Category Archives: defense policy

Another Schumer Shutdown?

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) told NBC News‘ Meet the Press that there would be no money for a border wall “in any form.”  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) has been saying much the same thing the last couple of weeks, but she doesn’t have the votes to block the money, and she doesn’t have the votes to become Speaker next month if she doesn’t say no this month.

But Schumer: this is the same Senator who a couple of administrations ago voted enthusiastically to fund a border wall.  This is the same Senator who earlier in this administration enthusiastically supported a DACA fix the took care of 1.8 million illegal aliens vice the 800 thousand Schumer wanted to handle and that also had $25 billion for a border wall—and then welched on the deal.  This is the same Senator who agreed earlier this year to $1.6 billion for a border wall but now says no money.

It’s clear that Senator Chuck Schumer is so desperate to oppose President Donald Trump that he’s willing to have open borders and a free flow of illegal aliens rather than see to the security of our borders—or the safety of aliens who want to and try to enter our nation legally.

Trump said he’d proudly take the blame for any government shutdown over the matter, but the responsibility plainly will be that of the automatic obstructionist.  After all, Democrats…aren’t eager to help the Republican president fulfill his signature campaign pledge in 2016….

Go figure.

Google’s Boss Testified

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Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai testified before the House Judiciary Committee earlier this week.  In the course of his testimony, he made some interesting claims.

“Even as we expand into new markets we never forget our American roots,” Mr Pichai said in his opening statement.

Not just roots, though. It’s important that Pichai and his team remember our American culture and values, too.  It’s not at all clear that he/they do.

As an American company, we cherish the values and freedoms that have allowed us to grow and serve so many users.  I am proud to say we do work, and we will continue to work, with the government to keep our country safe and secure.

Just how, exactly, does Pichai and his team propose to do that when they refuse to work with our defense establishment while enthusiastically working with our enemies—in particular, the People’s Republic of China and so with the PRC’s defense establishment?

Pay the Vig

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…or else.  The truth will out, at least for a significant fraction of the “caravan.”

One group of a hundred, under the alleged leadership of Honduran Alfonso Guerreo Ulloa, has gone to the US Consulate in Tijuana with an extortion demand: give us $50,000—per each, which works out to $5 million in all, if my third grade arithmetic doesn’t fail me—to go home and start a small business (we promise), or we’ll storm your border and break in forcibly.

Wait—I thought one of the major reasons these folks left Honduras was to escape the gangs’ extortion of small business owners/operators.  So now they want 50 large to go back and…pay off those gangs?

Questions arise.  Under alleged leadership: who’s really running this group?  What’s the real motive for this gang at the consulate?  Who’ll really get those $5 million when they get back home?

Bring It

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With President Donald Trump’s formal notice to Russia that the US will pull out of the Treaty on Intermediate-range Nuclear Force, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened an arms race.

Our American partners apparently believe that the situation has changed to such an extent that the US should have such weapons.
What answer will they have from our side? It’s simple: we’ll do it too.

In addition to that,

The head of the Russian armed forces warned that if the deal collapses, the targets of subsequent military exchanges would be US missile sites hosted by allies within striking distance of Russia rather than American soil.

Well, of course they will.  That’s what they’ve been threatening for some time with their deployment of tactical nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad, their redeployment of their tactical nuclear forces toward their western border—and their development and testing of the treaty-prohibited IRBMs.

If Putin wants an arms race, let him bring it. The last one these guys had with us didn’t end well for them, and Russia’s economy is in worse shape than was the Soviet Union’s.

What’s So Hard?

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Great Britain is agonizing over how to deal with the People’s Republic of China’s Huawei Technologies Co and the latter’s desire to supply the nation’s 5G mobile network.  On the matter of Huawei’s having supplied the predecessor 4G network, Great Britain thinks it had arrived at “an understanding” with Huawei concerning the latter’s behavior vis-à-vis the installed 4G—which, astonishingly, allowed Huawei to monitor “aspects” of 4G tech.  Britain’s MI6 head, Alex Younger, seems to be the chief agonizer.

5G will by and large be based on Chinese technology, chiefly with Huawei. We need to decide whether we are comfortable with the ownership of these platforms in the case where our allies take quite a definite position…This is not straightforward[.]

Why must Huawei be the supplier of Britain’s 5G network?

And: Huawei is an arm of the People’s Republic of China government—how is this not a straightforward decision?  Why is it so hard to decide whether the nation wants to let the PRC government spy on every aspect of the British government, its defense, its economy, its citizens?