EARMARKS FOR HOUSE GOP BUT FEWER FOR DEMS: House Republicans are implementing a revised procedure for earmarks in the 118th Congress.
Essentially, the new process means more for Republicans, fewer for Democrats. Remind us, please, which of the two parties in Congress declared a moratorium on earmarks in 2011, then abandoned it in 2021?
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Here’s That Collusion You Ordered: Russian Business Partner of Hunter Biden Dodges Sanctions.
RUSSO-UKRAINE WAR: Ukraine’s Bakhmut may fall in days, says NATO chief, as Russia claims victory over eastern half of city.
But: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 7, 2023.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on March 7 that the hypothetical Russian capture of Bakhmut would provide Russian forces an “open road” to Kramatorsk, Slovyansk, and other critical settlements in Donetsk Oblast.
ISW continues to assess, however, that Russian forces lack the capability to exploit the tactical capture of Bakhmut to generate operational effects, and will likely rapidly culminate following the capture of Bakhmut.
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Recent Russian advances within urban areas of Bakhmut demonstrate that Russian forces can secure limited tactical gains with infantry-led frontal assaults. Russian forces likely lack the mechanized forces necessary to exploit the roads (which are likely highly fortified) west of Bakhmut.
Kyiv’s promised winter offensive never materialized, likely due to weapons shortages and perhaps manpower, too. Moscow’s winter offensive has been a very long and expensive slog to capture a single town lacking any operational significance and, if ISW has it correct, is likely to fizzle out after accomplishing that little.
THE LATEST STRATEGYTALK: Near-Peer Wars. StrategyPage Editor Jim Dunnigan and I discuss armed conflict between nations that have roughly comparable military power — I stress roughly. Geography, demography and economic power matter. Will –as in will to resist and persist — that really matters. There’s also an MP3 download of the discussion. If you like the podcast, please subscribe.
VERY RELATED: I should have added a link to my initial post. It’s a Jim Dunnigan How To Make War “Attrition” update that directly relates to my comment on demography. Attrition: Putin Seeks More Russians.
MY LATEST COLUMN: Time For The Taiwan Porcupine To Bristle Taiwan must become a very hard target.
Aircraft and missiles alone won’t defeat a CCP invasion. Stopping Beijing will require a bitter ground battle against invading ground forces – amphibious and airborne.
In January the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released a study titled “The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan.”
Well conducted wargames are serious exercises in possible futures, with the goal of gleaning insights that help the gamers positively shape the future. I know something about high-level games. From 1989-1993 I was a special adviser in strategic wargaming in the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense.
The CSIS game is seriously flawed. My criticism is technical. The game is built around “3.5 day” turns – each turn represents 84 hours. Study classic amphibious operations like Gallipoli and D-Day and you’ll know the first three to four hours of the invasion are critical.
However, the game’s output has several points Taiwan, the U.S., and all U.S. allies must consider.
A bit more: “The island has elements of a porcupine defense. In 2002 I got a tour of Taiwanese bunkers on the west side and a look at an airbase on the east coast whose hangars were in a mountain.”
Read the column for some of the CSIS game team’s recommendations and my comments.
RELATED: Photo of an F-16V (“Viper”) — an updated model of the F-16. Taiwan has about 140 F-16s. Around 70 have been upgraded and there are plans to upgrade more. Taiwan also has at least 66 F-16V aircraft on order. They are fine airplanes. But to defeat a Chinese communist invasion the island must become a fortress.
ON MY BIRTHDAY A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO I DID 60 IN FOUR SETS OF 15 AND THOUGHT THAT I HAD DONE SOMETHING. OH, WELL: Fitness enthusiast does 8,008 pull-ups in 24 hours.
RED PILLED ONCE AGAIN: Bernie Sanders’s empty socialist arguments get exposed by Bill Maher.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: McCarthy Skewers Media for J6 Footage Hypocrisy.
THAT IS THE GOAL, YES: Democrats’ Climate Lawfare Campaign Jeopardizes America’s Energy Future.
WAS IT OVER WHEN THE GERMANS AND RUSSIANS BOMBED PEARL HARBOR? Who knew Ken Burns is an idiot? “All of these bills that DeSantis and others are doing limit our ability to understand … It feels like a Soviet system or, you know, the way the Nazis would build a Potemkin village. Tucker Carlson is doing the same thing with the footage from 1/6.”
ILLEGAL ALIENS KILL BALD EAGLE TO EAT AND MAKE ORNAMENTS OF ITS FEET, FEDS DO NOTHING. Are we 100% sure Trump did not hire these guys to give him the best “I told you so” story ever? (Secondary punchline: More jobs Americans won’t do!)
BRADLEY THOMPSON: The Laissez-Faire Constitution. “Laissez-faire, then, means that government is to keep its hands off the people and leave them free to pursue their material and spiritual values.”
GOODER AND HARDER: Portland’s Last Two Walmart Stores Closing Because of Shoplifting.
AMERICA KNOWS. BUT WHAT’S AMERICA GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? America knew: 67% believed COVID came from a lab leak, while 65% thought officials covered it up.
JOHN HINDERAKER: Who’s Deceptive?
Tucker Carlson launched Round Two of the January 6 tapes last night. Betsy Stauffer is working on a longer post on the latest revelations, along with the crazed (but revealing) calls for censorship from the likes of Chuck Schumer. For the moment, I just want to note one point.
Democrats have voiced a faux concern that there might be something suspicious about Carlson’s editing of the clips he shows on his program. Of course, there is no evidence of that. On the contrary, it looks as though the people who have deceptively edited January 6 footage are the Democrats, through their risible “January 6 Committee.” . . .
The Democrats’ fake investigation of the January 6 demonstration has been shot through with dishonesty from the beginning. The master deception, fueled by selective release of video clips while barring public access to the rest, was the claim that the protest constituted a “violent insurrection,” despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of protesters, including those who were allowed into the Capitol, were entirely peaceful, despite the fact that not a single one of the alleged insurrectionists remembered to bring a firearm, and despite the fact that there is no conceivable way the “insurrectionists” could have overthrown the government, no matter how long they milled around the Capitol building.
The whole “January 6” narrative is a hoax and a fraud.
Yep.
CDR SALAMANDER: Nord Stream’s Tap on the Shoulder.
Outside everyone’s interest in knowing “who’dun’it” in the blowing up on the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea, there has yet to be a full appreciation of the larger meaning of its destruction.
1937’s bombing of Guernica gave a preview of what would befall Europe’s cities just a few years later. The Russo-Ukrainian War is giving hints of what has changed over the last few decades that should give everyone pause to review their assumptions and critical vulnerabilities. Small and medium wars are good for that – they give hints to issues that will arise in future large wars.
While it is easier to understand, even in the face of “sea blindness,” the importance of the trade that arrives by ship, food and fuel at the top of the list, from the man on the street to policy makers in nations’ capitals, the importance of what lies on the sea bed is lost to most. . . .
As we covered in a FbF back in 2009, attacking undersea cables dates back to the 19th Century – but the modern reliance on what is on the sea bed is orders of magnitude greater than just telegraphs were back then.
Getting to them is not easy … but life once they are cut is even less easy.
Time to think about what is needed to keep them secure, especially in any time of heightened tensions…but in an era of international terrorism, is there really a time of peace for vulnerable targets?
No.
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: New Orleans residents warned ‘don’t sit in your car and play’ as carjackings skyrocket 165%. “The city has seen a significant rise in violent crime, including skyrocketing homicides, with the highest per capita rate among cities in the United States. The Big Easy saw 273 carjackings in the last year alone, compared to 103 in 2019. The sharp increase in crime has caused some residents to start taking precautions to avoid being targets, like avoiding using their cell phones while sitting in their cars.”
AMERICANS ARE PRETTY SHARP: A Shockingly Low Percentage of Americans Think Old Joe Biden Is Really Running Things.