RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18552/threatening-national-security

Once again, the power brokers in DC are signaling that in American politics, there is no room for debate on big issues, there is only one right answer.

Too often our legislative leaders forget that they are spending taxpayer money, and that with government spending even for benefits, there is no such thing as “free” anything. When there is no accountability, it is easy to spend someone else’s money.

Even though for their own well-being [NATO countries] should spend more for European security, these are legitimate, internal debates for their governments to have. It should be the same in America.

[I]n the U.S., it is frowned upon by some even to discuss why we are investing in European security and stability.

We all would do well to remember the costly lesson from the 1930s: how quickly Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland spread to most of Europe.

During my days in Congress, as many of us wanted to invest in defense spending, we were faced with an ultimatum from the Democrats. For every $1 increase in defense spending, there had to be a matching $1 increase in social spending. No discussion about the need for that spending, just this as an expected process.

[Y]ou would think they could find some programs to cut to fund Ukrainian aid. Not in Washington. They only increase spending, not make tough decisions about shifting priorities as the world changes. This is unfortunate — and ultimately devastating to the national security funding we must have if we are successfully to deter the potential threats to the US and the Free World by China.

Yet it seems as if the power brokers in Washington would prefer to start name-calling their opponents and avoid having to defend their positions. This does not make our country stronger…. We still have time — but not much — to engage in a serious debate on this issue. If we do not, we shall miss a real opportunity to prioritize what is crucial for the survival of our republic and what is not.

Within hours of 11 Republican Senators voting to delay proceeding with the roughly $40 billion Ukraine aid package, and days after 57 Republicans voted against the package in the House, the name calling has begun. “Isolationists!” Others characterized those who opposed the measure as “politicizing” the issue. Once again, the power brokers in DC are signaling that in American politics there is no room for debate on big issues, there is only one right answer.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/06/amidst-multiple-crises-bidens-dhs-releases-childrens-coloring-book/

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently released a coloring book for children, even as the agency faces widespread criticism for failing to handle a number of domestic crises.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the book is titled Jobs We Do. The book features 14 different images that children can color in, each depicting the kind of work that DHS agents engage in. Images include a man in a biohazard suit, a TSA dog at an airport, and a hurricane warning over a map of the United States. The book, the first of its kind in the history of the DHS, was published by the agency’s “Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer.”

An anonymous senior staffer at DHS, speaking to the Beacon, described the book as “laughable.”

“It makes a lot of sense that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is just standing there not doing anything,” the staffer said. “But if they wanted to make it more realistic, they’d have ICE handing over families to NGOs to board planes destined for secret locations across the U.S. interior.”

Under Joe Biden’s watch, the DHS has presided over the largest mass migration crisis in modern history. After Biden openly campaigned on an open-borders approach and supporting mass amnesty and federal handouts for those who come into America illegally, hordes of illegals have stormed the border since he came to power in January of 2021. In March, there were over 220,000 illegal border crossings, the highest yet since Biden took office.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/biden-unilaterally-surrenders-russia-and-china-daniel-greenfield/

Kamala Harris arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base where Discoverer-1, the first satellite to enter a polar orbit and America’s bold response to Russia’s Sputnik, was launched to announce that we would be unilaterally surrendering to Russia and China in the growing satellite wars.

Last November, Russia had conducted a DA-ASAT or direct-ascent anti-satellite test which demonstrated its ability to take out satellites. The Russians had used their A-235 anti-ballistic missile system to destroy their own Kosmos 1408 satellite. The message was clear: Moscow had the ability to clear out enemy satellites in the event of any conflict. Including ours.

“I don’t want to get ahead of specific measures that we may pursue,” Biden apparatchik Ned Price fumed, but had vowed that “we won’t tolerate this kind of activity.”

At Vandenberg, Kamala announced that the response would be absolute and total surrender.

Responding to Russia’s anti-satellite weapons test and Communist China’s earlier 2007 ASAT test, the Biden administration vows that it will surrender and refuse to deploy ASAT weapons.

“I think everyone here recognizes how extraordinary space is,” Kamala Harris rambled. “Space — it affects us all, and it connects us all.”

https://www.nysun.com/article/biden-leaves-americans-vulnerable-by-shortchanging-missile-defense?utm_content=

With Iron Dome, Israel will have a better missile defense than the continental United States. Israel’s leaders, unlike America’s, have placed a priority on deploying systems to protect its population.

The Pentagon recently sent Congress the 2022 National Defense Strategy, including a Missile Defense Review.

The document is classified and therefore not available to the public. The Defense Department promises an unclassified version will be “forthcoming,” but we’re still waiting. 

In the meantime, it is no wonder the Biden administration is trying to keep the information away from the voters. Once the electorate starts to understand how little the president and Vice President Harris are doing to protect the country, the political consequences could be devastating.

What is public is the president’s budget request: It seeks $9.6 billion for missile defense. That may seem like a lot — until you consider the context. 

In 2020, the final year of the Trump administration, the Missile Defense Agency requested $9.2 billion. In 2021, Biden’s first budget included an $8.9 billion request. Given inflation running at 8 percent a year, the $9.6 billion is effectively a cut from what Mr. Trump asked for. 

The sum for the Missile Defense Agency is a mere 1.2 percent of Mr. Biden’s $773 billion discretionary budget request for the Department of Defense. Most of the money would be for research and development, not deployment.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/04/08/men-accused-of-impersonating-dhs-agents-have-possible-ties-to-iranian-intelligence-n1588109

The bizarre case of two men who posed as DHS agents, ingratiating themselves with four Secret Service employees, took an unexpected turn when it was revealed that the men are under investigation for having possible ties to Iranian intelligence — specifically, the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Investigators allege that Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, posed as various officers and employees of the U.S. government, including members of federal law enforcement agencies, since February 2020. During that time, they got close to four Secret Service agents — including an agent assigned to Jill Biden’s protection detail — by supplying them with perks and gifts, including the use of a $40,000-a-year apartment.

The agents have since vacated the apartment, so investigators aren’t sure if their conversations were bugged or not.

The end game of the fraudsters is still unknown, although the ties to the IRGC would suggest that terrorism was a distinct possibility.

CBSNews:

Prosecutors said Thursday that Ali told witnesses he had connections to the Pakistani Intelligence Service, which the government said it has not yet verified. Prosecutors also said  the government recovered his passport containing three “older” Pakistani visas and two Iranian visas from 2019 and January 2020. There was an indication on Ali’s Iranian visa that he had entered that country at some point, prosecutors said, although they did not specify when.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/17/five-people-charged-for-being-spies-of-the-chinese-government-involved-in-harassment-campaigns-against-u-s-citizens/

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors in New York charged five individuals with acting on behalf of the Chinese government as they attempted to spy on U.S. citizens, and to subsequently harass them for criticism of China.

As reported by the Washington Post, three separate charges were brought against each of the five defendants in Brooklyn, with the charges coming from the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. The defendants have been accused of stalking and harassing Chinese nationals living in the country who are now critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In one example, one of the spies tried to interfere with the congressional candidacy of a military veteran who said he had been a leader of the student protesters at the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In another instance, the defendants allegedly plotted to destroy the artwork of a former Chinese national currently living in Los Angeles. In another of the accusations, a defendant is accused of using his position within the Chinese community of New York City to seek information about prominent Chinese dissidents and anti-CCP activists, in order to send such information to the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS).

“Transnational repression harms people in the United States and around the world and threatens the rule of law itself,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen. The Department of Justice “will not allow any foreign government” to target American citizens, he added.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/biden-so-weak-another-big-threat-organizing-us-robert-spencer/

The Islamic State (ISIS) is back. Five years after Donald Trump entered the Oval Office and quickly brought about the destruction of its caliphate in Iraq and Syria, ISIS is resurgent and wealthy. Could this have anything to do with Old Joe Biden’s misrule? Of course.

To be sure, there are other factors at play as well. An Iraqi security official said Friday that “recent assessments … put the group’s reserves at between $25 million and $50 million.” That could be a conservative estimate: the Wall Street Journal reported in September 2020 that ISIS had “assets ranging into the hundreds of millions of dollars across the Middle East and Central Asia,” according to “officials and government records.”

The Iraqi official said that ISIS got its cash from “opportunistic extortion, looting and kidnap for ransom,” but those are not the only sources of the jihad terror group’s income. WSJ added that ISIS “still extorts local populations in areas it controls or has supporters; receives income from businesses it seized during its rule; and collects payments from human trafficking.” It also controls “a growing share of illicit tobacco markets in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” Nor is even that all: “donors in several Middle Eastern countries work on raising funds,” says the WSJ, in an understated reference to wealthy Muslims around the world who believe that ISIS is a worthy Islamic organization and keep it afloat financially with substantial donations.

On Friday, the group announced that it had chosen a new caliph, the brother of the former ISIS caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a U.S. raid in 2019. The new top dog is Juma Awad al-Badri, a.k.a. Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, succeeding Abu Ibrahim al-Quraishi, who blew himself up to avoid being captured in a U.S. raid in Syria in February.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/01/the-increased-cyber-warfare-threat-from-a-new-sino-russo-alliance/

With the start of conventional warfare in the battle for control of Ukraine, many Americans wrongly assume that unless U.S. troops are deployed within the forces promised by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, this will be just another in the seemingly never-ending list of conflicts, wars, and skirmishes that may have little, if any, direct damaging effects on the United States.

We can certainly talk of the numerous economic implications of this war in eastern Europe. We can perhaps even argue that conflict may benefit the United States, as it might serve to provide a much-needed wakeup call to the Biden Administration that reversing the Trump-era energy policy and throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at an aggressive Russia only enabled this costly and destructive military endeavor.

Also enabling this brazen action from Russia is the weakness projected by yet another Democratic Party politician who has been forced to endure the indignity of having his red line ignored by a ruthless dictator. 

As a result, this new war will certainly signify the permanent arrival of what will be the most common theater of war in the future—the cybersphere.