by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Jul 3, 2015 | Asia-Pacific, Barack Obama, Liberty, Middle East, Radical Islam, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
By: Denise Simon
FoundersCode.com
Si Vis pacem, para bellum
GW Bush said it was going to be a long war when the top enemy was al Qaeda. Defeat was realized until the rules of engagement and strategy were altered dynamically month by month beginning in 2009.
There is Russia and Ukraine as noted by the Institute for the Study of War.
Then there is the Baltic Balance as summarized by the Rand Corporation.
There is Islamic State throughout the Middle East region where the caliphate is beyond incubation.
An outcome of the Iran P5+1 talk on the nuclear program is eminent and that could spell an armed conflict that includes Saudi Arabia and or Israel.
The forgotten region is the South China Sea.
Dempsey’s Final Instruction to the Pentagon, Prepare for a Long War
By: Marcus Weisgerber
Non-state actors, like ISIS, are among the Pentagon’s top concerns, but so are hybrid wars in which nations like Russia support militia forces fighting on their behalf in Eastern Ukraine threaten national security interests, Dempsey writes.
“Hybrid conflicts also may be comprised of state and non-state actors working together toward shared objectives, employing a wide range of weapons such as we have witnessed in eastern Ukraine,” Dempsey writes. “Hybrid conflicts serve to increase ambiguity, complicate decision-making, and slow the coordination of effective responses. Due to these advantages to the aggressor, it is likely that this form of conflict will persist well into the future.”
Dempsey also warns that the “probability of U.S. involvement in interstate war with a major power is … low but growing.”
“We must be able to rapidly adapt to new threats while maintaining comparative advantage over traditional ones. Success will increasingly depend on how well our military instrument can support the other instruments of power and enable our network of allies and partners,” Dempsey writes.
The strategy also calls for greater agility, innovation and integration among military forces.
“[T]he 2015 strategy recognizes that success will increasingly depend on how well our military instrument supports the other instruments of national power and how it enables our network of allies and partners,” Dempsey said Wednesday.
The military will continue its pivot to the Pacific, Dempsey writes, but its presence in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa will evolve. The military must remain “globally engaged to shape the security environment,” he said Wednesday.
The Russian campaign in Ukraine has military strategists questioning if traditional U.S. military force as it is deployed globally is still — or enough of — a deterrence to hybrid and non-state threats like today’s terrorism. “If deterrence fails, at any given time, our military will be capable of defeating a regional adversary in a large-scale, multi-phased campaign while denying the objectives of – or imposing unacceptable costs on – another aggressor in a different region,” Dempsey writes.
The chairman also criticizes Beijing’s “aggressive land reclamation efforts” in the South China Sea where it is building military bases in on disputed islands. In the same region, on North Korea, “In time, they will threaten the U.S. homeland,” Dempsey writes, and mentions Pyongyang’s alleged hack of Sony’s computer network.
Dempsey scolds Iran, which is in the midst of negotiating a deal with Washington to limit its nuclear program, for being a “state-sponsor of terrorism that has undermined stability in many nations, including Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.”
Russia, Iran, North Korea and China, Dempsey writes, are not “believed to be seeking direct military conflict with the United States or our allies,” but the U.S. military needs to be prepared.
“Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns which the international community is working to collectively address by way of common policies, shared messages, and coordinated action,” Dempsey said.
Prepare for a long war. General Dempsey is retiring as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and will likely move on to academia. Meanwhile, on July 9, the Senate Armed Services will hold a confirmation hearing for General Joseph Dunford.
As General Dempsey is making his farewell rounds, his words speak to some liberation in saying what needs to be said in his swan song.
In a new National Military Strategy, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warns the Pentagon to reorganize its global footprint to combat prolonged battles of terrorism and proxy wars.
The U.S. military needs to reorganize itself and prepare for war that has no end in sight with militant groups like the Islamic State and nations that use proxies to fight on their behalf, America’s top general warned Wednesday.
In what is likely his last significant strategy direction before retiring this summer, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon that “global disorder has trended upward while some of our comparative advantages have begun to erode,” since 2011, the last update to the National Military Strategy.
“We are more likely to face prolonged campaigns than conflicts that are resolved quickly… that control of escalation is becoming more difficult and more important… and that as a hedge against unpredictability with reduced resources, we may have to adjust our global posture,” Dempsey writes in the new military strategy.
Dempsey, the president’s senior military advisor, criticizes Russia, Iran, North Korea and China for aggressive military actions and warns that the rapidly changing global security environment might force the U.S. military to reorganize as it prepares for a busy future.
The military has been shrinking since 2012, when the Obama administration announced plans to pivot forces to the Asia-Pacific region as troops withdrew from Afghanistan and Iraq. But since then, Obama slowed the Afghanistan withdrawal as fighting continues there, and thousands of American military forces have found themselves back in the Middle East and North Africa conducting airstrikes, gathering intelligence and training and advising Iraqi soldiers that are battling ISIS. Since U.S. forces are not deployed to Iraq in a combat role, significantly fewer numbers are needed compared to the hundreds of thousands troops that were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade. Still, U.S. commanders have repeatedly said it will take decades to defeat ISIS, and a stronger nonmilitary effort to defeat the ideology that fuels Islamic extremist groups.
Non-state actors, like ISIS, are among the Pentagon’s top concerns, but so are hybrid wars in which nations like Russia support militia forces fighting on their behalf in Eastern Ukraine threaten national security interests, Dempsey writes.
“Hybrid conflicts also may be comprised of state and non-state actors working together toward shared objectives, employing a wide range of weapons such as we have witnessed in eastern Ukraine,” Dempsey writes. “Hybrid conflicts serve to increase ambiguity, complicate decision-making, and slow the coordination of effective responses. Due to these advantages to the aggressor, it is likely that this form of conflict will persist well into the future.”
Dempsey also warns that the “probability of U.S. involvement in interstate war with a major power is … low but growing.”
“We must be able to rapidly adapt to new threats while maintaining comparative advantage over traditional ones. Success will increasingly depend on how well our military instrument can support the other instruments of power and enable our network of allies and partners,” Dempsey writes.
The strategy also calls for greater agility, innovation and integration among military forces.
“[T]he 2015 strategy recognizes that success will increasingly depend on how well our military instrument supports the other instruments of national power and how it enables our network of allies and partners,” Dempsey said Wednesday.
The military will continue its pivot to the Pacific, Dempsey writes, but its presence in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa will evolve. The military must remain “globally engaged to shape the security environment,” he said Wednesday.
The Russian campaign in Ukraine has military strategists questioning if traditional U.S. military force as it is deployed globally is still — or enough of — a deterrence to hybrid and non-state threats like today’s terrorism. “If deterrence fails, at any given time, our military will be capable of defeating a regional adversary in a large-scale, multi-phased campaign while denying the objectives of – or imposing unacceptable costs on – another aggressor in a different region,” Dempsey writes.
The chairman also criticizes Beijing’s “aggressive land reclamation efforts” in the South China Sea where it is building military bases in on disputed islands. In the same region, on North Korea, “In time, they will threaten the U.S. homeland,” Dempsey writes, and mentions Pyongyang’s alleged hack of Sony’s computer network.
Dempsey scolds Iran, which is in the midst of negotiating a deal with Washington to limit its nuclear program, for being a “state-sponsor of terrorism that has undermined stability in many nations, including Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.”
Russia, Iran, North Korea and China, Dempsey writes, are not “believed to be seeking direct military conflict with the United States or our allies,” but the U.S. military needs to be prepared.
“Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns which the international community is working to collectively address by way of common policies, shared messages, and coordinated action,” Dempsey said.
by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Jul 2, 2015 | Barack Obama, Liberty, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
Justice Antonin Scalia said in his dissent in the same-sex marriage case that the ruling was a threat to our democratic form of government and constitutes a “judicial Putsch,” or secret power grab. He didn’t just say the majority was wrong or misguided; he essentially said they had conspired to overthrow our form of government. His position on the Court may have made it impossible to supply specifics. But one possible explanation of what he meant is that he saw a conflict-of-interest on the part of members of the majority, which required their recusal from the case.
Rather than investigate what Scalia is hinting at, our media have opened fire on Scalia for blowing the whistle on judicial corruption.
In fact, the push for gay marriage has been tainted by lies from the beginning. As Professor Paul Kengor notes, Obama himself was caught lying by his own adviser, David Axelrod, who now admits Obama favored gay marriage when he was publicly opposing it to get elected. “According to Axelrod,” Kengor told WorldNetDaily, “Obama supported gay marriage as far back as the mid-1990s, when he was an aspiring Chicago politician. He publicly suggested otherwise, however, in order to get votes, especially from African-Americans who rejected gay marriage in higher numbers than white Americans.”
