Free Republic

Technology, including nuclear bombs and hypersonic missiles, have necessarily expanded our view of the limits of presidential warmaking power. But merely because military action is arguable under an expanded view of the Constitution does not mean that every military action initiated by a president’s is wise.

The fact that the president goes to the country to win political space and even when a president secures explicit approval from Congress, such as did George W Bush when he invaded Iraq, does not ensure that military action is wise. Nothing has been so disastrous to our country since our war in Vietnam than our adventure into Iraq.

We were told that Iraq had nuclear weapons and they must be eliminated. I believed the government was telling the truth, I still believe that the government thought it was telling the truth, but it was not. Nevertheless, on its face the explanation brought forward by the Bush administration to justify waging war against Iraq was far more compelling than anything being cobbled together now by the Trump administration concerning Venezuela.

The dead giveaway of ill-conceived adventures comes with an inability to articulate in a short declarative sentence or two both the justification and the endgame. The justifications here are not compelling and there is simply no effort to describe how it ends.

Not one of us is fool enough to believe that military action in Venezuela will actually diminish the drug plague that is currently metastasizing in America. That this proposition is advanced betrays the vacuity of any military action in Venezuela.

All presidents are judged on whether they can bring the country along on issues like this. We saw this with Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson, Nixon and Bush. Right now, Trump is on the wrong side of this history.

I suggest you acquaint yourself with the postwar histories of Germany and Japan.

The kilometer long lines for petrol are not AI induced. The rationing of gasoline is a fact. Increased cost of fuel is apparent from the prices stated on signs.

As I understand it, official Russian reports for the first time admitted an actual strike on a facility, theretofore they had always maintained that it was remnants of shot down drones that had impacted. Obviously, Russian sources are to be discounted entirely. Videos of struck facilities are censored but many of them go viral nevertheless.

The sources for the 20% of capacity are not Pro Ukraine propaganda sources.

The impact of the energy strikes, together with the sanctions, on the economy are difficult to determine. The extent of weakness/vulnerability of the economy are equally difficult to measure. But the long lines are evidence that the damage is more extensive than your data suggests, or the repairs are not nearly as effective and prompt.

Whatever the whole picture, it is clear that the Ukrainians have been remarkably successful in striking deeply into Russia at critical facilities with resulting disruptions.

You have been reading yesterday's news.

Drones have effectively changed the game to the degree that Russian oil refinery production has been reduced by 20%, or by as much as 40% by some reports. Russian attempts to repair those facilities proceed apace with unknown results while Ukrainian attacks continue.

Because of its massive explosive power and great range, Ukraine's new missile, the Flamingo, promises to further change the game by inflicting even more damage on Russia's energy infrastructure. However, the Flamingo is slow and not very stealthy, so it is liable to be shot down by the Russians, as one recently was shut down.

To avoid these countermeasures and successfully deploy the Flamingo, the history of these strikes into Russia reveals that there is a synergy achieved by integrating short, medium and longer-range drones/missiles to take out Russian radar and countermeasures, thereby opening the way for deep penetrating Ukrainian missiles such as Flamingo to hit targets so damaging to Russia's capacity to wage war.

The Tomahawk, with its stealth profile would be devastating to medium range Russian targets but, when used in combination with short-range drones and long-range Flamingos, should continue to change the game by destroying Russian countermeasures.

Energy is Russia's Achilles' heel, and Tomahawks would significantly change the game even more if used in combination.

Winters are even colder in Russia.

You don’t really believe that? My God what happened to Free Republic?

Perhaps Free Republic has not entirely repudiated its widespread support of the thesis of The Bell Curve.

Not all the bright people are Asian, of course, but perhaps a disproportionate number are, and there are an awful lot of them, whether smarter or not. They constitute a powerful resource for India and, especially China, in the existential struggle in the brave new world of AI to come.

More, you have the simple reality that they are far more industrious than our new generation. That the Chinese believe in a 9-9-6 work schedule: 9 AM to 9 PM workday, 6 days a week, tells us we are complacent born of relative (repeat "relative") prosperity.

