Is America already in one? In many ways, yes. It’s a Cold Civil War (for now), but one regardless.
Category Archives: War Commentary
The Security-Clearance Process
…is about to get a long-overdue overhaul for the 21st century. It takes too long, and costs too much. I haven’t had a clearance in over a quarter of a century, and lack of one has probably limited my income opportunities.
Trump’s CPAC Speech
I listened to some of it, but I really, viscerally hate listening to Trump for long. But Nick Gillespie (!) was impressed:
All in all, it was, in the words of Daniel Dale, the Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, “one of the least-hinged speeches Trump has given in a long time.” It was indeed all over the place but like the weirdly wide-ranging and digressive speech in which he declared a national emergency, it was also an absolute tour de force, laying out every major point of disagreement between Republicans and Democrats (abortion, the Second Amendment, and taxes, among other things) while tagging the latter aggressively as socialists who will not only end the private provision of health care but take over the energy sector too. Those charges take on new life in the wake of the announcement of the GND and comments, however short-lived, by Democrats such as Kamala Harris, who at one point recently called for an end to private health care. And over 100 House Democrats have signed on to a plan that would end private health insurance in two years. For all the biting criticism and dark humor in today’s speech, Trump has mostly ditched the “American Carnage” rhetoric that marked his first Inaugural Address, pushing onto liberals and Democrats all the negativity and anger that used to surround him like the dust cloud surrounds Pigpen in the old Peanuts cartoons. “We have people in Congress right now who hate our country,” he said. “We can name every one of them. Sad, very, very sad.”
At moments, he seemed to be workshopping his themes and slogans for 2020. “We believe in the American Dream, not the socialist nightmare,” he averred at one point. “Now you have a president who finally standing up for America.” The future, he said “does not belong to those who believe in socialism. The future belongs to those who believe in freedom. I’ve said it before and will say it again: America will never be a socialist country.” That’s a line that may not work forever, but it will almost certainly get the job done in 2020.
As previously noted, the media is going to re-elect Trump. Because they still don’t understand how they got Trump.
Regime Change
Could the U.S. face it in the Trump era?
The Obama FBI and DOJ were certainly acting like secret police.
WW II
…in color.
The Fix Was In
The Obama Justice Department prevented the FBI from pursuing the proper charge(s) against Clinton.
The Only Way To Save The FBI
…is to expose everything.
We’ll see if Barr does it.
Though I think Wilson had a stroke, or a series of them, not a heart attack.
The Mullahs
I hope he’s right: Can they see their destiny being played out in Venezuela?
One of the many infuriating things about the Bush administration was their insouciance at the acts of war against our troops in Iraq by Iran, who has been waging war on us for forty years now. I expected better of them. Obama was worse, of course, but that outright treason, probably at the behest of Valerie Jarrett, should have been expected.
The Democrats
Let’s see … what else happened in the busy world of crazy … excuse me while I flip through my files … Ah yes, there was congresswoman Ilhan Omar, parroting the Kremlin-Havana-Tehran line on the democratic uprising in Venezuela, calling it “a U.S. backed coup.” A few days later, Omar, a supporter of the anti-Semitic Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement whom the Democrats have awarded with a place on the House Foreign Relations Committee, said she “almost chuckles” because “we still uphold” the Jewish State of Israel “as a democracy in the Middle East.” I chuckle—and begin seriously to worry—that someone who cannot distinguish between tyranny in Latin America and democracy in the Middle East commands such acclaim and receives such attention. Omar has former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett in her corner. When Omar dismissed Congressman Lee Zeldin’s criticism of her views by Tweeting, “Don’t mind him, he is just waking up to the reality of having Muslim women as colleagues who know how to stand up to bullies!”, Jarrett replied, “Shake him up!” Zeldin is a Jewish Republican.
Finally, as the week came to a close, the Democrats went beyond their support for partial-birth abortion to defend—the very fact that I have to write the following words saddens me to no end—post-birth abortion. This practice has been known throughout history as infanticide, and it flourished widely in the ancient world before being condemned in the Judeo-Christian tradition. As we “progress” from that tradition—a progression that is in fact a reversion—the morals and values that bind us to a culture of life slowly fade away. They are still there, of course, gossamer-like and tenuous, which is why Kathy Tran, the Fairfax County delegate to the Virginia Assembly who sponsored a bill lifting all state restrictions on abortion, hesitated before admitting that her legislation authorized the termination of a pregnancy up to the moment of delivery.
I’m not sure that this is anything new as much as Trump has simply made it much more obvious.
John Bolton’s Intriguing Notepad
I think it’s worth noting that it would be handy to have some troops next door just in case things went south and we had to extract Americans. But if it nudges things in the right direction, that would be good, too.