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  • Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense Nominee

    Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense Nominee

    The Hang-Chadian Nature of Divorcesque Confirmation Hearings:

    Does Pete Hegseth have the right maturity, experience, character, and personal constitution to be U.S. Secretary of Defense?

    Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Confirmation Committee argued over whether this particular American son was ready to protect the family estate. Except in this case, the partisan parenting philosophies were reversed. The Republican Party was the indulgent, permissive parent for their party nominee’s demerits while Democrats were all about discipline and moral principles in re Mr. Hegseth.

    From another angle, Pete Hegseth may not deserve to be Secretary of Defense not because he doesn’t have the talent, scars, and experience enough to bring a unique perspective, but because given his background he may have wounds, moral injury, and personal chemistry that the pressure of the top job would make worse. Would Pete Hegseth be a better fit for an advisory assistant or deputy SecDef role focused on his longest or best quality experience and education? Would it be innovation? Process reform? Fielding and testing of systems? Where would he serve with greatest effect?

    Bible Belts Worn in Committee

    There was coached testimony, right things said on deterrence and innovation, gotcha questions, worst demerits denied, and everything negative deemed forgiven by Jesus and Mr. Hegseth’s wife, implying that Hegseth is as good for the SecDef job as anyone else who needs forgiveness and redemption. Whereas Christian scriptures include everyone as falling short of the glory, what does that mean in the context of filling the top Defense post?

    Is Mr. Hegseth as qualified as any other combat veteran with distinguished service records, leadership experience, strategic training, and less overall baggage? Was there not a better SecDef nominee from among all qualified combat veterans willing to serve? Of course there probably is, but POTUS 47 likely remembers when he was POTUS 45 how he discarded decorated combat experienced geo-strategic leaders of theater-wide operations, roundly respected appointees who knew more than he did. He had coated them with lollipop flattery during their appointments, then dropped them in the dirt and excrement he tracked into the halls of government tweet after classless tweet.

    Even the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board wrote about the lack of substance in Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, noting the statements of what the nominee is “for” without his specifying how he would accomplish the historic defense priorities faced by U.S. Armed Forces today. Yet in Mr. Hegseth’s defense, few who are questioned publicly for sensitive strategic positions should get into the granularity of planning for all to hear, although they should give sound-enough answers to show they know the job they are nominated for.

    Senators Play at Religion in Service to Political Ideology

    Amendment One reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” and yet majority senators on the Confirmation Committee divined that nominee Pete Hegseth’s representations that his leadership demerits are redeemed by Jesus make his potentially disqualifying acts and words no longer relevant to Senate screening.

    In American governmental history, Jesus’ saving grace is usually reserved for morale building fireside chats, stumping in evangelical territory, criminal sentencing hearings for convicted persons, or parole hearings. Not confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense.

    Hegseth’s Case for Hegseth

    Pete Hegseth made his case for serving as Secretary of Defense with the following basic arguments, denials, and assertions:

    (1) innovation and competition whether in defense contracting or in leadership reform will best serve warfighters and the people they protect (true);

    (2) that he is not bigoted toward women or minorities in military service but believes in high standards related to the jobs involved while seeming to deny his more extreme past statements on the subject (predictable mixed truths and denials);

    (3) deterrence should be proportional to the threat and he acknowledged that Russia and China are building their nuclear arsenals yet without spelling-out his vision for meeting deterrence goals. Hegseth may have said less because he was not asked enough about how the President-elect’s foreign policy, immigration, and domestic security policies will affect deterrence; and

    (4) the several serious allegations against Hegseth for bad character, abusing personal power, assaulting women, alcohol abuse, making extreme statements about fellow Americans as enemies, and incompetent non-profit leadership are mostly from anonymous sources and therefore irrelevant. Real, confirmed bad judgment was ‘not being perfect,’ for which Jesus and his wife have forgiven and redeemed him.

    Upshot

    Mr. Hegseth argued standards for combat service should be high, and if women can meet the high standards alongside men, he implied that they are welcome to serve in combat roles. Yet if those standards are high for troops in the field, how much higher should the standards be for trustworthiness, mental maturity, and character of the one who would lead and serve them all?

    The cynical use of religion in a Senate confirmation or other government hearings on fitness for leadership posts belies the reason why character, temperament and judgment issues are brought up in the proceedings. If there is a history of bad character, temperament, and judgment for a SecDef that recurs after appointment, what could adversarial powers do with that? What would it do to morale in the Armed Services? How would it reflect on the tradition of a professional military? How would it affect unity in the ranks? Based on those questions, how would it affect U.S. national defense?

    If after considering letters in support of Mr. Hegseth’s nomination from fellow veterans, evidence showing a significant span of time free from the influence of his personal demons over his actions, the Senate Confirmation Committee votes to confirm this particular nominee, the man will need the country to remind him of the higher standards and better lights he expects of others wishing to serve.

  • Pitch: Tech Firms Should Provide In-Person ID Verification & Related Secure Tech Service

    Pitch: Tech Firms Should Provide In-Person ID Verification & Related Secure Tech Service

    For security of identity, it makes little sense for companies to require people to scan and send official documents proving their ID across servers on the internet to an online company that for whatever reason has flagged online activity or presence as “suspicious.” For one, consider that the company security challenger is communicating with a person they have flagged as a possible ID thief to begin with. There’s a good chance that ID thieves or black hat hackers have or can get access to their targets’ identifying documents in other ways, so having them scan those in could worsen a possible fraud loss.

    On the other hand, if it is the consumer that is required to prove ID to the company over the internet, the company asks the customer to put sensitive information at risk to do so. With constant serial hacks and thefts from online companies, institutions, and governments it is clear that the internet and its many, many, many moving parts and inroads is a sieve. Consumers cannot count on companies to keep their data safe; cannot count on the data to remain safe in transit; and cannot even trust their own devices due to persistent threats lurking and reloading through ISPs, supply chains, aged-out hardware, infected government computers, the vaunted citizen liability mess we call credit bureaus, and other attack vectors, whether the compromise is in hardware, software, supply chains, peripherals, updates, insiders, services, and or due to the human factors by which busy people cannot effectively keep up with nor run down repetitive security rabbit holes.

    Rather than the above, firms should phase in face to face customer care in which physical presence with document ID confirmation can unlock accounts, troubleshoot, advise or deal with infected devices, preserve data, and other services. This may involve mutual partnerships with co-working spaces, small office unit companies, retail stores, banks, and other client-facing venues with private meeting spaces.

    A physical presence for doing this would be a customer-loyalty investment, a marketing / upsell opportunity, and would likely save time and labor costs for the company because walking someone through a process remotely takes as much time and sometimes longer that troubleshooting in person, with physical ID, presence, and relevant device(s) available for technicians to work with.

    Providing (directly or outsourcing) a face to face service desk would also cut into black hat hackers’ success rates since they rely so heavily on anonymity to conduct fraud, theft, and worse.

    Finally, a fringe benefit of providing face to face service is a return to more in-person human connection, respect, and dignity in part lost to the impersonal aspects of internet and phone interaction. This builds trust, a real commodity.

  • Trump’s rhetorical Greenland spectacle

    Trump’s rhetorical Greenland spectacle

    President-elect Donald Trump, by calling for the effective U.S. purchase or annexation of Greenland, an autonomously-run territory of European NATO ally Denmark, seems to be playing mind games with Copenhagen, yet by so doing does damage to Ukraine, Israel, and NATO in open, obvious benefit to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Problem 1: By doing…

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  • Internet Morphs WSJ Article on 2021 IC Differences on Covid-19 Origin into “Cover-up”

    Internet Morphs WSJ Article on 2021 IC Differences on Covid-19 Origin into “Cover-up”

    Feature photo from China Daily. On Friday December 27th, 2024, the Wall Street Journal published “U.S. Intelligence Review of Origins of Covid-19 Masked Deep Divisions,” (also titled “Behind closed Doors: The Spy-World Scientists Who Argued Covid Was a Lab Leak”) reporting that the FBI was the only member of the IC with “moderate confidence” that…

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  • The Ouster of Christopher Wray

    The Ouster of Christopher Wray

    If President-elect Trump had learned anything since his first term he would have retained Christopher Wray as FBI Director for the duration of Wray’s term. Instead, Trump ousted an effective FBI director who served in the best traditions of the FBI’s national security and law enforcement missions. Specifically Mr. Trump hated that FBI agents under…

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  • Keeping the U.S.A. Out of Foreign Nation State Hands

    Keeping the U.S.A. Out of Foreign Nation State Hands

    Here is a historic quote no less true today during attempts to put Kash Patel over the FBI, Tulsi Gabbard over the ODNI, and Pete Hegseth over the Defense Department: “If Russia seizes the West’s secret services, it controls Western policies. If it taps into Western intelligence services, it makes them serve the Kremlin. That’s…

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  • Who Has America’s Center of Gravity: The United States of America’s Race for President, 2024

    Who Has America’s Center of Gravity: The United States of America’s Race for President, 2024

    The Center of Gravity of the United States is mostly about who the great majority of Americans really are, deep down, toward others. Deep down, are they about loving their neighbors or hating them?

    If hatred rules, the United States will fall apart in division and poverty, and our adversaries will move in and rule us harshly. That hasn’t happened. Hatred is the path to hell, and that is against every major faith practiced in America except perhaps some outlier sects, and the great majority of Americans do not believe in those.

    The Center of Gravity of the United States is more than any statement, pledge, creed, or law. It includes all of these and more. It is more than identity, race, gender, faction, organization, party, leader, or doctrine. It is not of words alone. It is the countless actions of all persons past, present, and future who have served and will serve their fellow Americans unselfishly.

    Dividers and destroyers are bad leaders who choose favorites and constantly switch them out, creating hatred and division. Why knuckle under to that hatred trance and lose everything, soul included? That’s not strength, that’s weakness for the United States. No person any one of us loves will benefit.

    Revenge does not win, whereas unity, preparation, deterrence, and a strong, unified defense with professionalism not hatred, can prevent loss of our people, our allies, and what is good about our way of life.

    Love your neighbor as yourself, and a house divided against itself cannot stand, taught Jesus, the Jewish Rabbi, Savior to Christians, prophet to Muslims, and great teacher to secularist ethicists.

    Mercenaries and narcissistic people are unprofessional, poor leaders who usually commit crimes and become tyrants. They feed off of hatred, anger, pride, selfishness, excess, prejudicial judgement, and playing favorites with conflicts of interest. Vote against them.

    As a nation, individually and collectively we must cast out such sicknesses and love our neighbors of all backgrounds and demographics. We need merit, evidence, and good ethics guiding our decisions. We need balance, freedom, and space for others, not materialism, unwarranted distrust, abuse, trauma, excessive luxury, obsession, narrowness, and addiction.

    Within the ethos of loving our neighbors the USA requires warranted distrust of those who would destroy their neighbors and divide the nation. The fulfillment of laws and the spirit of the laws fairly, without favoritism, discretionary mercy on the repentant, and grace that wins friends is what we need in leadership of Americans at home.

    What makes the United States special includes the relationships, families, communities, individuals, friends, loved ones, wonderful species of all kinds of creatures, competitors, faith, feelings, thoughts, ideas, work, worship, spirit, labor, intellect, art, sport, science, ethos upon ethos, business, and sacrifice of so many people that it is too great to comprehend. Our military people have fought for these qualities in the USA and our leaders must lead for and with them lest we fall.

    Freedom is a core element in the Center of Gravity of virtues in the USA, as is the rule of lawful decision making where Americans differ. These ideals are what makes the people of the United States able to fall and get back up again, to unify, thrive, think, debate, agree, and unify again.

    To set aside heart hardening pride and adopt heart emboldening powers of love, mercy, courage, service, and wisdom, from richest to poorest, is also the Center of Gravity of the United States. The rich help the poor meet their needs and grow their wealth, and the poor can help the rich let go of the wealth that chokes out their spiritual and emotional happiness and joy.

    That is how E Pluribus Unum is achieved from the ideals and virtues that are our national center of gravity prompting us to live them out in our lives together.

  • Africa, Awaken to Intentions of Putin, Xi Jinping

    Africa, Awaken to Intentions of Putin, Xi Jinping

    Africa’s future leaders will discover that they are expected to acquiesce to Russian and Chinese imperial foreign policy expectations in which Africans are tools, or they will be removed, even by signature Putin methods. A more accurately evocative image by which to remember the KGB ideals of the Russian nationalist Putin despite his diplomatic charm…

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  • Putin Perpetuates Mass Abuse of the Poor and Middle Classes via Weaponized Migration

    Putin Perpetuates Mass Abuse of the Poor and Middle Classes via Weaponized Migration

    Historic Repeat Thesis: The regime of Vladimir Putin is one of a number of resurgent vanguard dictatorships with ideological-DNA inherited from super-nationalist strains of autocratic authoritarianism shared by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Like them, Putin commits mass collateral damage and displacement abuse against poor and middle class peoples at home and abroad. Like them, he does it to protect himself from the consequences of his parasitic expansion strategy.

    Included in Putin’s portfolio of mass human misery: the Chechen wars; the Syrian civil war; the war of aggression on Ukraine; and the resourced, indirect facilitation and UN protection of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Iran’s proxy militia attacks on Israel and the United States over time, including that of October 7, 2023 and the bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in the 1983.

    Russian Regime Abuses

    Vladimir Putin’s abuses of the poor and less wealthy at home and abroad include his:

    (1) wars against neighboring states such as Chechnya, provoking terror against Russians and exported terrorism upon the ejection of Islamists from Chechnya, Dagestan, and elsewhere in Russia’s Caucasus region, plus the related, ongoing cyclic expenses detracting from domestic budgets that may otherwise have improved Russia’s standard of living more evenly;

    (2) wars against neighboring states such as Ukraine and Georgia, using mass conscription of poor Russians and migrant workers from former Soviet republics who are fed into a meat grinder of poorly thought-out, corruption-riddled, deluded, and ill-prepared wars of conquest;

    (3) proxy wars, and active measure power-plays in less powerful non-nuclear states in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and in Latin America by which these proxy regimes cause refugee crises with Russian military and intelligence help, driving refugees toward the free nation geopolitical units able and willing to help them, such as the E.U., U.K., United States, and Canada; and some not so able, even if willing to help: such as Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and others along the global refugee pathways;

    (4) active measures inside developed nuclear and non-nuclear constitutional democratic countries, including the E.U., U.K., and United States to heighten domestic political and interpersonal fear, anger, envy, and rage against forced and pressured migrants seeking refuge and or a better life;

    (5) active measures sending intelligence operatives, proxy terrorists, spies, and or criminal elements into the free nations receiving large numbers of legal and illegal migrants, with these infiltrates taking actions that enhance the division, rage, and instability among domestic citizenries and migrant populations;

    (6) war diplomacy and propaganda aimed at the ‘Global South’ and among populations uprooted by Moscow’s proxy regimes taking advantage of publicized incidents of politicians, vigilantes, police forces, and others in free nations that advocate, create, incite, or carry-out verbal or physical hostilities toward migrants.

    Conclusion

    Putin sponsors strongmen, terrorists, fake religious men, and authoritarians such as Maduro, Ortega, Haftar, Assad, Nasrallah, the Taliban, and Khamenei when they use crackdowns, assassinations, summary executions, and terrorism against their own peoples and neighboring countries. This drives refugee waves toward free nations. It has to stop at the sources in addition to establishing more effective border filters for those already enroute.

  • To Shorten Wars and Prevent Wider War The Biden Administration Should Lift Allies’ Conventional Strike Restrictions Against Iran’s and Russia’s Conventional Military Targets

    To Shorten Wars and Prevent Wider War The Biden Administration Should Lift Allies’ Conventional Strike Restrictions Against Iran’s and Russia’s Conventional Military Targets

    October 4, 2024

    Ukraine & Israel: Ukraine and Israel face common adversaries axially aligned. Russia and China enable Iran and its terror proxies with lethal supply and know-how to wage war against Israel. Russia and China could sanction Iran but do not. Iran, China, and North Korea likewise back Russia’s increasingly genocidal war of aggression against Ukraine.

    Despite these facts, the Biden Administration publicly calls Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear facilities and publicly calls Ukraine not to use long range U.S.- provided conventional weapons against conventional targets and supplies deep inside Russia.

    The Biden Administration restrictions prevent shortening these wars by failing to prevent Iran’s development of the bomb and failing to permit Ukraine to destroy Russian supply lines and capacity as would force retreat or surrender of Russian troops in Ukraine.

    If the Biden Administration lifts its restrictions on Ukraine and Israel, it would equalize power on the ground, shorten wars, save lives, and establish free nation allies by making continuing war too expensive for the tyrannical state and non-state aggressors to politically and militarily sustain.