OUTFLANKING CHINA IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA:

From the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings Magazine:

To borrow a concept from Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, the way forward for the United States is “to attack the enemy’s strategy.” 8 By raising awareness of China’s actions in the South China Sea and enabling regional nations to invest in asymmetric capabilities for maritime defense, the United States can turn the tables on China’s A2/AD strategy and leverage geography and international partnerships to maintain freedom of navigation.

China has angered its neighbors:

China’s aggressive actions have alienated ASEAN bloc members and isolated Beijing on the international stage. The geography of China’s near seas may enable its counter-intervention doctrine, but it also can be used against it.

Read the whole article.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: What You Need to Know Before Sessions Testifies at the Senate Intelligence Committee Today. “Don’t get distracted by the witch hunt.”

HACKING THAAD: The U.S. Army’s THAAD anti-ballistic missile battery in South Korea is a major target for North Korean, Chinese and Russian hackers.

The army knows it has a major problem with cyber protection as do the other services (air force, navy and marines). This was made clear after U.S. Army established its first Cyber Protection Brigade in late 2014. There were plans to create two more brigades by 2016. That did not happen because the army in particular and the military in general could not create or recruit enough qualified personnel. There were other problems but the key difficulty was a shortage of qualified people to staff the key units; the cyber protection team.

Read the whole thing.

FLASHBACK: An Untraditional War: We can’t stop ISIL-inspired massacres if we deny we’re fighting Islam’s jihadist strain.

CRONIES: Leaked Memo Details Wind Industry Campaign Against A Major Energy Dept Study.

“Wind energy is helping diversify our energy mix and makes the power grid more reliable and secure, as well as bringing good jobs and billions of dollars of investments to rural and Rust Belt America,” the memo reads.

“That’s old news at this point,” AWEA spokesman Evan Vaughan told TheDCNF, referring to the strategy laid out in the leaked memo.

“Since then we’ve had some good meetings with the Department of Energy team working on the study, and we’re making sure they have all the facts about how cost-effective and reliable wind has become,” Vaughan said.

“That has been confirmed by our own research and by experts who run the grid every day, such as the Southwest Power Pool and Xcel Energy,” he said.

On April 15, Perry ordered Energy Department officials to see if regulations, mandates, and tax subsidies “are responsible for forcing the premature retirement of baseload power plants.”

Forcing traditional power sources offline is certainly one way to make wind power more cost-effective — just not to consumers.

THE HILL: Four members of Mueller’s team have donated to Democrats.

Four members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team on the Russia probe have donated to Democratic presidential campaigns and organizations, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Michael Dreeben, who serves as the Justice Department’s deputy solicitor general, is working on a part-time basis for Mueller, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Dreeben donated $1,000 dollars to Hillary Clinton’s Senate political action committee (PAC), Friends of Hillary, while she ran for public office in New York. Dreeben did so while he served as the deputy solicitor general at the Justice Department.

Jeannie Rhee, another member of Mueller’s team, donated $5,400 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign PAC Hillary for America.

The political affiliations of Mueller’s team have been spotlighted by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) an ally of Trump.

After initially hailing Mueller’s appointment as special counsel, Gingrich questioned for former FBI director’s ability to be impartial on Monday because of “who he is hiring.” . . .

Two other members of Mueller’s team also have donated to Democrats.

Andrew Weissmann, who serves in a top post within the Justice Department’s fraud practice, is the most senior lawyer on the special counsel team, Bloomberg reported. He served as the FBI’s general counsel and the assistant director to Mueller when the special counsel was FBI director.

Before he worked at the FBI or Justice Department, Weissman worked at the law firm Jenner & Block LLP, during which he donated six times to political action committees for Obama in 2008 for a total of $4,700.

James Quarles, who served as an assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, has donated to over a dozen Democratic PACs since the late 1980s. He was also identified by the Washington Post as a member of Mueller’s team.

Starting in 1987, Quarles donated to Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis’s presidential PAC, Dukakis for President. Since then, he has also contributed in 1999 to Sen. Al Gore’s run for the presidency, then-Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) presidential bid in 2005, Obama’s presidential PAC in 2008 and 2012, and Clinton’s presidential pac Hillary for America in 2016.

Mueller’s hopelessly compromised. Nothing he does is going to be accepted as fair or impartial. He should step down.

PROGRESS: North Korea edging closer to launch a nuclear ICBM.

On June 4, North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported that the military would be ready to test-fire an ICBM in the near future.

This has left governments and analysts in the region more concerned that Pyongyang’s scientists have made far more rapid progress than anyone had anticipated.

“The great success of test-firing an intercontinental ballistic missile, which we are sure to achieve, will mark a historic watershed moment in the failure of the US hostile policy against us,” an editorial in the newspaper stated.

“Historically speaking, the US has never dared to go to war with a country that possesses nuclear weapons or ICBMs.”

This is new territory, because we’ve also never been faced with a country willing to commit nuclear blackmail.

TRUMP 2020: SLATE: “I’m Hearing You’re Really Angry:” Advice on how to talk to the white working class without insulting them.

In a new book, White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America, Joan C. Williams argues that much of the analysis of this class has been misguided and condescending. So too is the general cultural attitude toward the white working class from society’s more fortunate members. The result, Williams says, is a white working class increasingly isolated from the Democratic Party, with dangerous consequences for our politics.

I spoke recently by phone with Williams, who is also a distinguished professor of law at University of California Hastings College of the Law. During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed Trump’s view of his own voters, the role of racism in class resentments, and whether there is any way to avoid being “condescending” to Trump’s supporters.

Not some people. Joan Williams is actually very sensible here, but her interviewer is a stunning piece of self-caricature.

SINGLE-PAYER: Is Nevada All-in with Medicaid-for-All?

HE’S NOT AN INDEPENDENT NONPARTISAN INVESTIGATOR: Robert Mueller Stocks Staff with Democrat Donors: Special counsel’s team includes former Clinton Foundation lawyer, contributors to Obama, Hillary, more.

PLUM LINE‘S PAUL WALDMAN: Everybody Needs to Stop Telling Hillary Clinton to Shut Up.

You’ve seen the headlines, begging Joe Biden to just give it up and get out of our faces already. “Dems want Joe Biden to leave spotlight,” says The Hill. “Dear Joe Biden, please stop talking about 2016,” says a USA Today columnist. “Joe Biden is back. Should Democrats be worried?” asks The New Republic. “Can Joe Biden please go quietly into the night?” asks a column in Vanity Fair. A Daily News columnist begins his missive with, “Hey, Joe Biden, shut the f— up and go away already.” Folks sure do hate that guy. And all he did was give a couple of commencement speeches and an interview or two.

OK, you’ve probably guessed: Joe Biden wasn’t the subject of all those headlines. In fact, when the former vice president has made noises suggesting he still yearns to sit in the Oval Office, reporters treat it as at worst the understandable desires of a beloved uncle who may have lost a step or two, and at best a tantalizing possibility—despite the fact that Biden ran for president twice, and could barely have performed worse if he had punched out the mayors of Des Moines and Dixville Notch on national television.

No, the target of all that anger and contempt is Hillary Clinton, who has dared to be seen in public on a few occasions since last November, violating some unwritten rule that says that unsuccessful presidential candidates must never be heard from again.

Everybody? The columns cited by Waldman were either written by or were quoting Democrats and lefties. Here on the right, many of us have been encouraging Clinton to make another run at the White House in 2020 — maybe not with the best of intentions, but we certainly aren’t telling her to shut up.

So when did the Left become such a cesspit of misogyny?

THEY TOLD ME IF DONALD TRUMP WERE ELECTED, WE’D SEE BLATANT RACIAL DISCRIMINATION. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! White Professor Fired From Black College Gets $4.9 Million.

A Missouri appeals court upheld a $4.85 million racial discrimination award to a white teacher who was fired from Harris-Stowe State University, an historically black college.

A trial jury awarded Elizabeth Wilkins $1.35 million in compensatory damages and $3.5 million in punitive damages on her claim that she was fired in favor of less senior black teachers. She also claimed Dr. Latisha Smith, the temporary co-chair for Harris-Stowe’s Teacher Education Department, repeatedly proclaimed her belief in “black power” in emails.

Harris-Stowe’s defense was crippled by the fact that it deleted emails in Smith’s account, in violation of a court order.

Yeah, who did they think they were, Hillary Clinton?

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF FAKE NEWS AND THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: “Rolling Stone has settled a lawsuit with the University of Virginia fraternity whose members were falsely accused of raping a female student in a Nov. 2014 article, The Daily Caller has learned. A source involved at the national level with the fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, tells TheDC that Rolling Stone will pay $1.65 million to settle the defamation suit.”

Flashback: Ashe Schow on Rolling Stone’s settlement in April to “former University of Virginia dean Nicole Eramo over the magazine’s portrayal of her in a since-debunked story about a gang-rape that never happened.”

And from 2015, “How deep is this Obama-appointed DoE official’s involvement in the Rolling Stone hoax?”

MUELLER? ANYONE? MUELLER? Liz Sheld has the latest on Bob Mueller, rapid FOIA responses, and more.

ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC: ‘Political Hospice’ Is ‘Way Forward’ For White Working Class, Says WashPo Editor. “These are communities that are on the paths to death. And the question is: How can we make that as comfortable as possible?”

When elites talk this way, it’s no surprise that non-elites want to strike out against the elites.

THAT’S SOMETHING I’LL ALWAYS HAVE: On Being Persona Non Grata.

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED: Chinese-Made Video Cameras Pose Major Cyber Attack Risk.

SO, I’M NO LONGER USING WEATHER.COM.  I COULD TAKE CLICK BAIT.  I COULD TAKE THEIR LESS THAN STELLAR WEATHER PREDICTIONS: But this stupid, ham handed insertion of politics, using stupid science as a justification, I will not take. (Even if the Paris agreement did anything to reduce global warming; even if antropogenic causes of global warming were true, it would be approximately 10000 years before we saw any effect.  I guess Trump is supposed to be immortal.) Oh, the Irony: Trump May Have Sped Up Damage to His Real Estate Holdings By Pulling Out of the Paris Accord.  Seriously.  This is vomit inducing.

THAT THING OVER THE POND: May Not Have Been A Good Idea.

NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET: On Marxism and Morality, Part 1.

YES, OF COURSE.  IS THERE ANYTHING THAT DOESN’T: The way your partner treats you can affect your health.