Author: DELEITURAS

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly walked out of a meeting with a group of Democrats discussing anti-semitism Wednesday after facing criticism for not responding to Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments about Israel.

In a meeting with Democratic colleagues, Pelosi was reportedly confronted by a number of members of Congress for not reaching out to the party in regards to Omar’s comments on Israel. In the meeting, Pelosi was challenged for getting her talking points from MSNBC by Freshman Connecticut Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes, according to Politico.

“Well if you’re not going to listen to me, I’m done talking,” Pelosi reportedly said, before putting down her microphone and walking out of the room.

Omar has faced criticism on numerous occasions for her comments in regards to Israel and Jewish people, causing Democratic members of the House to bring a resolution to the floor, after criticism from Jewish lawmakers, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and others.

“What I’m fearful of — because Rashida and I are Muslim — that a lot of our Jewish colleagues, a lot of our constituents, a lot of our allies, go to thinking that everything we say about Israel to be anti-Semitic because we are Muslim,” Omar said during a town hall in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

Omar has yet to apologize for any of her comments regarding Israel or Jewish people.

Last night Maren Morris performed her hit songs “80’s Mercedes” and “My Church” on Saturday Night Live.

 

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a top aide appear to control an outside PAC credited with being the central force behind her June 2018 primary victory.
• One former Federal Election Commission member thinks there would be a “serious investigation” if a complaint were filed, noting that the probe could potentially result in civil penalties or even jail time for Ocasio-Cortez and her chief of staff.
• A second former commissioner said there were possibly “multiple violations of federal campaign finance law.”
• Justice Democrats ran campaigns for Ocasio-Cortez and 11 other Democrats, but the New York Democrat was the only one to win her general election.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti obtained majority control of Justice Democrats PAC in December 2017, according to archived copies of the group’s website, and the two appear to retain their control of the group, according to corporate filings obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. If the Federal Election Commission (FEC) finds that the New York Democrat’s campaign operated in affiliation with the PAC, which had raised more than $1.8 million before her June 2018 primary, it would open them up to “massive reporting violations, probably at least some illegal contribution violations exceeding the lawful limits,” former FEC commissioner Brad Smith said.

Ocasio-Cortez never disclosed to the FEC that she and Chakrabarti, who served as her campaign chair, controlled the PAC while it was simultaneously supporting her primary campaign, and former FEC commissioners say the arrangement could lead to multiple campaign finance violations. The group backed 12 Democrats during the 2018 midterms, but Ocasio-Cortez was the only one of those to win her general election.

“If the facts as alleged are true, and a candidate had control over a PAC that was working to get that candidate elected, then that candidate is potentially in very big trouble and may have engaged in multiple violations of federal campaign finance law, including receiving excessive contributions,” former Republican FEC commissioner Hans von Spakovsky told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

And fellow former FEC commissioner Brad Smith told TheDCNF that if “a complaint were filed, I would think it would trigger a serious investigation.” He also noted that such a probe could potentially result in jail time for Ocasio-Cortez and her chief of staff, Chakrabarti.

Republican election attorney Charlie Spies told TheDCNF: “It looks like the campaign and PAC are under common control and the PAC was funding campaign staff and activities as an alter-ego of the campaign committee, which would be a blatant abuse of the PAC rules.”

Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti could face prison if the FEC determines that they knowingly and willfully withheld their ties between the campaign and the political action committee from the FEC to bypass campaign contribution limits, according to Smith.

“At minimum, there’s a lot of smoke there, and if there are really only three board members and she and [Chakrabarti] are two of them, sure looks like you can see the blaze,” Smith, a Republican, told TheDCNF. “I don’t really see any way out of it.”

Justice Democrats stated on its website from December 2017 until two weeks after Ocasio-Cortez’s June 2018 primary victory that she and Chakrabarti held “legal control” of the PAC, and corporate filings obtained by TheDCNF show that the two still serve on the three-member board of Justice Democrats on paper.

Political committees are affiliated if they are “established, financed, maintained or controlled by … the same person or group of persons,” federal election law states.

Justice Democrats’ website on March 23, 2018. (Screenshot/Wayback Machine)

Smith said: “The admission makes it open and shut if someone wants to file a complaint with the FEC. I don’t see how the FEC could not investigate that. We’ve even got their own statement on their website that they control the organization. I don’t see how you could avoid an investigation on that.”

And if the FEC concludes that Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign and Justice Democrats were operating as affiliated committees, “then anyone who contributed over $2,700 total to her campaign and the PAC would have made an excessive contribution,” which is a campaign finance violation, Smith told TheDCNF.

Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign and Justice Democrats raised a combined $4.6 million during the 2018 midterm election cycle, FEC records show. There’s a maximum five-year prison sentence for anyone who knowingly and willfully receives a collective $25,000 or more in excessive campaign contributions in a single calendar year.

Justice Democrats raked in far more than $25,000 from individual contributors of over $2,700 after Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti took control, according to FEC records.

“If this were determined to be knowing and willful, they could be facing jail time,” Smith told TheDCNF. “Even if it’s not knowing and willful, it would be a clear civil violation of the act, which would require disgorgement of the contributions and civil penalties. I think they’ve got some real issues here.”

Spies, who served as legal counsel for Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign, said: “There are a bunch of well-funded groups on the left that file complaints on much thinner grounds than this against conservatives and Republican candidates. I hope that these so-called non-partisan groups file complaints and treat this with the same urgency that they would if it were a conservative candidate.”

Justice Democrats Went All In On Ocasio-Cortez’s Primary Campaign

Ocasio-Cortez credits Justice Democrats for recruiting her to run for Congress in May 2017. She tweeted that the group got her campaign up and running by helping “with all that stuff a normal person would need (what forms to fill out? ect).”

Ocasio-Cortez paid a combined $27,293 to Justice Democrats and to what was effectively its predecessor, Brand New Congress LLC, for administrative, staffing and overhead services from the time she declared her candidacy to her shock primary victory, according to FEC records. Ocasio-Cortez only began paying her staffers directly through her campaign beginning in March 2018, according to her campaign reports.

Justice Democrats supported Ocasio-Cortez throughout her entire primary run. The group, which Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti appear to have legally controlled for much of her campaign, had raised more than $1.8 million by the time she ousted incumbent Democrat Joe Crowley.

Ocasio-Cortez was the only Justice Democrats-sponsored candidate to win her general election. She was also the only Justice Democrats-sponsored candidate to hold legal control of the PAC.

The other 11 candidates propped up by Justice Democrats lost their respective races, according to The New York Times.

Justice Democrats staffers said there were discussions to go all in for Ocasio-Cortez as early as June 2017.

Justice Democrats’ goal was for one of its sponsored candidates to defeat the incumbent, co-founder Corbin Trent told The Washington Post in June 2018, and former Justice Democrats staffer Max Berger tweeted that they established that goal in 2017.

But the PAC was advertising that it sought to replace numerous Democratic members of Congress with progressives.

Ocasio-Cortez And Chakrabarti Obtained Legal Control Of Justice Democrats

Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti, who served in multiple leadership roles within her campaign including campaign manager, were serving on the board of the Justice Democrats as early as Dec. 2, 2017, according to an archived copy of the PAC’s website.

Justice Democrats’ board of directors on Dec 2, 2017. (Screenshot/Wayback Machine)

Cenk Uygur and Kyle Kulinski of The Young Turks network were also on PAC’s board in early December 2017, but Uygur was forced out of the organization Dec. 22, 2017, after what Chakrabarti called “extremely disturbing sexist and racist statements” Uygur made in the early 2000s were unearthed.

Kulinski announced on YouTube the following day that he was resigning from Justice Democrats due to the PAC’s “venomous” Twitter statement urging Uygur’s resignation. Kulinski said he had “strong disagreements with the staff” of Justice Democrats, but added that the PAC’s candidates had “nothing to do with this.”

Board members Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti were left in control over Justice Democrats after Uygur and Kulinski’s departures, according to an archived version of its website on March 23, 2018.

“Justice Democrats PAC has a board consisting of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Saikat Chakrabarti that has legal control over the entity,” the Justice Democrats website read that day.

Justice Democrats then reported that Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti were “governors” of the organization in a document submitted to the Washington, D.C. Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs on March 28, 2018. A third listed governor was the PAC’s treasurer, Nasim Thompson.

Justice Democrats’ two-year report submitted to the Washington, D.C. Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs on March 28, 2018. (Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs)

A governor of an organization incorporated in D.C. is any person “under whose authority the powers of an entity are exercised and under whose direction the activities and affairs of the entity are managed,” according to the D.C. Law Library.

The Justice Democrats’ website continued to state that Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti held “legal control over the entity” for weeks after Ocasio-Cortez’s shock primary victory over Crowley on June 26, according to a July 10, 2018 archive of its website.

The Justice Democrats’ website currently states that Alexandra Rojas and Thompson hold legal control of the organization, but the PAC hasn’t filed documents to Washington, D.C. where it’s incorporated reflecting the change, meaning that Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti currently retain majority control of Justice Democrats on paper.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Saikat Chakrabarti listed as governors of Justice Democrats on March 4, 2019, at 12:17 pm. (Screenshot/DCRA)

Politico reported Jan. 16 that Chakrabarti resigned from the board, and Justice Democrat’s website no longer listed Ocasio-Cortez as a board member as of Aug. 8, 2018. TheDCNF received the corporation filing document still showing both as governors on Feb. 25. The D.C. government website showed the same as of Monday afternoon.

Ocasio-Cortez’s office and Justice Democrats did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Forget what you’ve been hearing about the fiscal cliff being averted. Your taxes are going up.

Beginning January 1 your FICA taxes (Social Security and Medicare) will return to their 2009 levels. In 2010, in an attempt to jump start the economy, President Obama reduced payroll taxes from 6.2 to 4.2 percent. Congress, in its efforts to keep us from falling off the financial cliff, neglected to continue this reduction and so now all taxpayers will see an increase.

Some will say that we should be glad to see this money returning to the Social Security and Medicare funds; that these programs are in severe need of significant changes if they are to remain funded beyond the next ten years.

This unexpected tax hike isn’t just a blow to working families. It will also be a shock to the economy. Economists have considered the payroll break one of the more effective ways of stimulating the economy because, as working families enjoy larger take home pay, they have more money to spend. That, in turn, helped boost businesses’ bottom lines and spur the fragile economic recovery. Many economists think it’s too early to tell exactly how much the higher payroll tax will hurt the economy, but generally agree that there will be a negative effect.

The initial amounts of the increase don’t sound so bad…after all, it’s spread out over a year. But imagine this: A family making $50,000 per year (not rich by any means) will now see an increase in payroll taxes of $20 per week or $80 per month, $1,000 in total. If you are that family you know that extra money is needed each month to buy groceries, buy winter coats, or maybe pay for the kids to be in a soccer program. It is real money and will be felt by real people.

It’s remarkable that despite the bluster of Team Obama not to raise taxes on the middle class they are doing just such. Did they think we wouldn’t notice?

This month as your Democratic voting friends notice their paychecks are a little smaller ask them first, who they voted for and if they truly believed Obama would keep their best interest at heart?

Do not be a low information voter.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie is furious after a federal union president said that if politicians don’t end the partial government shutdown, federal employees who are veterans will kill themselves.

Edward M. Canales, a local union president with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), told ABC News that he’s received calls from veterans who aren’t able to support their families during the shutdown and who express “no positive outlook on the future.”

Though there is no indication in the story that the employees were suicidal, ABC said Canales referred employees unhappy with the government shutdown to the Department of Veterans Affairs suicide hotline.

“If this shutdown does not stop, we are going to have fatalities. We’re going to have suicides,” Canales, a retired prisons employee and veteran, told ABC. He called the shutdown “shameful” and said it is “slapping every veteran in the face who has served their country.”

Veterans who receive care and services from the VA are unaffected by the partial government shutdown; all VA employees are also being paid on time as normal. The VA is fully funded for fiscal year 2019 and all VA operations continue unimpeded, the department said.

On Monday, Wilkie fired back at AFGE in a letter to national president J. David Cox, saying AFGE was exploiting “the real tragedy of Veteran suicide to make political arguments about the partial Government shutdown.” He went on to dismantle the stereotype of fragile veterans:

One of the most insulting and misleading stereotypes about Veterans today is that of the ‘Veteran as victim.’ … the notion that most Veterans are so fragile from their service that the slightest hint of hardship can push them to the brink of mental breakdown or even self-harm is preposterous, which is why Veterans and Veteran advocates are continuously fighting this shopworn canard.

As leader of the largest union representing VA employees, many of whom are Veterans, you should know how harmful this stereotype is to Veterans, especially those attempting to enter the civilian workforce following their service…

While it is apparent some AFGE leaders consider Veterans as victims, allow me to inform you of the true character traits of those who have worn the uniform.

• Veterans are models of civic engagement, holding stronger ties to their communities and volunteering and voting at higher rates than their non-Veteran counterparts
• The Veterans’ unemployment rate is lower than the national average, in part because companies often look to hire Veterans for complex and demanding jobs, citing their leadership and work ethic.

In short, America’s Veterans are model citizens and leaders, and almost every American recognizes that. AFGE Local President Canales’ attempt to use Veterans as pawns in a political debate while exploiting the serious issue of Veteran suicide is nothing short of disgraceful.

I ask you to apologize publicly for your AFGE colleague’s reckless comments and to outline the steps you plan to take to ensure AFGE leaders demonstrate proper respect for our Nation’s heroes.

In 2016, Cox called the House chairman tasked with overseeing the VA a “fool” and said he would “whoop” the VA secretary’s “ass.”

The AFGE represents employees of federal agencies including the VA. The VA employs 300,000 people and its union is particularly strong, fighting to block the firing of employees whose misconduct has harmed veterans, and securing policies that, for example, in some case give current federal employees preference over veterans for job openings.

When the Department of Defense and the VA merged two of their hospital as an experiment, they found a massive cultural clash between the VA’s unionized, civilian workforce and the DOD’s enlisted hospital employees. The Navy refused to let VA employees treat military men in the ICU, and the VA and DOD co-directors of the hospital were not on speaking terms.

The proposal was supposed to save money by reducing redundancies, but the VA union ensured that no VA employees were laid off even though they weren’t needed, defeating the purpose.

For the first time… ever, I watched an entire video advertisement on YouTube even though I could have skipped it in the first 15 seconds.

BMW has found an engaging way to advertise, although we don’t know yet if it will actually sell enough cars to pay for whatever salaries Clive Owen, Dakota Fanning, Jon Bernthal and Vera Farmiga required for this 13 and a half minutes of … more fame.

Excellent action sequences, chilling drama, a great story and no doubt that the viewer is watching a summer blockbuster quality action flick – but it’s an ad.

So without further adieu, I present BMW Film’s “The Escape”:

Perhaps I’m old, but tripping across this one short film made me look back and realize that BMW Films has been doing this for years! Legendary directors like Guy Ritchie, Tony Scott, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Frankenheimer, John Woo, Ang Lee, and others.

The action is intense, the directing styles varied, but all only require a time investment of 7-15 minutes.

Hostess Brands, maker of the Twinkie and Snowball, returned to bankruptcy court today prepared to begin liquidation of all assets. Instead they announced that the company will enter mediation for one last try with the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco and Grain Millers Union.

Whether this was a brilliant marketing ploy or truly ‘a one last chance’ opportunity, it may be that the Twinkie will survive!

The BCTGM workers represent one-third of the Hostess workforce. All 18,500 jobs will be permanently eliminated if the Baker’s Union refuses to reconsider their position. They have only 24 hours to make their decision.

From the Hostess Brands Website: Hostess Brands Inc. announced today that it will follow a request from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York to enter a confidential mediation on Tuesday with the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco and Grain Millers Union (BCTGM).

Today’s hearing to consider Hostess Brands’ motion to wind down the Company and sell all of its assets has been adjourned until 11 a.m., EST, on Wednesday.

Production remains shut down.

The extreme Left has not given up. Despite all the facts proving the need for continued nuclear deterrence and for a large, modern American nuclear deterrent, the extreme Left – led by Reps. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Ed Markey (D-MA, now a Senate candidate), the left continues to work to disarm America unilaterally.

Purporting to want to solve the problem of sequestration – which would make $85 bn in spending cuts in the federal budget this year and $110 bn in each successive fiscal year through FY2022, half in the defense budget and half in nondefense discretionary spending – Ellison has introduced a bill (cosponsored by 11 other House liberals, including Markey) which would replace the sequester with even more crippling and disastrous defense cuts and with massive tax increases, while completely shielding civilian (nondefense) spending – discretionary and nondiscretionary alike – from ANY cuts.

Thus, under Ellison’s plan, the ONLY agencies that would see cuts in their budgets would be the DOD and the Department of Energy (in its nuclear weapons programs).

Under the guise of wanting to cancel sequestration, Ellison and his 11 fellow liberal Democrats have proposed a treasonous, disastrous plan to completely gut the US military, including and especially its nuclear deterrent that provides a life insurance and a security umbrella for the US as well as over 30 allies.

Never before have I seen such a disingenous, dishonest, and treasonous bill (except those sponsored by Markey) – pretending to save the military from sequestration but calling for even deeper, more crippling, cuts to it, especially (but not exclusively) to America’s nuclear deterrent.

Now, House Republicans will likely kill the bill in committee (as they should), but it’s such a dangerous and treasonous bill, and such an act of political perfidy and dishonesty, that I’d like to nonetheless explain its dangerous provisions so that the public will be warned and its sponsors will be shown for whom they really are: traitors.

What is wrong with that bill?

To start with, EVERYTHING.

It begins with so-called “Congressional findings”, where Ellison and his fellow extreme leftists inserted a number of blatant lies. They falsely claim that America can afford to dramatically and unilaterally cut its nuclear deterrent even further because “the Cold War is over, the Berlin Wall is down, and the Soviet Union is gone”. They also falsely claim that further deep cuts can be done  without damage to US national security.

But those empty slogans, which House liberals have been repeating for months, are meaningless and irrelevant to the question of how many nuclear weapons America needs. The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall does NOT mean that the need for nuclear deterrence (and for a large American nuclear deterrent) has significantly diminished or that America can afford to cut its nuclear arsenal still further, on top of the 75% of the cuts already made since 1991.

In fact, the opposite is true: the need for nuclear deterrence, and for a large American nuclear deterrent, has only INCREASED since the Cold War’s end, as China has dramatically expanded its nuclear arsenal (to up to 3,000 nuclear warheads now), Russia has expanded and modernized its own arsenal since 2000, and two new countries hostile to the US – Pakistan and North Korea – have joined the nuclear club, with Iran well on its way there.

Furthermore, while Russia, China, and North Korea are threats to many but protectors to nobody, the US has to provide a nuclear umbrella not only to itself, but also to over 30 allies who rely on it for their security and indeed their own survival. These allies cannot afford to bet their survival on America breaking free of its disarmament kool-aid in the next 4 years. If the US cuts its nuclear arsenal significantly further, they will have no choice but to develop their own nuclear weapons – and 66.5% of South Koreans ALREADY support such a course of action. (A large majority of South Koreans also want US nuclear weapons to be reintroduced to the Peninsula as a deterrent against North Korea.)

Today, Russia alone has up to 6,800 nuclear warheads (2,800 strategic and up to 4,00 tactical warheads), all of which are immediately deliverable. Russia’s fleet of 434 ICBMs alone can, due to the multiple-warhead carriage capacity of most of these ICBMs, deliver 1,684 warheads to the CONUS, while Russia’s 14-strong ballistic missile submarine fleet could deliver well over 2,000. Russia’s 251 strategic bombers can deliver 7 warheads each – 6 on nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and one as a freefall bomb. For its tactical warheads, Russia has a wide range of delivery systems: torpedoes, cruise missiles, surface ships, SRBMs, tactical aircraft, artillery systems, etc.

China has at least 1,800, and up to 3,000, nuclear warheads (most of which are immediately deliverable), as detailed here and here. On top of that, one also has to deter North Korea and Iran.

And no, a few hundred warheads would not suffice. They could destroy enemy population centers, but that would not deter the enemy – because Russian, Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian leaders do not value civilians’ lives. They care only about their military and economic assets and their tools of oppression. But to be able to target these, one needs thousands, not mere hundreds, of warheads – at minimum, the current 1,550 warheads allowed by New START, probably even more.

Deterrence means holding what the enemy REALLY values at risk. But then again, the Left rejects the entire principle of deterrence. Leftists think that military weakness guarantees safety and military strength is provocative. Ellison’s bill aims to make America as weak as possible.

No serious “analysts” or “experts” support these cuts

It also falsely claims that “many national security and arms control analysts and experts” say that the US should reduce its arsenal to “no more than 1,000 warheads.” But there aren’t any real “experts” or “analysts” calling for such cuts or such an arbitrary limit. The only people advocating that are utterly ignorant, but very opinionated advocates of unilateral disarmament, such as Tom Collina and Daryl Kimball of the ACA, Joe Cirincione of Ploughshares, Chuck Hagel of Global Zero, and the ignorant anti-nuclear hacks at the “Council for a Livable World.”

But these ignorant unilateral disarmament agitators have been calling for deep, unilateral cuts in America’s deterrent since the founding of their organizations in the 1960s and 1970s. They did not begin calling for America’s disarmament after the Berlin Wall fell, but much earlier – in the midst of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was still alive and very dangerous.

In other words, they have ALWAYS been singing the unilateral disarmament siren song – no matter what the times and circumstances were. And just as they were dead wrong during the Cold War, they’re dead wrong today.

And no serious “analyst” worth his salt, let alone an “expert”, would set an arbitrary limit on the US nuclear arsenal (“no more than X warheads”). A truly credible analyst would not set an upper limit on the nuclear deterrent and would call for however many warheads were necessary, also allowing for the possibility that he might be underestimating the need and for an increase of the arsenal should the need arise.

The pro-unilateral-disarmament hacks call for a firm upper limit (ceiling) on America’s nuclear deterrent, chosen arbitrarily at just 1,000 warheads, because they couldn’t care less about America’s security. All they care about is disarming the US unilaterally.

The bill also falsely claims that significant savings can be made by cutting the nuclear deterrent. But that’s also a blatant lie. The cost of maintaining it – the warheads, the delivery systems, and the supporting facilities – is only $32 to $36 bn per year, i.e. less than 1% of the ttoal federal budget.

Cutting it even by half – by $16-18 bn per year – wouldn’t come close to even making a dent in the federal budget deficit ($1 TRILLION every year). Eliminating the entire ICBM fleet would “save” only $1.1 bn per year; eliminating the bomber fleet, only $2.5 bn.

What does the bill call for?

So let’s see what the bill’s provisions are.

It would:

• Prohibit any funding for maintaining the B61 and W78 warheads.
• Require cutting the ICBM fleet from 450 to no more than 200 missiles.
• Require retiring B-52 and B-2 bombers from nuclear deterrence and disabling their nuclear carriage capability.
• Requiire cutting the ballistic missile submarine fleet to just 8 boats, down from 14, and procuring only 8 replacement SSBNs.
• Prohibit the development of any replacement ICBM, even though the current fleet of ICBMs will, due to its age, retire by no later than 2030.
• Prohibit making the F-35 nuclear-capable.
• Prohibit the development of the urgently-needed Next Generation Bomber (the replacement for B-1s and B-52s) until FY2025, which would delay its entry into service by a decade, until FY2035 at the earliest (unless the Left decides to delay it further). For why the NGB is urgently needed and absolutely necessary, see here and here.
• Prohibit the construction of the urgently-needed CMRR and Uranium Production Facilities (needed to produce plutonium pits for plutonium wahreads and highly-enriched uranium for uranium warheads, respectively), whose construction is REQUIRED by the Senate resolution of ratification of New START and the FY2013 NDAA.

In addition, the bill would gut America’s conventional capabilities as well:

• It would dramatically cut F-35B and C procurement while also strictly limiting the procurement of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, often touted as an alternative for the F-35, to just a few hundred aircraft, well short of the Navy’s and the Marines’ needs (not to mention that the Super Bug cannot take off and land vertically).
• It would permanently cut the carrier fleet to just 10 vessels by prohibiting the construction of the next USS Enterprise, CVN-80.
• It would limit Virginia class attack submarine production to just one boat per year, thus dramatically cutting the attack submarine fleet’s size over the short and long term while also creating inefficiencies, because economies of scale (made by procuring two submarines per year) would be lost.
• It would kill the excellent V-22 Osprey, which has performed magnificently in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and is loved by its Marine pilots, without replacement.

The bill is not about saving the military from sequestration or saving taxpayers money. The bill is about gutting the US military’s nuclear and conventional capabilities alike, particularly the nuclear deterrent, which is responsible for keeping America and over 30 of its allies secure. And besides making you and all of us much less secure, and hostages to Russia’s and China’s nuclear arsenals, it would also raise your (and everyone’s) taxes.

This is a wolf in wolf’s clothing.

The bill must be utterly rejected and killed in committee. Furthermore, its sponsor (Keith Ellison) and cosponsors (Ed Markey and 10 other stridently liberal Democrats) must be unmaksed and outed for whom they really are: traitors.

Master impressionist Jim Meskimen reads “The Night Before Christmas” as 27 different celebrities, including Robert De Niro, Anthony Hopkins, and Robin Williams.

Meeting with the reporters for the first time since assuming office Jan. 1, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan touched on the Syria withdrawal, success in Afghanistan, the U.S. Space Force, and his role as the head of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Shanahan, who had served as deputy defense secretary until the first of the year, said that from his new position, “the terrain is not different.” What has changed, he told reporters, is that he sees the president more often, and works more closely with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Cabinet members and defense counterparts in Europe and Asia.

As acting secretary, he said, he expects to travel less, and to “drive more integration between the services and the combatant commands.”

On Syria:

• • Shanahan said the withdrawal is in the early stages. “We’re on a deliberate, coordinated, disciplined withdrawal,” he said.
  • ISIS is no longer able to govern in Syria, he said. “ISIS no longer has freedom to amass forces. Syria is no longer a safe haven. We’ve eliminated a majority of their leadership. We’ve significantly diminished their financial capabilities,” Shanahan said. “The way I would probably characterize the military operations conducted in Syria is that the risk of terrorism and mass migration has been significantly mitigated.”
  • Inside Syria, he said, “99.5 percent plus” of territory controlled by ISIS just two years ago has been returned to the Syrians. “And within a couple of weeks, it’ll be 100 percent,” he added.
  • Along Syria’s northeastern border, some 3.5 million Syrian refugees are in Turkey, Shanahan said, and significant numbers of internally displaced people are on the Syrian side of the border. To ameliorate this crisis, he said, military-to-military conversations are happening, and the State Department is involved as well, looking for solutions. “There are very important dialogues going on in major capitals in Europe about support to that portion of Syria, as well as very important discussions with our [Syrian Democratic Forces] counterparts there in northeastern Syria,” he added. “The discussions hold real promise.”

On Afghanistan:

• • Coalition forces and Afghan national security forces “have been doing a tremendous job,” the acting defense secretary said.
  • There is no change to the “realign, reinforce, regionalize, reconcile and sustain” plan, known as 4R+S, he said.
  • Discussions are now between Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban. Khalilzad is the State Department’s special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation. “The talks were encouraging,” Shanahan said. “I would just add to that, we have to give people time.”
  • The acting secretary noted “a new level of energy” in the situation. “The reconciliation portion our 4R+S is working,” he said. “Now we need to give the diplomats time and space to advance those conversations.”

On Space Force:

• • The Defense Department is looking at some individuals who might lead U.S. Space Command, Shanahan said.
  • The Space Force will focus on faster development of technology, faster delivery of technology, and leveraging of commercially available technology, he explained.
  • Concerns on Capitol Hill involve avoiding unnecessary cost and not growing a bureaucracy, he said. His  idea of Space Force is that it have a small footprint, he told reporters. “That’s why I recommend it sits under the Air Force,” he said.

Source: Department of Defense