[Guardian] Heroes are curious things. Ours have roots in the ancient Graeco-Roman sense of the concept, which places a premium on military victory. What’s problematic is how many of our heroes embody an inherent level of violence, as is unsurprisingly the case with people whose main accomplishments arise from war. We are tolerant about people who regarded the working classes as an abomination (Wellington), the transatlantic slave trade as a good idea (Nelson) or Indians as repulsive (Churchill), because we think the ends ‐ defeating Napoleon or Hitler ‐ justified the means.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, as the press coverage of her death this week shows, is not entitled to the same rose-tinted eulogy as our white British men. She is "controversial" and a "bully". One newspaper columnist was boldly willing to abandon his usual restraint in not writing ill of the dead specially for this "odious, toxic individual".
The media reports have raised the horrific murder of 14-year-old Stompie Moeketsi, though few have been unduly troubled by the fact that this was a crime she always denied any involvement in, or by the ample evidence of the lengths to which the apartheid regime went to infiltrate and smear her and her followers.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the anti-apartheid campaigner, will be honoured with a state funeral later this month, South Africa’s president has said.
Cyril Ramaphosa made the announcement on Monday evening after paying a condolence visit to Madikizela-Mandela's home in Johannesburg's Soweto township.
The funeral will be on 14 April, with an official memorial service three days earlier.
#2
Soetoro to lead CBC delegation to South Africa with 9 plane loads of attendees along with entire LA Lakers Basketball team. Trump to send Jeff Sessions.
[American Thinker] As many people know, Illinois is a fiscal mess and a national leader in out-migration. To turn Illinois around, how about our elected officials Take the Pledge this November? Will our elected officials endorse these eight suggestions? Does any of these suggestions apply to your state?
1. Illinois is sinking in pension debt. Moving to a 401(K)/403(b) defined contribution plan for all new State of Illinois hires with the ability to put all newly hired public-sector (municipal, school, etc.) employees on a defined contribution plan as well will finally put a cap on unfunded pension liabilities and give certainty to businesses and job-seekers about the future of Illinois. Illinois recently moved to Tier 3 pensions, hybrid defined benefit-defined contribution plans that include a defined benefit component. This hinders the ability of public-sector employees to seek private-sector employment without compromising their defined benefit plan.
According to Reuters (February 2018), Illinois has an unfunded public pension liability of $129 billion. This is up from $111 billion in 2016. Moving new public-sector hires to a defined contribution plan caps unfunded pension liability. In addition, the funds in the public-sector employee's account belong to him ‐ allowing him to move freely between public- and private-sector employment without losing his 35% funded Illinois pension. No more public-sector job lock, no more collecting multiple pensions, no more unfunded pension liability ‐ a win for all.
2. Freeze public-sector hiring until we have shrunk the state workforce by 11.5% via attrition. Assuming a 4% turnover, this should take three years. The average cost per state employee (wages, benefits) is $97,545. Shrinking the payroll by 11.5% saves taxpayers at least $839 million in payroll cost, allowing Illinois to start working down the size of the unfunded pension liability. Those in need of state services will receive their services at a slower rate while a greater role for technological efficiency is implemented ‐ but they will get their services.
3. Repeal the 32% tax increase that went into effect July 1, 2017. In theory, this income tax increase generated $5 billion of revenue. In reality, it just continues to drive productive citizens and businesses out of Illinois. Five more ill-fated suggestions at the link.
