RE: Trump Battleships

Everybody on Mil X is giving their opinions on the new Trump battleships (“BBGs”), so I guess I should join in.

Although I love reading about the history of naval warfare, I am admittedly far less knowledgeable on the subject in the modern day than my USN/USMC/CG/MM brethren. My area of expertise lies in land warfare and logistics, but I have a passable knowledge of naval warfare and overall national strategy, so I will add my 2c.

John Konrad has a great breakdown as to why the BBG will fill important roles. I’ll link to his post on that one below. I had been concerned that the BBG was a bad idea in terms of putting all of our eggs in one sinkable basket, but he convinced me that the BBG has a vital role to play based on certain immutable facts of geography, such as sea lane choke points.

My focus instead for this post is on how all the usual suspects in the Democrat/Media Complex are decrying this as a Trump vanity project. Their arguments trace back to WWII where the battleship saw its preeminence vanish in the face of carrier-based aircraft. These detractors point out that in a peer-to-peer fight with a nation like China, the BBGs would be as vulnerable and useless as the gigantic Japanese battleships that the US Navy sent to the bottom in WWII before they could ever even join the fight.

I believe this is a wrongful application of military history.

As John Konrad points out, the BBG provides a unique capability that is especially useful in modern naval warfare against non-peer adversaries, and represents a deterrent against piracy-like operations that are more related to the Barbary Pirates than Guadalcanal.

Further, I doubt we would ever deploy a BBG in any environment where the USA did not possess air supremacy. Moreover, the air defense capabilities of modern naval warships eclipse WWII capabilities by several orders of magnitude, even with respect to aerial and sea-based drones. Finally, the survivability features of modern warships are greatly better than those WWII vessels that so many see as the exemplar of battleships. This is not going to be the USS New Jersey or the IJN Yamato—these will be modern designs with survivability capabilities far in excess of historic equivalents. For these reasons, I consider the WWII analogies to be invalid.

In practical application, the BBG would be an arsenal ship that can stay on station for extended periods of time without replenishment, securing vital choke points such as the entry points to the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf.

Additionally, as an Army guy I appreciate the ability of a BBG to conduct sustained, uninterrupted fire support to land operations in a way that even a carrier air wing cannot. (Does this mean the Army gets the same ANGLICO support it once enjoyed? Will ANGLICO stop focusing on CAS and now restore the emphasis on indirect fires?) Most of America’s land battles are in the littoral, not just for Marines but for the Army as well. IMO its has been a failure of US naval doctrine to limit the role of naval gunfire in support of land operations. The BBG will fix that shortcoming.

Next, as a matter of strategy and not tactics, consider the “Great White Fleet.” If you are not familiar with that fleet, it was a fleet of battleships and cruisers that Teddy Roosevelt sent sailing around the world in the early 20th Century that signaled the emerging naval preeminence and national power of the USA. Roosevelt saw this not as a tactical imperative, but as a strategic one, signaling “Don’t mess with the USA.” The power of that message is incalculable, as it serves as a deterrent that means those ships never need fire a shot in anger. I believe Donald Trump views the BBG in the same light, and he is right, IMO.

Consider the famous image of the USS New Jersey floating off the coast of Lebanon back in the ‘80s (below). Something about a gigantic, invulnerable, firepower-laden warship floating off one’s coast tends to have a dramatic strategic effect on bad actors and other adversaries. Trump intends to replicate that capability, which, CVNs notwithstanding, America’s naval forces have lacked for a very long time.

Finally, consider the bolster this will provide to America’s strategic industrial base. Countries like China and South Korea long ago eclipsed the USA in terms of shipbuilding capacity. The days of the USA turning out a Liberty ship in four days are long past. We have much catching up to do if we are going to ever try to go toe-to-toe with China in an extended conflict. The BBG will provide a great learning experience for our shipbuilding industry, it will help us grow that capability, and it will provide lessons learned and capabilities that can be applied to a great variety of other US warships and support vessels. This reason alone may justify the construction of BBGs.

The great challenge to the BBG will not be its employment. Its greatest challenge will be to get it built in the first place. For decades the USA has invested billions of dollars in the design and prototype production of weapons systems that are never actually fielded. For the BBG to succeed, we must see it through to full scale production. Which means electing MAGA Republicans to Congress and JD Vance as President, because without that follow-through from a supporting Congress and Presidency, the BBG will never sail.

So basically we have yet another reason to vote MAGA in 2026 and 2028.

Here’s to the battleship—Merry Christmas.

(I’ll explain some of the acronyms in follow-on posts below.) John Konrad's important post:

https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2003837390540910834

🔥MRS. DR. PUBLIUS ALERT (A 🧵, 1 OF 7)🔥

I hate to witness this ridiculous in-fighting amongst conservatives like Tucker and Vivek! Get focused and stay focused on our primary goal to save the Republic and preserve the country for future generations.

