Keeping up?
things are moving fast.
Welcome back to camp. Hey, it got up to 72 here yesterday, so of course I had to unship the BBQ grill. A little tip of the hat here to Bill’s BumperQ, that made the system our grill is on,
https://www.billsbumperq.com/
they made a great product, and their service is amazing.
that rig swings around and clamps to the bumper with a ball lock pin. The covers are something my better half made, to keep the road grime off. You really want to make covers if you get one of these. They can make them for lots of vehicles: Jeep, pickup, RV… If you have a bumper that things can be bolted to, they can hook you up. And no, I don’t get a kickback, I’ve just had this product for three years now, and been super pleased with it.
Anyway, booze is in the slide out pantry next to the Fridge, dinner is Jambalaya, pull up a chair. As always, please notice the cup at the tip jar Where we restock the bar. Of course, I thank the current contributors to the ‘keep the author lubricated’ fund!
Wow, I almost feel sorry for the left, and the MSM. I’m writing this on Tuesday, because the schedule for the rest of the week is busy, and as a result it will probably be overcome by events by the time you see it. I believe that having had four years to contemplate the mistakes that he made the first time around has done more for Trump’s effectiveness than having a majority in congress.
His “shock and awe” knows no bounds, he’s trying to get enough stuff done, fast enough, that the left doesn’t have time to react to it all, and it’s working.
Yes, some of the stuff he’s doing is probably going to get overturned, but then some of it’s probably throw away items anyway. Let’s take a look at some of the events of the last week:
The Elephant in the room at this time is the dissolution the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. DOGE walked in, did a weekend audit, and basically chained the doors shut. This has basically all of the Democratic party losing their shit. When you look at where the 6 trillion dollars went, you can understand why. Much of it seems to be sent to various NGOs, which then donate LARGE sums of money to the sorts of politicians that they think will keep them in money (IE Democrats.)
This is a beautiful way to launder your tax dollars. I, the senator from the great state of New York authorize the USAID to donate 3 million dollars to the Center for Unification of Northern Territories (CUNT). CUNT, in turn employs my kid, and his buddy, and a bunch of other folks that don’t have a gig right now, because the congressman they worked for is currently in prison. The rest of the money, about 1.8 million, is donated to my reelection campaign, and to pay my wife’s company for “Services Rendered.” I make money, my kids make money, we keep democratic apparatchiks employed until we can find them another government gig, and you, you peasant, foot the bill!
You can understand why this gravy train being shut down is of concern, right?
Well, said Demos are screaming that the dissolution of USAID by, first Musk (Who elected him, they shout!) and then by Trump is unconstitutional, and treasonous. They say that USAID was created by Congress, and only Congress can dissolve it!
Their justification for this is the Foreign Assistance Act OF 1961, as amended (and amended, and amended…) Well, I just did a deep dive on said act, and I welcome you to do the same: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1071/pdf/COMPS-1071.pdf
Now this sucker is 276 pages long, and full of one-time things that were never removed, like “the President is authorized to spend bla bla in the budget of 1982 and 1983…” and the denial of authorization for the president to send military equipment to South Vietnam after 1973!
It does create some things, like a Board of Micro Finance Agency, Board for International Food and Development, International Private Investment Advisory Council on Foreign Aid, the Trade and Development Agency, and some other equally obscure outfits, that, to remove, yes you would have to amend this document.
It also talks about authorizing the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the POTUS to do things, say things, and spend money on things. This doesn’t mean that this document creates the State Department, or the Treasury Department, it just says that the guy running that group can do this thing without a further “mother may I?” from congress. In fact, this document gives the President a SHIT TON of power to spend money with out any further permission from congress. You can read through it, and tell where the new stuff is, and where the old stuff that is just left in there is… Like there’s a whole section punishing Turkey for actions in Cyprus. Then there’s 60+ pages devoted to AIDs in various sections.
In much of the later stuff, there’s things about how the Director of USAID is authorized to bla bla. BUT, and this is a key but: Nowhere in this damn document can I find anything authorizing the CREATION of USAID. Just like authorizing Sec State to do something doesn’t create Sec State.
(That is done by G. Washington, as authorized by article 2 section 2 of the constitution. It is interesting to note that there’s no requirement in the constitution for congressional approval for a secretary’s creation. In addition, there’s absolutely no “Mother May I?” anywhere for, nor authorization for, the creation of “Tzars” as the various Democratic presidents of late have loved to style non-elected, non-approved advisors.
Trump hasn’t called Musk a Tzar, maybe because labeling things with Russian terms is a Democrat thing? But he’s certainly filling the role. Based strictly on tradition though, he certainly has the right to use henchmen, Andrew Jackson started that in 1831, and presidents on both sides of the isle have been doing it ever since.)
It appears to me that the USAID organization was started by fiat, by JFK ‘with a pen and a phone.’ What is created by Presidential order, without the making of a law, may also be removed by Presidential order, without making a law. If the Democrats want to keep the USAID, let them pass a law creating it. If you can find any place in that law that establishes, or creates, the USAID, please call it to my attention, but in the meantime, I’m going with NOT in the law.
It's also worth noting that there’s a bunch of money being filtered through USAID going to things that sound an awful lot to me like CIA ops. I suspect we will discover, in the aftermath of this, that much of the “black” funding for various CIA shit went though USAID. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, there’s a lot of ‘black’ ops that have great value. This does however drag a bunch of funding out into the light of day, for the sterilization that daylight brings.
It's also worth noting that the Dems are seizing on the age and lack of government experience for the wiz kids that Musk is using… While doxing those same wiz kids. Hey Dems, “Lack of government experience” is one of the primary requirements! If you are trying to clean the swamp, you don’t hire alligators to do it, you don’t hire weasels to guard the henhouse at night. Old NFO did a nice piece on this at /really? It’s worth a look.
The guys Musk is using are young. Most of them are about the age that my department head in the Navy was. Young, yes, but also in charge of 24 missiles with eight nuclear warheads per missile. If we can trust “young” men to take care of the end of the world, I think we can trust them to do an audit. The fun thing is that the DOJ is no longer providing high cover for the thugs in the DNC. statement on X from the AG for DC
There’s a really fun article on Musk’s weaponized autists at /wired-ran-a-hit-piece-on-doge that you should go look at. Those folks (Not the Bee) also ran a nice little piece on Bill Krystol falling on his sword -bill-kristol-posted-that-he-would-prefer-the-deep-state-over-trump-and-got-immediately-pulverized-over-his-corrupt-and-lucrative-connection-to-the-deep-state It seems that the guy that wants to preserve USAID is also making over two million dollars a year from USAID.
Then we have, from the same source Joe-biden-comes-out-of-retirement-to-sign-with-hollywood-casting-agency? It seems that this agency employs Obama, and had employed Biden during the stretch that he wasn’t an elected official… Pardon me if this feels like payola. If you don’t subscribe to “Not the Bee” you really should, they scan the news for all the ridiculous stuff that falls through the cracks.
Also in the news as far as threats against persons, we have the reporter from KERA news, Sara Gonzales who was threatened with death for reporting on the large number of Mexicans shutting down Dallas while protesting their deportation… All while waving Mexican flags. It seems the DPD turned a blind eye to these shenanigans. https://texasscorecard.com/state/dallas-anti-ice-protestors-threaten-to-run-over-conservative-news-personality/ This is going on in all the major cities in Blue areas. I’m wondering if we couldn’t just do a little intelligence gathering, and have a very large number of ICE and National Guard sweep down on these protests? Nothing like self identifying and volunteering to be deported.
Back in WA, we see yet another proof of the failure of DCYF, painful-timeline-of-everett-boys-killing-outlined-in-state-report While the stabbing to death of a four year old is not the norm, the rest of the story is all to familiar to anyone in the WA law enforcement community. DCYF gets a call from someone that a kid is being abused, they show up, ascertain that the family is poor as church mice, and drive away with a ‘“family assessment response,” which is an alternative to a traditional case for “lower risk allegations of maltreatment,” according to DCYF policy.
That alternative response, which first rolled out in 2014, does not open an abuse investigation but offers resources to the family and identifies the family’s needs. The department must respond within 72 hours in one of those cases.’
Yeah “resources” One kid is dragged down the stairs by his neck, the other one beat senseless, and they get “resources.” But see, they’re homeless, so the state can’t take any money to support the kids, so they’re just not very important. Now a four-year-old is stabbed to death(16 wounds.)
Let there be any question of the very slightest miss treatment, like refusal to get sex change surgery for a 10-year-old from a family with money? That kid is taken out of school, without even talking to the parents, and put in foster care where they can get the “gender affirming surgery” that they apparently want. Why? Because the state can take everything the family has, to support that function. It’s sort of the opposite of “Justice for money.” In a criminal case, with a court involved, the richer dude can hire a better lawyer, and is more likely to receive a lighter sentence… When dealing with the noncriminal system though, the more money you have, the harder you’re targeted, because “well you can pay for it.” Reasons to leave, number XXX.
Sal did a nice piece on Frances finally joining the “hey let’s pay a little for our own defense” club, at double-defense-spending-france-well you should go give it a look.
The Pentagon has decided to join the twenty-first century, giving the entrenched MSM the boot, in favor of more modern media. Out are NBC News, The New York Times, National Public Radio and Politico, (that last one has really got to sting.) In are the New York Post, Breitbart, One America News Network and HuffPost. Of course the article I got this from https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/feb/1/pentagon-boots-npr-nyt-nbc-favor-mostly-conservati/ claims that “it’s all conservatives” but If you notice, one of the “in” group is the HuffPost, formerly the Huffington Post, probably the most leftist outfit this side of Beijing. The “Pentagon Press Association” is, of course, squealing like a stuck pig… Music to my ears. They’ve also killed the free trips to have abortions on military time, and a few other leftist programs.
Speaking of Politico, they did an interview with the outgoing ambassador from Great Britain, the other day. Now you would think that a bunch of people who do nothing but report on government, the DOD, State, etc. would know better than to try and catch an ambassador saying something stupid… (what part of ambassador confused your asses?) But NOOOO.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2025/02/03/the-brits-take-on-the-next-trump-era-00202177
I’ll give you the quotes:
Do you think Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN will be an honest broker in any future negotiations with President Donald Trump on Ukraine? And if Trump ever asked your advice on how to deal with a man like Putin, what would your advice be?
I don't think President Trump needs any advice from me about negotiations. The one thing I would say about Putin is that he always has more than one scenario that he can contemplate, he has two or three scenarios. He dials them up and dials them down, depending on what we do. So the tougher we are, the more he moves to his less demanding scenarios.
Are you nervous about the future of the transatlantic alliance?
No.
Why not?
Well, why would I be?
Well, have you read any headline over the past 4 to 8 years?
It has withstood the test of time. It lived through the Berlin Wall. It lived through the Berlin airlift. It lived through Vietnam, even though that wasn't a NATO enterprise. It lived through Afghanistan. You've got a wider group of people who would say NATO's incredibly important, the transatlantic alliance is important, American leadership is important. But there's got to be more burden sharing, and we would broadly endorse that.
Do you think the U.K. would get to spending 5 percent of GDP on defense as the Trump administration has proposed for a new NATO defense spending benchmark?
If you look at figures when the Cold War was over, most NATO partners were at around 4 percent of GDP. And now we have a much more dangerous world and we have many more adversaries than we had during the Cold War. So logically, that suggests that defense spending needs to go up. But there are all these other constraints and there are ways of spending money that reduce the chance of conflict that aren't military.
But yes, I think defense spending will go up. Can we get to 5 percent? I think we'll have to see how the economic circumstances unfold over the next few years. But it's certainly the British government's intention to do more.
One criticism we hear from Trump’s team is Europe collectively doesn’t take the China threat as seriously as the United States does. Your response?
I was in a dinner the other night where someone made a very good point that America has never faced, possibly since 1812, an adversary as rich as they were or with an economy as big as theirs. And that is unnerving. And I can completely agree with that and I understand it.
America, they don't look at China as a national security set of problems, or an economic set of problems, they see them as fundamentally the same thing. I think for Europe as a whole, there's more of a tendency to put things in baskets: This is what we do economically. This is what we do on national security.
Is there daylight between the U.S. and U.K. on China? We probably do draw the line on cooperation with Chinese firms as opposed to firms owned by the Chinese Communist Party in a slightly different place from America. But we completely agree with America on the South China Sea, on freedom of navigation, on military risks and threats and human rights.
I mean seriously, you morons are trying to play “gotcha” with one of the premiere diplomats in the world? Where you dropped on your head as a child? Yeah, it’s been a rough week for those guys.
Look there’s a lot more that I could cover, but this is already awfully long, so I’ll leave you with the Quote Of The Day.
QOTD " They don't consider that they work for the U.S. They just think they're a global entity and that their master is the globe and not the United States, and that's not what the statute says, and that's not sustainable." " Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on USAID employees.
Yours in Service,
William Lehman