[Red State] Military recruitment is in trouble, with the U.S. Army missing its goal by about 10,000 new soldiers in 2023. What's causing the slowdown that has left the nation's oldest service branch in peril even as threats around the world grow?
According to a new report, the shortfall is coming from a lack of white recruits, a problem that has grown progressively worse since 2018.
BLUF:
Diversity, equity, and inclusion and an obsession with intersectionalism have inundated the Army and the military as a whole. Illustrating that is current Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Brown, who bragged that he used "diversity" as a barometer for promotions and staffing.
What does that tell a potential white recruit? It tells them that they shouldn't bother signing their life away because they won't be treated fairly and will not be promoted based purely on merit and accomplishment. They simply aren't "diverse" enough, and given the Biden administration is still pumping out DEI studies claiming more bias is needed, anyone thinking about joining should know it's only going to get worse.
#2
Since a VAST MAJORITY of potential recruits are straight and normal in nature. Why would DC expect them to sign up, to mixed in with the ABNORMAL's.
[MAIL] The esteemed Johns Hopkins Hospital is facing criticism after its DEI chief sent out a letter labeling all white people, Christians, men and English-speakers as 'privileged'.
The letter, posted on Twitter by End Wokeness, was written by Chief Diversity Officer Sherita Hill Golden, was part of the 'monthly diversity digest'.
A furious hospital employee shared the memo with the Twitter account.
In it, Dr. Hill explains that 'privilege' is the 'diversity word of the month'.
To explain who the phrase applies to, she offered a list. It reads: 'Privilege is characteristically invisible to people who have it.
'White people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males Christians, middle or owning class people, middle-aged people and English-speaking people,' all fit the bill, according to Golden.
#5
What's earned generation after generation is not 'privilege'. Getting stuff for what you didn't work for generation after generation simply because of some conferred special status is privilege.
[Daily Caller] As we head into the New Year, Chinese President Xi Jinping is weighing his options. Now that President Joe Biden has less than a year guaranteed left in the White House, Xi may be thinking this is the best opportunity China will ever get to recapture Taiwan. The complex calculations behind China’s actions and its expectations of a U.S. (under)reaction are best summed up by one academic who’s been holed up at Harvard for over half a century.
Harvard government professor Graham Allison first made his bones in the 1970s with a paper on the Cuban missile crisis, where he devised bureaucratic and organizational models for looking at foreign policy decisions. These have now become standard operating procedure for a new generation of foreign policy wonks. He went on to have an illustrious career at Harvard as a professor, founding dean and think tank director, advising both the Reagan and Clinton administrations as well as countless other agencies and task forces over the decades.
Even within Harvard’s elite pool, he ranks among the top. Perhaps only the late Henry Kissinger outpaced him in terms of government influence. But unless you went to college for political science, you’ve most likely never heard of him.
However, he’s broken through to some mainstream notoriety with his 2017 book, "Destined for War: Can America Escape Thucydides’s Trap?" The core concept references the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, whose explanation of the causes of the Peloponnesian War has been studied for thousands of years. "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable," Thucydides explains. In general terms, war is likely when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power.
I'm no big time scholar from Harvard but, to me, that statement there sounds like appeasement. Could it be this guy is every bit as corrupt as Joe Biden and looking to get rich from Chinese money?
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
01/12/2024 13:07 Comments ||
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#5
tl;dr conclusion of article: Treating China like an enemy is just too great a risk; we must make room for them in the current system or everyone loses.
[Gateway] During my time in Government, I twice had an encounter with a former Director of National Intelligence who made an odd comment. On both occasions, he said, "Taiwan is definitely going back to China," as if Taiwan was anyone’s to give away. On both occasions, I stopped him and corrected him that such a statement was nowhere in U.S. Law nor even stated policy. Both times he retreated and attempted to clarify himself. I had great respect for him and had once received a rare award from him and found these very odd statements, especially the second time a year later when he made the same strong assertion again.