America has evolved through tumultuous and prosperous times in her relatively short history of 250 years which we will celebrate next year. What all of us who love this great country must remember is - it is because there were people in the 1600s who left Europe looking to establish a new way of life, the slaves who were tragically brought here in chains robbed of their human dignity during the times of slavery, the native Americans who lost their lands as more settlers arrived and migrated west and the immigrants in the 19th century from all over the world seeking freedom - all of these necessary facts, the good and the bad played a monumental part in the evolution of our great land- America. This remarkable evolution now showcases to the world like no other nation - it is a way of life for everyone, a set of values not an ethnicity or particular race, or class status that makes Americans who we are. Imagine a canvas as each stroke of the brush representing historical events blending together to create this masterpiece -America. What a great vision, a vision that must sustain us. So stop the damn bickering! It isn’t very American-and we have our very existence on the line because the next election the Dems win - they are coming for all of who believe in and cherish their American birthright - to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Your race and ethnicity doesn’t determine the veracity of your American heritage - in my opinion, the question is - what did you specifically do to make our country great? I have my list .

What’s on yours? 2/7

Unfortunately, however, the reality is there are some horrific truths about our history and how different groups of people were hated for their ethnicity or race. We all know this.

We all know it wasn’t until after a slow but steady process of civil rights advocacy through the courts, elections, civil disobedience, etc that the Constitutional Rights of every American was codified into US law and thus, the real and hopefully enduring American birthright was born. Now, we know we face a looming problem - do we as a nation mandate its citizens are REAL citizens? The answer is YES!

Are we willing to fight for our way of life? Are we willing to turn back to God as a nation, so He can heal our land? We need to jettison the toxic cultural trash in our culture since post WWII - Wokeism, Radical feminism, Feminization of our culture, the attempt to eradicate masculinity, anti-Christian hate, Anti-semitism, the list goes on.

RE: The Sedition 6 and History

I’ve been doing my best the last few days to frame the Sedition 6 in terms of US and world history, so I thought I would consolidate links to those posts in a single post for folks who may not have seen them.

History is hugely important in this context, as people need to understand certain precedents that illustrate the following points:

1. What the Sedition 6 have done is unprecedented since the Civil War.

2. Historic U.S. military success in some cases may never have happened had the Sedition 6 had a say at the time.

3. The exercise of lethal force we are seeing again the invading drug boats is both legal and consistent with past US actions by some of our greatest Presidents, and is consistent with the Monroe Doctrine.

4. The act of undermining a nation’s military through perfidious information ops is a classic behavior of fascists and communists.

History speaks, and should be our guide.

Links:

x.com/CynicalPublius…

x.com/CynicalPublius…

x.com/CynicalPublius…

x.com/CynicalPublius…

x.com/CynicalPublius…

x.com/CynicalPublius… @JohnGalt_who_is suggested I do this in thread format instead. Good suggestion. Here goes: 🧵

RE: Pentagon Access Kerfuffle & Media Lies

Please take the time to read this lengthy post, it’s important.

There is SO MUCH lying and distortion on this matter, we need to cut through the garbage.

So I’m here for it.

Go ahead and Google this phrase (you'll see it everywhere in sooooo many legacy media reports):

“. . . information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified."

Google it with quotes around it so you get that EXACT phrase. See how much it shows up, VERBATIM, with those EXACT WORDS in that EXACT ORDER in so, so, so many media reports?

Go look for yourself. I’ll wait.

______________________

Welcome back.

Now.

This quote strongly suggests that what the Pentagon is saying is that the media cannot publish an article without Pentagon prior approval. If this were true, that would, in fact, be an egregious example of prior restraint and a grotesque First Amendment violation.

But…

See…

That VERBATIM quote is NOT TRUE. Here is the actual quote:

“. . . information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released by any military member, DoW civilian employee or contract employee, even if it is unclassified.”

(I’ll link to the source document in my post immediately below, because the algorithm hates links.)

Notice the words that are DIFFERENT in the actual quote. (I bolded and italicized them.)

The lying media—the ones mewling about First Amendment violations—PURPOSELY LEFT OUT THOSE KEY WORDS.

Liars, liars, pants on fire.

Let me explain the difference:

1. In the media’s distorted, untrue quote, the language suggests that any news story requires pre-approval by the DoW. If this were true, it would be a clear First Amendment violation.

But it’s not true.

2. The ACTUAL quote merely says that people who work in the Department of War are not allowed to provide important defense-related information to the media without the appropriate national security approval party in the DoW authorizing that DoW employee to share such information first.

THIS IS NOT A FIRST AMENDMENT VIOLATION. THIS IS NOT PRIOR RESTRAINT. The press is still allowed to write whatever it wants. The limitation is on DoW employees, military and civilian, and NO ONE ELSE.

THERE ARE NO LIMITS ON THE PRESS IN THIS MATTER, and the press is purposely and deliberately lying to you about this issue—lying by omission.