The Chinese and Indian governments take their obligation to educate this generation in a STEM curriculum seriously, far more seriously than we do, judged by comparing the sheer numbers of graduates. Clearly, this new young generation of Chinese and Indians takes far more seriously the need to educate themselves than do our youth.

Finally, part of the blame clearly rests upon the leftist social engineers of our educational establishment who will always favor a foreign applicant of color over one of our own. Hence, fault is not entirely with the government nor with our entrepreneurs, our field generals if you will, who will either win or lose us this existential war for survival in the new digital age.

When faced with the existential challenge of World War II and, subsequently, of the Cold War, we as a nation did what was necessary to win. That means importing Nazis to build rockets or conduct intelligence in the Cold War. That means after the war repenting for locking up Japanese, and some Germans and Italians. On proactive side, we were happy enough to develop the ideas of one German Jew to build a war-ending bomb.

The answer is not to throw the baby out with the bath, but to protect American workers who are competent against foreign worker exploitation, while at the same time prudently arming ourselves with all the talent we can attract from whatever source to win.

The stakes are that high, and we do not want to replay in the digital age what we did to the Japanese.

Why would Trump want to go to war with Venezuela?

Perhaps to establish fortress America from Panama to Greenland.

Why would Trump want a fortress America? Perhaps because he is withdrawing from NATO and has already concluded that he will not oppose China invading Taiwan. Thus, American isolation on this continent is where he intends to make a last stand against China.

Or, on the other hand, perhaps he foolishly thinks he can stop drugs by making war on Venezuela.

One conspiracy theory is as good as another.

There’s a new illness of the mind going around the Globalist corners of the European Union.

Argument by name-calling, e.g., "globalist" is a refuge for those in the wrong. It is equally instructive, and useless, to call the Hungarians, "isolationists."

Let's see where the facts lead us but we should take note that much of the name-calling arises from frustration on both sides. Hungarians are rightfully frustrated that EU simply cannot or will not throttle illegal immigration and, worse, expects Hungary to share the pain they cause.

Members of the EU and NATO, who are reasonably apprehensive about Russian aggression against Ukraine and now by air incursions against several NATO countries, are frustrated by Hungary's obstreperous resistance to any reasonable steps taken to protect Ukraine and the rest of Europe.

A word to the wise to the so-called "globalists," the best way to moderate the influence of hungry and, significantly, the AFD in Germany and the other populist parties in Western Europe, is to get control of the flood of illegal immigration. If that is not done, every other problem, principally failing economies, are sores that irritate all the more and will lead to disruptions across Europe.

Stop illegal immigration now!

There are still people willing to risk jail time who will step in to take the place of those who are caught and sent to prison. But this is why President Trump’s approach is potentially such a game changer.

At the lower level most of those people willing to risk jail time are probably populated by addicts as well as those motivated by simple greed. The demand for drugs by addicts is probably very inelastic and therefore there is a cadre of drug dealers not easily deterred by the threat of jail time. So very powerful is the urge that we now see the threat of death from fentenal overdose is hardly a deterrent.

I wonder how effective Donald Trump's approach will prove to be under these circumstances. So far the multilevel marketing scheme succeeds brilliantly.

The problem of enforcement against drug kingpins is that they have immunized themselves from prosecution enough so that there is little deterrent. This even though notorious drug kingpins have been apprehended. It appears a major war is being waged right now for control of the cartels, indicating there is no shortage of candidates to be drug kingpins.

In any event, no class of prosecution at any level of the drug chain has succeeded in any measurable degree to substantially curtail the drug epidemic.

Stronger arguments that we have seen so far should be adduced that new efforts will somehow succeed where everything has failed. Those arguments must be strong enough to compensate for all of the downside of the war on drugs: corruption, expense, deaths, homelessness, crime, hypocrisy etc., etc.

As one with due regard for our Bill of Rights and rule of law, I am hard-pressed to see how the failing war on drugs does not cause more damage than it prevents.

You are quite correct, the wording is ambiguous enough to drive a truck through if one wants to do so at the time of attack. Heretofore, the ambiguity has been swept aside, and everyone has proceeded on the assumption that all would come to the aid of the one attacked, meaning that the United States would intervene.

Now Donald Trump has emphasized that ambiguity and in the process has vitiated the power NATO had to deter. The great benefit of NATO in Europe, or as viewed from Asia, is the power to deter.

Now we are in the worst of both worlds; we have compromised our ability to deter without explicitly extracting ourselves from the commitment to go to war while member nations, for their part, cannot formulate their national security policies because they cannot depend on the United States.

Socialist led Spain is doing what socialists have done since Germany packed Lenin onto a train and sent him to Russia. From the Spanish/socialist point of view, they have a free ride against any actual invasion as a member of NATO. Additionally, they have many buffer states between them and the potential aggressor, Russia. So for a socialist's viewpoint, it makes political sense to withhold NATO's money to buy votes domestically. If NATO breaks up altogether, that is simply a bonus to a socialist.

From the American point of view, we are exploited by Spain because everybody knows that if an article 5 war occurs, requiring the defense by all nations if one is attacked, that really means that America rides to the rescue or there is no rescue. So we have to pay and bleed while Spain benefits. Small wonder Donald Trump threatens to checkmate Spain's selfish gambit.

But what about all this from NATO members' point of view? Donald Trump has said more than Spain must pay, he has said, in effect, that he reserves the right to play or not play under article 5 if a NATO nation is attacked. Trump is not just saying you got to pay or I won't play, he leaves the implication that he might not go to war under article 5 even if and attacked nation is fully paid up.

At least that implication is worrying NATO member nations. It is this ambiguity that is destructive of NATO and should be corrected by Trump. It is one thing to demand that NATO members live up to their commitments before America is willing to bleed but quite another to leave NATO members unsure whether they have a deal at all even if they do pay up.

The recent incursions of European airspace by Putin was was almost certainly partially motivated to exert pressure on the NATO alliance in the hope that it will break up, or at least will open fractures within the organization and weaken it.

We should not play Putin's a game even as we rightly seek to reinvigorate NATO because the stakes are not just in Europe but in Asia where the Chinese are eyeing our fidelity to our treaty commitments to judge whether we might honor them under similar circumstances around Taiwan. Equally, our allies in the Pacific like Japan and North Korea are sensitive to Donald Trump's ambiguity concerning NATO.

The stakes are war in Asia or deterrence of war. The stakes include nuclear proliferation of disillusioned NATO members in Europe and among frightened Pacific Rim nations who might fear similar treatment from Trump.

My reply was an old one from 11 years ago on May 20, 2014 when it contained a phrase which I eliminated when I reproduced it here: "unless you want to live in North Korea."

It appears that the North Koreans and the Chinese have gone a long way toward eliminating an efficient drugs marketing system-but at what cost?

The drugs marketing system we have now exploits the law of supply and demand; the communists simply do away with that law of Adam Smith, along with the Bill of Rights.

Are we burning down our village to save it?

If you want to know why the war on drugs is lost, start thinking about it the way Adam Smith and Warren Buffett would think about it.

Adam Smith would talk about the law of supply and demand, and he tells us that when the demand goes up, so does the price; when supply goes down, the price goes up. When the demand is inelastic, that is, when it is the product of an addiction, the price curve is even more radical in its upward thrust when supply is reduced. Therefore, the more the government succeeds in interdicting the supply of addictive drugs, the more it increases the price and thereby increases the incentive to increase supply. The more the government succeeds, the more it must fail.

That is why drug smugglers and dealers are so wonderfully inventive in evading the law and will ever continue to be so.

Without putting words in Warren Buffett's mouth, his criteria for investing in an enterprise are well-known. He wants a company with a unique product and a huge market potential. What better than an addictive drug? He wants a company with high barriers to entry against competition. What better barrier than the law, and what better barrier than drug enforcement agencies raiding your competition? And if competition becomes too serious, this business model says you simply eliminate it by murdering them.