The elections in Taiwan are only a couple of days away on January 13, 2024, and the stakes are high. For years, Presidential Administrations have used "strategic ambiguity" in regard to Taiwan. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) was for years the law in effect on Taiwan and stated it was required for the United States "to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan." What did this mean? It meant it was law that the U.S. would maintain a military large enough to resist any use of force or other forms of coercion against Taiwan. Not exactly a crystal-clear expression of U.S. Policy on Taiwan, but it did imply Taiwan was under the American nuclear umbrella, and with a large U.S. Navy and Air Force presence in the Western Pacific, the Chinese were deterred from taking Taiwan. Would the U.S. come to the aid of Taiwan if attacked? My interpretation was yes — but few of my colleagues were confident or advocated that.
Times have changed, and President Biden was told by President Xi of China when they met in San Francisco that China would re-unify Taiwan with the mainland, and then on December 31, 2023, President Xi said, "re-unification was inevitable". This statement was possibly the most bellicose reference to Taiwan made by a Chinese leader in 30-plus years.
#2
But if China’s military is so deeply corrupt and under-equipped, as was just reported, with missiles fueled with water and such, how serious of a threat are they, at least until a thorough inventory is done and the equipment problems fixed?
In other words, is China currently a paper tiger, and if yes are they capable of turning that around?
#5
Imagine Xi's humiliation if the Taiwanese were to repel an invasion from the mainland. If he's gonna do it he better make damn sure the invasion succeeds, and quickly, because he probably wouldn't survive a failure.
#6
Yep, even with the deal inked - Taiwan still has a say in the matter.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
01/12/2024 12:29 Comments ||
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#7
FIFY @ Phugum
U.S. policy does not recognize the PRC's sovereignty over Taiwan; U.S. policy does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country; U.S. policy considers Taiwan's status as unsettled.
The reality of US's one China policy states that Washington does not take a position on Taiwan’s sovereignty and merely “acknowledges” the existence of a Chinese position.
#8
@ #5 - and that's the PRC's strategic dilemma. IF/IF the PRC chooses to go kinetic and invade (big if) - do they preemptively attack US forces in the region to delay our response?? If they don't and we can respond quickly, the invasion never gets past the high water mark. If they do, they will be the aggressor and get their dicks kicked.
I don't think the ChiComms are anywhere near ready for an invasion. They are more than happy to run gray-zone ops and build capacity. I do think at some point they will escalate in the form of a blockade, seize the near islands, and maybe missiles/airstrikes/SOF in a decapitation strike. A full-scale amphibious assault is whole other game.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
01/12/2024 14:23 Comments ||
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#9
/\ Valid assessment. How about a game of 'Two-Up' (best of 5) for the drinks ?
[Semafor] Big banks have hired one of the country’s top trial lawyers and are preparing to sue the Federal Reserve — a nearly unthinkable challenge — if sweeping new industry regulations aren’t watered down.
Eugene Scalia, the son of the former Supreme Court justice and a well-known conservative litigator, is quietly drawing up a lawsuit seeking to block the proposed rules on behalf of the Bank Policy Institute, a trade group that represents JPMorgan, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, and others, people familiar with the matter said. It would be the first time in recent memory that the industry has sued the Fed, and a departure from standard halls-of-power persuasion efforts that try to avoid antagonizing its chief regulator.
The stakes are high: Banks warn they’ll pull back from lending, particularly to small businesses and borrowers with lower incomes or credit scores. Some of that is posturing, but the rules would eat into bank profits, pushing them in some lines of business below the returns they have promised shareholders.
In a full-court press against the proposed rules, banks have run ads during Washington Commanders football games and enlisted pension funds to put a more sympathetic face on their grievances. Testifying in front of Congress last month, the CEOs of the biggest banks criticized the proposal in a tone so confident it bordered on condescension. “It makes no sense,” said Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman, who stepped down last week.
The rules, called Basel Endgame, are the result of more than a decade of efforts by global bank regulators to harmonize patchwork rules that had sprouted up over decades and were further balkanized in varying responses to the 2008 crisis. Michael Barr, the Fed’s top cop, says that even 15 years later, U.S. banks still aren’t prepared for a financial shock.
The government says banks would have to hold about 20% more capital — a buffer they’d build up by socking away profits that might otherwise go to shareholders, employees, or acquisitions. The banks say those numbers are off and have produced their own analysis that puts the add-on closer to 30%.
“As a matter of legal process, it’s not going to be enough to say that a bunch of regulators got together in Switzerland, and this rule is what they brought down from the mountain,” Scalia told Semafor.
“The agencies have to do their own work, explaining why these new requirements are properly calibrated, and why their benefits are worth the costs,” he said. “This proposal doesn’t do that.”
Even using the more conservative figures, a bank with $1 trillion of loans and trading assets in a mix similar to JPMorgan’s would need an extra $20 billion or so of capital, according to a Semafor analysis. Most of that comes from surcharges to mortgages, credit cards, and securities.
“Requiring more capital will almost always improve the stability of the banking system,” said Randy Quarles, the Fed’s chief bank supervisor during the Trump administration. “But it may not improve the stability of the financial system as a whole.” A lot of lending has already been pushed out of banks and into private investment firms, where the Fed has a harder time seeing it, he said.
The proposal has critics even within the government. Two members of the Fed’s board voted against it, as did two members of the FDIC’s board, one of whom said last week that he was “unable to defend or even understand important aspects.”
That leaves Fed Chair Jerome Powell as referee, and he has hinted both in dry government-speak in public and in more pointed comments in private meetings with congressional lawmakers that the proposal is likely to be reworked. He only has a few months to do so: The Fed generally doesn’t announce overhauls on the eve of a presidential election.
#1
During peak COVID it was my understanding that bank reserve requirements were run down to virtually nothing. Any insight on what the current actual requirement is?
[Daily Caller] CNN political commentator Jonah Goldberg said Thursday that New York Attorney General Letitia James’ case against former President Donald Trump should have never been brought, describing it as entirely political.
Trump gave a closing statement Thursday as his civil trial concluded. James brought the case in Sept. 2022, alleging that Trump inflated the value of his properties to obtain better loan terms. The Democratic AG is seeking a penalty of $370 million and to ban Trump from doing real-estate business in the state for life.
"Jonah ... You mentioned money. $370 million in ill-gotten gains. That’s what the New York attorney general is saying. And trying to bar him from doing business in the state of New York. And also asking for a five-year business ban for Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr, his sons. Just talk about the sort of psychology of this for Donald Trump," host Dana Bash said.
[BLAZE] A New York City school has forced students to stay home so it can temporarily house illegal immigrants.
Glenn Beck believes this is a sign of what’s to come for the rest of the country if the Biden administration doesn’t do something about the growing border crisis.
"What would you do as a parent? 'Wait, my kid has to move, my kid has to go someplace else because their school has been taken over by illegals?'" Glenn asks, adding, "No, I don’t think so."
Meanwhile, the Red Cross is passing out flyers on how to get to America all over South America and Latin America. But it's not the only one. The United Nations is not only aiding and abetting immigrants but pushing them toward the southern border.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Malek Dudakov
[REGNUM] Three years have passed since the death in an American prison of the scandalous billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. However, the United States continues to be haunted by scandals surrounding his parties with minors.
The release of court documents related to Epstein has once again brought to the fore the Western elite who attended his parties. But they will again try to avoid any serious consequences, escaping with only reputational losses.
The figure of Epstein remains one of the most mysterious among American elites. He is often called the Jay Gatsby of the 21st century - referring to the character in Fitzgerald's famous novel.
Like Gatsby, Epstein was very rich and flaunted it, owning gigantic estates and a private island in the Caribbean. It was there that his debauched parties took place, to which the billionaire invited celebrities, businessmen and influential politicians. And then he collected dirt on them.
Epstein's career began as a math teacher at an elite private school in Manhattan. When he got bored with that, he went to trade options at the investment bank Bear Stearns on Wall Street. And he even managed to take part in the work of the largest financial pyramid in America in the 80s - Tower Financial Capital.
After the collapse of the pyramid, Epstein, like many times in the future, managed to get away with it. He founded his own investment firm, where he offered Wall Street tycoons to manage their assets.
Epstein established profitable contacts with influential people. He managed to make friends with the Clintons. And after Bill Clinton left the presidency of the United States, it was Jeffrey Epstein who became one of the first donors to the Clinton Foundation.
Then, in the early 2000s, the now famous parties began. Epstein invited famous figures to his mansions, who spent time in the company of 14-16 year old girls. The scheme was simple - each of them received $300–500 per night and a bonus for inviting friends. So Epstein formed an entire industry of child prostitution around himself.
In addition, he also traveled extensively. On his private plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” the billionaire organized a “tour” to poor countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, where he conducted the same pedophile orgies. And since 1998, he chose an island in the American Virgin Islands as a permanent place for his debauchery.
Epstein was helped in organizing a den for pedophiles by Leslie Wexner, the founder of the Victoria's Secret lingerie brand, who “supplied” models from his fashion shows. He had a similar accomplice in France - Jean-Luc Brunnel. True, he eventually went to prison and committed suicide in 2020, immediately after Epstein’s death.
In 2005, more than 50 girls filed charges against Epstein. During searches, child pornography was found in his home. But, despite all this, the lover of girls got off with a very light sentence. He was given 13 months in an "elite" cell at Palm Beach Prison. And they even allowed me to return to my home on weekends. Well, after his release, Epstein continued to organize pedophile orgies.
The next arrest took place only in 2019. Then the circumstances were much more serious, and Epstein faced up to 45 years in prison. But he eventually committed suicide, although he was in a special cell where he was supposed to be monitored around the clock. But the video cameras suddenly broke down at the moment of Epstein’s death, and the guard went out for a smoke break.
A year later, FBI agents managed to arrest Epstein's accomplice Jislaine Maxwell. She handled his finances and looked after underage girls at parties.
Maxwell was widely linked to Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. Allegedly, she could transfer dirt on pedophiles there. Similar rumors about cooperation with intelligence agencies were spread regarding Epstein - there was talk about his work for the FBI. However, rumors about connections with the Israelis did not help Maswell much: she received a twenty-year prison sentence.
The materials on her case were then classified because the court considered them too “sensational.” Only a few years later they began to gradually become public. But it cannot be said that what has now been published has become some kind of great sensation. Much could have been guessed before, but now these guesses are confirmed by new details.
Let's say Bill Clinton liked "younger girls." He once burst into the editorial office of the gossip magazine Vanity Fair and demanded not to publish material about his connections with Epstein. Clinton rode the Lolita Express for more than 30 years and was more deeply involved in this pedophile scandal than anyone else.
Prince Andrew, the younger brother of the British monarch, also got it. Underage girls were paid $17,000 to spend the night with him. The prince himself denied participation in pedophile parties for a long time, although there was even a photo where he posed with one of Epstein’s girls. As a result, he had to pay $16 million to the victim to cover up the case.
Epstein's parties were attended by many others, from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to physicist Stephen Hawking. They are now trying not to appear in public, hoping that the scandal will fade away on its own. Bill Clinton even fled the United States and temporarily relocated to Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
The British prince was forced to give up some of his duties as a member of the royal family. They even wanted to deprive him of his Windsor residence and move him to a smaller house. But in the end they didn’t, considering it too “severe a punishment.”
None of those who appeared on Epstein’s island were touched in 2019, when these criminal cases were just opened. They will not be touched even now. One of the reasons is due to the fact that many materials on the case of the pedophile pimp mysteriously disappeared.
After his arrest, for some reason the FBI did not immediately conduct searches of the estates, although the feds in the United States are usually not inclined to be so careful with private property.
During the weeks that Epstein's residence remained empty, a safe containing discs was removed. They featured videos of his partygoers, which Epstein then used for blackmail. The publication of such materials could definitely become the basis for lawsuits against Clinton or Prince Andrew. But the safe evaporated in a timely manner.
So now these scandals only damage the reputation of the participants in Epstein’s orgies, but nothing more. And many of them are probably waiting until the dust settles to continue their debauchery, just in new company.
However, such obvious injustice will only mean for America a further decline in the level of trust in the political elite and the law enforcement system, which clearly protects its own.
All American institutions - from the military and police to Congress and the presidency - are now experiencing a crisis of confidence. And it will only worsen against the backdrop of increasing division and political wars tearing apart American society.
#1
I think this is one of the reasons why Pelosi stayed in Congress. She was on of the folks that made this happened. It would be hard for her to keep a lid on things from retirement although Paul Ryan seems to still have influence.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/12/2024 13:00 Comments ||
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#2
Pelosi, McConnell, Ryan, Cheney, Schumer...these are all sick and twisted individuals. I believe they are capable of planning and executing such a coup.
On 15 July 2016, Turkey was shaken by an attempted coup. For the first time in modern Turkish history—a history littered with attempted coups—the elected government thwarted the putsch. We suggest that the success of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in defeating the coup attempt is part and parcel of its competitive authoritarian regime. On the one hand, AKP’s extensive access to public and private resources, as well as its control over conventional and social media, bolstered its capacity to mobilize during the time of crisis. On the other hand, the regime’s electoral features have armored the AKP with political (not to mention popular) legitimacy, and have incentivized opposition parties to remain committed to the regime, rather than opt for an uncertain future under military rule. We conclude that the failure of the coup attempt not only indicates the resilience of competitive authoritarianism in Turkey, it may also pave the way for a more stable authoritarian regime under the AKP’s rule.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] They can grow brains, but not babies. SKYNET smiles.
Babies are more complicated than brains. But both are in their infancy.
Scientists could be on the verge of a medical breakthrough that slashes the 'big element of chance' involved in IVF.
Currently, the fertility treatment has a success rate of up to 40 per cent.
Academics based at the University of California San Diego have now developed a new non-invasive that can assess the quality of lab-grown embryos.
At present, fertility doctors typically have to carefully analyse embryos to pick out ones with the best chance of success. This can involve taking biopsies or visually assessing them, both of which can be problematic.
The new technique, although still in its infancy, avoids interfering with the 'delicate process'.
Particles of genetic material, known as exRNAs, are left behind in petri dishes used to grow eggs that have been fertilised in the lab. This allows scientists to inspect them without relying on biopsies of the embryos or visual characteristics.
The researchers also identified around 4,000 different exRNA molecules for each of five different stages in an embryo’s development.
Using this range of molecules they were then able to measure the morphology — the form, shape and structure — of the embryo as accurately as more invasive tests, they said.
Professor Sheng Zhong, an expert in bioengineering from the university's school of enginerring, said: 'We were surprised by how many exRNAs were produced so early in embryonic development, and how much of that activity we could detect using such a minute sample.
#1
Yep, Gates has gotta be in there somewhere. Decrease population even more. Be like Japan with negative growth. Putin of course has gotten it wrong by offering women money to have babies. Muslims couldn't care less. Numbers game and they are winning.
#2
Babies require a lot of care and feeding but can't do much work. Growing them into intelligent, hard-working adults requires several ingredients modern society is hell-bent on banishing from the equation.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/12/2024 8:15 Comments ||
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#3
There is Yin and Yang to all things.
So, how will this be used by the New Normal World Order?
#5
At present, fertility doctors typically have to carefully analyse embryos to pick out ones with the best chance of success. This can involve taking biopsies or visually assessing them, both of which can be problematic.
Especially for the embryos. What happens to those with no chance for success?
..are left behind in petri dishes used to grow eggs that have been fertilised in the lab.
The little one won't know his parents until The Last Day. What a reunion that'll be!
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.
[MAIL] The esteemed 
/\ Pelosi, Schumer and Co. didn't write the project plan. You know who wrote it. You watched the Turkish J6 news broadcasts of course.