Please spread the word. Otherwise well-meaning people are being snookered by this propagandistic sleight of hand these evil journotards are foisting on them.😡😡😡😡 Source link, bottom of page 3:

rcfp.org/wp-content/upl…

A thread. 🧵

So a follower pointed out to me that the modern Democrat agenda is quite literally an embodiment of the Catholic doctrine of the Seven Deadly Sins.

What an insight! (I’ll credit the follower below as new posts with X @ names embedded tend to get suppressed.)

The Seven Deadly Sins are:

1. Pride.
2. Greed.
3. Lust.
4. Envy.
5. Gluttony.
6. Wrath.
7. Sloth.

This thread will use images to make the comparisons. 🧵First of all, credit where credit is due:

https://x.com/ljffatima/status/1972017838472024072

Now they we have renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War, hence making the name accurate, I’m thinking we could also rename the remaining 11 federal departments to more accurately reflect their current missions:

1. Department of Agriculture—> Department of Genetically Modified Foods.

2. Department of Education—> Department of Indoctrination.

3. Department of Health and Human Services—> Department of Publicly-Traded Pharmaceutical Companies.

4. Department of Homeland Security—> The Stasi.

5. Department of Housing and Urban Development—> Department of Free Rundown Government Housing.

6. Department of the Interior—> Department of Critters and Oil & Gas Leases.

7. Department of Labor—> Department of Marxism.

8. Department of State—> Department of Acquiescence to Our Enemies.

9. Department of Transportation—> Department of Derailed Trains and Potholed Highways.

10. Department of Treasury—> Department of Theft.

11. Department of Veterans Affairs—> Department of Sorry, That Is Not Service-Connected.

Yes, I know President Trump and his team are doing a great job changing all this, but at the moment these departments are still infested with unelected, unaccountable Deep State Bureaucrats. A little truth in advertising can’t hurt. Oops.

Forgot

12. Department of Justice—> Department of Lawfare.

I really don’t like it when racists, antisemites, xenophobes and/or all-around nutters follow me on X. I don’t like being associated with any of that.

So, on this Labor Day, here is a compendium of twenty things about me (or things I believe) that I know are deeply unpopular in certain sectors. If you disapprove of these, please feel free to self-select and unfollow.

Thanks in advance!

Here is the list:

1. I was once a Democrat. I voted for Walter Mondale in 1984 because I believed Ronald Reagan wanted ketchup to be a vegetable. Later, I became an adult.

2. I believe Israel is the freest nation in the Middle East, and is a force for good—a shining light of personal liberty and democracy in a desert sea of abject tyranny.

3. I’m a white Irish kid from New Jersey. I’ve been married for 35 years to a black woman from the South who descends from slaves, and we are deliriously happy. If you find this in any way offensive, you have a subtard ratbrain.

4. I believe such a thing exists as the “Judeo-Christian Tradition.”

5. The Earth is round. It’s not flat.

6. “We’re a republic, not a democracy” is a stupid comment because we do have representative democracy, which in fact is a form of democracy.

7. We landed on the Moon.

8. Race is a human construct, and God knows no races. The only way to end racism is to stop talking about race.

9. “QAnon” is now and always has been a whackadoodle loony group, deliberately created by intelligent Leftists as a way of embarrassing the most gullible among us on the Right.

10. They are contrails, not chemtrails.

11. Catholics are Christians. The most socially acceptable form of bigotry in the USA today is hatred of Catholics.

12. MartyrMade would have fit in quite nicely in a Hugo Boss uniform, and Conceptual James is devoid of valid concepts of any kind. Both are midwits who mistakenly believe they are geniuses with unique insights that elude lesser humans.

13. Burning a US flag (so long as you are not breaking other laws in the process) is protected free speech under the First Amendment.

14. Prattling on endlessly about how Jews control the world makes you an evil antisemite.

15. I oppose the death penalty. Why? Because you can’t oppose abortion without opposing the death penalty, because the law often makes mistakes even with eye witnesses, and because the state should not have the power to kill its own citizens.

16. People who wave you through at intersections when they have the right-of-way should be publicly shamed in the town square.

17. Demons exist, and walk among us.

18. Atheists generally become atheists because they have slightly-above-average IQs and went to a university. Smart enough to be indoctrinated, not smart enough to challenge any premises of the indoctrination, and not smart enough to realize many things are unknowable.

19. A plane flew into the Pentagon on 9/11/2001. I was friends with one of those who died there that day. Later, many of the group of civilians I supervised in my last Pentagon assignment narrowly missed being killed on 9/11 and saw the burning engines between the C and D Rings as they evacuated. If you say something other than an airliner hit the Pentagon that day you are a disrespectful brainwashed conspiratorialist loon.

20. Pam Bondi is the best U.S. Attorney General of my lifetime. Let me elaborate on #15.

While I oppose the death penalty, I'm perfectly OK with child rapists and the like being locked naked in an 6'x'6'x6' concrete box, drenched in freezing water 8 times a day, and fed a diet of grubs and beetles.

RE: DeepStateGate & Federal Criminal Law

So a lot of my followers have been asking me to explain what Tulsi Gabbard's reveal yesterday means as a practical matter, i.e., what can actually be done about it in the courts?

Well, while I am a lawyer, I’m not a litigator, and I’m not well versed in criminal law, so I’m probably not the right guy to ask. BUT… as a lawyer I do know enough to do basic statutory research, and as a public service I thought I would tie out Gabbard’s allegations against actual federal criminal statutes that MIGHT apply (note I did not say “DO apply”).

(Before I begin, I want to make two things clear because I know I will hear about these in the comments. Yes, the statutes of limitations for these various crimes are important here. But I am not going to get into that, as the very specific, non-public facts matter as to when the last acts in the alleged crimes occurred, and certainly with at least conspiracy it would seem the statute has not yet run. Second, I’m not going to get into “They’ll never win in DC” argument. The DOJ is full of smart lawyers who can figure out how to get these charges into friendlier venues.)

OK, let’s start.

In non-legal, layperson’s terms, Gabbard is alleging that certain elected and appointed federal government officials engaged in the following bad behaviors:

1. Knowingly falsifying classified intelligence reports for political gain.

2. Relying on such knowingly falsified classified intelligence reports as a basis to engage in illegal searches and seizures against political opponents, and otherwise compromising such opponents’ constitutional rights.

3. Releasing classified information to the media.

4. Conspiring with other government officials to accomplish any of the foregoing.

5. Lying about the foregoing to Congress while under oath.

6. Attempting to cover up any of the foregoing.

Hopefully we can agree that these cover all of the bad actions of DeepStateGate (and we’re not even including the media’s willingness to lie about all this).

I’ll now repeat that list and for each entry cite the federal criminal laws that may have been violated:
__________________________________________
“Knowingly falsifying classified intelligence reports for political gain”

18 U.S.C. § 1001, “Statements or entries generally” (Basically this covers knowingly falsifying official documents.)

18 U.S.C. § 1519 , “Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy”
__________________________________________
“Relying on such knowingly falsified classified intelligence reports as a basis to engage in illegal searches and seizures against political opponents, and otherwise compromising such opponents’ constitutional rights”

18 U.S.C. § 241, “Conspiracy against rights”

18 U.S.C. § 242, “Deprivation of rights under color of law”
__________________________________________
“Releasing classified information to the media.”

18 U.S.C. § 793, “Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information”

18 U.S.C. § 798, “Disclosure of classified information”
__________________________________________
“Conspiring with other government officials to accomplish any of the foregoing”

18 U.S.C. § 371, “Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States”

18 U.S.C. § 241, “Conspiracy against rights”
__________________________________________
“Lying about the foregoing to Congress while under oath”

18 U.S.C. § 1621, “Perjury generally”
__________________________________________
“Attempting to cover up any of the foregoing”

18 U.S.C. § 1505, “Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees”

18 U.S.C. § 1512, “Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant”

18 U.S.C. § 1519, “Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy”
__________________________________________

OK that’s it.

TO REPEAT: I am not saying anyone will be, can be or should be charged under the code sections I listed above. But they MIGHT be. Ultimately, that will be up to smart DOJ lawyers who have way more information on these matters than any of us do. I posted this merely so laypeople can do their own research, which I encourage.

An informed citizen is a powerful citizen.

Those code section cites above are easy to Google, and you don’t need to be a lawyer to understand the plain language of those laws.

I encourage you to review the actual text of these laws.

I hope this helps inform the public debate.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

(P.S., if you are a litigator or criminal law litigator, please correct me if I said anything wrong, I would appreciate the clarity.) @shipwreckedcrew, @ProfMJCleveland, @KurtSchlichter, @RonColeman, if so inclined I would love if you could point out anything I might have gotten wrong, or add salient points I missed.

(I write contracts for a living, not motions.)

Are you sick of engagement farming via threads by paying blue checks?

A thread, 1/10🧵 They can make their posts as long as they want.

2/10🧵

Re: the Signal chat and The Atlantic article.

The minute I read the chat my very first thought was that Goldberg was specifically and deliberately included so that he would leak what he saw to the public. The idea was to let Europe know just how unhappy American leadership is with Europe's unwillingness to pull its weight militarily. The backchannel, seemingly accidental nature of that reveal was powerful and I believe intentional.

Also, as someone who has read his fair share of Top Secret/SCI war plans, this ain't it.
I also envision Trump, JD and Hegseth laughing their a$$es off as they set up Goldberg.

If you were going to write a Hollywood script that contained a contemporary, giga-conspiracy theme, you could do no better than what we're seeing right now play out before us regarding Master Sergeant Matthew Livelsberger.

Think of all the contemporary/conspiracy theory elements:

-Trump Tower.
-Cybertruck (Elon).
-Special Forces Afghanistan vet, one year from retirement, whose family and teammates say he could not have done any of this.
-Worked in cutting-edge, military drone tech.
-Emails to whistleblowers about super-secret anti-gravity tech, Chinese forces attacking the East Coast, wartime cover-ups about killing civilians, and the Deep State hunting him as he tries to cross the border into Mexico.
-A MAGA Manifesto that millions of Americans could have mostly truthfully written without blowing themselves up (i.e., a scriptwriter theme, MAGA = crazy suicide bomber).

