Ordering Chinese

This week we learned that China has hacked into U.S. defense files for information on key American weapon systems. The official Obama Administration response is stifling a big yawn. Here's another head-scratcher for you. We have invited Chinese naval units to participate in the RIMPAC naval exercise off Hawaii for the first time. This is a huge naval exercise to allow U.S. Pacific allies to practice combined operations with our Navy. Why might we be running such exercises? Here are some hints.

What country:

• "...has deployed along its southern coast its DF-21D, a two-stage solid-fuel missile that can be guided by satellite signals. The missile is dubbed the "carrier killer" because it can be configured to explode in midair, raining down sharp metal on a deck crowded with planes, ordinance, fuel and sailors. Its apparent intent is to drive U.S. forces out of East Asia."
• Harassed " ...in international waters of unarmed U.S. Navy reconnaissance vessels for more than a decade."
• Forced down a U.S. EP-3 reconnaissance plane over international airspace in 2001 and held plane and crew for several days. 
• Had one of its attack subs surface in the middle of a U.S. carrier battle group in 2006 during fleet exercise.
• Is at odds with most of its neighbors over the South China Sea all the way down to Malaysia and Singapore.

Who could it be? Why China of course! I guess we want them to do it even better in the future. What could possibly go wrong?!

www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-chang-chinese-navy-20130530,0,293255,print.story

www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/05/30/Admiral-Something-Very-Wrong-At-The-Core-Of-Obama-s-China-Policies

Me, Me, Me is Not a Voice Exercise

A board that I serve on recently read an article from Time magazine about the Me Me Me generation - the Millennials. This group is the generation now in their 20s and the article focused on some of their disturbing characteristics:

• They suffer from narcissistic personality disorder at 3 times the rate of people over 65.
• 40% of them believe they should be promoted every 2 years regardless of performance.
• They average 85 pictures of themselves in their homes.
• 60% of them will make important moral decisions based on what "feels right."

Hopefully, you can begin to understand the implications for society and the future of the U.S. and they are not good. 

Contrast the stuff the Millennials are apparently made of with the generation that reached their 20s in the 1940s. The Greatest Generation defeated the Nazis and the Japanese and then built the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen. With nuclear, chemical and biological weapons proliferating around the world, Islamic terrorism, North Korea, Iran, etc., etc. the future of the this country does not look like a cake walk. While a number of the Millennials are up to the task of doing what it takes to assure the survival of America, I hope the rest will be able to put down their cell phones down and do their part too or it could be very rough sledding for all of us. 

www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/breakpoint-commentaries-archive/entry/13/22339

This is the Way It Is Done ... The Gipper

"First, let me say I take full responsibility for my own actions and for those of my administration. As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities." ~ Ronald Reagan

(Tip 'o the hat to Al Lyons and Being Conservative)

Pre-Apocalyptic Spain

George Friedman, the CEO of Stratfor (which provides private intelligence briefings for international companies),  provides a fascinating look at the current situation in Spain and what it portends from a historical perspective. It's not good.

From empty roads because gas is too expensive to 22-year old beggars in Madrid who are dressed neatly like students, the situation for Spain's people is bad and getting worse. Unemployment is over 27% but it is shifted toward those under 25 who are staggering under 57% unemployment numbers. From a political standpoint, this is a dangerous mix. Friedman notes of the 22-year old student beggar:

"He is broke, scared and bored -- not something you want a mass of young men to be. That is the point at which history turns. Over time, they become men with nothing to lose; they become violent men, trying to reshape the order by any means necessary. Looking around the violent parts of the world, it is young men with nothing to lose and fantasies of glory, led by older men who understand them and their needs, who wage the civil wars that tear countries apart."

He goes on to note that this was exactly the situation after WW I and the bloody Spanish Civil War soon followed. 

Eurocrats from Germany and Spain that he talked to were quite sanguine that it would all soon work out, but we have heard those assessments before and they have yet to be realized. A volatile mix is brewing and some point, it will not take much of a spark to set it off. How much of Europe is in or close to the same situation is an even more disturbing question.  
finance.townhall.com/columnists/georgefriedman/2013/05/25/geopolitical-journey-an-empty-highway-in-spain-n1606167

Not the Usual Political Games

Peggy Noonan writes an eye-opening story in today's Wall Street Journal about how far the abuse of power has gone in the Obama Regime and the agencies involved. It's bad enough that the IRS has been hip deep in the muck, but Noonan's article says the FBI has now joined them and that's a genuinely scary thought.

