January 21, 2025

“WOKEPEDIA IS AT IT AGAIN”:

The Left has to invent distractions like Elon Musk’s “Nazi salute” to keep people from noticing their actual, Nazi-like activities.

Posted at 4:51 pm by Stephen Green

BIDEN’S PARTING GIFTS:

The Obama Cabal that ran the Biden White House really did a Third World number on our nation’s finances. Trump and the DOGE boys have their work cut out for them.

Posted at 3:49 pm by Stephen Green

DECOUPLING: Drone Makers Looking to Steer Clear of China Fear Beijing’s Wrath.

China dominates the global market for the small, inexpensive drones that have transformed the world’s battlefields—and Beijing hasn’t been shy about keeping the industry under its thumb.

For U.S. companies, dependence on China has become untenable, particularly as Beijing shows it is willing to cut off their access to essential supplies.

In Taiwan, that spells opportunity. Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun, who heads a government program to develop the island’s drone sector, said in a recent interview that the development of a “democratic supply chain” starring Taiwan is an inevitability.

However, recent examples of Beijing punishing companies for their ties to Taiwan have made U.S. businesses cautious in their efforts to avoid China in the production of drones, an industry where commercial ambitions and national security intersect.

Beijing really doesn’t want Taiwan to become self-sufficient in drones.

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green

CDR SALAMANDER: Red Sea Experience: Don’t Let Others Ignore It.

When it comes to war at sea, we get few opportunities to see what works, what does not work. What we need more of, what we can do without. The last 15-months of experience in the Red Sea have been priceless, unscheduled range time.

The Europeans have learned that they need to work on their software integration and need [to] find some extra money for improvements to existing kit, but as the US Navy has done the bulk of the fighting—from Aegis software to proving that Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles are not boogeymen—we have a lot to leverage.
…
Look at those numbers again. What weapon system was used more than any other?

The 5” gun.

We always need more shells. They aren’t sexy, they’re cheap compared to missiles, but we always need more.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Stephen Green

THE REAL BIDEN SCANDAL: Running for a Second Term.

“They had Mr. Biden use a teleprompter for even small fund-raisers in private homes, alarming donors, who were asked to provide questions beforehand. They came up with replacing the grand steps that presidents use to board Air Force One with a shorter set that led directly into the belly of the plane. They chastised White House correspondents for coverage of the president’s age. They hand-delivered memos to Mr. Biden describing social media posts the campaign staff had persuaded allies to write that pushed back on negative articles and polls.”

A similarly-timed article in the Guardian relayed an anecdote from political scientist Larry Sabato. A Democratic senator called Sabato in early 2024 and said, “You do realize, off the record, that Joe Biden is not going to be our nominee?” Sabato, stunned, says the senator then told him: “I just was at a meeting with him with several other senators and he couldn’t even function. We can’t run him.”

That senator tried to talking to the administration about it and “was punished, as several of them were. They gave him the cold shoulder for a while. The point is that a lot of people had figured it out but they didn’t care. I’m stunned that they got away with it.”

But we already knew from past reporting that some of this was going on. Over the summer, CNN reported that members of Biden’s Cabinet didn’t know much about his health because they were so rarely given the opportunity to see the president. An earlier piece in the New York Times reported that Biden’s staff had been stage-managing podcast interviews since 2022. And of course there was the early-July Wall Street Journal report that came under attack from the media and the president’s administration and allies yet turned out to be exactly right about Biden’s condition and the fact that he was essentially a part-time president. The Journal recounted a 2022 meeting abroad with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that the president skipped, even though it was in the early evening, so he could go to bed. The chancellor and his aides didn’t know Biden was flaking on him until Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived and held the meeting in his stead. The president just simply didn’t show up.

The stand-in part of that is the key. Biden may not have been “presidenting” at various key moments, but someone was.

Now the best you can say for anyone who wasn’t a member of the Biden nuclear family is that perhaps they didn’t know the full extent of it either and were made to respond on the fly. But if Blinken knew in 2022 that the president couldn’t handle an early-evening meeting with Scholz, so did plenty of other people—and nobody said anything for two more years.

“I am struck by an observation that few others seem to have made about the Biden era: Nobody really ever got fired,” Jeffrey Blehar adds:

I remember that Donald Trump had only one good line during his first (and only) debate against Joe Biden — primarily because he needed do nothing else but remain functional while Biden melted like a wax candle beside him — and it was his point that Biden had never fired anyone for poor performance, not even once in a presidential term that all voters could agree was wrought with massive, avoidable, personally accountable failures. Why not? I flagged it back then (even amidst the chaos of Biden’s meltdown) because I felt that it subtly got to the point that Trump, in that debate, was not expecting to deal with: Biden’s presidency had been a sham from its very first day, a project managed by a group of advisers rather than an actual president, and that cabal couldn’t fire anyone who might reveal the secret.

It really boils down to that: We were stuck with the useless administration Biden announced on Day One, because, on Day One, Biden was already mentally unfit for office. His aides and family hid him, and every single person who accepted a berth working for this fraud of a team inevitably realized it (or came to realize it) as well. That’s why nobody could be fired or let go. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Remember when America’s entire transportation infrastructure, from plane to highway to rail, suddenly convulsed early in the term under Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who at one time happened to be secretly vacationing? Of course you don’t, because no disciplinary action was taken after that PR malfunction. Ask yourself why. The obvious answer is that a Buttigieg cashiered for political purposes would be a Buttigieg free to remark about how he suspected Biden to secretly be a mental vegetable. (Mayor Pete has ambitions, so perhaps he could be trusted to maintain omertà; how about Lloyd Austin?) That’s why they were all forgiven, I suspect. How nice it must have been to work in a presidential administration run with the same mindset as a failing Mafia enterprise, where you weren’t even expected to “produce numbers”; only loyalty to the secret of the dying don was required to keep your sinecure.

In the case of Buttigieg, it’s simply because we mere mortals simply can’t appreciate the infinite capacity of his “cathedral mind,” and the amount of time it will take to fully comprehend the genius of his time in office:

In an exit interview with Politico, Buttigieg blames this not on administrative failures, bureaucratic backlog, or voters’ prioritizing other things but rather on that pesky time-space continuum. “The nature of good policy and being politically rewarded for good policy is it doesn’t tend to happen — in the same way that an artist is not necessarily appreciated in their lifetime, a policy is rarely appreciated in the same political cycle where it happens, especially a good one.” Buttigieg implies Biden shares his frustration — but will also share in his ultimate vindication.

Or to put it another way:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

AS IF L.A. DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH PROBLEMS ALREADY: Oregon arsonist, climate educator couple arrested for impersonating firefighters in LA.

An Oregon couple was arrested Sunday for impersonating firefighters in the area burned by the Pacific Palisades near Los Angeles, California, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Times, citing law enforcement sources, identified the couple as Dustin Nehl, 31, and Jennifer Nehl, 44. Mr. Nehl’s social media accounts say he lives in Woodburn, Oregon; Mrs. Nehl’s say she lives in Jefferson or Scio, Oregon.

The couple allegedly drove a full-size firetruck emblazoned with “Roaring River Fire” into the recently burned area, claiming they were volunteer firefighters. Police were contacted when someone noticed the fire truck, which had California plates, did not look quite right, according to the Times. There is no “Roaring River Fire” in Oregon.

The Nehls combine a longstanding interest in fire, climate change and weather, according to media reports and the couples’ social media accounts.

Dustin Nehl was sentenced in 2016 to five years in prison and three years post-incarceration supervision for arson and possession of a destructive device related to damage caused in incidents from 2013 to 2016 to a country club and a water treatment facility in Woodburn, according to a contemporaneous report from The Woodburn Independent and The Oregonian.

The 21st century isn’t turning out as I had hoped.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

CHANGE:

In case anyone needs a refresher, here’s how much US armament Biden gave to the Taliban in 2021:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll