Target Rich Environment, the Return

Wow. Go away for a couple weeks and the target list multiplies like yeast. So many things to talk about, so little space. As a result, many of the things I want to mention will just be a snap shot with a FAF (fire and forget) weapon. Dinner is Smoked pork roast, you know where the drinks are, please remember the tip jar where we collect for the mess. Let’s begin!

Of course, the 800 pound Gorilla in the room is the capture of Maduro and his wife. A lot of pundits are applauding the action, while either trying to pussyfoot around the legality of it, using “what-about-ism,” or out and out saying it was an illegal and unconstitutional act.

Well, I’m not a lot of pundits. I am also not a lawyer, but I am a student of history and of the constitution, so make of this what you will.

I’m not going to go into: “But there’s a history of Presidents from Grover Cleveland in 1893, through Teddy R, Woodrow Wilson (three times) Eisenhower, JFK (twice), El B.J., Tricky Dick, Gerry Ford, R. Reagan (three times), Bush Sr, Blowjob Bill, and Obama all having done the same thing, Displacing a current national leader by force of arms, without seeking congressional approval.” Yes, it’s all true, and if you ask I’ll provide dates, nations, and victims.

But, while true, and a legal defense, (Precedent is always a legal defense at this level: “well Joe shmuckatelly did this right in front of city hall, in full view of the police department assembled for inspection and was not charged with anything!” Is a great way to get the charges dismissed.) it’s unnecessary as a defense.

I’m also not going into the October 23 2001 DOJ memo authorizing the use of military force inside or outside of the US, against Terrorists, other than to acknowledge that it exists, it’s been reviewed and blessed by the Supreme Court, and Congress ratified it. Maduro was identified as a terrorist, not by President Trump, but by his predecessor, President Autopen. No one ever removed that identification. In fact there’s a fifty million dollar bounty on his head.

Instead, I’m going to quite simply point out that the evolution was conducted with Law Enforcement Officials embarked. As such, this is a law enforcement action. The picture of Maduro being frog marched from the chopper onto a US Navy vessel has someone from Delta Force holding his right arm, but notice the Combat vest of the guy holding his left arm? Here’s a hint, DEA is not an acronym for a unit of the US Military. They’re a law enforcement agency. The Drug Enforcement Administration is every bit as much of a police agency as the Federal Marshals. With them calling the big picture shots (we’re talking 40,000-foot level stuff. IE, “We want to capture him for trial, we want to do it at this location, where we have credible information that he will be from xxxx hours, to yyyy hours. Rules of engagement are: Minimum civilian casualties, minimum damage to civilian infrastructure. We don’t care how badly you fuck up the military infrastructure, as long as we get in and out intact. Figure out a plan to do this.”)

With that covering your willy, suddenly this assault is not a military action, by law. It’s a law enforcement action, will military assistance. Yes, it’s a thin coverage, but how thick does a condom need to be?

So all the hand wringing by some of the libertarian side of the house, and screams by the Democrats, Communists, Socialists and so on (yes, I know I repeated myself there.) Is “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Now that doesn’t mean that some Obaiden appointee judge isn’t going to find the actions illegal, and demand that we turn this mutt and his bitch loose with a “sorry, and here’s a billion dollars for your trouble.” In fact I’m surprised that hasn’t happened yet. It’s the only card the left has to play. I sort of hope they do, only so that we can drive this up to the SCOTUS and get a final determination of who runs this nation, the elected officials and the people, or some district judge appointed for life.

Now if Congress wants to pull on their big girl panties and pass something revoking the 2001 use of force piece and changing the rules for using military assistance for law enforcement activities, FINE. Then the rules change going forward. It still would not change the legality of this piece though, because Expo facto laws are unconstitutional.

No, the facts are the facts, and no matter how much you pound on the table, they remain the facts. This was a good bust, and I strongly suspect that this duo is going to wind up getting a chance to find out what life was like for Manuel Noriega in Supermax.

But like anything else, this event did not exist in a vacuum. It isn’t JUST about the removal of a terrorist who has ignored at least fifteen years’ worth of elections that voted his ass out of office, and who has completely destroyed a once prosperous and successful nation.

It’s also about sending a message in the only way that some recipients understand.

Some of you are probably too young to remember when Ronny Reagan sent a message like this, by bombing the shit out of Libya late one night. If so you’re also too young to remember that after blowing up the school that Kaddafi’s kids went to, and a couple of his palaces, taking out his AAA, and destroying his navy and Airforce, suddenly, he quit blustering and threatening, decided to kill his nuclear program, and denounce the idea of getting the bomb, and generally became a very quiet individual. But he wasn’t the only one. After that, no one got froggy for over a decade.

Why? Because we sent in a force that basically owned the nation of Libya for the duration of the time we were there, even though the Libyan military was armed with the best Soviet export stuff available.

And make no mistake, they did have the best, not the third-rate stuff the old Soviets used to export to no-name countries. There was a reason for that. Libya was the Soviet Military Port on the Mediterranean at the time. There was a Don II Submarine Tender permanently based out of Sidra Bay, and there was usually the old Moskva (not the one the Ukies sunk, but their first generation carrier) and the rest of her battle group, based out of there. So the AAA provided was not just to protect a “dear friend of the Soviet Union” but the Soviet fleet in the Med.

By showing that we could just wander in there, blow shit up, and walk away, including pointedly: “I know where your kids go to school! Next time we just might do this while class is in session, KAPISH?” We put the rest of the enemies of the US on notice. We’re being run by someone that is not afraid to cross a freezing river in the middle of the night, and kill your troops at dawn on Christmas morning.

It was very quiet internationally after that, and a couple years later, the wall fell between east and west Berlin, and shortly after that, the Soviet Union collapsed. Was this attack the direct cause of all that? No, but it was certainly part of the calculations, a big part. That and the shelling of Beirut a couple years before.

All of this is part of the calculus of risk that any leader, no matter how crazy, works through. Notice that in the immediate aftermath, while Cuba, Iran, and Russia lost their shit immediately, West Taiwan was noticeably quiet?

Cuba is irrelevant. And they sort of had to scream, after all, they supplied Maduro with his guard force. Yeah, if you haven’t already seen this, the Varangian Guard for the “President of Venezuela” was a bunch of Cuban Mercs. Why? Because just like the late Byzantine Emperors, Maduro couldn’t trust his own people not to off him. Rather says something about his legitimacy, now doesn’t it. Still, the point is Cuba and Venezuela were propping each other up. And just like a tent, when you break a pole, or pull the stakes on one side, collapse is inevitable.

It’s highly unlikely that the Cuban government will survive another five years, and I’ll give you even money on whether it makes it to 2027. Venezuela owed Cuba billions. Cuba relied on them for oil, and more importantly FOOD.

Iran and Russia? Iran is hearing footsteps. We’ve already proven that any time we want, we can waltz into their air space and blow shit up with no repercussions. They already have major riots and a “color revolution” going on. Khomeini has already set up an “Exit strategy,” that includes, “The first time a unit questions an order, or the cops refuse to leave their barracks, family, we are out of here and on the way to Moscow!” There is a long history to document what happens to Muslim leaders that don’t read the room perfectly, who decide that “well maybe we can still pull this out.” They end up either shorter, by about a foot, or stretched by about four inches, after a long drop. Khomeini is frightened of his own people, and he has good reason to be.

Now, the US, coming off of waltzing into an enemy capital equipped with the best that Russia and West Taiwan can make in the way of anti-air defenses, capturing the dictator in charge, and waltzing out again, without losing a single man, is looking at him and saying “touch one hair on those protesters’ heads. I dare you. I double dare you. Give me an excuse motherfucker.”

Iran is about out of options. And of course, when I say Iran, I really mean “the Guardian Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The people will do just fine. But the only thing left for the government, is to hope that the UN and other nations can be noisy enough, and obnoxious enough that the US leaves them alone, just to gain some peace and quiet.

Then there’s Russia. Putin is just not sane. He’s also caught in the Dictator’s dilemma. He kills anyone that brings him news he doesn’t want to hear, and so no one does. Therefore, he is disconnected from reality on the ground. His allies are dwindling faster than you can say, “Lets all go kick the ass of that great big guy with the machine gun. He can’t kill all of us, can he?” The ones he has left can be counted on one hand. The biggest of those is frankly convinced that he’s the client state, not the other way around. They’re right, too, but that’s just not something that the old KGB operative can accept.

The very idea that the CCP, which was an appendage to the Soviet Bear for so long, is now the BIG guy, and the only thing keeping you afloat, is just not a concept he can even contemplate. The brain refuses to accept the input. It’s like Scrooge getting visited by Marley. It’s so at odds with the basic picture of the universe that Scrooge rejects the input of his own senses.

So, completely detached from the world as it is, Putin shrieks at something less than what he tried to do to Ukraine, demanding of the UN that they make us give Venezuela back to his bubba. The sheer audacity of this is mind numbing, considering he’s told the UN to piss up a rope repeatedly on their demands that he quit invading Ukraine, and quit cutting other people’s undersea cables.

Now we get to West Taiwan. They were deeply involved in Venezuela, and I mean up to their bad haircuts and their little red books involved. They were making deals for basing there, and part of the four way game with Russia, Iran, and Cuba to take the contraband oil from Venezuela, (which, it is important to know, is “heavy, sour oil” that, by itself, is suitable only for making asphalt and shitty diesel and has to be mixed with something just to pump it.) Running it through Cuba, where it’s mixed with Russian and Iranian contraband oil (light sweet crude) and then taken to the PRC. In addition, it’s believed and I fully buy this, that the PRC was behind/supporting the drug trade into the US, on the theory that “Anything that weakens the Americans, is good for us.”

They’ve put a lot of time, effort, money, and prestige into the plan to take Taiwan under their control. They have claimed ever since they came into power that the island of Formosa was, and by rights should be, theirs, that the government of Taiwan, which was the government of all of China until the Communists took over and the rightful government had to flee for their lives, along with those that didn’t want to live under Mao’s caring guidance. Of course they claim everything west of the international dateline is by rights theirs, so…

But, in a very superstitious, and still mostly peasant nation, where numerology and the stars are more important than Physics to the majority of their population, the CCP has been playing up the symbology and numerology of conquering Taiwan by 2027.

They were sure that they could do this, too. After all, it looks (I can’t prove it, but there’s some really suspicious ‘coincidences’) like the prior administration was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party Inc. They also seem to control a large portion of the Democratic National Party.

There’s been a news article circulating that claims Maduro sang and named Senators that were on the take from the Cartels. I doubt it, if it seems too good to be true, ask for a lot of proof. Boy I hope it’s true, because everyone named is going to be up shit creek if it is… But again, it’s just too pat that everyone who’s fought against Trump’s actions is on the list, both Dem and Repub. So yeah, it would be nice, but I don’t believe it.

They (the Chinese) were going to have bases just a couple hundred miles from the American coast. Even if America wanted to get involved, they’ll be busy defending against spoiler attacks from your new bases in Venezuela and Cuba.

When you look at the raw numbers, with no knowledge of quality or actual capability, it looks like they could maybe beat us on the sea and in the air. The Mainstream media has poised that as ‘facts on the ground.’ We are no longer the big dogs at sea, they’ve claimed.

With all of that put together, they were fairly sure they could keep us out of the war, until it was an accomplished fact. After all, it wouldn’t take much to get enough of their Democratic possessions to slow or stop the deployment of troops in defense of Taiwan, and once they had the island, well, surely America wouldn’t try to invade to reverse the Fate Acompli!

Without the US forces, the Japanese, competent though they are, would not be enough to stop the red tide. It was all coming together. A little planted fear here, a little propaganda there, a bunch of domestic problems that will surely look more important to fix than beginning an adventure on the other side of the world…

Seed them with drugs to weaken their society further, bring in a shitload of “low trust society” foreigners who will behave, intentionally or not, as fifth columnists. Look at the amount of money that was removed from our economy by the fraud schemes from the Somali refugees. Think that didn’t weaken our economy? Didn’t tap money that could otherwise have been spent on new warships, more missiles and guns? Bet your ass it did.

Yes, it was all coming together. Then calamity.

Trump didn’t play by the music script he had been given. All of the “Saber rattling” by aircraft flying just outside of missile range, or even inside missile range, wasn’t, it turned out, “Saber rattling” meaning nothing. It was EA-18 G Growler aircraft mapping the air defense zones. Then suddenly in thirty minutes or less, everyone’s opinion of just how good your gear is, got shot in the ass.

Your mighty, vaunted air defense envelope, that can track and engage the best stealth fighters in the world, can’t track shit, and quickly becomes missile sponges. Your superior anti-aircraft missiles are blown up before they can leave the rails.

All your shit turns out to be TEMU garbage, bad monkey copies of Western or forty year old Soviet designs. Suitable for small things, or disposable uses… You can give them to the Special Olympics contestants, and they’ll do fine. The simple stuff? Yeah, it’s OK, you can buy fencing from TEMU and it’ll hold up for a couple years until you can afford the good stuff…

Ah, but don’t try to win the Olympics with them. Against real competition, they’re garbage, it turns out.

Oh and the idea that you’ll keep America from getting involved? Well, if they are willing to fly into an enemy capital and black bag the dictator for life, what’s the likelihood that they’ll wait for a three-week debating society argument to stop your invasion?

It is, of course possible to take a different view of this, the clowns at Politico are spinning that “ The Trump administration’s action in Venezuela is prompting concern from some Department of Defense officials who worry that the U.S. is pivoting away from deterring China’s rise, our own Jack Detsch and Paul McLeary write.”

As usual, the left can’t see past the event, to the second and third order consequences. They see “oh, we’re centering on the western hemisphere, it must mean we’re going to ignore China.” Instead of “Oh we’re dealing with China’s intrusions into the western hemisphere, which deters China.” And they then went hunting some junior staffer at the five sided puzzle palace to support that theory.

Now this doesn’t guarantee that Xi the Pooh isn’t going to get stupid, and just in case he suffers from the same sort of Dictator’s dilemma that Putin has, we still need to build ships. Lots of ships, and build them fast.

Sal has had several recent posts that are relevant: want a new amphib? well we’re going to get one. You Wanted a National Security Strategy, Well, You Got One. a very important discussion on the PRC v Japan Giving the Taiwan Hot Pot a Good Stir and Understanding Japan’s Military Expansion and last but not least, China Develops World’s Oldest Warship If you only read one of these, read that one. It has some very interesting second and third order things associated with it. If they’re arming their merchant fleet, even a small amount of it, that gives us all the justification we need to put every merchant China owns on the bottom, day one of the war.

He also did an evaluation of the second and third order effects from the action in Venezuela, the-maduro-raid-early-reports

On other things: something odd that I stumbled on, Duke University has in it’s library a collection of every Sears catalog, since the founding of the store. 12 ¼ feet worth. At first glance, you would ask, WHY, and why would we care… Ah but it’s a priceless reference for historians, people who do costuming, and economists. Look, historians and costumers have all sorts of data on what the high fashion looked like, but Joey Bagadoughnuts, what did he wear in 1902? Well you can count on the fact that Sears sold it!

For economists, it’s awful easy to just take the government’s numbers… But they’ve been tweaked, what’s tracked has been changed, and they’ve been massaged to within an inch of their lives, to support political agendas. But here you can compare Granny Smith Apples, with Granny Smiths. How much did a Number 10 cast iron skillet cost in 1891? How much did that skillet cost in 1919? 1939? When Sears stopped carrying them, what did they cost? Same thing for every durable and disposable good that Sears sold, from underwear to whole houses (yes Sears used to sell houses as a kit, that’s where the ‘Craftsman’ style architecture comes from!)

El Gato Malo has some very important work on the brainwashing and propaganda industry at prebunking the prebunk at home and abroad His perspective is that all the controls on the common man, are coming apart, here and abroad. All of the Propaganda, education and entertainment industrial complex bullshit, is coming apart like a cheep TEMU chair. And of course, the harder the coterie try to hold it together, and the harder they grip, the more it shows, and the more squish out.

His prediction:

You’re going to see this unravel all over the US and the world.

The attacks on the 2016 trump administration from the Russia hoax to the impeachment shenanigans and Jan 6 absurdities

The 2020 election manipulations

EU political party suppression and election rigging/overturning

The scuz, scam, and shakedown of the DSA

Calculated and cultivated replacement/displacement immigration schemes. the sheer scale of the NGO mediated programs to import census loading residents and voters by paying for their lives is going to boggle the mind.

As will the scope, cost, and illegality of the calculated propaganda around it and the suppression and vilification of dissent.

The large scale theft from Minneapolis to the New York home care scandal that seems likely to break and all the dirty money that flowed therefrom to swamp donkey politicians and machines and the massive money laundry around the immigration NGOs and politicians and political dynasties. (anyone else wonder if the reason Kammy Whammy chose a crazy running mate like Tim is because he had access to huge flows of dirty money to fund a campaign?)

The cat can go a little tinfoil at times, but he’s usually over the target. This is one of those times when he’s dead on top. The bottom line, literally:

threads will come together and I suspect we’re going to see a former US president and a former US first lady (and not the wife of that president) implicated in it up to their necks along with a bond villain and his weirdo progeny. (Uh, that would be Soros)

buckle up.

gonna be a wild one and gangs like this do not go quietly.

Captain/Senator Kelly is getting a formal reprimand, and being reduced in rank for retirement, which is the officer’s version of NJP. The captain, who claims to be such a legal eagle and that “My statements were just ‘the law’ and nothing that the troops aren’t taught,” seems to have missed a different part of the UCMJ, because he stated in reference to the reprimand that he was going to dispute it “to send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.” Uh, no Senator, they don’t get to decide what Americans get to say…

But they DO get to say what people in uniform get to say, and that includes officers who have retired. Please bone up on the UCMJ article 88, as well as article 94. For a captain, you sure are stupid.

Oh by the way, that’s one good thing about being enlisted, It’s legal for me as a retired petty officer, to say “the president is a moron” or “this captain couldn’t find his ass with both hands tied behind him, and a search warrant.”

Well, there’s a lot of other things that I could mention, but this is already twice the length I normally go, so I’ll leave you with one last piece, Tom Knighton had a very interesting post, The Law of Unintended Consequences remains undefeated

It seems that climate scientists have discovered, and produced a paper documenting that all of the worries about climate change, have actually caused climate change!

Allow me to explain. The removal of pollution in the form of particulate matter from clouds, has lowered the reflective index of those clouds. In other words, by not putting so much carbon in the air, the clouds are now letting more heat through than they used to, and there are LESS clouds. End result: more of the sun’s heat hits the earth’s surface instead of reflecting out into space. Or as Tom phrased it: “In short, trying to combat climate change due to greenhouse gases is leading to climate change due to a lack of greenhouse gases.” You should really go over and give Tom a look, his stuff is always worth reading.

And now I’m finally off.

QOTD: “That’s the way a lot of Americans feel about our party, that we’re just out of touch and can’t be trusted.” —Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) Who wonders why Trump didn’t carefully inform congress of his intent before capturing Maduro.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman