Displaying posts published in

November 2020

Will America Hand Space Dominance to China? by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16718/space-dominance-china

Some believe the US space program should emphasize climate change research. If there is no overall increase in space spending, there will be less money for, among other things, defending American assets in space.

Brandon Weichert of The Weichert Report said in an interview with Gatestone that there might be a move to “staff the Space Force with people inimical to its mission.”

America is… in many respects behind Russia and China in the ability to fight “over great distances at tremendous speeds, ” as Space Force’s General John Raymond said in September.

Moreover, there are other policy proposals that would degrade America’s ability to defend itself…. Unfortunately, there are many who still believe America can come to agreement with China.

In space, almost everything has a dual purpose. Fisher, for instance, reports that China will put a laser on its upcoming space station for the announced purpose of eliminating space junk. Of course, such a laser is also capable of killing American satellites.

Other dual use items are Russia’s co-orbital “Space Stalkers.” In peacetime, they can be used to repair satellites. In wartime, Weichert says, “they can physically push U.S. satellites out of their orbits.” That would render America’s forces, and America itself, “deaf, dumb, and blind on land, at sea, in the air, and within cyberspace.”

In any event, neither Russia nor China honors agreements, especially arms control treaties.

China will be launching satellites almost every other week starting next March. In one instance the gap in next year’s frenetic schedule of launches will be only five days.

This year, through the end of September, China launched 29 satellites, more than any other nation. The U.S. was a close second with 27.

Beijing aims to widen its lead. Most observers worry that the Chinese regime is determined to get to the moon before U.S. astronauts return there, but another troublesome development is that China will quickly be filling up orbits with satellites.

Iran’s Mullahs are in Turmoil Thanks to America’s Current Policy by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16722/iran-mullahs-turmoil

Iran’s currency, the rial, lost more than half its value so far just in 2020.

Iran’s regime is currently running a $200 million budget deficit per week and it is estimated that if the pressure on Tehran continues, the deficit will hit roughly $10 billion by March 2021. This deficit will, in return, increase inflation and devalue the currency even further.

Iran’s militia groups are subsequently receiving less funding to pursue their terror activities. This shortfall may be why, for the first time in more than three decades, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, made a public statement asking people to donate money to his group.

Iran’s ruling mullahs desire to maintain the JCPOA. It not only provided their regime with many benefits including economic relief and global legitimacy; at the same time, it ignored Tehran’s military adventurism in the region, its ballistic missile program and its support for terror groups across the Middle East. Most importantly, the JCPOA also paved the way for Tehran ultimately to become a nuclear state.

The “maximum pressure” policy against Iran’s ruling mullahs is working and must absolutely continue.

The Iranian regime is in turmoil thanks to the “maximum pressure” policy implemented by US President Donald J. Trump against the ruling mullahs.

Iran’s currency, the rial, lost more than half its value so far just in 2020. That decline makes it one of the most worthless national currencies in the world. As of October 25, the rial traded on unofficial markets at 300,500 to the US dollar. The rate has pushed the Iranian authorities to agree on removing four zeros from its currency, which has gone into a virtual free-fall. Two years ago, one US dollar was worth nearly 30,000 rials.

Biden Flubs

https://freebeacon.com/2020-election/biden-flubs-his-way-through-elections-final-week/

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden labored through the final full week of his campaign, failing to recall the sex of Kamala Harris’s spouse, the name of the current president, and how to spell “respect.”

Biden Has Earned 11 Pinocchios From Fact-Checkers During Coronavirus Crisis (April 2020)

https://freebeacon.com/2020-election/biden-has-earned-11-pinocchios-from-fact-checkers-during-coronavirus-crisis/

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has been dinged several times by fact-checkers over claims he has made during the coronavirus crisis, including a total of 11 “Pinocchios” from the Washington Post.

Over the course of three weeks between March 13 and April 3, Biden was fact-checked five separate times for making false or misleading claims concerning the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic.

A Washington Post fact check on March 13 awarded Biden four Pinocchios, the fact-checker’s most severe rating, for two manipulated videos the Biden campaign circulated.

Obsession: How the Media Keep Us Ignorant By Jeff Minick

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/obsession–how-the-media-keep-us-ignorant/

Many people of all political persuasions, including myself, find much of the mainstream news opinionated and biased. Negative media coverage of President Trump, for example, ran as high as 99 percent in May.

This slanted news does serious damage to our republic. It’s divisive, but it also causes ignorance. Two days ago, I met a man in his mid-30s who gave me a blank look when I mentioned the scandal surrounding Hunter Biden’s hard drive. When I asked another woman, a Democrat, what she thought about the possibility of Joe Biden having dementia, she had no idea what I meant.

But there is a threat to an informed citizenry as great as prejudicial reporting: negligence. The MSM not only keeps us in the dark by their bigotry and their deliberate omission of certain stories, but also by their inability to broaden their reporting.

Since January, the media has focused continually on the pandemic sweeping the globe. They’ve battered us with statistics, with terrible stories of nursing home deaths, and with arrests made when a church or business opened, news seasoned with the opinions of “experts.”

The Black Lives Matter Movement with its protests and riots occasionally nudged aside the pandemic as worthy of reporting, but generally coronavirus remained front and center in the headlines. The nomination and confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court dominated the news for a few days, and with the election season, those who watch televised news find themselves now in a storm of opinions, polls, and speculations.

Meanwhile, this hurricane of headlines has swept away events taking place around the world.

Bidenomics’ Shock Taxes

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/11/02/bidenomics-is-a-tax-nightmare/

“Yet another thing to consider as you cast your ballot: America will be a much poorer place under tax-heavy Bidenomics than under Trumponomics. Choose wisely. And don’t say you weren’t warned.”

Facing perhaps their important election ever, Americans have much to worry about: Urban riots and political violence, a loss of respect for our basic constitutional rights and American institutions, and the spate of socialist-inspired radical policy proposals from the Biden campaign. Here’s one more thing: the ruinous taxes you’ll have to pay for the left’s socialist wish-list if Joe Biden wins.

A recent study by a group of highly regarded economists at the Hoover Institution, including two former members of the Council of Economic Advisers, found that the full panoply of Biden’s policy proposals — Medicare for All, big tax hikes on the wealthy and the working poor, the massively expensive Green New Deal, and thousands of impending regulations — would have devastating consequences for the U.S. economy.

Why? Not only would they destroy the economy’s current renewed momentum, but they would require enormous tax increases on all Americans, businesses and individuals alike. It would hit the U.S. economy with its largest tax shock ever, and take it down.

Douglas Murray: An Outsider’s Perspective on America’s Racial Discontent

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/11/16/white-supremacy-in-a-magic-lantern/?utm_source=

An outsider’s perspective on America’s racial discontent

For several years I have marveled at, and become worried by, the depiction of America that has been playing around the world. Despite being a lifelong admirer of this country, I’ve not been in America for a couple of years, and during that time even I have occasionally wondered whether my image of America might have been wrong all along. Might the country have been — or become — what its detractors both internal and external say it is? Now I have had a month traveling around the United States, and I feel as though I may have come to a better understanding of a problem that afflicts this country. Perhaps an outsider might share a modest insight?

The problem first clarified during a conversation in New York with several people, two of whom happened to be comedians. Looking forward to shooting the breeze, I found myself instead marveling at the forensic detail in which everyone was going over the death of Breonna Taylor. Why were we talking about this so furiously? Why were comedians discussing ballistics reports? Why did everybody — whatever his viewpoint — need to have this much knowledge? And the obvious truth dawned on me that in this era every single detail of every single wrongdoing or alleged wrongdoing on the part of America matters, because the focus of light on America today operates in the manner of a magic-lantern projector. The light shining on this country today is so great that it does not just illuminate — it magnifies. Shift the tiniest detail in the picture and the image projected is monstrously altered.

Over recent years I have watched a very particular image of America projected onto the wall of the world and worried about it as much as any other friend of America. For it is an image of a society riven by many conflicts, just one of which (but worst of all) is the racism problem from which America is said to suffer. It is hard to exaggerate how starkly this is perceived by the rest of the world. While Americans argue over and eventually litigate every police interaction gone wrong, the rest of the world sees only one vast blown-up version of the problem.

Pittsburgh Paper Backs Trump in First Republican Presidential Endorsement Since 1972 By Zachary Evans

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pittsburgh-paper-backs-trump-in-first-republican-presidential-endorsement-since-1972/?utm_source=

““I am worried about Pennsylvania,” Democratic strategist Neil Oxman told the Washington Post on Saturday. Oxman said it was possible that Trump voters “will come out just a little bit stronger than our base.”

A Pittsburgh, Pa., newspaper has backed Donald Trump just days before the general election in the paper’s first endorsement of a Republican presidential candidate since 1972.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette released its endorsement on Saturday, just before the general elections are set to take place. President Trump flipped Pennsylvania red during the 2016 elections, and the state’s fracking industry has become a major campaign issue, with Trump accusing Joe Biden of aiming to downsize the industry.

“We share the embarrassment of millions of Americans who are disturbed by the president’s unpresidential manners and character — his rudeness and put-downs and bragging and bending of the truth,” the Post-Gazette editors wrote. “But we believe Mr. Trump, for all his faults, is the better choice this year.”

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Frets Over Trump Support: ‘That’s Not Photoshop’ By Jack Phillips

https://www.theepochtimes.com/democrat-lt-gov-frets-over-trump-support-in-pennsylvania-thats-not-photoshop_3560670.html

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, says he hasn’t seen anything like President Donald Trump’s rallies and barnstorming across Pennsylvania.

“Donald Trump is doing things that have never been done in Pennsylvania politics in terms of the raw barnstorming across small county Pennsylvania,” Fetterman told CNN on Nov. 1. “It’s hard to predict with certainty how that’s going to activate not only his base of voters from 2016, but also those that sat it out, too.”

Fetterman then sounded the alarm to fellow Democrats who are pinning their hopes on Democratic nominee Joe Biden winning the Keystone State. Pennsylvania and its 20 Electoral College votes would provide a significant boost toward winning the 270 needed to win the White House.

“I’m not saying Donald Trump is going to win Pennsylvania, but what I am saying is he’s doing everything that he can to maximize his chances,” he said.

Trump held multiple events on Oct. 31 in Pennsylvania, including one in Butler County, where tens of thousands of supporters turned out. Photos and videos showed a scene more reminiscent of a rock concert than a political event.

Fetterman on Twitter offered a more urgent warning to Democrats.

The ‘Anonymous’ saga ended with a dud — a perfect example of the problem of Trump-era media By Steve Krakauer,

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/523692-the-anonymous-saga-ended-with-a-dud-a-perfect-example-of-the-problem-of

There will be many incidents from the past four years of the Trump era that will erode the public’s faith in the press to provide fair, accurate information — all the nonsense from the Russia collusion story, pings in Prague, the Steele dossier mess, false promises of what would be in the Mueller report and more. These will leave lasting, damaging marks.

But no story better exemplifies the core problem with the media’s anti-Trump instincts to elevate every crumb of a story to an 11 out of 10, only to be let down consistently for their exaggeration or outright falsehood, than the saga of “Anonymous.”

For those who don’t remember the drama that gripped Washington and the Acela media (located along Amtrak’s Acela rail corridor between D.C. and New York City), The New York Times published a column in September 2018 from someone identified as “Anonymous,” whom the Times described as a “senior official inside the Trump administration.” The column, titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,’’ detailed the work that the author and others in the administration supposedly were doing to undermine President Trump’s agenda. 

Guesses of who the author was started flowing in. RealClearInvestigations thought it was Victoria Coates. Josh Campbell, a former FBI agent and current CNN contributor, thought it was Kirstjen Nielsen, based on her use of commas in her resignation letter. But most guesses on Twitter and throughout the media rose to higher ranks. Mike Pence? Nikki Haley? CNN’s Chris Cillizza wrote, in retrospect, a spectacularly wrong column titled “13 people who might be the author of The New York Times op-ed.” His arguments included names such as Kellyanne Conway and John Kelly, then some of the top advisers to Trump, as well as “Javanka” and Melania Trump. Dripping with innuendo, it was sure to grab a ton of clicks from CNN’s audience and throughout the #Resistance mediasphere.

And then, this week, we got the big reveal. “Anonymous” was Miles Taylor — a name that is likely literally anonymous to you to begin with.