory. Does anyone believe if the Ukraine still had the third largest nuclear arsenal on Earth that Putin would have attacked? 

 

Another example of the disasters we have when Democrats are in the White House. Afghanistan. How many allies we left to fend for themselves after we ran like scared children from a nation we spent trillions to stabilize. In Vietnam, we had that last helicopter leaving Saigon. Last year, we have people holding onto the landing gear of planes to get out. 

Oh, let’s not forget Libya. In the aftermath of us knocking out Saddam in Iraq, Ghaddafi gave up his WMD program, settled the civil actions on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland, and gave up on terrorism.He became, if not an ally, a non-hostile. His changes in policy largely based on assurances the US and the West would not take actions against this regime. 

What happened in 2011? Without provocation, the Obama administration destabilized his government and he was overthrown. Besides putting a stable nation into chaos, thousands of SA-7s/14s MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense Systems) were lost. The US and Israel spent a fortune trying to recover them.  Not to be outdone, Obama also overthrew the Egyptian government, almost giving this nation to the Muslim Brotherhood.

After seeing what we do to our allies, is it any wonder North Korea is going hog wild on nuclear development. The Kim’s are interested in one thing, regime survival. Seeing how the US has stood behind Libya, Egypt, and now the Ukraine, I would not bet my life on the word of the US myself. And we should remember the wisdom of Churchill from over seventy years ago:

 

More books, more books!

My wife Beth is always on me about buying books, and I have to say it, she has a point. My "To Read" bookshelf have over 100 books on it. But my retort is, "There are worse habits to have." And I've discovered buying used books for a lot of what I'm reading now. I just picked up a four volume biography of General Marshall, hardcover, used and in good condition, for less than fifty dollars.

I am currently re-reading The Leader's Bookshelf by retired US Navy Admiral James Stavridis, and R. Manning Ancell, which is a review of fifty books on leadership. I read the summary of Dereliction of Duty by retired Army Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, and yes, I immediately got on Amazon and ordered a slightly used copy. I promise Beth, I will get to it. 

But while I was reviewing this, I found this article by General McMaster, and found it fascinating. I agree with the general that Ronald Reagan did the proper thing in challenging the Soviet Union. In the Gipper's immortal words, Reagan,  “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win; they lose.” Rawhide was always to the point. 

Now with China rising as our new major advisor (Although Putin is trying to make Russia the Soviet Union 2.0), I find this article very insightful.

Op-Ed: Look to the Reagan administration for the answer to the China challenge

Among the best remembered summits of the 20th century are those of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan’s commitment to dialogue with America’s primary adversary and what then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz called his “personal chemistry” with his Soviet counterpart were hallmarks of his presidency. But even more important was the fact that Reagan had a clear strategy for victory in the global contest with the Soviet Union.

Reagan’s approach — applying intensive economic and military pressure to a superpower adversary — became foundational to American strategic thinking. It hastened the end of Soviet power and promoted a peaceful conclusion to the multi-decade Cold War. 

Now it is useful to ask if a similar approach would be equally successful in America’s contest with an even more formidable rival, the People’s Republic of China, a challenger with whom the free world’s economies are intertwined and increasingly interdependent.

In 1983, Reagan approved National Security Decision Directive 75, which set the course for an assertive, competitive approach to the Soviets, in contrast to the “live and let live” aspirations of détente... 

...Working from (George F.) Kennan’s original intuitions (on containment), the operational approach that Directive 75 emphasized was “external resistance to Soviet imperialism” and “internal pressure on the USSR to weaken the sources of Soviet imperialism.” Rather than trying to reduce friction with the Soviets as prior administrations had done, Directive 75’s aim was “competing effectively on a sustained basis with the Soviet Union in all international arenas.” Within nine years, the Soviet Union collapsed, worn out by economic pressure, an arms race it could not win and internal political contradictions.

The goal of a competitive strategy versus Chinese Communist Party aggression should be different. The United States and like-minded liberal democracies must defend against the expansion of the party’s influence, thwart its ambitions to dominate the 21st century global economy, and convince Chinese leaders that they can fulfill enough of their aspirations without doing so at the expense of their own people’s rights or the sovereignty of other nations.

These efforts must apply Reagan’s fundamental insight — to win against a rival of China’s magnitude requires sustained pressure against the true sources of the adversary’s power.

China is an economic juggernaut. Through its engagement with the United States and other major markets, it has made itself central to global supply chains, moved to dominate strategic industries and emerging technologies, and built up a military designed to win a war with the U.S. and its allies. Numerous multinational corporations and global financial institutions pump capital, technology and know-how into China. This transfer of capability and competitive advantage can be used against the free world to devastating effect. As the CCP puts it, China is poised to “regain its might and re-ascend to the top of the world.” 

To foil China’s plans for preeminence, the United States and its partners should restrict investment into Chinese companies and industries that support the CCP’s strategic goals and human rights abuses. The U.S. should work to block China’s access to Western technology in areas that contribute to military advantage and to construct a new global trade and supply chain system that reduces dependency on China. With India, Australia and Japan, the U.S. must also maintain preponderant military power in the Indo-Pacific to convince Chinese leaders that they cannot accomplish their objectives through threats or the use of force....

H.R. McMaster, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, was national security advisor from 2017 to 2018. He is the author of “Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World.” Jonathan D.T. Ward is the author of “China’s Vision of Victory” and the founder of Atlas Organization.

Gentlemen, you are dead on. The Chinese government's attempt to push the United States off being the center of the economic, political, and military power on the Earth must be fought. And the fist thing Washington must understand is we are in Cold War II, and we need to be engaging and countering our enemy, not detente at best, and helping them destroy us at worse. 

However, the powers that be on the left in general, and in the Democratic party specifically, are vehemently against that. They believe the United States was not legitimately the global superpower it is, and they must manage the decline of America (and the West in general). And Joe Biden will do this part. Actually, he will be a stand in like Wilson after his stroke, or William J Lepetomane in Blazing Saddles. A point made countless times, Jack Kennedy would not recognize his party today. And there are no Democrats who sticks to the wisdom of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in our relations with the Soviet Union, "I'm a liberal, but I'm not a damned fool!"

Hopefully the Democratic Party has a reformation, if only to keep the GOP honest (amnesty and environmental extremism anyone?). Otherwise we may have already passed the end of the beginning and are heading to the beginning of the end.

The real reason they hate Trump...

I've said too many times too count that I didn't vote for Donald Trump, I voted against Mrs Bill Clinton. And that being said, I've been very happy with his performance overall, and have never been as happy to say I was dead wrong before. It has been amusing to see libtards, etc loose their mines during his two years in office. Haven't seen Democrats this upset since Lincoln freed the slaves.

Now I found this column in today's Wall Street Journal, and the author is dead on:

The Real Reason They Hate Trump

He’s the average American in exaggerated form—blunt, simple, willing to fight, mistrustful of intellectuals.

David Gelernter Oct. 21, 2018

Every big U.S. election is interesting, but the coming midterms are fascinating for a reason most commentators forget to mention: The Democrats have no issues. The economy is booming and America’s international position is strong. In foreign affairs, the U.S. has remembered in the nick of time what Machiavelli advised princes five centuries ago: Don’t seek to be loved, seek to be feared.

This has happened before, in the 1980s and ’90s and early 2000s, but then the financial crisis arrived to save liberalism from certain destruction. Today leftists pray that Robert Mueller will put on his Superman outfit and save them again.

For now, though, the left’s only issue is “We hate Trump.” This is an instructive hatred, because what the left hates about Donald Trump is precisely what it hates about America. The implications are important, and painful.

Not that every leftist hates America. But the leftists I know do hate Mr. Trump’s vulgarity, his unwillingness to walk away from a fight, his bluntness, his certainty that America is exceptional, his mistrust of intellectuals, his love of simple ideas that work, and his refusal to believe that men and women are interchangeable. Worst of all, he has no ideology except getting the job done. His goals are to do the task before him, not be pushed around, and otherwise to enjoy life. In short, he is a typical American—except exaggerated, because he has no constraints to cramp his style except the ones he himself invents.

Mr. Trump lacks constraints because he is filthy rich and always has been and, unlike other rich men, he revels in wealth and feels no need to apologize—ever. He never learned to keep his real opinions to himself because he never had to. He never learned to be embarrassed that he is male, with ordinary male proclivities. Sometimes he has treated women disgracefully, for which Americans, left and right, are ashamed of him—as they are of JFK and Bill Clinton...

I've posted multiple times, the STRATFOR Geopolitical Diary for Ronald Reagan's death. A quote from it is relevant for this article:

...Reagan reduced the problem to its essence and correctly identified the trajectory. We tend to confuse the terms "intellectual" and "intelligent." An intellectual is a person who makes his living dealing in ideas. He is learned by profession. He could also be a moron. There is no guarantee that an intellectual is intelligent. At the same time, there are people who are enormously intelligent, but not at all intellectual. They do not make their living working with ideas. They are not learned. But their unencumbered intelligence can sometimes see the future more clearly than someone who is encumbered by complex ideas that their intelligence can't sort through. Reagan was no intellectual. That allowed him to see things that intellectuals could not see...

A point I've made describing "public servants," i.e. the professional political class. They are often learned, educated at the best schools, connected, and went up a political latter. And they are often idiots that have never done anything. See Mrs Bill Clinton (Eight years in the senate and authored all of three bills), Joe Biden (One of five senators who voted against the Alaska Pipeline), B Hussein Obama (Enough said). Republicans, to a much greater degree, draw men and women of accomplishment to office. No question, Trump is part of that group. Is he my style, no. But his administration has accomplished multiple things (tax cuts, judicial appointments, the end of the war on police) or tried to do his promises (Repeal of Obamacare (Rest in piss McCain), the border wall).

So yes, come 2020, I will proudly and gladly vote for Donald Trump's reelection. Don't know if that election night will be as fun to watch as 2016, but as long as the Democrats are kept from power.

Insite to the man who is only a heart beat away from the Presidency

An interesting interview with Roger Ailes

...One day during the 2012 primary season, Newt Gingrich complained that Fox News’s support for Mitt Romney was responsible for Gingrich’s poor showing. Rick Santorum had made a similar claim when he dropped out of the race. Gingrich and Santorum had been Fox commentators before getting into the race, and Ailes found their complaints self-serving and disloyal. Brian Lewis, his spokesman, asked Ailes for guidance on how to respond to Newt. “Brush him back,” Ailes said. “He’s a sore loser and if he had won he would have been a sore winner.” Lewis nodded.

Ailes was silent for a moment and then added, “Newt’s a prick.”

Lewis then read Ailes a summary of the flap over Democratic operative Hilary Rosen’s comment that Ann Romney, mother of five, had never worked a day in her life. Ailes spun it without hesitation. “Obama’s the one who never worked a day in his life. He never earned a penny that wasn’t public money. How many fund-raisers does he attend every week? How often does he play basketball and golf? I wish I had that kind of time. He’s lazy, but the media won’t report that.” He noticed my arched eyebrows and added, “I didn’t come up with that. Obama said that, to Barbara Walters.” (What Obama said was that he feels a laziness in himself that he attributes to his laid-back upbringing in Hawaii.)

“I like Marco Rubio,” Ailes told a staff meeting of Fox News Latino when talk about the Florida senator being Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential pick was at fever pitch. “But I don’t know about as a vice-presidential candidate. He’s a nice guy, and that role requires kicking the crap out of your opponents.” He paused, thinking about vice presidents he had known. “I have a soft spot for Joe Biden,” he said. “I like him. But he’s dumb as an ashtray.”...

I respectfully disagree. Joe Biden is as smart as an ashtray!

Actual reporting....from CNN

What is more astonishing? That Joe Biden, the dumbest man to be Vice President in our history actually said something truthful and intelligence, the fact a journalist actually reported on it and called his dumb ass out on it or the fact the network that this journalist works for is the Clinton News Network, sometimes know as CNN.