Kengor, author of Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, said he believes Obama was influenced in favor of “a more open view toward sexuality” by his communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a pornographer and pedophile. But Obama was careful to sound conservative and Christian on these issues when he ran for president.
What’s more, as AIM has documented on numerous occasions, media “coverage” of the issue has been non-stop propaganda, much of it emanating from a group called the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association. Most people haven’t heard of the group, which is the way they want it. The nature of gay pride parades has even been censored, prohibiting the public from understanding that the homosexual movement celebrates crude displays of nudity and vulgarity.
Politically, it would be one thing if Scalia had responded that there was an honest disagreement over the meaning of certain words in the Constitution. Instead, he said the majority subverted the Constitution by reading into it something that does not exist—the “right” to force government at all levels to recognize gay marriage. By inventing this “right,” Scalia and the other dissenters said, the Court has put our actual rights of freedom of religion and expression in grave jeopardy. This seems to be the nature of the “putsch” Scalia is talking about. He could very well be referring to behind-the-scenes pressures put on the Justices by homosexual elite forces, the financially powerful one to two percent, who seem to have so much sway over the media, academia and the corporate world. These people are now attempting to suppress a new film, “An Open Secret,” about pedophilia in Hollywood.
Whatever the reason for the putsch, our form of government has been overthrown and another put in its place—a judicial dictatorship that is devoted to elevating to protected status a sexual minority seeking the abolition of traditional values. Left unchecked in its drive for power over others, this cabal threatens not only our heritage but America’s standing in the world as a superpower. It appears the Obama administration wants to spend more money on Pentagon gay pride events and climate change than actual weapons systems to defend America.
As we get ready to celebrate Independence Day, however, we can rest assured that the American people remember enough about the founding of their country that they cannot and will not accept a judicial tyranny. That would make a complete mockery of what July 4th is all about and what millions of Americans have sacrificed for.
The critical part of the law in the gay marriage case is Title 28, Part I, Chapter 21, Section 455 of the U.S. Code, which is applicable to judges and courts. It says, “Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” These disqualifications include cases in which “he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party…”
Our media didn’t treat it as a big deal, but Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg had both officiated at gay weddings. Groups such as the National Organization for Marriage, the American Family Association, the Coalition of African American Pastors, and the Foundation for Moral Law had called for Kagan and Ginsburg to withdraw from the case.
Matthew Kidd, executive director of the Foundation for Moral Law, told Accuracy in Media that the failure by Kagan and Ginsburg to withdraw from the case leaves them open to impeachment and removal from the bench.
But will Congress act?
According to the Supreme Court website, the only Justice to be impeached was Associate Justice Samuel Chase in 1805. It says the House of Representatives passed Articles of Impeachment against him; however, he was acquitted by the Senate. A majority is required for impeachment in the House but a two-thirds vote is required for conviction.
In the case of Kagan, an Obama appointee, she may have had a personal conflict-of-interest. This is a sensitive matter, but various reports indicated that Kagan was a known lesbian before she was nominated to the Court by President Obama. For example, the gay blog QueerTY had identified her as a lesbian. That would mean she was compromised on homosexual issues prior to her ascension to the bench and after she was confirmed. This is a conflict of interest that cannot be tolerated.
Whether the reports of her lesbianism are true or not, we know that Kagan had an extremely radical record as Dean of Harvard Law School (2003 to 2009) where she promoted homosexuality and transgenderism. Nevertheless, she was confirmed to the Supreme Court in a 63 to 37 vote.
Kagan “avoided the sort of scrutiny that some nominees have faced,” The Washington Post noted at the time.
We now see the evidence of what happens when the media and Congress fail to do their jobs.
Congress, however, can try to undo some of the damage by holding hearings into the possible impeachment of Justices Kagan and Ginsburg. This would be one way of getting to the bottom of Scalia’s sensational charge that America’s democratic system has been subverted and stolen from the American people.
We are bound to hear that impeachment would be difficult and conviction impossible. There’s always an excuse for not taking bold action in Washington, D.C. But a congressional failure to act, in the wake of Scalia’s extraordinary charge of a judicial Putsch, would suggest that celebrating July 4th means fireworks and nothing more.
I think enough Americans are sufficiently concerned about this matter that they want to see some real fireworks, in the form of Congress exposing the lies, corruption and conflicts of interest that went into the sick and tyrannical gay marriage ruling.
Members of Congress taking up this cause will not get sympathetic headlines in the media. But it is something that has to be done if Independence Day is going to have any meaning left at all.
by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Jul 2, 2015 | Barack Obama, Liberty, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
The Watcher’s Council
Yes, once again, It’s time to present this week’s statuette of shame, the Golden Weasel!!
Every Tuesday, the Council nominates some of the slimiest, most despicable characters in public life for some deed of evil, cowardice or corruption they’ve performed. Then we vote to single out one particular Weasel for special mention, to whom we award the statuette of shame, our special, 100% plastic Golden Weasel. This week’s nominees were all particularly slimy and despicable, but the votes are in and we have a unanimous winner… the envelope please…
Legal Surgeon, Amateur Legislator and Chief Justice John Roberts!
The Noisy Room: Justice John Roberts for his judicial activism on King v. Burwell and the ultimate betrayal with his ruling in favor of Obamacare this week. The ruling stomped all over state’s rights and bent over backwards to reinterpret the Obamacare statute in favor of federal exchanges. “The somersaults of statutory interpretation they [the Justices of the Supreme Court] have performed …will be cited by litigants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence,” concludes Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito. “And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.”
“So it rewrites the law to make tax credits available everywhere,” he dissents. “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.” The Court’s interpretation is “absurd,” Justice Scalia opined. And right he is. Scalia is a brilliant legal mind and he is horrified by the Leftist turn of the court. This must tear his soul apart. This was simply a political power play and one has to wonder, as I have before, if Chief Roberts has skeletons in his closet that are being used to sway his opinion.
This partisan ruling will have wide-ranging, catastrophic ramifications for America. The majority opinion states that “The combination of no tax credits and an ineffective coverage requirement could well push a State’s individual insurance market into a death spiral.” And it inevitably will. Which in turn, will usher in single-payer healthcare. It’s coming.
“It is implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner,” Justice John Roberts writes for the majority. Really? Because it looks entirely plausible to me. In fact, choreographed.
Justice Scalia notes that these Justices are “presuppos[ing] the availability of tax credits on both federal and state Exchanges.” In layman terms, that means that federal tax credits that have already been given to millions of people must continue. Along with the tax credits will come higher premiums, crappier healthcare, death panels, higher deductibles and part-time employment as the national norm.
This is tyranny and what you are seeing here is the dissolution of the three branches of constitutional government we are based upon. We now have one executive behemoth branch that is drunk with power and careening out of control, right on schedule. Justice Roberts is a treasonous weasel, whose legacy will include the ending of our Republic as we have known it.
You know, this was an interesting week for Justice Roberts. One day, he’s rewriting ObamaCare for the second time, clearly disregarding what the law said and substituting what he thought the law ought to say.
A few days later he’s writing the minority opinion on same sex marriage, harshly criticizing the Court for – wait for it – legislating from the bench!
Those whom characterize Justice Roberts as lacking in testosterone have it all wrong. It takes real Weasel with cojones to criticize the Court for doing what you did just a few days ago!
The truth of the matter is, like almost all Weasels, John Roberts looks out for Number One. There’s suspicion that the Obama regime has something on him and given whom Barack Obama is and the amount of spying and data collection that’s been going on, that’s not at all an unreasonable scenario. Or it could be he’s being intimidated or bribed in some other way. But he’s not an idiot and for him to make such a hypocritical switcheroo like that, the simplest and most obvious explanation is that he was told beforehand that his vote wasn’t needed to impose same sex marriage on America. That way, he could come out with a dissent that criticized exactly what he himself did in the ObamaCare ruling, to try and salvage some of his credibility as a PR move. It didn’t work of course, but weasels live by that old saying about dogs barking, but the caravan moving on.
The damage he and his cohorts whom voted to judicially rewrite ObamaCare, redefine marriage and lay the ground for attacks on the First Amendment isn’t at all obvious to those cheering on the New Order, but that damage is severe and will last for some time. Roberts probably realizes it, at least intellectually. But the fact remains that on ObamaCare, he did what he did anyway. And I’m sure that had Justice Kennedy swung the other way and Roberts’ vote was needed to impose same sex marriage, Roberts would have voted that way.
In any event, he performed like a trained seal. He did what he was supposed to and after all, he has a lifetime appointment. And of course, a well-earned Golden Weasel.
Well, there it is.
Check back next Tuesday to see who next week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week are!
Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.
It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere and you won’t want to miss it… or any of the other fantabulous Watcher’s Council content.