#2
Pension Tsunami. Illinois makes the frequent flier criteria
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/04/2018 8:51 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Really, some states need to bottom out, die and be parted out to the states around them. In each dead state, the urban area that was the prime cause of the death needs to be emptied, flattened and made into park land.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/04/2018 9:59 Comments ||
Top||
#4
If Federated Investors does not want to leave Pissburgh, liquidate it pour encourage les autres...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/04/2018 10:01 Comments ||
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#5
My local jurisdiction pushed all new hires into 401K in 2012. We having trouble retaining new staff once they get trained - they move on. We can't pay enough to compete with private
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/04/2018 10:10 Comments ||
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#6
Not whining, BTW, it's just a fact
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/04/2018 10:10 Comments ||
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#7
Gummint always complains it cant hire good help. When all the affirmative action and diversity bullshit is a applied, I wonder why. "I came for the pension package that the private sector has not offered for 15 years." OK...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/04/2018 10:16 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Filling out marriage licenses and sewage permits isn't even AI territory.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/04/2018 10:20 Comments ||
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#9
I'm talking Engineers
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/04/2018 10:20 Comments ||
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#10
Sorry, I misestimated. Shouldn't that stuff be contracted out?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/04/2018 10:24 Comments ||
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#11
We can't pay enough to compete with private Two solutions come to mind (1) pay more (2) do without the services provided. Either way, the electorate will be much better off for not making financial promises they cannot keep.
[Frontpage] The United States has 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, 39,000 in Japan, 34,805 in Germany, 23,000 in South Korea, and around 5,200 in Iraq. Our military protects the borders of countless nations.
Except our own.
In 1919, we had 18,500 soldiers on the border. "Twice a day every foot of the border line is patrolled by cavalrymen and infantrymen," the New York Times noted.
A hundred years later, President Trump’s proposal to use the military to secure the border is controversial even though Marines fighting drug cartels have come under fire from drug smugglers.
El Salvadoran migration has inflicted 207 murderers on this country. The migrant caravan threatening to invade this country includes migrants from El Salvador. Some of them may be MS-13 members. The Pueblo Sin Fronteras caravan of 1,000 migrants is the product of an alliance between international leftists and migrant invaders. Their goal is the invasion, colonization and occupation of America.
And the only ones defending us against them are the members of an outnumbered border patrol, threatened by both drug cartels on the other side of the border and sanctuary states in this country.
That’s why President Trump is mobilizing the troops to do the job that the Democrats won’t do.
"Until we can have a wall and proper security, we’re going to be guarding our border with the military," President Trump said.
Some of the same politicians who oppose withdrawing our forces from Syria also oppose sending troops to secure the border. But which should be a higher priority?
If an enemy army were invading South Korea, our soldiers would swing into action. But the United States has already been invaded. The invaders have occupied and seized control of state governments, including California, while declaring that their rebel cities will defy Federal immigration law.
They mean to do the same thing to the entire country. Their DREAM is the end of America.
From fighting Indian raids to the banditry of Pancho Villa, the military has always secured the border against invasions out of Mexico. The military was our defense against the "Plan of San Diego" terror waged by Mexican racists who vowed to seize control of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Colorado, liberate the "proletariat" and execute all "North American over sixteen years of age."
h/t Instapundit
...But in direct reference to the present Trump phenomenon, he composed a rather artistic combination of traditional conservative views, but sensible conservative views, that he could exploit a nostalgia for and an aspiration for, and added to them a couple of populist flourishes that consisted of a particular emphasis on a couple of points that were not in themselves radical or unheard of or frightening, but from him received greater emphasis, particularly questions of immigration and trade, and to some extent, the imposition of law enforcement.
...I don’t think the Democrats will win the House. I think what will happen is that the President will carefully assemble his healthcare reform that the Republican Party is pretty much agreed upon, and an immigration reform that it’s pretty much agreed upon, put those out very firmly to the voters, stand on his high economic growth and continuing excellent economic numbers, and order the release by the Justice Department, relatively close to the midterm elections, of everything to do with the collusion investigation, to reveal in its ghastly infirmity the absolute vacuity of that argument, the falsity, the malice and the defamatory destructiveness of the entire argument that he or anyone closely associated with him ever colluded with a foreign power to rig an American election. Just administer a bone-crushing defeat to the Democrats, and their echo chamber in the national media. And do it right...just coming into the midterm election campaign. And I think he will gain seats in both the House and the Senate.