Buffett would be very intrigued by the idea that costs are extremely low, markup extremely high, and the price is ever supported by the government! By making drugs illegal, the government in effect has enacted price supports. By selling into an inelastic demand of addicts, the market as well as the price are virtually guaranteed.

Because the price is high, addicts are incentivized to push the drugs onto others to addict them, to create a mini market that funds their own addiction. What a wonderful business model! On the macro level, it is a multilevel marketing scheme on steroids, or should I say, powered by addiction, and supported by the government.

Meanwhile, this wonderful marketing scheme generates so much money that corruption is inevitable.

In your blatant ignorance, you are toying with the national security of the nation. In the future, take the time to learn the well-established facts about which you pontificate.

well then lets stop paying for the wars and let all chips fall where they may. Cheer leading for NATO to adapt 1939 Finland strategy is just fine!! they can pay for it... they can have their own die in it.

I’m almost dead, so I really dont care what the hell happens. I just tire of these small countries rattling their sabers like a Pomeranian little yapping dog behind the fence...

The parade of ignorance continues unabashed.

We don't pay for all the wars, Trump's allegations to that effect concerning Ukraine have been exaggerated and wrong.

Letting "all the chips fall where they may" is a mindless statement and, worse, nihilistic: "I really dont care what the hell happens."

The Finns died for it in the 1939 war and the Ukrainians are dying for it wholesale today. The courage of both these countries is truly remarkable. It is not confined to them nor should it be denigrated.

No small countries have been "rattling their sabers, " indeed, the problem has historically been small countries failing to speak and act aggressively enough. Fortunately, Mr. Putin has done a lot to correct that deficiency and inspire Europe with courage and financial commitment.

Let the land of the brave and the home of the free find the humility to match our courageous history that permits us to arm ourselves with allies and survive.

My point being, all those little countries trying to butch up and wear big boy pants should just stfu and mind their own business...

It is unfortunate, indeed dangerous when historical illiteracy combines with misplaced jingoism to result in neo-isolationism.

The era of American dominance is over; we squandered it. We are now in one of the most dangerous eras to confront our constitutional republic. We are now threatened by an axis that includes the world's largest landmass with a billion brilliant and industrious people whose nation is now our peer in most respects and superior to us in others.

If we are to survive with our culture, Constitution and capitalism intact, we must rid ourselves of this neo-isolationism, avail ourselves of every worthy ally and, above all, drop this fatal arrogance that no one is worthy, that no one could prove a valuable ally to our survival.

Let's leave it there.

If, after all these years you had taken the time, before indulging in seriatim insults directed to me personally, to read what I wrote, you would have learned that I agree with virtually everything you said in your last reply.

I agree H1B visas have been criminally abused. My solution is the same as Donald Trump's, reform the system, retain those who have real contributions to make, bar those whose jobs can be done by Americans, end the exploitation of mid and lower level Indians.

Donald Trump believes $100,000 will do the trick. The solution, as I wrote, seems reasonable to me because it tends toward correcting the abuses in the next above paragraph while retaining the benefits of the system where it counts.

Send them all back.

The irony of all this is you call me a troll as you wallow smug in the misplaced conviction that you are the true disciple of Donald Trump. In your arrogance you believe that the more shrill you trash-talk whom you believe to be apostate, the more you are piling up credits in MAGA heaven.

The irony is, as you can read in this thread, that I explicitly support the position of H1B visas advanced by Donald Trump that you explicitly oppose. Trump wants to admit some Indians according to his new visa plan, as do I. Since I am a "ray-ciss" card player for the same beliefs, I guess that makes Donald Trump a racist demagogue too.

Let go your obsessions and let go your sycophantic support of what you mistakenly believe is Donald Trump's position, and you might find the world is inhabited by fewer race baiters and trolls.

The US built nukes in the 1940s without dots.

Actually, the US built nukes in the 1940s with the help of Jews. And we built a space program with the help of Nazis. Now we are building the AI structure to save the nation from another existential threat with the help of Indians, among others. Thank God.

It is this "thin gruel," only a few of whose names are listed in #9, that has helped transform the world with their 84 IQs.