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National Security Crisis: Russia’s and China’s Nuclear Threats by Judith Bergman

Posted By on May 25th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18535/russia-china-nuclear-threats

Russia has not only been modernizing its nuclear triad; it has also been developing new types of nuclear systems….

Russia, of course, is not the only nuclear threat to the United States. China has accelerated its nuclear buildup to the extent that Admiral Charles Richard, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command told the Senate Armed Services Committee last April, “For the first time in our history, the nation is on a trajectory to face two nuclear-capable, strategic peer adversaries at the same time, who must be deterred differently. We can no longer assume the risk of strategic deterrence failure in conflict will always remain low.”

The Minuteman III ICBMs are badly in need of modernization — they were built in the 1970s and were originally intended to last for just 10 years. The development of a next-generation ICBM, known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) has been decided, but the process has proven slow and the Air Force only expects the GBSD to begin replacing Minuteman III in 2029. According to General John Hyten, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the GBSD system will not achieve initial operational capability until 2030, or full operational capability until 2035.

“It’s going to take us 10 to 15 years to modernize 400 [ICBM] silos that already exist. China is basically building almost that many overnight.” — General John Hyten, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Defense Magazine, regarding the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program, September 13, 2021.

The Minuteman III has grave structural problems stemming from the fact that “the missile itself is 51 years old,” but the launch capsules and other support facilities are “58 years old.” — Col. Erik Quigley, director of the Minuteman III systems directorate, Air Force Magazine, June 14 2021.

In the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, the Trump administration decided that a new Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (known as the SLCM-N)…. needed to be added to the US nuclear arsenal to provide the US with “a needed non-strategic regional presence” that would address “the increasing need for flexible and low-yield options.” The Biden administration, however, removed it from the FY2023 budget, while several generals have disagreed with that decision, arguing that it is needed against Russia and China.

“The Trump Administration proposed the SLCM-N in 2018. Message to Mr. Putin: If you drop a nuke on NATO soil, the alliance has the will and ability to respond in kind. This reduces the risk Mr. Putin will use a nuke,” the WSJ wrote in April. “The Trump Administration said the U.S. might reconsider the SLCM-N if ‘Russia returns to compliance with its arms control obligations, reduces its non-strategic nuclear arsenal, and corrects its other destabilizing behaviors.’ How’s that working out? Now Mr. Biden is surrendering this leverage—probably to placate progressives who are opposed to nuclear weapons as an article of faith.” — Wall Street Journal editorial, April 20, 2022.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has brought renewed attention to Russia’s nuclear arsenal and the risk of nuclear war, especially after Russian President Vladimir Putin placed his country’s nuclear forces on high alert shortly after invading Ukraine on February 24. Close to half of Americans are very concerned that Russia would directly target the U.S. with nuclear weapons, and an additional 3 in 10 are somewhat concerned about that, according to a recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

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We Aren’t Raising Adults. We Are Breeding Very Excellent Sheep. Our elite college graduates know how to imitate, but they don’t know how to be independent. William Deresiewicz

Posted By on May 24th, 2022

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/we-arent-raising-adults-we-are-breeding?token=

I have given up on being able to properly pronounce the last name of today’s guest writer. But anytime I see the byline William Deresiewicz I make sure to read very carefully. He first came on my radar through friends who raved about him as a professor at Yale. But Deresiewicz separated himself from that herd when he wrote the book “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life,” which presaged so much of what we see today—and what he writes about, in part, in the essay below.

Keep an eye peeled for Deresiewicz’s new book, “The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society,” which will be out this August. — BW

….

I taught English at Yale University for ten years. I had some vivid, idiosyncratic students—people who went on to write novels, devote themselves to their church, or just wander the world for a few years. But mostly I taught what one of them herself called “excellent sheep.”

These students were excellent, technically speaking. They were smart, focused, and ferociously hard-working.

But they were also sheep: stunted in their sense of purpose, waiting meekly for direction, frequently anxious and lost.

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SELF DOUBT: SYDNEY WILLIAMS

Posted By on May 24th, 2022

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“What the Durham trial has exposed is not getting the press it and the people deserve. The decision by the Clinton campaign to deliberately instigate a false story of Russian collusion by Donald Trump – no matter what one thought of him – was the dirtiest trick ever played in Presidential politics. It tells us what sort of a President Mrs. Clinton would have been. Why is this not getting more coverage? Can you imagine the headlines if roles were reversed?”

Self-doubt is usually considered a negative. And when it dominates one’s activities it is. In Measure for Measure, William Shakespeare has Lucio speak to Isabella: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we might win, by fearing to attempt.” A recent article in National Review, signed by 59 conservatives, was titled “America’s Crisis of Self-Doubt:” “Our traditional values of fair play, free speech and religious liberty are trampled by inflamed ideologies determined to impose their will by force and fear.” That is all true, but the real problem is the over-confidence of the woke who, with religious zeal, see society “as archaic, unfair, and racially biased.” As a governor of impetuous behavior, self-doubt is a positive.

