Author Archive: Stephen Green
January 4, 2017
THE 1980S CALLED… WELL, YOU KNOW THE REST: Russia Beefing up Military Ties With the Philippines.
Rear Adm. Eduard Mikhailov, deputy commander of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, led the five-day visit of vessels including an anti-submarine ship and showcased what his country can offer to a Southeast Asian nation that’s long been a staunch American treaty ally.
“You can choose … to cooperate with United States of America or to cooperate with Russia,” Mikhailov told reporters through an interpreter at the Manila harbor after a welcoming ceremony. “But from our side we can help you in every way that you need.”
“We are sure that in the future we’ll have exercises with you. Maybe, just maneuvering or maybe use of combat systems and so on,” he said.
The anti-submarine ship Admiral Tributs and sea tanker Boris Butoma have a wide range of combat features. Filipinos will be allowed to tour the huge ships and Russian marines will demonstrate their combat capability during the high-profile visit, according to the Philippine navy.
Years ago I wrote that in the face of growing Chinese power, the natural response of China’s neighbors would be to coalesce back around the United States and forge deeper ties than ever. I also noted that it would take unprecedented White House incompetence to screw up that natural response.
Well.
JUSTICE, DELAYED: Charles Manson reportedly seriously ill, taken to hospital.
ALLIES: Turkey Makes Veiled Threat Over Incirlik.
In the past few weeks, Turkey has complained that the coalition forces aren’t providing air cover to Turkish troops trying to capture the key IS-held town of al-Bab.
Fikri Isik said Wednesday: “this is leading to serious disappointment in the Turkish public opinion.”
“We are telling our allies … that this is leading to questions over Incirlik.” He was referring to the air base in southern Turkey that is home to coalition planes involved in the anti-IS campaign. IS has claimed responsibility for the New Year’s Istanbul nightclub attack that killed 39 people.
Effectively peeling Turkey off of NATO would be Putin’s greatest coup to date — a goal the Erdogan regime seems willing to help along.
TYLER O’NEIL: 7 Desperate Liberal Lies About Trump’s Education Pick Betsy DeVos.
Chuck Schumer has already promised to drag out Trump’s cabinet confirmation process for months, so really this story is just the warmup.
QUESTION ASKED: Can the Democrats Start from Scratch?
Look at the Democratic Platform. The preamble has a decent paragraph about stagnant wages, wealth gaps, and Americans feeling like the “system is rigged.” But if you look for an overall vision or statement of values you’ll have to make do with this: “Democrats believe that cooperation is better than conflict, unity is better than division, empowerment is better than resentment, and bridges are better than walls. It’s a simple but powerful idea: we are stronger together.” As the reader may have noticed, these aren’t really ideas, let alone powerful ones. They’re barely slogans. Who disagrees that “cooperation is better than conflict” or that “empowerment is better than resentment”? As for “bridges are better than walls,” okay, that’s deep. I happen to prefer my bathroom to have walls rather than bridges, but progress is progress. Let me also suggest adding “up is better than down,” “light is better than heat,” and “spoons are better than forks.”
In my lifetime, conservatives seem to be more prone than liberals to manifestos. A self-serving explanation for this among liberals would be that manifestos are the work of ideologues and cranks. But the simpler reason is that avatars of prevailing opinion don’t need manifestos. Liberals produced them during the George W. Bush years but got out of the habit once they were back in the driver’s seat. Now it’s time to get back to them. Manifestos are the starting point for movements based on serious ideas, and never are they more crucial than when you’re out of power. So, for the Democrats, let 100 manifestos now bloom.
What’s missing from T.A. Frank’s prescription is the new leadership required to produce new results. But the Clintons are old and out of juice, the Democrat bench is as thin as it’s been in nearly a century, and Barack Obama and his hard-left coterie threaten more — much more — of the same.
That’s not the change Frank can believe in.
SURPRISE! Turkey extends emergency rule to maintain purge of Gulen supporters.
Emergency rule, first imposed in Turkey after an attempted putsch on July 15 and then extended in October, enables the government to bypass parliament in enacting new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms when deemed necessary.
The extension, effective from Jan. 19, comes as Turkey reels from a series of attacks by Islamist or Kurdish militants, most recently on Sunday when a lone gunman shot dead 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub during New Year celebrations.
Ankara accuses Pennsylvania-based preacher Fethullah Gulen and his supporters, whom it terms the Gulenist Terror Organisation (FETO), of being behind the July coup attempt. Gulen denies the allegations.
It wasn’t “an attempted putsch.” It’s an increasingly successful purge.
IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP. THANKS, EGON. Nuclear experts to Trump: More than tweets are needed to stop North Korea.
PAYBACK’S A… YOU KNOW: Congress to Freeze State Department Funds Until U.S. Embassy Moves to Jerusalem.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Do You Dismantle a 90-Ton Whale? Start With a Strong Stomach and a Machete.
The blue whale is the world’s largest mammal, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to see or study. Unless you’re inside.
That is why Jacqueline Miller found herself clad in a hotel shower cap, fisherman’s chest waders and rubber boots, wading into the chest cavity of a deceased whale.
Wielding a machete, the mammal technician poked through the whale’s cavity in search of its heart vessels. It took lying on her side to sever pipe-size arteries and veins from the organ, which resembled a deflated swimming pool.
After a few machete swings, she was showered in whale fluid. No Ghostbuster suffered a greater indignity. “I was totally slimed,” she said.
When the corpses of two female blue whales floated into two Newfoundland seashore villages in 2014—their undersides partly preserved by the icy Atlantic—it presented a rare research opportunity and a question. How, exactly, do you disassemble a 90-ton whale?
The rest of the report is not for the faint of heart.
CHUCK SCHUMER: I wish we hadn’t triggered ‘nuclear option’
Oops.
Although to be fair, Schumer was opposed back then, too. Harry Reid left him with a Senate minority more diminished in its power to obstruct than it is in its numbers.
LIVE BY RECONCILIATION, DIE BY RECONCILIATION: Senate Republicans just introduced an Obamacare repeal plan Democrats can’t stop.
Senate Budget Committee Chair Michael Enzi (R-WY) introduced a budget resolution Tuesday that includes “reconciliation instructions” that enable Congress to repeal Obamacare with a simple Senate majority. Passing a budget resolution that includes those instructions will mean that the legislation can pass through the budget reconciliation process, in which bills cannot be filibustered.
That means Republicans will only need 50 of their 52 members in the Senate, and a bare majority in the House, to pass legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act. According to the Wall Street Journal, the budget resolution could be passed by both houses as early as next week.
To be clear, passing the budget resolutions does not itself repeal Obamacare. But it’s the necessary first step if Republicans are to do that this year, and unless three or more Republican senators defect (or 24 House members do), it’ll be smooth sailing for the repeal effort from there on out.
First day of business, too.
Updated with this flashback: “Reid: Dems will use 50-vote tactic to finish healthcare in 60 days.”
The move would allow Democrats to essentially go it alone on health reform, especially after losing their filibuter-proof majority in the Senate after Sen. Scott Brown’s (R) special election victory in Massachusetts.
Republicans have protested the maneuver as a hyperpartisan tactic to ram through a health bill, and have said that plans to use the reconciliation process make moot a bipartisan summit at the White House this week, where both GOP and Democratic leaders are supposed to present their ideas on healthcare.
They honestly bought into that “permanent Democratic majority” stuff.
STEPHEN KRUISER: 10 Almost Already Forgotten Celebrity Deaths of 2016.
Make it 11 and include Angus Scrimm who passed away in January, famous for playing Phantasm’s “Tall Man.”
Actually, Kruiser has a twofer for you today. You also won’t want to miss the latest Must-C TV.
(That’s C for Carlson, Tucker.)
THE BREXIT IS COMING! THE BREXIT IS COMING! Prime Minister Theresa May to Trigger Article 50 Before EU Summit in March.
THE SILK RAIL: China launches freight train to Britain.
The train will travel from Yiwu West Railway Station in Zhejiang Province, Eastern China to Barking, London, taking 18 days to travel over 7,400 miles.
The route runs through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium and France, before arriving in London. The UK is the eighth country to be added to the China-Europe service, and London is the 15th city.
The railway is a major strategic development to assist Xi Jinping’s multi-billion dollar ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy, according to the China-Europe Freight Rail Development Plan released in October.
The strategy was launched in 2013 and is an infrastructure and trade network connecting Asia with Africa and Europe along old Silk Road trading routes.
Most interesting? China’s infrastructure improvements planned for East Africa and Arabia to create the corresponding “Maritime Silk Road,” which would leapfrog India’s position in the Indian Ocean.
AN OPEN APOLOGY TO EVAN MCMULLIN: “I’m writing to tell you how much I regret my part in making you someone who sucks up to Shaun King.”
Heh. Read the whole thing.
WITH FIRE: To Fix the Department of the Navy; Kill the Mabus Legacy.
Global warming and political incorrectness are the greatest threats to the United States, and it is the job of America’s Navy to protect us from those threats. For the past eight years, that has been the strategic legacy of Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, and the primary goal of his successor should be to ensure that Mabus has no legacy. The traditional mission of the US Navy has been to deter potentially hostile navies, or failing to do that, defeat them. Getting the US naval services back to that philosophy is going to be a big job for the new administration.
The Mabus priorities have been making the naval services more caring, inclusive, and environmentally protective. Discipline, combat effectiveness, and readiness have been secondary goals at best. Under Mabus, the Navy has sunk to readiness levels approaching those of the post-Vietnam Carter era.
Read the whole thing — although Instapundit readers have long known that Jimmy Carter was Obama’s best-case scenario.
FASTER, HOTTER, PLEASE: Chillies could help beat cancer as research finds capsaicin destroys diseased cells.
ONE EMPATHIZES: NATO Allies ‘Desperate For Leadership’ Under Obama.
COULDN’T ANYBODY SEE THIS COMING? Leaving for Las Vegas: California’s minimum wage law leaves businesses no choice.
Here’s what the math looks like: I pay my employees $10.50 an hour, plus productivity bonuses. In addition, I pay payroll taxes and one of the highest worker compensation rates in the state. Even still, I could likely absorb a minimum wage as high as $11.50 an hour. But a $15-an-hour wage for my employees translates into $18.90 in costs for me — or just under $40,000 a year per full-time employee.
When the $15 minimum wage is fully phased in, my company would be losing in excess of $200,000 a year (and far more if my workforce grows as anticipated). That may be a drop in the bucket for large corporations, but a small business cannot absorb such losses. I could try to charge more to offset that cost, but my customers — the companies that are looking for someone to produce their clothing line — wouldn’t pay it. The result would be layoffs.
When Los Angeles County’s minimum wage ordinance was approved in July, I began looking at Ventura County, Orange County and other parts of the state. Then, when California embraced a $15 wage target, I realized that my company couldn’t continue to operate in the state. After considering Texas and North Carolina, I’ve settled on moving the business to Las Vegas, where I’m looking for the right facility. About half of our employees will make the move with us.
There’s no repealing the law of supply and demand.
OPEN CARRY COMING TO FLORIDA? Senate Judiciary Committee to Hear Open Carry Bill.
The legislation, SB 140, is sponsored by Sen. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, who introduced the measure last year when he was a state representative.
If passed, the bill would allow Florida’s 1.7 million concealed carry permit holders to openly carry their firearms. The more sweeping part of the measure, however, would eliminate gun-free zones in places like secondary schools, local centers and government meeting areas.
The bill would not allow CCW permit holders to carry their firearms on college or athletic events and restrictions would still exist on carrying guns to restaurants and bars. Any permit holder in violation of the restrictions in the bill would face a misdemeanor charge.
The Judiciary Committee is the first stop for the bill, and the odds are in its favor this year since Steube chairs that committee.