On the Huckabee show Catherine Engelbrecht from Richmond, Texas was interviewed. She and her husband own a small manufacturing business. She also founded two small non-profits to explore public policy, King Street Patriots and True the Vote. The latter was designed to cull dead voters from the voting lists. The next thing she knows, the FBI arrives on her door step, as does the IRS, and the ATF and proceed to put her through the wringer. 

The FBI has always been thought of as a professional organization but at least in this case and the recent wiretapping against the AP and Fox News reporters it is morphing into the KGB right before our eyes. If we are complacent about this any longer, we will wake up and it will be too late. Life in the U.S. won't be like France or Spain but more akin to the USSR and the captive countries behind the Iron Curtain. Enough!

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323475304578501581991103070.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

El Jefe

The arrogance of the Obama Regime is truly stunning. The IRS employee at the center of the scandal targeting conservative non-profits gets a promotion to oversee the IRS enforcement of Obamacare. Now Victoria Nuland from the State Department, who was heavily involved in vetting the CIA memo outlining what was known about the Benghazi attack and turning it from a truthful document into a fairytale, is also getting a promotion. 

www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/05/24/Victoria-Nuland-Getting-a-Promotion

Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and their henchmen all look like boy scouts compared to these guys. Not only are they lawless, but when called on it spit in your eye and dare you to do something about it. I think you have to go back to Huey Long in Louisiana in the 1930s to find anything remotely similar in American politics. I hope John Boehner and the House Republicans are up to this because it is going to be a brawl.

Canary in the Coal Mine

Simon Conway is a Brit and a naturalized American citizen who has a U.S. radio show. I have never heard of him before this article, but the column is well worth reading. He grew up in London and is horrified by the jihadist butchering of a British soldier in broad daylight on a London street, but he is equally horrified by what he saw from his former countrymen. I will let him speak for himself.

"This is the country I chose to leave because it was slowly becoming unrecognizable to me. And I know in my heart that if you transplanted that atrocious scene on a London street yesterday, to an American street today, then the outcome would have been entirely different. People, as they did in Boston, would run TOWARDS the danger.

So what happened yesterday? What could possess a crowd to watch two men with knives and machetes hack to death another human being? And why was the only reaction to pull out phones and shoot pictures and video? How could these people then wait 20 minutes for the police to show up without any attempt to take down these terrorists?

It took most of the day for me to reach my conclusion, but I have arrived at something that is really quite uncomfortable - more so because we here in the United States are currently headed down the same path. We might be 10 or 15 or even 20 years away, but unless we change direction then we too will simply record an event and do nothing to try and save another human being."
townhall.com/columnists/simonconway/2013/05/23/london-a-deeper-horror-than-we-might-think-n1604717

He believes that the Brits have become so thoroughly wards of the government that they cannot imagine taking the initiative, even in a life-or-death situation. 

It has in fact happened here before - think the Kitty Genovese murder in NYC - but it is not typical American behavior. Conway says that Todd Beamer and his colleagues are much more typically American:

"There’s one picture I’ve seen of one of the terrorists with at least 17 people in the background. All I can think of are the last heard words of 9-11 hero Todd Beamer on Flight 93.

'Are you guys ready? Let's roll'

He wasn’t talking about video cameras."

Indeed Todd Beamer wasn't. May it ever be so!

Trying to Take a Bite Out of Apple

The U.S. Senate enjoyed grilled Apple yesterday, putting the company through its paces for having the temerity to take advantage of laws passed by, well the Senate. Shameful! Apple was castigated for not sitting here in the U.S. and getting taxed up the wazoo like it should to fund the senators' grandiose pork projects. Not surprisingly, Apple defended itself, as well it should have.

Any company has the legal and moral obligation to obey the law. No company has the legal or moral obligation to be taxed at the maximum rate, of which the United States has the highest income tax rates among Western nations. Further, Apple has followed the law, albeit very cleverly, in seeking to keep more of the money that it earned for the company and its shareholders. There is nothing wrong with that except that it is an affront to those in government, like yesterday's Senate committee, who arrogantly think that they know how to spend our money better than those of us out in the trenches who actually work hard and earn it. 

Prayers and $ for OKC

I hope that you will pray - and then make a contribution to the relief and rebuilding efforts in Oklahoma City. The devastation is amazing.

Heinrich Would Like to Talk to You

ABC News reports that the female director of the tax-exempt division at the time of the now famous Tea Party targeting has now been promoted to head the implementation of the IRS oversight and enforcement of Obamacare. Un-frigging-believable! Just a guess, but the black uniforms with skull insignias will be arriving shortly for the troops, er agents.

abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/05/irs-official-in-charge-during-tea-party-targeting-now-runs-health-care-office/#.UZVeM5g4Tdw.twitter

townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/05/16/rimshot-irs-official-who-oversaw-targeting-scandal-now-in-charge-of-obamacare-division-n1599015

Nothing New Under the Sun

Jon Stewart can be funny and is here (if off color) going ballistic over the current Obama Administration multi-scandals. What makes me scratch my head, though, is the continuing and apparently permanent inability of progressives to admit the truth of Lord Acton's maxim: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is the reality of the human condition. The Founders understood this and designed a political system with elaborate checks and balances to assure that no one person or branch of government acquired overwhelming power.  

Progressives always want to ignore the Constitution because this time we will do it better - the person is smarter, wiser, a different color, etc., etc. Not gonna happen. The hitch is that they are still human and even if their motives are good when they begin, soon the intoxication starts and they are soon drunk with power and lose their way with scandals inevitably following. There should be no surprise at this but witness Stewart's angst, there always is.

Human nature doesn't change - there is nothing new under the sun. We should not be surprised at political scandals. It is time to put the guardrails back in place and follow the Constitution. This statement will probably draw an IRS audit but if more and more people shout it from the housetops, they can't audit the whole country.

www.ijreview.com/2013/05/52244-jon-stewart-absolutely-skewers-incompetent-obama-administration-sides-with-conservatives/

(Tip o' the hat to Al Lyons)

No Smoking Gun Yet, But ...

What did the White House know and when did they know it? At this time the circumstantial evidence is starting to build and a disturbing picture is beginning to emerge on Benghazi, the AP phone taps, and the IRS abuses. Just one of the stories is that of KMOV-St. Louis news anchor Larry Connors who asked President Obama some of the tough questions that the national reporters were not and shortly thereafter found himself on the wrong end of an IRS investigation. 

www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/05/14/Anchor-IRS-Targeted-Me-After-Obama-Interviw

There are a lot of other stories describing similar abuses coming to the surface and so far they are circumstantial, but as Jonah Goldberg reminds us at Townhall, "...as Thoreau once said, ' some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.' "

townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/2013/05/15/benghazis-smoking-guns-n1594509

Reminds Me of a Certain Someone

Who got himself impeached. The parallels are getting eerily similar to our current White House occupant. President Nixon buried George McGovern in a 1972 landslide reelection only to be impeached a few years later over Watergate and other little no-nos like using the IRS against his political enemies. His coverups worked for a while, but in the end it all fell apart. At least in Watergate no one got killed. 

news.yahoo.com/irs-kept-shifting-targets-tax-exempt-groups-scrutiny-041423528.html

Men - and Women Too

My comment on the whole sordid Benghazi matter is best said by C.S. Lewis:
 
"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor, and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."    The Abolition of Man

Coming Apart at the Seams

I have previously blogged that the Germans are getting restive with the rest of their EU cronies, but now England is starting to move in the same direction. The UKIP - United Kingdom Independence Party - had some major gains in Parliamentary seats in the recent elections. Its major issue is an up or down vote on whether the Brits stay in the EU. We are in a time of major political change and the end result is not yet clear, although I continue to believe that the EU is a goner. Increasingly our friends in the UK would seem to concur.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22393094

Where Is God When It Hurts?

This question haunts us whether our tragedy is personal or we are sharing in a national trauma like Sandy Hook or Columbine. Philip Yancey comes as close to an understandable answer as anything I have read:

"In New Orleans, crews from Texas churches still spend weekends rebuilding houses destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, long after government aid dried up. If the church does its job, people don't torment themselves with the question, Where is God when it hurts? They know the answer. God becomes visible through God's people, who live out the mission that Paul expressed so well: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God" (2 Cor. 1:3-4)."

www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/april/national-tragedy-and-empty-tomb.html?order=&start=1

In short, He was with the afflicted the whole time - He was just waiting for His Body, the Church, to show up.