[Breitbart] MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has taken to Twitter to assure customers that he will not be pulling his advertising from Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show despite the liberal outrage over her feud with anti-gun Parkland kid David Hogg.
As one company after another rushed to announce an end to advertising on The Ingraham Angle, Lindell stepped forward to tell the world that he won’t abandon Laura.
In a tweet seemingly aimed at Sean Hannity, the company’s CEO and founder insisted, "I did not take my advertising down from @IngrahamAngle and @FoxNews, nor do I intend to. @seanhannity."
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/04/2018 8:49 Comments ||
Top||
#3
I have MyPillows, they are strictly OK, but made in USA? The company does not spit on me by playing pick'n'choose with free speech? I'm all in.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/04/2018 9:11 Comments ||
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#4
I'm glad MP is not caving. Does the left have to politicize everything?--it's just a pillow and a fairly good one at that. Let the left suffer from neck pain.
[WAPO] Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III informed President Trump’s attorneys last month that he is continuing to investigate the president but does not consider him a criminal target at this point, according to three people familiar with the discussions.
In private negotiations in early March about a possible presidential interview, Mueller described Trump as a subject of his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Prosecutors view someone as a subject when that person has engaged in conduct that is under investigation but there is not sufficient evidence to bring charges.
The special counsel also told Trump’s lawyers that he is preparing a report about the president’s actions while in office and potential obstruction of justice, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations.
Mueller reiterated the need to interview Trump ‐ both to understand whether he had any corrupt intent to thwart the Russia investigation and to complete this portion of his probe, the people said.
Mueller’s description of the president’s status has sparked friction within Trump’s inner circle as his advisers have debated his legal standing. The president and some of his allies seized on the special counsel’s words as an assurance that Trump’s risk of criminal jeopardy is low. Other advisers, however, noted that subjects of investigations can easily become indicted targets ‐ and expressed concern that the special prosecutor was baiting Trump into an interview that could put the president in legal peril.
John Dowd, Trump’s top attorney dealing with the Mueller probe, resigned last month amid disputes about strategy and frustration that the president ignored his advice to refuse the special counsel’s request for an interview, according to a Trump friend.
[WarOnTheRocks] Over the last several years, I have met with commanders and fighters from Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (al-hashd al-sha’abi, or PMF), an umbrella organization of some 50 paramilitary groups, to hear about their perspectives on the situation in Iraq. Last month, I re-visited a leader whom I hadn’t seen in some time. As I walked into the room, I noticed that he no longer wore army fatigues ‐ instead, he was in a suit. He joked that things had changed, and he was now returning to politics.
He is not the only one. The PMF have become much more than a group of militias, now seeking to establish a legitimate institutional presence and play a role in politics and the economy, against the backdrop of a fragile Iraqi state that remains weak after the fall of ISIL.
A critical aspect of the state rebuilding process is reforming the security sector, which collapsed in 2014 when a few thousand fighters took over one-third of Iraq. During the 3-year fight against ISIL, a number of armed groups ‐ united in opposition to a common enemy but not in command structure or vision ‐ emerged in place of the struggling state armed forces. Although the Iraqi armed forces have since recovered, the state’s weakness has allowed many of these paramilitary groups continue to control territory in liberated areas from Mosul to Kirkuk.
The largest of these groups is the PMF, established in June 2014 by former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki after the fall of Mosul. The PMF includes groups with competing ideologies and rivalling allegiances to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. However, the most powerful groups and leaders in the PMF come from a network of conservative Shia Islamists who enjoy good relations with Khamenei and the regime in Tehran. PMF forces played a key role in the liberation of territory, first on the front lines in much of the initial fighting, and then holding areas as Iraqi forces recovered and began leading the liberation.
Today, in recently liberated areas, the PMF has recruited local fighters and serves as a de facto national guard. Its political influence is also growing. Organized into the Fatah Alliance electoral bloc, PMF leadership is focused on making gains in the upcoming 2018 elections.
The Iraqi government and its international allies have demanded that the PMF integrate into the central state apparatus. Most recently, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi issued a decree to rein in the militias through an integration process. This has traditionally meant incorporating fighters into the command chain of the traditional state armed forces (al-quwwat al-musalaha), which legally fall under the Ministry of Defence or the Ministry of Interior.
But realities on the ground paint a different picture. Benefitting from the weakness of Iraqi state institutions, the PMF leadership has rejected Baghdad’s decrees, and instead offered its own vision for the future of the militias: to become an independent security body protecting the political system, like a praetorian guard for the state. Under this proposal, the paramilitary groups would fall under the Prime Minister’s Office, which separates it from the Ministry of Defence of Ministry of Interior.
Despite Abadi’s ongoing efforts at security-sector reform, so far the PMF leadership has won the debate. It will not integrate in the traditional way; rather, it will become an institutionalized autonomous force, fundamentally altering Iraq’s security architecture and challenging Baghdad’s command structure and monopoly over legitimate violence. Institutionalization, rather than integration, will define the PMF’s role as the Iraqi state rebuilds itself. Long, click through for the whole thing.
Herb, please don’t use p and /p to separate paragraphs, but just put a blank line between them (except when doing in-lines, of course). For whatever reason, using p and /p results in two blank lines appearing between the paragraphs, and it’s time-consuming to clean up.
Thanking you for the moderators,
trailing wife
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
04/04/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq
#1
So there you have it. Some of the overseas adventure money is now being spent on stuff the USDoS must truly love, ie political hijinx. Let's spend that money here in the USA on our borders, missile defense and better detection at points of entry.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/04/2018 9:18 Comments ||
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#2
I do have an $1800 dollar suit. I didn't need to buy a $1200 plane ticket to get it. Nor additional $1200 plane tix for each member of my entourage. WTF?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/04/2018 9:37 Comments ||
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#3
Hey, I can't be responsible if Rantburg can't parse proper HTML. Every paragraph must be terminated with a end of paragraph marker.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
04/04/2018 15:41 Comments ||
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#4
a number of armed groups ‐ united in opposition to a common enemy but not in command structure or vision ‐ emerged in place of the struggling state armed forces
So regional governing warlords and their enforcers.
[Breitbart] President Donald Trump may about to throw the Kurds under the bus ‐ and with them, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and American interests in the Middle East.
If concerns for securing the Pentagon budget are what convinced Trump to sign the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill last month, Pentagon concerns about keeping Islamist Turkey in NATO seem to be informing Trump’s thinking about abandoning the Kurds.
To the dismay of America’s allies and the delight of its enemies, President Trump declared last Thursday, in a speech in Ohio focused on infrastructure renewal, that he will soon recall U.S. forces now deployed to Syria to fight the Islamic State (or ISIS).
In his words: "We’re knocking the hell out of ISIS. We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now."
On its face, Trump’s statement seems reasonable. In 2014, then-President Barack Obama received congressional authorization to deploy U.S. forces to Syria to defeat ISIS, which had seized large swathes of territory in eastern Syria and western Iraq, and had set up its so-called capital in Raqqa, Syria. But Obama’s war against ISIS was lackadaisical and inconclusive.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged to obliterate ISIS. Upon taking office, he loosened the rules of engagement for U.S. forces, and devolved authority for making attacking decisions from Washington to the forces on the ground.
The results paid off. In December 2017, Iraqi President Haider al-Abadi announced that ISIS had been defeated in Iraq.
....
As global financial analyst and strategic commentator David Goldman notes, the prospect of a global financial shock will rise to near certainty. "When you throw a lit match into a barrel of gas, you will get a big fire," Goldman explains.
If Iran and Saudi Arabia go to war, they will target one another’s oil installations, he explains. "The price of a barrel of oil will rise to $200. Even though the U.S. is energy independent, the global price will still rise due to supply loss, and the global economy will be shut down." Goldman continues.
"This will be the Trump Depression," he concludes.
In other words, the 2,000 American troops in Syria are what stand between the U.S. and a meltdown of the global economy. They prevent war in the Middle East by denying Iran the ability to consolidate its victories in Syria and to launch wars directly, or through its proxies, against Israel and Saudi Arabia.
It does. We import 8m barrels a day. Apart from the effect of a bigger import bill, the ramp in the price of domestically-produced oil will crush the economy by imposing what is essentially a large tax on other industries, and on consumers. Now, other economies will be hurt worse. The question, really, is whether a small amount of expenditures in the Mid East is such a big deal. $200m a year is a large amount of money even for a billionaire, but it is peanuts for the US economy.
#3
Of course, making our allies foot some of the bill isn't such a bad idea, either. Maybe that's what Trump is trying to do. After all, James Baker strong-armed Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the other Gulf kingdoms into shelling out the $60b cost of Desert Storm. If they say no, maybe we just let them suffer the consequences. Tough love is sometimes necessary for countries to learn the facts of life.
#5
These are just globalists desperately trying to keep US troops in Syria. They came to defeat ISIS, job is done, now time to go home.
They come up with this OMG DEPRESSION because that's their answer to every time someone wants peace. Oh, but we need constant war because peace would be even worse! And it would deny the military-industrial complex its ability to profit. Oh dearie me, what an awful outcome!
Posted by: Gronter Smiter of the French9585 ||
04/04/2018 5:13 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Overly simplistic, I'm sure. BUT. What if all the money spent on overseas adventures was instead spent to harden our borders and points of foreign entry?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/04/2018 9:05 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Overly simplistic, I'm sure. BUT. What if all the money spent on overseas adventures was instead spent to harden our borders and points of foreign entry?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/04/2018 9:26 Comments ||
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#9
Even if it's the "overly simplistic" part...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/04/2018 9:45 Comments ||
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#10
I'd make it even simpler. We don't go there, they don't come here.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/04/2018 10:24 Comments ||
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#11
I vote for that ^
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/04/2018 10:33 Comments ||
Top||
#12
Alas the world does not work that way. Withdrawal is an act of betrayl of our local allies, and a show of weakness. It will have all the consequences of Obama's withdrawal from Iraq, and probably more.
Even if you are pro Iran, as some of you appear to be, the consequences of it could be its complete destruction: if it encourages Iran to more aggressive behavior, and there is a devastating response which there most probably would be.
Posted by: Daniel ||
04/04/2018 15:11 Comments ||
Top||
#13
Even with 50 ft tall walls along the border, the foriegnors woll always have a massive back door, the Democrats.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Guardian] Heroes are curious things. Ours have roots in the ancient Graeco-Roman sense of the concept, which places a premium on military victory. What’s problematic is how many of our heroes embody an inherent level of violence, as is unsurprisingly the case with people whose main accomplishments arise from war. We are tolerant about people who regarded the working classes as an abomination (Wellington), the transatlantic slave trade as a good idea (Nelson) or Indians as repulsive (Churchill), because we think the ends ‐ defeating Napoleon or Hitler ‐ justified the means.
[American Thinker] As many people know, Illinois is a fiscal mess and a national leader in out-migration. To turn Illinois around, how about our elected officials Take the Pledge this November? Will our elected officials endorse these eight suggestions? Does any of these suggestions apply to your state?
[WarOnTheRocks] Over the last several years, I have met with commanders and fighters from Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (al-hashd al-sha’abi, or PMF), an umbrella organization of some 50 paramilitary groups, to hear about their perspectives on the situation in Iraq. Last month, I re-visited a leader whom I hadn’t seen in some time. As I walked into the room, I noticed that he no longer wore army fatigues ‐ instead, he was in a suit. He joked that things had changed, and he was now returning to politics.
[Breitbart] President Donald Trump may about to throw the Kurds under the bus ‐ and with them, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and American interests in the Middle East. 