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 Joe Biden’s China-Taiwan gaffe just latest mistake that could start a war: Liz Peek

Posted By on May 24th, 2022

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/joe-biden-china-taiwan-gaffe-mistake-war

Joe Biden’s “gaffes” are a danger to Americans.

Once again, addressing a foreign audience without the benefit of his Teleprompter, President Biden wandered off-script, in this case promising that the U.S. would respond militarily if China were to invade Taiwan. Once again, the White House had to walk back his careless remarks.

It was just weeks ago that Biden made similarly reckless comments during a visit to Poland, when he appeared to call for the overthrow of Vladimir Putin, and suggested that U.S. GIs might soon enter Ukraine. 

In both cases, Biden gave enemies of the U.S. unparalleled propaganda opportunities; both Putin and President Xi can use video of the president’s remarks to justify heightened hostilities. This is not smart.

Casually dropping a military threat against China is not smart at any time. But especially now, as President Xi faces criticism for having mishandled the economy and COVID, he could grasp Biden’s injudicious promise like a life raft, using the implied threat as an excuse to ramp up military aggression, or even to invade Taiwan. 

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Rescuing the coalition at Israel’s literal and figurative expense Ruthie Blum

Posted By on May 24th, 2022

https://www.jns.org/opinion/rescuing-the-coalition-at-israels-literal-and-figurative-expense/

When Israeli lawmaker Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi reversed her decision to quit the government, a sigh of relief was heard in the halls of half of the 120-seat Knesset. Had the Knesset member from the left-wing Meretz Party upheld her resignation, the coalition, which had already lost its single-mandate majority with the exit of Yamina MK and coalition chair Idit Silman, would no longer be in a 60-60 tie with the opposition.

Even worse for her partners, who were already miffed that she had failed to inform anyone of her plan to bolt, her move didn’t include evacuating her Knesset seat to make way for the next in line on the party list. Their fear was that her vote might tip the scales in favor of toppling the government if a no-confidence motion were put forward.
Her assurance that she had no intention of contributing to the replacement of the current coalition with a right-wing one was not sufficient, and she knew it. She also milked it for all it was worth, issuing a list of demands as a condition for a change of heart on her part.

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A Chink In The Armor Of The Progressive Administrative State Francis Menton

Posted By on May 24th, 2022

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-5-23-a-new-chink-in-the-armor-of-the-progressive-administrative-state

The great mission of the early twentieth century Progressives was to transform our constitutional order without ever amending the Constitution itself. The intellectual leader of the movement was Woodrow Wilson. The fundamental idea was to replace the messy and contentious system of separated powers and slow bi-cameral lawmaking with a cadre of supposedly apolitical administrative “experts” who could run the country smoothly and efficiently.

The idea sounded rather benign to most people at the time, and probably still sounds benign to most people today. Who could be against having “experts” to run significant government agencies? But a hundred-plus years into this project, we have seen cancerous growth of vast administrative bureaucracies, outside the constitutional structure, and exercising great powers, but accountable to no one but themselves — the very antithesis of the constitutional structure that our founders attempted to bequeath to us.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A New Kind of Child Abuse M.B.Mathews

Posted By on May 24th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/05/a_new_kind_of_child_abuse.html

Until only a few years ago, child abuse was thought primarily to be hitting a child, starving a child, confining a child in a closet, not properly feeding a child, or engaging in sexual practices with a child.  Now child abuse has taken a quantum leap.  Child abuse now includes poisoning and mutilating a child to make him look like a member of the opposite sex, often by taking advantage of the child’s trust in a parent.

Stealing a child’s childhood should be a crime punishable by grievous measures.  Every human being has normal stages of growth.  Generally speaking, those stages are infancy, when he is totally dependent upon parents for survival; the toddler stage, where he is dependent upon parents to keep him from setting the dog or the house on fire; early childhood, where he is beginning to assert himself with his own personality; adolescence, where the child inevitably knows everything and his parents know nothing; teen years; and adulthood. 

During the earlier stages up until adulthood, the child is finding his way in the world, learning how people and things work, developing relationships and their parameters, learning acceptable behavior, and forming his own unique character.  This is the time a child discovers the difference between maleness and femaleness and experiences a normal progression from infancy to adulthood.

Sexually obsessive “progressive” parents are interfering with and sidetracking this normal process by inflicting their own perverse notions of sexuality on helpless and naïve children who trust them.

