[Breitbart] In a superficial world where pro athletes and Hollywood actors are sometimes considered heroes, Veterans Day exists to remind us that real heroes wore combat uniforms and kept the USA free.
Veterans are rightly praised for their service as they are the ones who literally put their lives on the line for this nation. Among them are combat veterans who said goodbye to their families for deployments — sometimes numerous deployments — and who fought against barbaric fascists in World II, were often overlooked for holding the ground in Korean, crawled under live fire in Vietnam jungles while dodging Viet Cong attacks, and lived and breathed in the intensely dangerous environment of IEDs and suicide bombers in Afghanistan and Iraq.
They came home yet still paid a price that civilians complaining about the minutia of everyday life cannot comprehend.
Veterans who did not see combat are heroes as well because they were willing to don the uniform and undergo the basic and specialty training in order to be able to serve in combat if called to do so.
If you take time to sit down with a veteran and talk about his service, you will find that whether he was in the brown water navy taking machine gun fire in Vietnam or sitting on a large ship in blue water, far from the dangers of a Viet Cong attack, his heart still breaks over the fact that bureaucrats in Washington, DC, prevented the U.S. military from winning the war.
If you were ever fortunate enough to speak to a POW who was held by fascists in WWII and treated with an inhumanity that eludes words, you no doubt remember them brushing aside any praise to say, "I was just doing my duty." Perhaps you recall seeing their eyes lock onto something in the distance, or perhaps something playing out in their minds as if it were right now, and they talk nostalgically about what it means to form and defend a band of brothers.
I am convinced that these are things civilians cannot fully understand, myself included. However, I also believe that these are things over which we should be proud and grateful — things that cause us to make time to walk up to a veteran and say, "thank you."
Freedom isn’t free folks, and it never has been.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/11/2024 05:44 ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Ivan Lizan
[REGNUM] We learn about many Western monopolies that have formed and become so commonplace that they are no longer noticeable only when they collapse. We will certainly learn more in the near future, thanks to Chinese companies that are quietly but systematically capturing world markets.
But it is worth starting with the already formed Chinese monopoly. We are talking about the extraction of rare (RM) and rare earth metals (REM). RM includes 17 minerals, the rare group includes another 60 elements, including lithium and cobalt.
The peculiarity of rare earth metals is not so much their small reserves, but their low concentration in the earth's crust, uneven occurrence across countries, and their tendency to form strong compounds with other metals and minerals. As a result, to extract rare earth metals, it is necessary to shovel thousands of tons of rock, spending a lot of energy and chemicals to extract them as pure metals and other compounds. Therefore, the extraction of rare earth metals turns into big problems for the environment, and the club of producing countries has never been large.
In 1986, the United States was the leading producer of rare earths, more than twice as much as the USSR, and China was in third place. With the collapse of the USSR, the Soviet rare earth industry also disappeared. At the same time, China, with the support of the government, began to actively increase the volume of REE production: it was becoming increasingly difficult for American miners to compete with cheap Chinese rare earths, and increased pressure from environmentalists finally finished off the Mountain Pass mine.
Thus, by the mid-2000s, the global rare earth market was under the control of China, accounting for over half of production.
Until 2023, China's monopoly in the REE sphere was a burden for governments of other countries only when they tried to get rid of it - export control allowed the Chinese government not only to control the price of REEs, but also, if necessary, to bankrupt Chinese competitors by dumping on the market. However, in 2023, China began to impose export restrictions.
First, the American military-industrial complex giant, Lockheed Martin, and its subsidiary Raytheon, responsible for missile production, fell under sanctions. Then Beijing introduced licensing for the export of germanium and gallium under the pretext of protecting national security. And this became a huge problem for the American military-industrial complex: it is cut off from part of the REE, and its total consumption of these minerals does not allow for profitable extraction of the necessary minerals in the United States under market conditions.
At the same time, other companies continue to receive supplies from China and do not need expensive rare earth metals from Mountain Pass.
STEEL
Already in 2024, it was not only gallium and germanium from China that became a problem. Chinese steel became a headache for many countries. China smelts 1 billion tons a year, more than the rest of the world combined. For comparison: Russia smelts 75-77 million tons a year, Ukraine before the start of the SVO - 20-22 million.
For decades, steel remained in China, where it was consumed by construction sites. The Chinese government was aware of the dependence of its own metallurgy on the construction industry, as well as the negative impact of metallurgy on the already problematic ecology, so it periodically introduced bans on the construction of new metallurgical plants. Naturally, the plants tried to export surplus metal.
From 2025 onwards, China's steel demand is expected to decline by 1% per year, equivalent to 10 million tonnes. The "excess" metal has already found its way onto the world market: in the first six months of 2024, China's steel exports grew by 24%, reaching 53.4 million tonnes. The country now exports around 100 million tonnes of steel per year.
Russia is not affected by the influx of Chinese steel: its import in 2024 is at the level of last year. In addition, Russian metallurgists have a general agreement to refuse to supply metal to suppliers of cheap imports. But for the European Union, this is a problem: in August, the European Commission began anti-dumping investigations into the import of hot-rolled sheet metal from Egypt, India, Japan and Vietnam, through which Chinese metallurgical plants can bypass European restrictions.
If in 2023 there were three anti-dumping investigations against metal from China worldwide, then by the beginning of July 2024 their number increased to ten. At the same time, the already mentioned Ukraine is not able to compete on the European market with Russian steel, and even less with Chinese steel.
RENEWABLE ENERGY
China has achieved no less resounding successes in mechanical engineering. IA Regnum has already written about the reasons for the popularity of Chinese cars. But China also has something to brag about in power engineering, and in its most fashionable part - "green" energy.
In August 2024, Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy reported that China's installed solar and wind power capacity exceeded that of coal-fired power plants for the first time. From 2020 to 2023, China commissioned 100 GW of renewable energy, and in 2023, 293 GW of new "green" capacity was commissioned.
The presence of its own RM and REE, together with the focus on the development of renewable energy, has allowed Beijing to make a giant technological breakthrough in solar and wind energy. The already low cost of producing photovoltaic cells in China has decreased by 42% this year. Now the specific cost of solar modules in China is 15 cents per 1 watt, which is significantly lower than the production figures for India (22 cents), Europe (30 cents) and the USA (40 cents).
Therefore, it is not surprising that China controls 80% of the world market. And it is not a matter of dumping or subsidies - it is the effect of scale and a powerful raw material base.
A similar story is with wind turbines. By the end of 2023, China took first place in the world in registering patents in wind energy. As in the case of solar power plants, the effect of scale, domestic reserves of rare earth metals and cheap steel are at play.
In 2023, of the 116 GW of new wind power capacity globally, projects in China accounted for 65%, with most of the generators being manufactured locally. China now also accounts for 40% of the world’s total installed wind capacity, making it the world’s largest market, surpassing the US and Europe. As a result, Chinese wind farms are three times cheaper per MW than those in the US and EU, so they are barred by prohibitive tariffs.
COMPUTER HARDWARE AND TECHNOLOGY
In the field of high technology, China's leadership has long been undisputed, and it is no longer fought so much by high R&D spending as by sanctions.
A striking example of their inefficiency is the Huawei corporation, against which the United States first introduced restrictions back in 2019. Following six years of being under American sanctions, Huawei managed, firstly, to triumphantly return to the Chinese smartphone market, causing a drop in Apple sales; secondly, to bring its Ascend 910B AI chips to the market, forcing the American Nvidia to sell its products on the Chinese market at a discount of 10-15%; thirdly, to take and hold first place in the Chinese cloud computing market for seven years in a row; fourthly, to ensure global leadership in the wearable electronics market.
All this allowed the corporation to earn record profits — with a growth of 34.3% — in the first half of 2024 in the amount of $7.7 billion. In addition, Huawei released the world's first smartphone that folds in three in September.
But Huawei's breakthroughs are not the end of Western problems: Chinese companies have put down roots in the production of semiconductors and other components for electronics. The creation of YMTC in 2016 resulted in a collapse in prices for SSD drives by 2022 - China not only learned to produce next-generation memory, but also began to produce it in gigantic volumes, changing the alignment of the global market. At the same time, the company's inclusion on the US sanctions list could not stop YMTC: last year, it mastered the mass production of 232-layer memory chips with a record storage capacity.
The situation on the global display market is no better for Chinese competitors. For many years, South Korea dominated the LCD and OLED display market — OLED screens were a competitive advantage for smartphones from Samsung. But then the star of China's BOE Technology Group began to rise. First, it captured the LCD panel market, bringing its market share to 26.5% by the end of 2023, and now it is storming the global OLED market. The Chinese company currently controls 12% of the global market, but BOE is building new factories and actively investing in development. Meanwhile, the United States is discussing the need to include it in the sanctions list — under the pretext, of course, of protecting national security.
VIDEO GAMES
Chinese companies have also reached an area where the West's position previously seemed unshakable. In the summer of 2024, the Chinese studio Game Science released the computer action game Black Myth: Wukong, which immediately set several records in the global video game industry. Sales of the game on the Steam platform exceeded 21 million copies, bringing Game Science $1 billion with development costs of about $70 million. The game also broke the record for the number of simultaneous players - 2.1 million people played it.
Black Myth: WuKong had every chance to become the game of the year in the prestigious Golden Joystick Awards 2024 rating, but it did not work out for various reasons, including those far from fair voting.
Apparently, Chinese successes are very stressful for American studios. In particular, the publisher of the legendary Call of Duty series of games, Activision-Blizzard, for which Microsoft recently paid 70 billion dollars. After all, if sanctions can still be imposed on Game Science, then standing behind every gamer and making sure that they do not launch Chinese games will definitely not work.
And in general, sanctions are sanctions, but, as practice shows, it has not yet been possible to stop China.
[Commentary] Early Friday morning in Amsterdam, in the shadow of the house in which Anne Frank hid and where her family was betrayed, rampaging mobs of Moslem men targeted Israeli attendees of a soccer match featuring the Maccabi team. They beat up men and women. They broke into buildings searching for Israelis to attack. They assaulted at least one child. For hours, the streets were not clear of them, as the authorities in the Dutch city had no clue what to do or how to engage. The mobs had been prepositioned at stadium exits, subway station entrances, and near and around the hotels at which Israelis who had come to town to support their team were staying. This was a pre-planned attack. We are mere days away from the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the day when Jews and Jewish businesses were specifically targeted for arrest, injury, and destruction. We’ve only ever really seen still photographs of the damage. You want to know what Kristallnacht was like? Go to Twitter and watch the videos, taken by the GoPro cameras of the goons, and you’ll get some flavor of what the word "pogrom" means. We have just seen the first unambiguous pogrom after October 7.
Now go to the home page of the New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... . Go to the home page of the Washington Post. Go to CNN ...formerly the Cable News Network, now who know what it might stand for... . Go. See where they have placed this story. It is two screens down, in smaller type. Now, fair is fair—it happened in the evening and these organizations no longer have things like Amsterdam bureaus. So this is a rare moment to thank God for the existence of social media; without X the world would not have known that the horror was upon us.
But as it happens, I did, and for a very personal reason. A dear friend of mine, with whom I’ve shared a friends’ text chain for a decade, sounded the alarm because her 20 year old daughter was there—traveled to watch the game from another European city where she is studying abroad for the semester. The first word was this: "A is in Amsterdam. Was going to the Tel Aviv v Amsterdam soccer game. No, she didn’t tell me. Turns out the tickets weren’t working so they went to dinner. Tel Aviv won 5-0 and insanity broke out. The waiter had to use a crow bar to lock everyone inside the restaurant."
A little later I asked her if she’d heard from her daughter. She replied: "She’s in a hotel. Which is a dorm. I haven’t heard from her in a bit. She didn’t answer her phone so I hope she’s just sleeping." As I was reading this, I was watching a video of hooligans breaking into a hotel for the purpose of hunting down Israelis staying there. I did not mention this. I asked if she could see her daughter’s location on Find My Friends. She said, "I see her phone is working. She said she and her friend would stay in and watch movies.."
And my blood ran cold because as she was texting this, I was reading that there were at least three people who had fallen out of contact and whose families did not know where they were or what was happening.
Oh, and I knew that my friend’s father had himself survived the Holocaust in Poland from babyhood in the guise of a child of a Christian family. Finally she got the story from her daughter: "A said a van pulled up next to her and was asking her ’something palestina’ like did she agree. She said she played dumb and ran back inside. Then there were these fake bomb sounds and everyone was sprinting. She said it was terrifying." And she learned her daughter had been at the game but had left early because the entry tickets of some friends hadn’t worked and she went to meet them.
Then my friend said: "She’s like, should I not go to the Anne Frank house today?"
Meanwhile,
...back at the hoedown, the fiddler suddenly struck a sour note. The dancing stopped abruptly. Everyone looked at Bob... in America this week, here’s what’s been happening. On Monday, an Orthodox boy was slapped off his bicycle by a man as he rode in his Brooklyn neighborhood on his way to school. Also on Monday, a speech by an Israel Arab delivered at a synagogue in reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown ...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel... was disrupted by protestors who lay screaming on the floor and had to be dragged out. Also in Chicago, at DePaul University, two students—one of them an IDF reservist who had a shirt saying as much and offering to answer any questions anyone might have—were assaulted. As Rooters reported, "Chicago police identified the victims as two men, ages 21 and 27, and said two male offenders struck the 27-year-old about the face and body and pushed the 21-year-old to the ground then fled on foot....the students were standing near the student center just off campus property."
The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson ...Hizzonner da Mare of Chicago. He was elected in April 2023 to replace the disastrous Lori Lightfoot and immediately set about out-Richtering her. A member of the Democratic Party (naturally), Johnson previously worked as a social studies teacher in the city's stellar public schools system. He helped organize the 2012 teachers strike. Prior to becoming Da Mare, he served on the Cook County Board of Boodlng Commissioners from 2018 to 2023... , has yet to speak on either matter. It is important to note that it took Johnson four days to respond at all to the shooting of an Orthodox shul-goer on Shabbat morning by a gunman shouting Allahu Akbar, and this was his response, through a front man: "Mayor Johnson’s heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with the victim and his loved ones from this weekend’s shooting incident that took place in Rogers Park. This tragic event should have never happened, and we recognize the dedication of our first responders who put their lives on the line during this shooting." Note the missing words. They are "Jew" and "anti-Semitism." Johnson is a Black Lives Matter radical decarcerationist, and his behavior here comes as no surprise to anyone who watched him win the office in 2023.
There was an outbreak of encampment action at Yale this week, where Jewish students had their pathway blocked. At Harvard, there was a "protest"—which is to say, an unlawful disruption in a private area—in a library where foul goons shouted about genocide and settler colonialism. Courses were announced for 2025 at Cornell and Columbia on the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... "genocide." And in the reporting of the invaluable AMCHA Initiative, at the University of Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, at Santa Cruz, "the Critical Race and Ethnicities Studies program shared on the program’s Instagram story a call for students to join the Students for Justice in Paleostine group, stating, ’Interested in advancing justice, liberation and self-determination for the Paleostinian people? Join SJP!’ with accompanying imagery stating ’Student Intifada —We are the revolution of the people’ with an image of a keffiyeh-clad individual firing a rock sling." This program is an officially recognized major, run by tenured faculty and administrators.
[IsraelTimes] What we know now is that the mob attacks on Jews in Amsterdam were premeditated, planned, and sent around on multiple social media groups days before the pogrom.
We also know that taxi drivers were part of it, part of this coordinated effort to corral Israelis and to not let them escape. Israelis reported getting in taxi cabs thinking they were escaping but being brought to side streets to the waiting mob. All along the train route from the stadium, mobs waited on either side of the tracks for the fans to alight. They had knives, sticks, batons, and fireworks which they set off at the Jews.
Jews had to jump into canals, hide in stores, and in random people’s apartments, to escape the bloodthirsty assailants who asked for people’s ID to know where they were from even posting some Israeli IDs on Telegram.
We also know that the Israeli government sent warnings as early as that morning to the Amsterdam authorities regarding these planned attacks but they were not heeded.
We also know that the police, other than in very few instances, stood by and even refused to protect the Israelis that came to them for help- this is an addition to security forces refusing to guard Jewish spaces in Amsterdam in the preceding months.
Returning Israelis reported that in the days leading up to the game they were harassed in public places and casinos for being Israeli/Jews.
A number of Jewish Israelis were saved by a Druze Israeli citizen who spoke Arabic to the perpetrators, throwing them off the trail. He went back and forth saving groups of Jews from the frothing mob. His name is Melhem Asad and he is a hero.
There are people trying to justify these attacks by posting two videos from Amsterdam earlier in the day, one is Israelis taking down a Paleostinian flag, and the other is fans on an escalator chanting a very very stupid soccer chant in support of the IDF against Arabs.
As to the first, there are social media posts where groups are telling one another to put Paleostinian flags everywhere near where the Israelis are staying in the hopes that they can catch one of them ripping it down.
As to the second, I’m not a soccer fan but I am well aware that soccer fans for whatever reason are known as the most testosterone leaden aggressive sort of fans and while I most certainly do not condone their chants (and find it to be extremely unselfaware and stupid at the best of times let alone now) it’s a whole lot of bull to try and justify a pre-planned premeditated coordinated pogrom because of chants... if I recall correctly, chanting in the streets isn’t considered terror ... right?
I do find it ironic of course to expect Israelis not to react to the flag that has become a symbol of terror (or to the burning of the Israeli flag) and yet to be appalled when they chant to let the IDF against those very people.
At the end of the day, what we know is that Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... has failed to protect its Jews once again. The hate is dressed up differently, but it is the same.
Of all of the perpetrators who kicked, punched, stabbed, humiliated, chased, pummeled, terrorized Jews, none are in jug. They are all free on the streets.
The Israeli government sent 10 planes to retrieve its citizens in a rescue effort. From Europe, in 2024.
Amsterdam, indeed, Europe and the rest of the Western World, the premeditated Amsterdam pogrom of 2024 may be your last warning before the end cannot be rewritten.
I see a number of valid points in this Meme.
The DC Swamp and Liberal Socialists and Democrats Coup must be addressed and those guilty arrested and placed on trial.
[RaconteurReport] Dear Deep State:
You lied about me daily for 9 years.
You impeached me. Twice.
You stole an entire election.
You prosecuted me a dozen times.
You raided my family's home.
You tried to bankrupt me.
You tried to imprison me.
You tried to kill me. TWICE. All because I dared to stand between
you and the destruction of the republic. So...how do YOU think it's going to go for all of you starting the first day
I'm back...?
I'm coming for ALL of you.
There's nowhere you can hide.
Sweet dreams, snowflakes.
Posted by: NN2N1 ||
11/11/2024 00:00 ||
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Authored by Chris MacIntosh via InternationalMan.com
[ZeroHedge]
The Houthis in Yemen tried to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Then Hezbollah droned his house. Apparently, he was not at home at the time.
Iran launched an unprecedented missile attack on Israel. The part you probably didn’t hear about is that Iran says a “state of war” now exists between them and Israel.
There’s been a shadow war for many years, though Iran has mostly spends their time on mass attacks on Jewish civilians around the world — like the 1994 VBIED attack on the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 and maimed over 300 — internet attacks on Israeli businesses and infrastructure, and ginning up coordinated wars with Hamas and Hezbollah, while Israel has gone after Iran’s nuclear bomb program, including assassinating nuclear scientists in Iran, and no doubt other spy stuff. And of course, beating the Palestinians and Hezbollah like a drum whenever they act up.
France ended all arms exports to Israel, and the Israel’s pissed and subsequently bombed a French factory in Syria
They did? We missed that…
— an F you and no thanks for all the previous arms shipments and military aid.
Israel paid money for those arms, so the books were balanced in the usual way.
Russia sent 33 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Lebanon.
Israel bombed Syria’s capital, Damascus.
Erdogan compared Israel with the Nazis.
I’ve probably missed a whole lot of things, but you get the picture. None of the above is good in any shape or form.
This last point I pay a lot of attention to, and here’s why.
His sublime radiance, Sultan Recep Tayip Erdogan I “the much beloved” — who hopes to be the first of the neo-Ottoman sultans — has been calling Israel names for over a decade, so the fact of name calling is not indicative of anything. The points the writer makes below are important independent of schoolyard taunts.
Turkey has the second largest military in NATO, and it’s clearly going to leave or be kicked out.
Turkey also controls the Bosphorus, and Iran controls the strait of Hormuz.
The Houthis effectively now (to some extent at least) control the Suez.
That, my friends, is the holy trinity of supply disruption in oil shipments.
What else?
Well, an interesting little dilemma is opening up for NATO. What happens if Israel decides to have a go at Turkey — either inside Turkish territory or outside? That would, according to the NATO treaty, constitute an attack on a NATO partner and immediately mean that all NATO members were now at war with… Israel.
That would certainly clarify all the posturing about Never Again on Holocaust Day. Interestingly, multibillionaire investor Bill Ackman — the one who led the defunding of Harvard after the university president refused to say whether Hamas protester attacks on Jewish students were against university policy — just announced he will be working to move from Amsterdam the hedge fund and Dutch music production company on whose boards he sits, in response to the “Jew hunt” pogrom last week. There is a bit of a tradition for this kind of thing: when Spain expelled the Jews in 1492, many of the refugees were welcomed by Amsterdam, where in gratitude they supported Dutch independence from Spain and the Anglo-Spanish war that followed.
[Bee] BURBANK, CA — Liberal woman Marcie Galveston was forced to film herself having a second post-election meltdown this week after she realized she forgot to hit the record button on her phone the first time around.
"WHY??? WHY?????" screeched Galveston, tears running down her cheeks. "I'm shaking, I'm so terrified! Look what you did, you sick freaks! I'm literally no longer safe as a woman, are you happy? I just can't believe over half the country is so RACIST and SEXIST and... oh wait a second. My phone isn't on. Aw, man. Gonna have start this whole thing from the beginning."
Despite the setback, Galveston worked hard to drum up new tears and access that same level of rage as she set her phone up against the kitchen backsplash a second time and put it on selfie mode.
"Yeesh, it's hard to get that level of emotion on a second take," she said. "Come on, Marcie, you can do this. Think about the trans gulags, the internment camps for gays. ARGH. The tears aren't coming, the tears aren't coming!"
At publishing time Galveston was seen holding an onion under her eyes while reading The New York Times in an effort to spark tears of rage again.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/11/2024 06:51 ||
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#1
Been seeing these things on line. Mental breakdown or incontestable evidence that these individuals failed to mature into adult human beings?
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] When I volunteered for Kamala Harris who got her start in politix between former Oakland mayor Willie Brown's' knees a few weeks ago in a swing district in the New York commuter belt, I was assured by Democratic Party organizers that their ground game would cream Donald Trump ...So far he's been unkillable, and they've tried.... Though the polls were showing the two contenders running neck and neck, the confidence was understandable.
This, after all, was the party machine that generated more than 81 million votes for Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. Too old and senile to be prosecuted, not too old and senile to set national policy... the last time round.
And it was better funded than ever. Nearly a billion dollars had poured into the party's coffers since the start of 2023, well over twice what Trump had raised in the same period.
The campaign in New York's 17th district focused not on Kamala but Mondaire Jones, a gay, black former congressman who was challenging a pro-Trump incumbent, Mike Lawler, for a seat in the House of Representatives.
Jones had all the charisma Harris lacked and, if he defeated Lawler, there was a fighting chance Kamala would pick up additional votes on his coat tails.
At 37, Jones was a made-for-Instagram candidate. And, with registered Democrats ...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy,white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects... outnumbering Republicans by some 80,000 in the district, I thought we were in with a good shout.
Yet what I found soon changed my mind: a self-regarding shambles of a campaign staffed by temporary workers with little experience, less know-how and, apparently, zero interest in talking to Main Street America.
My turf included the affluent Westchester County horse country - home to the sprawling estates of high-profile Dems like Richard Gere and David Letterman - as well as hard-knock Hudson River towns like Ossining, where employment is provided by the Sing Sing supermax.
I’d been assigned to a campaign office in the attractive commuter village of Mount Kisco, one of three the Democrats had opened in the district. But it was a disappointing start.
There were just a few scruffy posters on the rather grubby door. Outside, Harris’s trademark 'not going back' signs were nowhere to be seen.
One smartly dressed woman strolling by told me she thought our headquarters was an abandoned shop.
Then I met my new bosses. It’s fair to say they were young — and that some of them knew little about the area we were canvassing.
Though the door knocking was performed by unpaid enthusiasts like me, our labors were overseen by temps the party hired at rates advertised from $15 an hour on a recruitment site.
I counted nine or ten of them lounging around the office.
The next surprise was to find that I would be using a supposedly state-of-the-art phone app called, incongruously, miniVan.
It would pull up addresses as I went from house-to-house, I was told. And it would synch the outcome of each approach in split seconds with the Democratic campaign's computers.
Advantage Mondaire and Kamala!
Yet the only names on the list were registered Democrat and — in what had been described as the tightest race in recent history (until the results came through, of course), we were to talk to no one else.
'The app lists the registered Democrats in the district. We're only approaching Democrats,' a temp explained.
Incredulous, I called Mitch Saunders, the party's Northern Westchester County organizer, for some guidance.
'The idea is to get Democrats to turn out,’ he confirmed. ’It's all about turn out.’
How about people like the neighbors near my home in Westchester who strung a gaudy Trump banner in the trees?
’No,’ said Mitch.
What about the throngs of well-to-do female shoppers outside the campaign base — the very demographic that the Democrats were supposedly shooting for?
'No.'
I said I'd like a Kamala-Mondaire yard sign for my verge at home. The Mount Kisco office had run out of them. 'You don't need them,' yawned an unshaven youth. 'Just use the app.'
But the app failed to synch when I hit the streets on November 5.
A few doors were answered by puzzled Democrats who’d already cast their ballots and were fed up with being 'harassed' — as they put it — by the non-stop texts and calls pestering them for money.
While the Republicans were stressing authenticity, we were confined to a verbatim script.
’Hi! I'm a volunteer with the NY Dems. I just want to confirm that we can count on you to vote for Mondaire Jones...’
The script was constantly rejigged. By Election Day its most notable feature was that had nothing to say about Mondaire Jones other than his name.
[AmericanThinker] Donald Trump appears to have been the first Republican in 20 years to win the popular vote.
Scouring the internet, the only Democrat figure who seems to be smiling is President Joe Biden. For the others it seems to be a time of mourning. A look at the results, their implications, and the machinations of the federal bureaucracy is in order.
The very best wrapup is by Victor Davis Hanson.
Harris-Walz were not the only losers: There were the media which gave him 95% negative coverage and the pollsters:
The polls -- with the exception once again of AltasIntel, Trafalgar, and Rasmussen -- were off, and way off in the Senate races. The pollsters’ reputation is again in full reverse and now back to their nadir of 2020 and 2016. Many shamelessly warped their data in the last two weeks to gin up Kamala Harris momentum, fundraising, and voter turnout. And to no avail.
There were plenty of indications long ago in key states of a Donald Trump thunderstorm: defections of minorities, anger among both the Jewish and Muslim voters, alienated union members, massive increases in Republican registrations, and non-Election Day balloting. And all were deliberately ignored by the corrupt media and pollsters.
The worst of cable news was MSNBC, which Comcast is trying to unload. I don’t see any takers.
The issues Harris-Walz chose to run on were wildly unpopular, says Hanson:
Open borders, hyperinflation, abortion deification, the transgendered mania, the crime wave, and the “green” obsessions all did their bit to repel voters. The “racist” Trump won more minority support than any Dole, McCain, or Romney figure of the past.
Their lawfare efforts proved unavailing, and this week Jack Smith moved to end those cases against him. New York Judge Juan Merchan is reportedly considering dropping the meritless “hush money” case against Trump.
[Jpost] Short of leasing an American strategic bomber and providing nationality to the pilots and maintenance crew, no option would be operationally ready within months if not years.
It sounds like Israeli ingenuity needs to be applied to the problem.
Last week, Dr. Eric R. Mandel made a compelling argument for deterring the Iranian regime through the use of the largest bunker busters. While I wholeheartedly agree with him, I disagree with the methods of delivery from a technical standpoint. This is an important debate as Dr. Mandel must lobby for the most effective weapons that can be operational quickly.
Why is the 30,000lb GBU-57 bomb important?
The GBU-57 would, in Dr. Mandel's words, "slow their nuclear program, prevent a retaliatory ballistic missile attack on Israel, and de-escalate the conflict." If Israel can destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities, "Iran may be much more hesitant to respond to the Israeli attack on Iranian soil or move towards weaponization and complete a functioning atomic bomb."
Dr. Mandel's article claimed that F-15I Ra'am could theoretically undergo retrofitting to carry 30,000-pound bombs. While the bomb does fit size-wise, there are several engineering roadblocks. The Ra'am would need structural modifications as its payload is 23,000lb in at least three hardpoints. The fuel capacity would be reduced by two-thirds, as external fuel tanks would have to be omitted. Since the F-15I cannot reach Iran without aerial refueling, the vulnerable tanker would likely have to cross into Iranian airspace.
The recently introduced F-15IA has an increased payload of 29,500lb but is spread out throughout the airframe. Structural modifications and range and aerodynamic issues would be time-consuming. The center of mass would shift, adding a whole set of issues to be solved.
Why can't the Israeli Air Force deliver 30,000-pound bombs?
Israel lacks the methods of delivering a bomb larger than the 5,000lb GBU-28. The Air Force strike capabilities are centered around tactical multirole fighters, such as the F-15 and F-16, with no strategic bombers, such as the supersonic B-1B Lancer or the stealthy B-2 Spirit.
The reasoning behind such a procurement strategy was two-fold: Israel did not need the range of these aircraft (and associated weight and complexity), and purpose-built bombers lack air-to-air capabilities. The benefit of F-15s and F-16s is that after dropping their payload, they are nimble fighters, and they can also be used in air superiority configuration to escort a strike package into enemy territory.
The B-1B, B-2, and B-52 bombers are the only aircraft in the Western inventory with the capability to carry the 30,000lb GBU-57. Additionally, it can strike Iran without aerial refueling. They were designed to penetrate Soviet air defenses and go after hardened and mobile targets, such as road-based ballistic missiles - something Israel might eventually need to do against the Iranian regime.
What are the issues with obtaining US bombers?
The B-52 lacks either the supersonic speed of the B-1B or the low-observability of the B-2. The mothballed units would take a long time to get operational, although they could benefit from Israeli electronic warfare suites.
Training is an issue, as it would take months in the best case scenario to be flown by Israeli crews and potentially years to have the level of proficiency currently displayed by them.
Even if the US authorized such a sale, it would require congressional approval, instantly giving Iran the incentive to test its first nuclear device to alert Israel of the consequences of an attack, and at the same time, they would fit nuclear warheads on all their remaining ICBMs.
Dr. Mandel's proposal of using C-130 Hercules cargo planes is unrealistic. While they have been used in Afghanistan, they are highly vulnerable aircraft. Short-range MANPADs can make short work of slow transports. Iran, like Vietnam or Yugoslavia, when facing US airpower, has aircraft and mobile SAM systems dispersed, making it almost impossible to destroy all of them. Furthermore, new guidance systems would have to be developed, increasing development time.
What are the alternatives?
Short of leasing an American strategic bomber and providing nationality to the pilots and maintenance crew (upwards of 120 hours of maintenance per flight hour), no option would be operationally ready within months if not years.
There is a new bunker buster bomb in the pipeline, which would use rocket boosters akin to WW2's "Disney bomb", and would be smaller for the new B-21 Raider and potentially the F-15IA/EX.
Another option could be to modify an existing Jericho ICBM. According to open sources, the Jericho III has a 2,500lb warhead. However, the missile itself weighs over 60,000lb and has a range of over 4,000 miles, so swapping fuel for warhead weight could be plausible, albeit with enormous engineering challenges. Data on Jericho IV is still classified.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
11/11/2024 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11131 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#2
They evidently don't realize that original 'bunker busters' in the Gulf War were produced from surplus artillery barrels. The biggest difficulty was working out the weight and balance so the guidance software would understand how to drop it and hit the target. They did this by mimicing a different bomb. Worked on the first try.
The original non explosive test piece is still in the desert floor in Nevada. Drove itself in, and there's no actual need, so they just left it 113ft down in the caleche.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/11/2024 9:07 Comments ||
Top||
#3
I think that if you are accurate enough a sequence of carefully timed small bombs would be more effective than one big one. (jackhammer vs sledge hammer...)
#4
Short of kamikaze flights or 'unchaining Samson', Israel could proceed with causing maximum relative damage to slow the 'Breakout Time' of Iran's bomb, until the Trump has time to assume power, and prey to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to delay Iran in lieu thereof!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
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