The final part of the Merkle administration was problematic, but under the present SDP government led by Olaf Scholz – the Cold War socialist and Soviet apologist, Germany’s irresponsible stance in the face of European and NATO security requirements cannot go without consequences. The present, “Just do enough in security to look like we’re doing something, but not too much…” should be called out for exactly what it is.
Germany, even more than France, is the keystone to Europe. Too many nations look to her for leadership culturally, economically, and security. Poland is an emerging leader, but she does not have the population or GDP power to match Germany.
Here’s his proposal for changing things:
In NATO, General and Flag Officer billets are distributed amongst nations in a rather complicated way, but this formula is controlled by NATO – and as such – can be changed.
Entering argument: take the present formula for “fair distribution†and multiply by .75 any nation that spends 1.5% to 1.99% GDP on defense. Multiply by .5 any nation that spends between 1.25% to 1.499%. Multiply by .25 1.0% to 1.240%. If you fall below 1%, you get nothing and your OF5 (Col./Capt) billets are halved.
1.25x for 2.01%-2.25%. 1.5X for 2.26%-2.75%; 1.75x for 2.76% -3.0%. 2x for +3.01%.
IMO the situation is actually somewhat worse than he realizes. The greater threat to most European countries, other than those that actually border Russia, is not Russia but German banks. I also don’t agree that the Germans chose the wrong leader at the wrong time. I think they chose a leader who reflects Germany’s conflicted nature. They don’t want to pay for their own defense and they don’t want the Americans to think of them as an impediment or liability. So they try to straddle.
I found this “deep dive” into the Tesla Semi at The EV Universe pretty interesting. If the range and charging time are as claimed, a driver could cross the entire country from coast to coast on just six charges which would translate into a total of three hours of charging time. The price tag also appears to be roughly in line with ICE semis.
My wife’s dad and uncles serviced in the Navy during World War II. My mom’s uncle was one of the lucky few who were called up for World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. He apparently had skills that were in demand. Perhaps it’s natural that we should notice that the “day that will live in infamy” is fading from memory. Only 167,000 some-odd veterans who served remain alive today and they’re very old.
Here’s something that should be remembered. Back in 1941 Americans were actually angry and frightened. It had been almost 150 years since the last time the United States had actually been attacked and we didn’t know how things were going to turn out. For all we knew a Japanese invasion of the West Coast or a German invasion of the East Coast was immanent. The Man in the High Castle is fiction but just barely.
The drought of opinion pieces continues. Let’s talk about Ralph Warnock’s successfully defending his Senate seat in Georgia, shall we? As usual I’m disinterested in the local politics aspect of it since I don’t live in Georgia but it does have national implications.
What good is one additional Senate seat to the Democrats? I think they’d claim a mandate for whatever they cared to do anyway just as the Republicans would in their shoes. I can’t see a chastened Chuck Schumer looking to forge a more bipartisan path for legislation in any event.
Enacting legislation will be difficult with a Republican majority in the House, even a narrow one. Especially funding bills viz. Article I Section 7 of the Constitution:
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
Where I think the additional vote will help is in committee seats. They won’t need to play nice with the Senate minority. That in turn has implications for judicial, ambassadorial, and cabinet level appointments.
I agree with Carl Schramm’s point in his piece at City Journal: the CDC is in need of reform. IMO the matter needs to be considered a long-term project rather than the master stroke, one and done approach that Congress seems to prefer. I doubt that just increasing funding, Congress’s typical approach, will provide results other than increasing the pay of present people working at the CDC.
I’m not sure he realizes it but in this piece at RealClearPolitics John R. Lott, Jr. is making the case for the increasing importance of a if not new previously pretty rare form of terrorist: the eco-fascist:
Of the 82 mass public shootings from January 1998 to May 2021, 9% have known or alleged ties to white supremacists, neo-Nazis, or anti-immigrant views. But many of those, such as the Buffalo murderer, are environmentalist authoritarians.
Another 9% of mass public shootings are carried out by people of middle eastern origin, despite them making up only 0.4% of the US population. Whites and Hispanics are underrepresented as a share of the population. Blacks, Asians, and American Indians commit these attacks at a slightly higher rate than their share of the population.
Seventy-one percent of mass public shooters have no identifiable political views.
Even violence against pro-life people and organizations this year has been over 22 times more frequent that violence against pro-choice groups.
We’ve had a few homegrown “eco-fascists” over the years. They’ve been pretty prominent in Germany.
Here nobody closer to the mainstream wants to claim them. They consider themselves to be on the left but many Democrats are pretty quick to label them as “right-wing”. Has anyone seen any mainstream Republicans side with them, even to the extent of suggesting that they have a point?
Next up; the brouhaha about how Twitter and, indeed, major media outlets more generally molded the news to suit their political purposes. As you are presumably aware, Matt Taibbi at the behest of Elon Musk has published a series of tweets on how Twitter did its best to quash the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop. I don’t think that Twitter’s actions are that big a story and I don’t think that Matt Taibbi’s tweets are that shameful.
IMO you should recognize that Joe Biden has been engaged in influence peddling for decades. Politicians in high office no longer think that all sorts of corrupt activities are abuses of power any more. My sense is that they think they’re perks of the office. Pay to play in all forms, insider trading, probably even including outright bribery.
Just for the record I think that once a politician has reached a high enough office, he or she is all but unquestionably corrupt. I think the same of CEOs of big companies. In other words I think that Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Jamie Dimon, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett—all corrupt.
And the state of journalism is pathetic. I think the piece I linked to a week or so ago called it right. Media outlets are publishing what their target audiences want to hear rather than the news.
We’ve been going through a period in which the opinion pieces published in the major media outlets and online have been particularly tedious. In the absence of something to react to I thought I’d give some quick takes on major stories in the news. First off: Ukraine, undoubtedly the biggest story now as it has been for most of the last year.
We know that Russia hasn’t won outright and we know that Ukraine hasn’t won outright. What else do we know? Other than that we’re being deluged with propaganda by both sides. I think we can say with confidence that the Russians are continuing to degrade Ukrainian infrastructure. I think we can say that the United States and our European allies are continuing to provide arms to the Ukrainians.
I think that’s about it. I don’t think there’s much else we can say with confidence.
Jack is six months old now. He is charming, loving, intelligent, and possibly the most difficult Samoyed we’ve had since the first Samoyed my wife and I brought into our home almost 30 years ago.
Jack prefers to be out of a crate. Most of the time that is perfectly fine but he still does not have good house manners. We work with him on a regular, systematic basis and those may come with time and maturity but meantime it’s a bit frustrating.
