Naivete

JCS Chairman Mark Milley wants to deepen the level of military-military communications between the US and Russia.

Army General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US and Russian militaries need to expand and deepen their communication and stressed that dialogue between the two adversaries could help de-escalate a future crisis.

Milley went on, paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal:

[A]dding to existing communication channels already in effect would help each side understand the other’s plans and moves.

He wants the same with the People’s Republic of China, also.

The problem with this tension-defusion concept is that it depends on the participants, in particular our DoD’s Russian and PRC counterparts, being truthful with each other. Why, though, should we believe that a military buildup opposite the Balkans or the Republic of China, is just a training exercise, just because the relevant Russian or PRC generals say so? Or why should they believe that about us?

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer really only works if the enemies aren’t armed to the teeth.

Ransomware Shame

Corporate executives openly confess that they would aid and abet ransomware criminals by paying them for their crimes.

  • 78% of C-suite executives claim that they would be willing to pay a ransom
  • 56% would be willing to pay over $100,000 to resume operations

That’s deliberately hanging a target on their enterprises.

And this…

  • 74% of executives with hybrid work environments believe their in-house IT and security teams lack the capability to defend against ransomware
  • 60% of executives believe their employees could not identify a cyberattack

…indicates that those executives aren’t even trying seriously to train their IT and security teams or their employees, or to enforce security measures by their work-from-home employees.

Worse than that, they actively cover up their crime enabling:

well over half (61%) of business owners admitted to concealing a breach

This willingness to reward hackers for their hacking not only endangers their own companies, it endangers other companies, as well, by making the crimes routinely lucrative—which these executives are smart enough to know.

That willingness to pay the fee-for-hacking-services aggregates into a threat to our nation’s weal and security. After all, where are the hackers so willingly rewarded located? In our nation’s enemies: 82% of the attacks come from within Russia and the People’s Republic of China, split evenly between the two.

She Said No Such Thing

The ACLU, pretending to celebrate the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her position on abortion, has utterly changed—falsified—what she said about the matter.

The ACLU’s fabrication:

The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] well-being and dignity… When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices[.]

What Ginsburg actually said was this:

The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.

But that wasn’t woke enough to suit the “lawyers” at the ACLU, so they fabricated a claim and falsely attributed their artifice to her.

Greg Scott, Senior Vice President of Communications at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), has one aspect of this:

The ACLU literally erasing women.

Additional to erasing women, this is an example of how blatantly dishonest the American Civil Liberties Union—the ACLU—has become.

Duplicity

President Joe Biden (D) eased travel restrictions for foreign nationals, allowing those who can show proof of vaccination against the Wuhan Virus to enter the US.

Except for illegal aliens. They aren’t even being tested, just checked for symptoms—which at the virus’ early stage are largely the same as those for the flu or a cold. If “symptomatic,” illegal aliens are supposed to be quarantined for two weeks, then sent on their way, often, but far from the norm, via deportation.

Biden explained the difference through his Press Secretary Jen Psaki:

As individuals come across the border, they are both assessed for whether they have any symptoms, if they have symptoms, the intention is for them to have to be quarantined.
They are not intending to stay here for a lengthy period of time. I don’t think it’s the same thing.

Never mind that most foreign nationals coming to the US also are not intending to stay here for a lengthy period of time. They’re coming on visitor visas to be tourists or to visit family, and on business visas to conduct some business, and then they’re on their way back home.

Biden knows this.

Pope Francis, Communion, and Abortion

This is a subject into which I’m going to poke my Protestant nose, which may be a symptom of my own sin of arrogance, but there it is.

Pope Francis insists that communion is a gift to all of us, not a prize for the perfect. He also says,

What must the pastor do? Be a pastor; don’t go condemning. Be a pastor, because he is a pastor also for the excommunicated.

He’s right, too, as far as he goes.

He also emphasizes

Whoever has an abortion kills. It is a human life. This human life must be respected—this principle is so clear.

He’s right here, too.

But while communion is for us sinners, including the excommunicated, for us who truly try to do better, who truly try to repent for our past failures, can it really be for those don’t bother, for those who reject the Church’s teachings outright?

It seems to me that those latter have taken themselves out of the church [sic] altogether. It’s not so much that they should be, or are, denied communion; they’ve made themselves ineligible for it.

And so it is for those who claim to be anti-abortion personally but fine with abortion for others. That strikes me as an especially grievous example of a sin of hypocrisy.

Bishop Michael Olson of the Ft Worth, Tx, Diocese:

He [Pope Francis] wants us to be pastors, and we also want to be pastors. But a pastor is not just a mascot for one’s private point of view.