Monthly Archives: January 2018

The Obama White House, the Obama DoJ, and Hezbollah

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Recall the Politico report on how then-President Barack Obama (D) and his Department of Justice killed an investigation into Hezbollah’s drug dealing because Obama was so desperate for a nuclear weapons deal—any nuclear weapons deal—for his legacy.

Now we’re seeing that Derek Maltz, ex-Special Agent-in-Charge of the DEA’s Special Operations Division, had briefed Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, on Hezbollah’s performance and on the depth of their drug empire’s penetration in the US.  Maltz said that Holder was “very alarmed” by the briefing, and Maltz also said that Holder “promised to set up meetings with national security officials and was almost always ‘supportive’ of his investigations”—and nothing happened.  There was no followup.

Maybe Maltz misinterpreted Holder’s alarm, degree of support, and the nature of his promises to follow up.

The investigation into Hezbollah was spiked some time after that briefing.  Maybe Holder’s alarm was over how much was being found out about Hezbollah’s drug dealing and the extent of its drug empire in the US.  Maybe Holder’s support for the investigations was so he could keep abreast of how much was being learned about Hezbollah’s drug operations.  Maybe there was followup on Maltz’ briefing: that killing of the investigation.

Legacy matters, after all.  And maybe the true nature of a particular legacy is coming to light.

Facebook Revamp?

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Christopher Mims had a piece on this, that Facebook MFWIC Mark Zuckerberg says he’s interested in doing.  Mims opened his article with an important question:

So here’s the multibillion-dollar question: is Mr Zuckerberg willing to sacrifice revenue for the well-being of Facebook’s two billion-plus users?

Unfortunately, his piece centered on the potentially addictive nature of Facebook (among other virtual, interactive social media).  Important as money is to running a business, and important as addiction is to handle, Mims missed a number of larger questions—which bear on addiction, but not exclusively so.

  1. making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent Whose definition of “time well spent?” Is Facebook going to dictate that to its users?
  2. encourage meaningful social interactions Whose definition of “meaningful?” Is Facebook going to dictate that, too?
  3. push us away from harmful ways of using the service Whose definition of “harmful?” Will Facebook dictate that to users, going beyond the possibly addictive nature to other definitions convenient to Facebook?
  4. steps include [what] Facebook…believes will reduce engagement on the service, including hiding click bait and fake news Whose definition of “click bait?” Of “fake news?” How will Facebook prove it’s not merely censoring? It already has been exposed as having an unbalanced coterie of “content moderators” who censor what they personally view as unacceptably conservative.

All of this, also, elides Facebook’s well-known lack of concern for user privacy, invading it at will for “business” purposes.

Time to Visit

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Li Kexin, Minister, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United States of America, says

The day that a US Navy vessel arrives in Kaohsiung is the day that our People’s Liberation Army unifies Taiwan with military force[.]

Kaohsiung is a major seaport on the southwest coast of the Republic of China.  Since the PRC now is threatening to invade and conquer a sovereign nation that is an ally and friend of ours, it has become imperative that we do a number of things, including:

  • send a USN combatant ship and a hospital ship to Kaohsiung for a friendly visit
  • resume patrols in the Taiwan Strait between the PRC and the RoC
  • upgrade the RoC’s Air Force with newer fighter and ground attack aircraft, and greater numbers of them
  • sell to the RoC, and train their personnel in the use of, missile defense systems, including Patriot and THAAD
  • broker deals between the RoC and Israel for the RoC’s acquisition of Iron Dome and Arrow rocket and missile defense systems (the latter to complement Patriot)
  • increase our sea and air patrols of PRC-seized islands in the South China Sea, sailing as close as the waters will safely allow, and making low-level flights over the islands
  • increase, in coordination with Japan, our sea and air patrols of East China Sea islands harassed by the PRC’s navy and air forces
  • patrol the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea with missile defense capable naval shipping

This also is an attempt by the PRC to distract from its decision to not enforce in any serious manner the sanctions against northern Korea and its decision to not persuade its new BFF, Russia, to seriously enforce those sanctions.  We need to make appropriate responses against those PRC and Russian entities, both business and government, that are disregarding the sanctions’ requirements.

The PRC has been asking after our cauldrons since early in the Obama administration; it’s long past time to respond to the PRC’s Warring Nations mentality.  For our allies’ and friends’ safety, not only the RoC’s, and for our own safety.

Energy Poor?

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In an otherwise reasonable piece on the disaster that the Global Warming Funding Industry represents for the poor folks, Bjorn Lomborg, Copenhagen Consensus Center President (aside: he, too, uses the climatistas’ euphemistic obfuscation “climate change”), Lomberg based much of his argument on this definition of energy poverty:

Economists consider households energy poor if they spend 10% of their income to cover energy costs.

Wow.  I guess, then, that households that spend 20%-30% on their housing costs must be housing poor even more so.

Prolly need lots of Government subsidies for homeowners and renters, too.  The solution to [housing] need not punish the poor.

Value in Spending vs Parity in Spending

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The House and Senate leadership met Wednesday in Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R, WI) office, along with White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, to see if there’s any possibility of the Progressive-Democrats working with Republicans to get Federal spending under control.  It seems not.

Both parties claim to want to increase our ability to defend ourselves and our friends and allies, and so both claim to want to increase defense spending.  Only one of the two seems serious, however.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA):

In these talks, Leader Schumer and I will continue to insist on parity in the caps[.]

Parity in the spending caps, she meant.  The icon of Progressive-Democracy in Congress is conflating parity with equal value.

There will be no domestic spending available if we can’t defend ourselves.  We will have nothing with which to deal with the opioid epidemic, veterans, pensions, disaster relief, National Institutes of Health, Children’s Health Insurance Program and community health centers, or infrastructure rebuilding, or education, or Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid or anything else if we can’t defend ourselves.

Or if we merely go broke, whether by being forced to spend all of our money just to pay the vig on that debt or by defaulting outright.

Parity—this is not the same as equal value. It is, however, another example of the Progressive-Democrats’ constant demand for equal outcomes rather than true equality.

It may be time to kill the filibuster on matters involving the Federal budget and spending bills, at least for the current Congressional session.  The alternative, if the Republicans stand tall on spending, along with getting their messaging skills up to snuff—finally—is to let the Progressive-Democrats shut down the Federal government over their demand to spend us into oblivion as their price for letting us spend enough on defense to rebuild our military.

To do any of that, though, Republicans also will have to understand that parity is not equality.