Until only a few years ago, child abuse was thought primarily to be hitting a child, starving a child, confining a child in a closet, not properly feeding a child, or engaging in sexual practices with a child.  Now child abuse has taken a quantum leap.  Child abuse now includes poisoning and mutilating a child to make him look like a member of the opposite sex, often by taking advantage of the child’s trust in a parent.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians: A Vote to Destroy Israel by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on May 24th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18553/palestinian-vote-destroy-israel

These Palestinians are evidently fed up with the rampant corruption and bad governance of the Palestinian Authority leadership. Moreover, these Palestinians who no longer support Abbas are stating that they have no interest in any peace process with Israel.

As the last poll showed, 70% of the Palestinians are opposed to an unconditional return to peace negotiations with Israel. Another 58% expressed opposition to the two-state solution.

The truth is that Abbas called off the elections [in 2021] because he was afraid that Hamas would defeat his Fatah faction in the parliamentary election, as took place in 2006.

The results of the Birzeit University elections prove that Abbas’s fears were not unfounded. Had he insisted on proceeding with the presidential and parliamentary elections, it is most likely…. that Hamas would have taken control of the Palestinian presidency and parliament.

Hamas, for its part, said that it sees the results of the university election as a vote of confidence in its policy of pursuing deadly terrorist attacks against Israel.

The students who voted in support of Hamas fully identify with the terrorist group’s covenant, which states that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

Palestinians have been radicalized by their leaders and media to a point where they do not want to hear anything about a peace process with Israel. In fact, they want to see Israel vanish from the map, as the results of the student council elections and the polls clearly illustrate.

The results of the Birzeit University elections and the polls stand in sharp contrast to the views expressed by the Biden administration concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Over the past year, Biden administration officials have repeatedly stated their commitment to the “two-state solution” while totally ignoring the widespread support among the Palestinians for the elimination of Israel.

The Hamas victory at the university’s student council should sound alarm bells in the Biden administration, especially the State Department, regarding the true intentions of the Palestinians – that their sole commitment is to have a state that would replace Israel, not one that would exist peacefully alongside Israel. That is why it is nonsensical to pressure Israel to make any territorial (or non-territorial) concessions to the Palestinians, who are openly proclaiming that they want to establish a Palestinian state on the ruins of Israel and the bodies of dead Jews.

The Palestinians have once again shown that they have not given up the dream of destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamist state funded by Iran and its terrorist proxies, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hezbollah.

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Joe Biden’s Buffalo Speech Was the Speech of an Indecent Man By Dennis Prager

Posted By on May 24th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/columns/dennis-prager/2022/05/24/joe-bidens-buffalo-speech-was-the-speech-of-an-indecent-man-n1600295

Biden used the terrible mass shooting of black people in a Buffalo grocery store to smear America, divide Americans and foment race-based hatred. A decent man would have given an entirely different speech.

A decent man would have gone to Buffalo and said something like this:

“My fellow Americans, what happened here in Buffalo was pure evil. Let there be no equivocating about this moral fact. If evil exists, what happened here was evil. But, my fellow Americans, this young man and his race-based homicidal hatred represents an infinitesimally small number of Americans, white or otherwise. The overwhelming majority of Americans of every race, ethnicity, and religion get along with each other beautifully. We work alongside each other, date each other, socialize with one another and marry one another. We are the most successful experiment in creating a multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious country in world history. The actions of a deranged teenager do not change this fact.”

Instead, the hater-in-chief went to Buffalo and said:

“What happened here is simple and straightforward: terrorism. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism. Violence inflicted in the service of hate and the vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group. A hate that, through the media and politics, the internet, has radicalized angry, alienated and lost individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That’s the word. Replaced by ‘the other.’ By people who don’t look like them.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Will the Lies and Smears Ever Stop? By Matt Margolis

Posted By on May 24th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/05/23/the-left-will-never-stop-smearing-us-n1599368

Without fail, when there’s a mass shooting, the mainstream media will collude with the Democratic Party to blame conservatives.

In 2019, a deranged man named Brenton Tarrant shot and killed 50 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. He was a self-proclaimed socialist and an environmentalist who hated capitalists and trade. One motive for his attack was to bring more gun control to the country. He called himself an “eco-fascist by nature” and declared that “the nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China.”

The media called him a “far-right extremist.”

Months later, Patrick Crusius killed 23 people at Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Crusius proclaimed to have the same views as Tarrant and wrote in his manifesto that “Our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly overharvesting resources. This has been a problem for decades.”

The media called him a “far-right extremist.”

Last Saturday, a deranged teenager shot up a Buffalo supermarket, killing ten people. According to his manifesto, he is a former communist who now says he falls in the “mild-moderate authoritarian left category,” and added that, “you can call me an ethno-nationalist eco-fascist national socialist if you want, I wouldn’t disagree with you.”