thought i was done posting for today until i watched this librul hivemind nine minute exploration of california corruption and crap. eleven agencies to get a permit is wacky;
Saturday, February 15, 2025
here be the other half of the previous post in which vance tells europe like it aught to be, and is;
In his first major speech on the international stage, Vice President JD Vance criticized European leaders for allowing mass migration and extreme laws censoring speech, remarking that he worries more about Europe’s “threats from within” than from external threats like Russia and China.
“While the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine … the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor,” said Vance.
“What I worry about is the threat from within – the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.”
The vice president’s confrontational remarks at the Munich Security Conference apparently surprised many officials who were expecting him to focus his remarks on Ukraine and Russia.
Instead, Vance called them out for embracing authoritarian policies and using “ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation” to enact laws marginalizing populist voters.
As an example of Europe’s draconian attacks on on free speech, the veep cited a recent egregious case in Great Britain: “A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Conner, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own,” Vance recounted. “After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son.”...........more...........
vance and hegseth announce changes i never imagined hearing from the empire but applaud as way past due;
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a terrific, bracing speech yesterday to the Ukraine Defense Contact Group that deserves praise.
For more than two years, European capitals have been encouraging maximalism regarding the Ukraine war, and more generally encouraging the doddering US president’s romantic ideas about the transatlantic relationship.
It all came crashing down today.
Hegseth made clear, inter alia, that,
- “NATO membership for Ukraine is [not] a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement”;
- “as part of any [postwar] security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine”;
- a return to Ukraine’s 1991 borders, an official Ukrainian war aim, is “an unrealistic objective”;
- “stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe”; and that,
- “the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.”
For too long, US policy on Europe has been driven by airy romanticism, not by a cold, hard assessment of the strategic environment.
As Joshua Shifrinson and I wrote in Foreign Affairs last year:
With no candidate for European hegemony lurking, there is no longer any need for the United States to take the dominant role in the region… U.S. policy does not need to aim at formal withdrawal from or continued membership in NATO; it simply needs to make clear that Washington’s tenure as Europe’s pacifier is coming to an end, and if European defense planners feel that leaves a hole to fill, they must fill it themselves.
Hegseth’s speech suggests the Trump administration agrees. The division of labor in the transatlantic relationship needs to change now...........more......
turn about being fair play i'll fully applaud this move;
Democrats have cast the Trump administration’s ouster of eight senior FBI leaders as a “purge” and act of “retribution” from a weaponized Justice Department, some likening it to President Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.”
But former colleagues of the terminated “G-men” say this narrative is backward. FBI officials, past and present, have marshaled significant evidence via whistleblower complaints and testimony indicating that several terminated leaders routinely used their offices for partisan purposes.
These include allegations that at least two of the fired officials, Jeffrey Veltri and Dena Perkins, manipulated the security clearance review process to personally and professionally punish conservatives, COVID-19 vaccine skeptics, and Jan. 6 whistleblowers who reported suspected bureau malfeasance, and retaliated against those who came to the whistleblowers’ defense.
A third, Timothy Dunham, is also alleged to have improperly suspended security clearances.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) read numerous accounts of alleged misconduct perpetrated by these and other officials into the record this morning as the committee considered the nomination of Kash Patel for FBI Director.
One subordinate of the three terminated individuals, a former supervisory special agent in the Security Division, “SecD,” from which Veltri and Perkins hailed, and whom Dunham oversaw, told the committee:
I witnessed abuses committed against multiple employees by FBI senior leaders, particularly by Jeff Veltri and Dena Perkins. I also saw SecD retaliate against five of its own employees for protesting these unlawful practices. Because I spoke out against these abuses, Perkins and Timothy Dunham suspended my security clearance, costing me my job and continuing employment, totaling approximately $700,000 in lost wages and retirement benefits...........more...........
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