The story even has a MacGuffin--a Desert Eagle handgun suicide weapon that no self-respecting SF operator would ever actually carry. It's like the scriptwriters threw that little detail in there just to troll us.

Honestly, it all just feels to on-the-nose for me.

"Grok, write me a treatment for a movie about a paranoid anti-hero that includes a deep, dark conspiracy theory regarding the US government, and make it rotate around all of the biggest news issues of the past 6 months."

Too perfect.

Too much like we're living in a simulation.

At this point I have zero idea what is true or untrue about Livelsberger, or what is missing from his story.

I know Occam's razor says that the most logical scenario is that the guy snapped and had some sort of psychotic break, but my spidey sense is nevertheless tingling big time.

Something is off. ...and if you followed me for a while, you know I am almost always the one stomping on conspiracy theories and reverting to Occam's Razor. But this just feels too much like this:

So they identified the guy who was in the Cybertruck that blew up at Trump's place in Vegas.

His supposed LinkedIn is below.

✅Green Beret NCO?
✅Intelligence and Operations Specialist?
✅19 years, 1 month of Army service?
✅"Remote Autonomous Systems"?

Holy crap is the information op gonna be unreal on this one.

Could somebody please hit Ctrl-Alt-Del on 2025 please?

kthxbai Here's some fuel for the fire.

Over the 2024 election season and after, I have been astonished to learn that so many conservatives are almost completely unaware of how politics and persuasion work in the USA.

A governing coalition must learn to rule as a group, with internal compromise being necessary at every turn. It is quite literally an impossibility for a governing coalition to accomplish ANY of its goals if it is unwilling to compromise on SOME of its goals.

This is not an opinion, it's a basic and immutable natural law.

This is particularly true under the Constitution, with its deliberate checks and balances designed to neuter the ability of any one branch to dominate.

The Democrats know this rule, which is why they are always able to push through radical agendas with only the slimmest of majorities. Republicans? It's like we WANT to be neutered and ineffective.

Moreover, this GOP ignorance extends to not understanding public "persuasion," as Scott Adams calls it.

A governing coalition that shows public-facing unity is able to persuade its weaker opponents that resistance is futile, and therefore it is far easier for the coalition to achieve its goals.

OTOH, a governing coalition that is publicly fractured and openly dispirited persuades a weaker opposition to be optimistic and work towards cracking open the coalition along those lines of fracture, and as a result the coalition is far less able to achieve its goals.

I wish more people understood these realities.

(And please spare me the "CP just wants us to shut up and do what he says" garbage. Also, you can say all you want that "we are conservatives, we are not lock-step like the left" because none of that changes the objectively true statements I made above.)

Conservatives need to learn how to govern. To be abundantly clear, I am talking ONLY about compromise INSIDE our ruling coalition.

I am not talking about compromise with Democrats.

As far as I'm concerned, at this moment in time we should compromise with Democrats on NOTHING and tell them to suck eggs.

We are all on edge about the election. Despite our confidence in the pro-Trump polling and early vote numbers we see daily, we are nevertheless anxious and uncertain.

We should be anxious and uncertain.

Our nation, our lives and the lives and our grandchildren depend upon the results of this election.

We are 6 days away from the election.

Fear and uncertainty are our enemies, as we need to inspire our friends, families and co-workers to get out and vote.

Inspiration is required.

Those of you who follow me know how much I am inspired by certain movie scenes.

So let’s do that.

A thread.

1 of 9. 🧵 Of course it all starts with this.

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters;
For he or she to-day that votes blood with me
Shall be my brother or sister; be they ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle their condition:
And voters in the USA now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their personhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon November 5th.”

youtube.com/watch?v=bvFHRN…

2 of 9 🧵

So GEN (Ret.) Barry McCaffrey is in the news again, this time as an MSNBC commentator attacking Trump regarding the “Trump loves Hitler” hoax.

I want to tell you a story about good ol’ Barry. The story speaks to how The Swamp operates, how political generals operate and how the Democrat/Media Complex operates.

(I usually hesitate to cite anonymous sources, but the story I’m about to tell comes from a friend who was on Barry’s personal staff when the incident I am about to describe happened, and I have since confirmed the story with an impeccable source who served in the Clinton White House. I’m telling this story just as it was told to me.)

Bill Clinton took office in 1993. Shortly after the inauguration, Barry (who was then a 3-star and serving as the Joint Staff J-5 (Strategy, Plans and Policy)) went to the White House for a meeting. He wore his Class A uniform. I’ll let the Congressional Record tell you what supposedly happened:

“He says ‘good morning’' to a young staffer, a female, not that gender means anything. She leans over in his face, and says, ‘We don't talk to people over here who wear their uniforms.'’ Nobody was ever fired for that despicable insult. As far as we know, nobody was even disciplined.”

…and that’s exactly how the news media reported the story.

If you are a youngster, you may not realize what a big, BIG deal this was. Bill Clinton’s status as a draft dodger and someone who was on the record as saying he “loathed the military” was a HUGE campaign issue. Mending fences with a military that really did not like him was a very important issue in the first days of his Presidency. This issue with Barry could have had terrible implications for the Clinton Administration, but it was basically smoothed over and Barry appeared very gracious about it.

But here’s the shocker.

That “young staffer”? It was really 13 year-old Chelsea Clinton, and what she said was actually more along the lines of:

“My father and mother don’t allow uniforms in the White House.”

The White House Press Corps KNEW THIS and collectively refused to report it, ostensibly to protect an innocent 13 year-old girl. (But imagine if Barron Trump had done something similar!!!) The reality was that they stayed silent not to protect Chelsea, but to protect Bill and Hillary from having to ‘fess up to the fact that they really did teach Chelsea to think and act like that. (Things could have been even worse because a few weeks later “Blackhawk Down” happened after SecDef Les Aspin refused to authorize sending M1 tanks to Somalia.)

Even today you won’t find this story accurately reported in the news.

Which brings us back to Barry. The President privately apologized to him, Barry kept his mouth shut, and to quote what the President told Jack Ryan in the movie “Clear and Present Danger”:

“You've got yourself a chip in the big game now. You're gonna tuck that away, you are going to save that for a time when your own ass is on the line and then you're gonna pull it out. And I'm going to cash it in for you. Right? But it won't go any further than that. It's the ol' Potomac two-step, Jack."

And that’s exactly what Barry did. He kept his mouth shut. He played the Potomac Two-Step. Then he made his fourth star and became the combatant commander for USSOUTHCOM, and most people in the know thought that was a steeping stone to moving first to USCENTCOM, and then maybe to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But Barry retired early, called in that chip, and Clinton appointed him as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (the “Drug Czar”), which I feel pretty sure (IMO) Barry thought was a path to one day maybe being POTUS himself, which thankfully never happened.

So there it is. A scandal the media refused to report on. A political general who let POTUS, his wife and his kid insult and demean the military in exchange for a shut mouth and a cushy political appointment.

It’s the Potomac Two-Step.

It’s The Swamp.

It’s why The Swamp has to lie about, attempt to imprison, and attempt to murder Trump, all because he won’t play the game.

It’s also why when Barry McCaffrey and his banana republic, corrupt flag officer ilk get on MSNBC, you can’t trust a word they say. Here's the Congressional Record link:

govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CR…

I see that dude is getting millions of views getting his Tim Walz story out drip-drip-drip.

If you know me, you know I despise Tim Walz and would never do anything to assist his electoral chances.

Nevertheless, I try to remain a person of integrity.

If/when this dude reports something meaningful that either:

(A) Is not already open-source public knowledge;
(B) Includes official and incriminating government or school district documentation; or
(C) Includes assertions of illegal behavior by Walz from a named and independently verifiable source;

Then somebody please wake me and let me know because I would love for these accusations to be verifiably true.

Until then, however, I'm not playing Kraken-level engagement farming. OK, everybody, please let me explain why I find this problematic.

Unproven/unprovable, libelous assertions discredit our movement.

Here are FACTS that we know about Walz:

-As a high school teacher, he took a confused 15 year old boy student home with him and to an Indigo Girls’ concert.
-He encouraged this boy to accept that he was gay, presumably without his parents’ knowledge.

These facts ALONE are scandalous and disqualifying. We should be shouting them from the rooftops. We know they are true because Walz bragged about them. In his telling of the story, “Coach” Walz was a hero who saved this boy from bullying.

However, when you add in a bunch of unverified/unverifiable accusations of gay statutory rape, all of a sudden that unverified story puts a cloud over the FACTS that by themselves are awful.

This is how counter-intel ops work.

The idea is to discredit MAGA, discredit our movement, and hide truth behind deceit.

This is why I recommend we ALL be super cautious whenever we encounter a Kraken/Q/PizzaGate story. Often times we are the targets. We are the intended victims.

Let’s be careful out there please.

If you have some free time and are interested in the information war that flows all around all of us, I suggest perusing the U.S. military's Joint Pub 3-53, "Doctrine for Joint Psychological Operations." (I'll provide a link below.)

Quick excerpt:

"Psychological operations (PSYOP) are planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. PSYOP are a vital part of the broad range of US diplomatic, informational, military, and economic activities. PSYOP characteristically are delivered as information for effect, used during peacetime and conflict, to inform and influence. When properly employed, PSYOP . . . [reduces] adversaries’ will to fight. By lowering adversary morale and reducing their efficiency, PSYOP can also discourage aggressive actions and create dissidence and disaffection within their ranks, ultimately inducing surrender."

Now go ahead and replace the word "foreign" with the word "domestic" each time you see it, and tell me we are not right now, as ordinary American voters, the target of a deliberate, pro-Democrat PSYOP campaign using the tactics, techniques and procedures developed by the US military and the CIA.

Tell me we are not. Go ahead. I dare ya. I double-dog dare ya. Link:

nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB1…

Well I guess I don't need to worry about doxxing Walz's battalion commander, because his battalion commander has done it himself on Facebook.

So everyone understands, Walz's battalion commander was his direct supervisor, and the bond between a Lieutenant Colonel battalion commander and his battalion Command Sergeant Major is one of sacred trust (or at least it is supposed to be).

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Colonel (Ret.) John Kolb, Minnesota Army National Guard. See below. Hat tip to @SRAlsultani for pointing me to this.

Thanks Braveheart, and thanks for your fearless service downrange.

OK Patriots, please listen up.

THIS POST BELOW IS THE VERY MOST IMPORTANT NEWS STORY RIGHT NOW, BY FAR. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE SPREAD IT FAR AND WIDE AND TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

Seymour Hersh is a well-respected, veteran journalist and HE IS A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT.

He is reporting that Obama told Biden "Step away, or Kamala Harris will invoke the 25th Amendment."

Here is why this is so important:

1. This is criminal blackmail and extortion under federal and Delaware law (where Joe was at when it happened).

2. It is also likely a violation of numerous other federal statutes regarding abuse of an elected office.

3. This is blatant abuse of the Vice Presidential office and CLEARLY rises to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors" necessary for impeachment of Vice President Velveeta.

4. As a campaign issue in the Information War, this is a tactical nuclear artillery round:

"Kamala Harris, Backstabbing Blackmailer & Extortionist. How can she ever be trusted with our nation?"

5. I don't care if she is ever charged or impeached--it's the MESSAGING that matters.

Please spread this far and wide. Please, I beg you. This is exceptionally powerful stuff, I promise. I'm beginning to also think that this was a shiv that Obama, Pelosi and Schumer shoved in Harris' back at the same time they shoved one in Biden's back.

What if Obama and his cronies hatched this plan up, knowing Harris would go along if they did and that she would be too stupid and narcissistic to recognize that the plan put her at as much risk as Biden?

Then Obama or a close Obama associate leaks it to the immensely credible and unassailable Seymour Hersh, Harris is forced out of the race, and Obama gets the open convention he wanted. What if?

Do you put anything past the Targaryens at the top of the Democrat Kingdom?

In the light of morning of the next day, I'm going to posit the Occam's Razor theory of what happened. I think this is logical and is the most reasonable understanding of what happened:

1. A deranged young Democrat gun enthusiast was heavily influenced by fascistic Democrat/media rhetoric and decided it was just and necessary to assassinate Trump in order to "save our democracy."

2. He was a lone gunman, as acting alone is the only way to pull this sort of thing off.

3. Despite some individual acts of bravery, the Secret Service acted incompetently.

4. To the extent anyone wants to uncover conspiracies directly related to the shooter inside our government, nothing is there. The real conspiracy is simply the denial by the Biden Administration of the Trump campaign's repeated requests for additional Secret Service protection.

____________________________

You don't need to know the burglar to facilitate the burglary, you just need to leave the front door unlocked.

I think that's the whole story. I could be wrong, but don't think I am. Let's not let wild theories hide the fact that Democrat rhetoric caused this and Biden denying Trump protection allowed it. I'm reading the replies.

Never underestimate the incompetence of under-resourced government agencies staffed with DEI hires.

In my military career I have so many times seen things that were so dangerously unprofessional that one could easily believe they were due to intent when in reality they were due to gross incompetence.

If you see that enough you begin to understand it and are able to recognize it when it happens.

So the other day the great Buzz Patterson posted a story about serving in the Bill Clinton White House. The story was about Clinton blowing off national security issues at a golf tournament, and while it told us nothing materially new about Clinton's character, it was a nevertheless a FASCINATING insight into a piece of important recent history. I really, really enjoyed reading it. Now Buzz had the Clinton nuclear football and was a USAF pilot, and I definitely do not want to make anyone think my military career was anywhere near as sexy or glamorous as his was, but I do have a few stories to tell. So I want to tell my one Bill Clinton story, because it’s about a historic event, and in a similar vein to the ripping (and 100% truthful) yarns of Buzz Patterson.

It was 1993. I was a U.S. Army Captain, fresh out of company command, and I was amazingly fortunate enough to be selected as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Internship Program (today it’s called the Bradley Fellowship). Basically, as a mere O-3, I was given an opportunity to act as an actual O-5 action officer on the Joint Staff doing actual, real JCS-level stuff, and that also came with an awesome intern educational program that included things like chatting with Colin Powell and meeting an amazing array of political and military luminaries. This is where I first learned about the meat-grinder that is the Washington D.C. Beltway (although at the time I admittedly was a bit naive and start-struck and found it all to be pretty cool). As awesome as this program was, me and my fellow interns were also nevertheless the junior officers in every one of our Joint Staff directorates, and as a result we were prime targets for becoming what we called a “rent-a-crowd.” Basically, any time some D.C. dignitary needed a bunch of military officers to act like they were really into hearing a speech about some arcane policy issue, we interns got the call. I kept my Class A jacket in my office so I could put it on for my twice a week rent-a-crowd duties, and routinely me and my fellow uniformed interns (from all four services) were called to sit looking adoringly at some pontificating blowhard as if we cared about what he or she was spewing. We were well-paid stage props, but it was pretty interesting nonetheless. The worst was when Clinton came to the Pentagon to get an initial briefing from the Joint Chiefs right after he was inaugurated, and we were ordered to stand on the steps outside the Pentagon River Entrance en masse and we were ORDERED to wave at Slick Willie as he departed. I kid you not. You have to realize that Clinton was an avowed and unrepentant draft dodger as part of his still fresh-in-our-memories campaign, and none of us had forgotten that—these were the very most sarcastic waves ever waved in the history of waves.

But that’s not my Bill Clinton story.

This is my Bill Clinton story.

In July of that year we got a rent-a-crowd call: “Put your Class A’s on and go over to Fort McNair, the President is giving a speech.” Now that was pretty cool. Even though I despised Clinton, hearing a Presidential speech was a really big deal, so my Navy lieutenant and fellow intern buddy Werner and I got all dolled up in our best shiny brass dress uniforms and took the Metro over to the Waterfront Station in D.C.’s Anacostia neighborhood. We walked the rest of the way to the National Defense University’s auditorium in Fort McNair. We got there super early, before the NDU students who would make up most of the crowd, so we got to pick our seats. The first two rows were reserved, so we got the third row, front and center, twenty feet from the stage. We had no idea what the subject of the speech was going to be, but soon the Clinton White House crew came in and sat right in front of us: David Gergen, George Stephanopoulos, Dee Dee Myers (not Dee Dee Ramone) and the rest of the Clinton henchmen and henchwomen entered and sat literally two feet away from our seats. Soon we overheard (because as far as that crowd was concerned we had the same tangible existence as the auditorium chairs) that the speech was about gays and lesbians in the military, and we rapidly realized we were human stage props sent there to pretend we approved—this was the infamous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” speech. I was about to be a stage prop to history.

Soon the principals came in on stage: SecDef Les Aspin, Vice President Gore, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Slick Willie himself. The secondaries were all given seats high on the stage right behind the Prez, and it was clear that the JCS were every bit the stage props that poor little O-3 me was. We were all there to give the illusion that we supported and endorsed what the President was about to dump on the American people, and that realization was sickening.

I’ll drop a link to that actual speech in a comment right below if you are interested, but it’s not the content of that infamous speech I want to cover. Rather, it is two observations as a near-front row participant to history that I want to relate:

1. As David Gergen and George Stephanopoulos came in, their s***-eating grins were palpable. They were so, so, so, SOOOOO very pleased that they had created the illusion that the uniformed military was totally behind what their draft-dodging President was about to say. They looked like the Grinch after he stole all the Christmas decorations from Whoville. Even then, when I was still almost apolitical and really did not care who had sex with who, I found this appalling. I was being used and I did not like it one bit. It got worse when Gergen and Stephanopoulos sat down—they were verbally high-fiving each other over the illusion they had created, and I could overhear them celebrating in nefarious whispers. Even when Clinton spoke, they were whispering and giggling in glee like little girls, and… it sickened me. It was one of the very first times that I understood that politicians viewed the military as mere pawns in their social engineering schemes, and that idea has stuck with me to this very day.

2. As I mentioned, the Joint Chiefs were ordered to sit behind Clinton. The Commandant of the Marine Corps at the time was bada$$ Vietnam vet warrior USMC General Carl Mundy, and he had been an outspoken critic of gays in the military prior to that time. They sat him at the far side of the stage, mostly out of view of the cameras, but I had my eye on him the whole time. I swear to you, Mundy sat down, legs spread, hands on his knees, with the facial expression of a stone-cold killer, and he remained almost completely and totally immobile as a glowering, frightening statue during the whole speech. He did not move a muscle, except I could see his jaw muscles tightening and loosing repetitively. It’s a wonder all his teeth did not crack on that stage. I loved it. To me, Mundy was like one of those USAF Vietnam War POWs in the Viet Cong propaganda films who was blinking his eyes to spell out T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code. He was coerced into being there, he was used like a horse in a gladiator chariot movie, and he knew it. I only wish he had resigned in protest. Nevertheless, on that day he became one of my heroes.

So that’s it. That’s my Bill Clinton story.

There is nothing all that Earth-shattering here, and the whole “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” thing is now water long passed under a very murky rainbow bridge. Still, this is a wee part of history, and I hope it shows how politicians (particularly Democrat politicians) view the troops as mere inanimate pawns on a political chessboard and not living, breathing, bleeding Americans whose lives and sacrifices actually matter.

I hope my little story was enlightening or at least interesting—let’s not let politicians do this again to our duty-bound and selfless military. Here is that speech, if you are so inclined: