The first President of Hungary, Mihály Károlyi, had been forced to swallow many bitter pills in his short time in office.  The last appointed Hungarian Prime Minister by Austro-Hungarian Emperor Charles I, Károlyi had ushered the relative bloodless Astar Revolution (with a couple of notable exceptions) and Hungary’s full independence.  In short order, Károlyi watched the Allied powers disintegrated the lands of the ancient Habsburg regime by decree and by force.  The latest blow had arrived the day before with the arrival of the “Vix Note” – a communique from the French that Hungarian troops were expected to retreat even further than originally agreed upon in order for those lands to be seized by Hungary’s neighbors.

The note had caused Károlyi’s prime minister to resign on March 21st, 1919 as the Hungarians didn’t wish to agree to France’s demands but were in little military position to resist.  With his authority evaporating as quickly as Hungary’s borders, Károlyi proclaimed that the National Council, the legislative body through which he ruled, would attempt to form another government.  But as Károlyi was a determined anti-communist, only the center-left Social Democrats would be allowed as the organizing party.  The Social Democrats agreed on the same day and made a surprising announcement – Károlyi was resigning as President.

Mihály Károlyi had most certainly not told the Social Democrats he intended to resign.  And the Social Democrats had most certainly not told Károlyi that they had secretly entered into an alliance with the Hungarian Communist Party and had released their imprisoned leadership the night before.  Béla Kun, the Moscow-dispatched leader of the Hungarian Communists, immediately declared a Hungarian Soviet Republic, deposing and arresting Károlyi by fiat.  Kun then radioed Vladimir Lenin in Russia, telling him that a “dictatorship of the proletariat” had seized control in Budapest.

The fear of most nations around the world since the Russian Revolution of 1917 had arrived – a Communist dictatorship had taken hold in the heart of Europe.

The Astar Revolution – Hungary’s hopes for an Allied-supported government died a quick death, even with a pro-Allied leader like Mihály Károlyi at the helm

“I was certainly no adherent of the ancient regime, but it seems doubtful to me whether it is a sign of political shrewdness to beat to death the smartest of the many counts [Count István Tisza] and to make the stupidest one [Count Mihály Károlyi] president.”  – Sigmund Freud

Hungary’s fate was far from sealed as the Great War ended on November 11th, 1918.  It took a series of terrible moves from leadership to ensure the rise of a Soviet Republic.  (more…)

The fact that the news media is, today, writing stories lauding the administration for its panicky handling of the baby formula crisis that it created, tells us a little about the sick state of both our executive branch, our bureaucracy and our news media.

President Joe Biden authorized the use of Air Force planes for the effort, dubbed “Operation Fly Formula,” because no commercial flights were available

Well, that’s mighty big of him, given that it was an executive branch bureaucracy – the Food and Drug Administration – whose inexplicable, and as yet unexplained, closing of a formula plant in Michigan, not to mention Byzantine importation restrictions on formula from Third World hellholes like Switzerland in Germany, caused the crisis in the first place.

I’ve never been the worlds biggest Donald Trump fan – but if this had happened on his watch, a series of peevish and borderline inscrutable tweets would have been followed by executive orders expediting the reopening of the plant and trashing the import restrictions that prevented the free market from doing what it does best Dash getting resources where they are needed, when they are needed.

The fact that our news media is allowing government to treat itself like heroes for “solving” a problem it created (at absolutely sinful and bizarre expense – have you seen how much military aircraft flights cost these days?) is a little bit like giving a medal of valor to an arsonist for putting out a fire they set.

It’s not just law abiding home and business owners that can’t get any help from overstretched Minneapolis law enforcement until it’s too late:.

If I’m reading that correctly – and I believe I am – the dispatcher was aware that the guy had passed out on the train platform for three solid hours before someone checked him out.

This is “New York City in the 1970s“ level stuff, here.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emailed (a little while ago):

I had an airplane reserved but they cancelled. Tornado in Cannon Falls. Too windy for light planes to safely fly. Disappointing.

Some people spend their whole lives chasing storms. I had one drop right in my lap and I missed it.

Feels like being a kid again. “Other people have all the fun, I never get to. It’s so unfair.”

Joe Doakes

as someone who occasionally likes to chase storms (when they aren’t chasing me) they both sound pretty cool.

Since we’ll all be living in Bidenvilles soon, it might be wise to develop some skills that our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents learned during the Great Depression for making do in times of want. Yes, we could just tax the rich and take all their money for ourselves, but between inflation and the stock market tanking, there won’t be any rich people.

-Instead of meat, use oats or beans or lentils
-In the absence of eggs and butter, vinegar and baking soda in breads and cakes
-Make your own soap and cleaning products
-Remember those Home Ec classes that just reinforced hateful gender norms? Take a few. Learning how to sew will come in handy.
-Remember how guns are scary? Learn to use them. Hunting will keep food on the table.
-Raise a few chickens in the backyard. You’ll thank me later.
-You’ll want to learn how to ride a horse, and hook one up to a buggy.

And don’t forget to plant that Victory Garden!

I was at the Minnesota GOP Convention last Saturday in Rochester. It was actually the best organized convention I’ve ever been to. Electronic balloting allowed five rounds of balloting, including speeches and arm-twisting time, between rounds.

Of course, the State Central meeting was a Bulgarian cluster-cuddle – more on that, maybe, next week.

And the initial sign-up period, where about 2,000 people showed up on Friday morning in the space of about an hour, involved some long lines and a little waiting. Now, by all rational accounts, the lines cleared up fast – the convention organizers had done their homework…

…but that didn’t stop the DFL from releasing some snarky press releases claiming that a party that can’t run its own convention shouldn’t try to run the state.

Suffice to say, we’ll be watching their performance tomorrow, also in Rochester.

Because I’ve heard from people who grew up in East Berlin in the 1970s who’ve said “Good God, getting into the DFL convo looks like a freaking nightmare:

Please take a moment to carefully read the list of precautions shown below:

Every delegate, alternate, vendor, news media member, volunteer, staff, elected official, or campaign member will only gain entrance to any space on the first floor of Mayo Civic Center during the Convention with a valid photo ID, proof of COVID-19 vaccination, and a negative COVID-19 test result. If you do not have your vaccination card, the Minnesota Department of Health cannot provide a replacement CDC COVID-19 vaccine card. If you lost your COVID-19 vaccine card, you can request a copy of your immunization record, which includes similar information to the vaccine card, by using the Docket app or submitting a request to the Minnesota Immunization Information Connection (MIIC).

The precautions listed here are subject to change based upon public health advisories from the state of Minnesota, Olmsted County, and the City of Rochester.

• All persons must show proof of COVID-19 vaccination and must test negative for COVID-19 on-site at Mayo Civic Center to receive a silicone wristband which must be shown at the security checkpoint. This wristband will be required for entrance each day of the Convention.

Go ahead, DFL. Make my weekend.

“Are you now or have you ever been a ‘white supremacist’?”

The spirit of Tailgunner Joe lives on.

This article came out the other day, demanding that white people “speak out against White Supremacy”.

OK. White Supremacy sucks.

Now what?

There are indeed “white supremacists” out there. Like all racial supremacists – Nazis, Hutu, HAMAS, the Japanese of the 1930s – they believe something that is deeply, intensely evil. Every rational person of all races has condemned them for over a century.

And the objective record shows that that condemnation has had an effect. The number of people in “white supremacist” groups has been dropping by roughly an order of magnitude every generation. In the 1920s, there were several million members; the Klan drew 50K to a rally in Rochester, MN. In the 1940s, the American neo-Nazi “Bund” party filled a couple nights at Madison Square Garden.

By the time of the Civil Rights movement, membership had dropped to somewhere in the hundreds of thousands; by the 80s and 90s, a few tens of thousands (some of whom were exceptionally militant). According to the FBI, organized white supremacist groups mustered under 5,000 members in the 2010s.

In 1988, a Gallup poll showed that 1/3 of black Americans believed racism was to one degree or another a powerful force. In 1992, William Raspberry, a man who grew up under Jim Crow in Mississippi, covered the Civil Rights movement, and became the first black national syndicated news columnist, wrote a column (that, coming out as it did juuust before everything in the world got put online, has proven to be impossible to unearth) that racism wasn’t dead, per se, but was the province of the stupid and ignorant, and should be mocked and taunted, akin to the moral flat earthers they were. [1]

Suddenly, in the late 2000s, after the election of the first black president, the political class discovered racism again. The Obama Administration spent its entire time in office warning that a “white supremacist wave of terror that would dwarf 9/11” was on the way, yessirreebob. Obama’s handling of several police shooting incidents in the early 2010s could have hardly been better designed to stoke racial division – it’s what the approach was designed to do.

By 2015, that same Gallup poll showed 2/3 of black Americans felt racism was a dominant fact in their lives – doubling in 27 years.

Did America get more racist between the LA riots and the election of Barack Obama?

More on point – did more racists fall out of the trees in 2017? Or is it suddenly in the interest of the political class’s narrative to not only focus on a tiny class of deviants, but to try to create more of them, so they could have a boogieman to wave around to scare the ignorant into line?

Is there a story that our political class’s dominant narrative doesn’t try to squeeze a “white supremacist” into? Governor Klink and Mayor Frey and the Strib all preposterously blamed “white supremacists” for the rioting after the murder of George Floyd; the Strib fingered the infamous “Umbrella Man” – who disappeared without a trace. MPR reporter Jon Collins famously sent out a tweet asking – fairly begging – for any evidence of white supremacist involvement in the riots; his record of stories over the past two years shows no follow-up on that tweet (Collins has ignored questions – as, indeed, all MPR reporters do, these days. It’s official policy. I have the email). Several government “stings” of “white supremacist terrorists” (remember the “Hutaree”? The “plot” to “kidnap” Governor Whitmer?) came and, when shown to have been government shake and bake operations, went.

And today – after a retrograde idiot shot ten people (whom, he gleefully noted in his manifesto, could not effectively resist him, due to New York gun control laws), the WaPo op-ed writer Michelle Norris says all white people are accountable for “white supremacy”.

Of course, when people like Norris say white people should “speak out” against something, they don’t want speaking out; they want silent acquiescence.

If you read the article – I did so you don’t have to, but go for it anyway – she harps on the notion that the shooter was driven by fear of the “Great Replacement Theory”, or GRT. GRT, Norris notes, is the idea that white conservatives believe that there’s a plan to replace white voters with voters “of color”.

And of course, there’s no such plan, and you’re a racist to think so.

Except that our dominant political class was celebrating the idea, before they started telling us that not only is there no such thing, but you’re racist for thinking it exists at all:

Which is, of course, the political class’s MO these days; promote something radical and utterly fractious – CRT, Schools primacy over parents, election integrity, third trimester abortion, gun control, the Disinformation Bureau – and then cry “That doesn’t EXIST, and you’re being paranoid” when called on it.

So – why are “white supremacists” suddenly everywhere?

Because, despite four years of “white supremacy is everywhere – who are you gonna believe, us, or your lying eyes?”, more black and latino voters pulled the level for Donald Trump than any Republican in sixty years – because, notwithstanding all the alarmism about “white supremacy”, their lives got better. After four years of hearing Trump’s border policy called “Racist” and “White Supremacist”, Latinos – who favor a tough border policy at levels that make white Republicans look like Oberlin humanities sophomores – voted for Trump at levels Republicans may have never seen. And the ever-more-extreme Democratic party is running with one of the worst two year records in memory; stagflation, collapse in Afghanistan, Covid not eradicated, five dollar gas, no baby formula, a looming recession and Europe at war – they’ve got to convince the black and latino parts of their base that if they don’t vote Democrat, there are going to be guys in pointy white hoods and swastikas parading down their streets.

So let’s cut the crap; articles like this aren’t about people “speaking out” – literally everyone that matters has been speaking out against “white supremacy” for a century, now. They’re like the “Ninety Seconds of Hate” from Orwell’s “1984”, they’re about ensuring people are reacting to stimuli with sufficient zeal, and shaming or removing those that don’t parrot the chanting points on cue.

Holding entire racial groups accountable for the behavior of their most aberrant members is exactly the same sort of evil that brought us “white supremacy”, and every other race-based evil of this wretched past century.

[1] Raspberry – a center-leftist straight out of the 1980s, would be cast out of today’s hard left for writing things like this and this. Indeed, you see some leftist columnists labeling Raspberry a “conservative”, which I’m sure would have amused him, were he around to defend himself; he died in 2012.

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

Still working from home (two weeks to flatten the curve, you know). Can’t log in today. My “remote authentication certificate” is not recognized.

Called the Computer Support phone number. Recorded message says they’re experiencing a problem with remote login software but will send updated information to affected users by email.

I am – literally – living in a Dilbert cartoon.

Joe Doakes

Dilbert has been running since 1989.

If it took you until 2022 to realize this, you’ve had a very good run indeed.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

As I was putting out the cat this morning, the little girl from upstairs walked by. She was crying. I asked her what was wrong. “Someone stole my bike, I’m looking for it.” I told her I’d keep an eye out and wished her luck.

Yes, I could have lectured her on the evils of society, how she should have assumed everyone is a thief and locked it up, how we have new neighbors so no doubt they stole it just to wreck it because that’s how Those People are. I could have offered to buy her a different bike, a even better bike. But she’s a 2nd Grader. She doesn’t care about any of that. She doesn’t want a different bike, she wants her own bike back.

I know how she feels. I feel the same about America. The Left keeps trying to take it away so they can wreck it. They claim they will replace it with a different America, an even better America, but I don’t want a different America. I want my own America back. The fear it may be lost forever makes me feel like crying, too.

Joe Doakes

In my book “Trulbert“, the question on the surface was “what if society had to stay over“.

Implicit in that, sometimes, was “what if we could start society over“.

Because these days I’m feeling…

… not so much like that second grade girl.

More like the 18-year-old who got his bike stolen, and spent the summer roaming the city, looking for an excuse to pound the thief flat with a hammer.

SIGAR (the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) was established in 2008 to serve as an oversight body. It conducts audits of reconstruction projects and its mission is to look for waste and fraud.

In the wake of the collapse of the Afghan government last year, SIGAR was asked by Congress to look into the causes of the rapid collapse and today it issued an interim report. The text of the report is here.

Here is a summary of the conclusions.

SIGAR found that the single most important factor in the ANDSF’s collapse in August 2021 was the U.S. decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from Afghanistan through signing the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020 under the Trump administration, followed by President Biden’s withdrawal announcement in April 2021. Due to the ANDSF’s dependency on U.S. military forces, these events destroyed ANDSF morale. The ANDSF had long relied on the U.S. military’s presence to protect against large-scale ANDSF losses, and Afghan troops saw the United States as a means of holding their government accountable for paying their salaries. The U.S.-Taliban agreement made it clear that this was no longer the case, resulting in a sense of abandonment within the ANDSF and the Afghan population. The agreement set in motion a series of events crucial to understanding the ANDSF’s collapse.

The report identifies “six factors that accelerated the ANDSF’s collapse in August 2021.”

1) U.S. decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from Afghanistan through signing the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020 under the Trump administration, followed by President Biden’s withdrawal announcement in April 2021
2) the change in the U.S. military’s level of support to the ANDSF
3) the ANDSF never achieving self-sustainment
4) Afghan President Ashraf Ghani frequently changing ANDSF leaders and appointing loyalists
5) Afghan government’s failing to take responsibility for Afghan security through an implementation of a national security strategy
6) the Taliban’s military campaign effectively exploiting ANDSF weaknesses

In addition, the report identifies “nine factors that explain why, after 20 years and nearly $90 billion in U.S. security assistance, the ANDSF was ill-prepared to sustain security following a U.S. withdrawal”.

1) no country or agency had complete ownership of the ANDSF development mission,
2) the length of the U.S. commitment was disconnected from the reality of the time required to build an entire security sector
3) the U.S. created long-term dependencies that would require significant time to overcome, such as providing the ANDSF with advanced equipment they could not sustain and leaving them out of the equipping process
4) the U.S. military, driven by political deadlines, struggled to balance winning battles with letting the ANDSF gain experience by fighting on their own
5) U.S. metrics created to measure the development of the ANDSF were unable to effectively measure ANDSF capabilities
6) Afghan corruption harmed ANDSF capabilities and readiness
7) U.S. control of the battlespace and of key governance systems restricted Afghan ownership of important military and governance systems
8) U.S. and Afghan governments failed to develop a police force effective at providing justice
9) advisors were often ill-trained and inexperienced for their mission, and personnel rotations impeded institutional memory

SIGAR has been issuing quarterly reports and “lessons learned” reports as part of its mission. Last August, SIGAR issued one of these “lessons learned” reports, the text is here, and this is from the executive summary.

The U.S. government has now spent 20 years and $145 billion trying to rebuild Afghanistan, its security forces, civilian government institutions, economy, and civil society. The Department of Defense (DOD) has also spent $837 billion on warfighting, during which 2,443 American troops and 1,144 allied troops have been killed and 20,666 U.S. troops injured. Afghans, meanwhile, have faced an even greater toll. At least 66,000 Afghan troops have been killed. More than 48,000 Afghan civilians have been killed, and at least 75,000 have been injured since 2001—both likely significant underestimations.

What, really, do we have to show for all that blood and treasure? Will anyone be held accountable, even if it’s only at the ballot box? If the American people don’t have the fortitude to hold their leaders accountable, we shouldn’t hold out hope that said leaders will hold themselves accountable.

It’s not something I think about that much, but I do from time to time — why do Classic Rock stations sound the same, year after year? I wrote about this on my moribund blog a number of years ago and, based on recent listening to market-dominant KQRS, this list of faves hasn’t changed a bit:

In thinking about this list, a few things are worth noting:

• The majority of the songs on this list are written in a minor key. If rock and roll is supposed to be uplifting, this group of songs isn’t it.
• Of the bands listed here, the happiest band appears to be ZZ Top, who made their name initially as a bare-bones Texas blues trio, until they made their fortune hawking classic cars and leggy models. Make of that what you will.
• Think back to any of the years listed here. Would you have had any interest in listening to songs that were recorded as long ago from that moment as these songs are from today? I didn’t hear much of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys or the Andrews Sisters in 1983, for example, nor do I recall seeking such things out. In fact, I’m more likely to seek out Bob Wills today than most of the songs listed here, right or wrong.
• In my youth I was reliably informed that rock and roll was supposed to be about rebellious youth and revolution. While their politics were dodgy at best, the Clash was right about this much — you grow up and you calm down; you start wearing blue and brown. And so has the music of our youth.

Gil Scott-Heron, who doesn’t get much airplay these days, argued back then that the revolution will not be televised. But rest assured it will be monetized.

Erin Preese is gonna show the gun rights movement what for:

All right. Let’s get taken on!

I’m just going to head out to her Twitter account…:

Like an amazing number of leftist candidates, she seems to have availed herself of some mass blocking service/list. I’ve never even interacted with her…

…and I’m already cast forth from her echo chamber.

So we’ve established this: “taking on the gun lobby“ means “parenting chanting points into the echo chamber“.

I occasionally listen to public radio – not “in spite of” the fact that they have turned into the public relations arm, not just of “today’s left”, but of the “progressive” upper middle class. It reflects their angsts; I imagine a drinking game involving taking a shot whenever there’s a mention of Covid, January 6, climate change and white supremacy being very short and very chemically lethal.

It reflects their conceits; the traditional “NPR Voice”, the ofay upper-middle-class accent of the Oberlin poli-sci graduate, is being supplanted by very audibly African-American and, how shall we say this, accents of males with alternate lifestyles – the sort of stuff things that upper-middle-class white progressives demand from their entertainment.

And it reflects their ignorance, over and over, in so many ways.

One that I caught yesterday while driving across the Northern Plains, on the syndicated “New Yorker Radio Hour” – an episode which has not yet gotten onto the website – involved a woman, a reporter if memory serves, saying with what sounded like a straight face:

China has changed so much in recent years – economically, and socially.

And yet, the political system just doesn’t seem to change…

Huh.

You’re saying a communist kleptocracy, which knows fiull well that the only alternative to being in power in a Communist dictatorship is a bullet in the back of the head, a system that is more similar to the Mafia than anything else we know of, doesn’t “change with the times?”

I often – very, very often – say that Democrats can say pretty much anything they want to their audience, since they – whether they dropped out of high school, or have a PhD in Women’s Studies – are so universally gullible and ignorant.

Sometimes I feel like I’m speaking too broadly.

Then, I hear things like this, and I get back on track.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

“Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis on Twitter: “Out of 27 women that were accidentally pregnant during the vacc program. Outcome: 23 spontaneous abortions. 2 premature with neonatal death. 1 spontaneous abortion with neonatal death. 1 living baby Pfizer doc 5.3.6 page 12 “Safe and effective”” / Twitter”

How is it misleading to cite actual numbers from the original source?

Perhaps they use “misleading” to mean “leading people away from The Narrative,” which would be true but not the normal usage.

Silver lining: women won’t need coat hangers after Roe is overturned. Just vaxx your troubles away.

Joe Doakes

There’s always a silver lining, isn’t there?

While American power abroad slowly erodes, it’s good to know our society is girding its loins to fight the true enemy.

Three students at a Wisconsin middle school are facing allegations of sexual harassment under Title IX after they repeatedly refused to use “they/them” pronouns when addressing a fellow student.

Attorneys for the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty demanded that the Kiel Area School District stop the Title IX investigation into the three male students at Kiel Middle School.

“The complaint against these boys, and the District’s ongoing investigation, are wholly inappropriate and should be immediately dismissed,” the institute wrote in a letter to administrators. “The mere use of biologically correct pronouns not only does not constitute sexual harassment under Title IX or the District’s own policy, it is also speech protected by the First Amendment.”

The letter from the WILL is here.

We represent the families of three eighth grade boys (and the boys themselves) who the District recently charged with sexual harassment under Title IX for “mispronouning.” The District’s position appears to be that using what the District calls “incorrect pronouns” “after being informed that a student’s preferred pronouns were ‘they/them’’’ automatically constitutes punishable sexual harassment under Title IX.

The complaint against these boys, and the District’s ongoing investigation, are wholly inappropriate and should be immediately dismissed. The mere use of biologically correct pronouns not only does not constitute sexual harassment under Title IX or the District’s own policy, it is also speech protected by the First Amendment. The District has also violated Title IX procedures and its own policy in its handling of the complaint. The District should promptly end the investigation, dismiss the complaints, and remove them from each of the boys’ records.

“Mispronouning” is also not sexual harassment under Title IX because gender identity is not included within the definition of sex within Title IX. In fact, the Department of Education is currently attempting to amend Title IX to add it. And none of the “other conduct” described in the statement from the music teacher (which the families of the boys eventually received with the Title IX complaint) comes remotely close to sexual harassment. The statement even acknowledges that the whole class “expressed frustration with remembering pronouns.”

It’s hard to have a society when half the country wants to take a chainsaw to it.

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission was established to “review the national security implications of trade and economic ties between the United States and the People’s Republic of China”.

Last week they held a day-long hearing with eleven witnesses on “China’s Activities and Influence in South and Central Asia.” Topics included China’s Interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan, China’s Reach in Central Asia, China’s Influence in Continental South Asia, and Competing Visions for the Indian Ocean.

As part of the latter, Christopher K. Colley outlined China’s naval goals, especially as they apply to the Indian Ocean, saying “the American navy is the driving force behind China’s security concerns in the IOR.” Written testimony is here.

The greatest structural change in the Chinese navy in terms of strategy and tactics is the transformation of a navy based on regional defense and access denial, to a force that is firmly inline with power projection and blue water capabilities. Such an evolution is a conscience decision by the top levels of the Chinese government to build a navy that has the ability to project sustained and meaningful power to locations thousands of miles from Chinese home ports. This transformation is one of the most critical developments in the security architecture of the Twenty-First Century.

Last week, before a full committee hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, Adm Gilday, Chief of Naval Operation, spoke about the growing strength of China’s navy. Written testimony is here.

Over the past two decades, the PRC has built a comprehensive sea-denial, anti-access system of sophisticated sensors and long-range precision weapons. Backed by a robust industrial base and the largest shipbuilding infrastructure in the world, the PRC has extensively modernized its military and tripled the size of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN). It is also building next-generation strategic missile submarines, erecting hundreds of new missile silos, and growing its cyber and space capabilities.

Under the cover of this anti-access umbrella, the PRC has embraced the use of “gray zone” activities to turn incremental gains into long-term strategic advantages. Using a multi-layered fleet of naval ships, maritime militia, and coast guard, the PRC is undermining international norms by staking illegal maritime claims, militarizing geographic features in the South and East China Seas, and intimidating its neighbors regarding offshore resources. Additionally, the PRC is extending its global reach with its Belt and Road Initiative—leveraging predatory lending practices, aggressive mercantilism backed, and hard military power—to access critical maritime terrain, ports, and waterways.

Given China’s increased strength, Adm Gilday also tried to explain why the US Navy planned to scrap nine warships, some less than three years old.

“I refuse to put an additional dollar against a system that would not be able to track a high-end submarine in today’s environment,” Gilday told the committee. He said the main reason for the early retirement was that the anti-submarine warfare system on the ships “did not work out technically.” The decommissioning of the ships would save the Navy approximately $391 million, according to the service’s proposed FY23 budget. But that recoups only a fraction of the cost of the nine littoral combat ships, which totaled about $3.2 billion.

The arcs of Chinese and US naval strengths are heading in the wrong directions. As Conrad Crane writes about here, America’s ability to fight a major conflict, let alone two at the same time, for the first time in a long time can be questioned. Part of Russia’s strategic mistake in going into Ukraine is it revealed how weak Russia’s military really is. How long before someone decides to test how strong the US is these days?

For the handful of Australian troops on watch at the Finschhafen District military headquarters in Morobe, New Guinea, January 5th, 1919 seemed to be as nondescript as the multitude of days, weeks, months and even years before it.  The region, formerly part of the provinces of German New Guinea, hadn’t seen meaningful combat in more than four years since Australian troops invaded and occupied the colony, driving out the Germans in some of the earliest combat of the Great War.  The brief campaign had been Australia’s first independent military action and had kept region out of the hands out of British or Japanese interests.

The sight greeting the Australians seemed more appropriate for 1914 than 1919 – a column of fully armed New Guinean native German troops, with a resplendently dressed Major in his pressed and cleaned field dress uniform – marching down the streets of Morobe, directly towards the headquarters.  Upon arriving at the front door, the German Major drew his sword and presented it to the Australian commanding officer.  Major Hermann Detzner and the last of his men would surrender – bringing to an end the longest, strangest quasi-guerilla campaign of the First World War.

Hermann Detzner – after the war.  His celebrity would be his undoing

Had Otto von Bismarck had his way, no German soldier would have set foot in New Guinea – or anywhere outside of Europe, for that matter.  The man nicknamed “the Iron Chancellor” for his mastery of 19th Century realpolitik had little time for the expensive vanity projects that were often the result of colonial expansion.  Overseas colonies required vast expenditures of resources without any guarantee of profit and could only further entangle Berlin in the foreign policies of France or Britain, all plainly without the naval might to secure such holdings.  In short – Bismarck sought to avoid precisely most of the military and foreign policy missteps that Germany ended up making in the 1880/90s.  But the allure of powerful financial interests, coupled with domestic political considerations (colonial policies sold well at the ballot box), pushed the Chancellor to embrace the establishment of private colonial ventures.  It would only be a matter of time before private German interests became part of the national interest and forced Germany to send engineers, laborers and finally soldiers overseas. (more…)

So what happens to the “Lime” scooters – The popular electric scooter rentalsthat used to see around Saint Paul?

When you remember that st paul is “Chicago on the Mississippi“, the answer pretty much sorts itself out:

Among the details, Lime will pay the city a trip fee of 10 cents per trip for every trip that begins or ends within the city. Those fees are paid to St. Paul on a monthly basis.

In addition to regular trip fees, Lime will pay a “park impact fee” of 20 cents per scooter for all trips that begin or end on city parkland. The city will also be reimbursed for staff time spent relocating or removing scooters from prohibited locations, at the rate of $35 per scooter, as well as a $20-per-day storage rate at the city’s Dale Street Public Works facility.

Everything in St. Paul must transfer money from the productive parts – the few that are left – to the government.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Story outline for my next novel:

Biden is declared unfit, removed from office two days into his third year, Kamala takes over just in time to serve out the remainder of Biden’s term and two full terms of her own

President Kamala (PK) orders US troops overseas to fight brush wars and orders private cars and home air conditioners in the US banned, because Climate Change

During the hot summer, riots break out in major US cities

PK invites the UN to send peacekeepers to maintain order in US cities

Un demands PK disarm the people to keep the peacekeepers safe from the people they’re keeping safe

Language barrier, cultural differences, resentment for past US wars: peacekeepers open fire on citizens, some of whom return fire (looking at you, Blade)

PK declares martial law, orders peacekeepers to round up those deplorable fly-over state residents bitterly clinging to their guns and Bibles, sends them to concentration camps ‘for their own good’

Deplorable people refuse to go, engage in guerilla war against peacekeepers, shortages of toilet paper, bottled water and SPAM, cities burning

PK blames Trump

Congress impeaches Trump again

Hey, this could be a decent Sci Fi story, if we added some aliens. Maybe they’re observing from the Moon saying, “What were they thinking, electing her?” before flying away to look for intelligent life on other planets

Joe Doakes

”Trulbert” is seeming less and less like satire these days.

The Star Tribune continues to earn its keep as the DFL‘s “unpaid “ PR machine:

For those of you who weren’t paying attention to the GOP convention last weekend – it hardly needs to be said, but nothing of the sort of happened.

A move to disaffiliate with the “Log Cabin Republicans” (to be fair, led by someone who has never been a fan of the notion of LGBTQ Republicans) wrapped up in a procedural motion to vote on the affiliation of each and every affiliate with the party (there are quite a few) led to the clock literally running out on the State Central Committee meeting on Thursday. For the evening, it left the affiliates unattached, and their delegates not credentialed to be seated in the convention.

The body of the convention itself reversed that action on Friday.

This squabble – largely led by a representative from the first congressional district – mirrors in large part a similar fracas a few years ago, when a group of Central committee representatives and convention delegates tried to introduce rules that would bar Muslims from holding Republican Party positions.representatives and convention delegates tried to introduce rules that would bar Muslims from holding Republican Party positions.

It’s the position of this blog that, whatever your personal beliefs about homosexuality and/or Islam, that there is very little that is more aggressively American than “coming out“ as a Republican. Not even buying a house in Burnsville, with a literal freaking picket fence surrounding your front yard.

Indeed, in many of the communities served by these affiliates – Somali, Latino‘s, African-Americans, mong and LGBTQ Dash “coming out“ as a Republican carries an affirmative social risk these are not people to be pushed away; they are frequently the toughest, most resilient Republicans there are.

People may disagree. Let’s disagree.

But let’s also focus on the things we do agree on; for example, the Star Tribune are a bunch of partisan hacks..

And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres

-This Is My Father’s World, hymn

Music is mathematical. You hear it instantly when a talented musician opens their mouth to sing, or when they play their instrument. Our brains recognize the consonance when notes are played within the same key. That is because the frequencies of notes in the scale form integer ratios.

Octaves are a 2:1 ratio, thirds are 3:2, fourths are 4:3 and so forth. These combinations of notes are pleasing to the ear.

Integer ratios don’t occur by chance in random noise. We instinctively respond to the intent behind the notes, the intelligence that deliberately put the notes together in that order.

Our brains are wired to look for patterns, though. Even when we hear seemingly random noise, such as these radio emissions from around Jupiter, we can’t help but go looking for those integer ratios and the notes behind them.

But, while Nature may not play the same notes that Bach knew, integers have a surprising way of popping up in nature, if we know where to look.

The Fibonacci Sequence appears often where a swirl is present, such as in the pattern of a snail’s shell, or spiral galaxies, or arrangement of seeds in a plant.

Integers are also found in something called orbital resonance. This is where two satellites have orbital periods that form integer relationships. For instance, the Earth and Moon have a 1:1 relationship. The Moon spins once on its axis for every trip around the Earth. (This is why one side of the Moon always faces the Earth.) Pluto and Neptune have a 2:3 relationship. Heading back to Jupiter, the moons Ganymede, Europa and Io have a 1:2:4 relationship. It’s not exactly magic, it just turns out that these are gravitationally stable orbits.

The heavens sang again last night. It was quite a performance, though, perhaps not surprisingly, not a random one. The interval between successive lunar eclipses can be 1, 5 or 6 lunar months. The music of the spheres indeed. Bravo to the Composer.

I’ve had some Republican friends express dismay about the timing of the Dobbs decision at the Supreme Court. They fear is going to turn out a biblical wave of “progressive“ voters.

Not without justification, they recall the debacle of the gay marriage amendment in Minnesota in 2012, which splattered with enough force to take out the voter ID proposal.

Of course, that vote coincided with Barack Obama‘s reelection bid; progressives turned out for that, as well.

As for today?

The media will do their darndest to convince voters that everything is hunky-dory by this fall.

How gullible will they be? We’ll see what a difference five months can make.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Pollsters predict this Fall will be devastating for the Democrat Party, maybe an extinction event. Republicans will win handily.

I don’t want Republicans to win. “Republicans” include Liz Cheney, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney – Republicans in name only.

I want Conservatives to win. I’ve seen nothing in the polling to indicate a conservative landslide.

Replacing Democrats with RINOs is not victory.

Joe Doakes

Joe hints toward a point I’ve been pondering writing about for a while, now; the republican party today is painfully similar to the one we had 50 years ago; different from the Democrats in just enough ways to fight over every couple years, but not in terms of policy substance, really, anymore.

In the 1960s through the mid-1970s, a conservative insurgency rooted in the principles William F Buckley enshrined in the Sharon Declaration

They gradually took over the GOP – over the cold, dead, figurative bodies of the Rockefellers and Nixons and other moderates, basically Democrats with better suits, that had held sway since the 1930s. It started with Barry Goldwater, peaked with Ronald Reagan, and spread out into national policy via the 1994 Gingrich landslide.

We need another one of those. Stat.

The real wave of terror is going to be all those white right-wingers.

Someday.

One of these days.

Any time, now.

Honest.

In the meantime, though, we’ve just got the regular left-wing terrorists in the Twin Cities:

Or at least some Macalester poli-sci majors apprenticing with Big Left. By the way – the guy with the Molotov Cocktail in the pic is black – but I’ll wager a shiny new quarter that everyone behind this leaflet is whiter than me, and comes from a family with an income well into six figures.

Remember – if the people to whom we pay taxes don’t provide law and order, people will provide it for themselves.

And it ain’t gonna be pretty.

F#&*k around and find out, indeed.