DELEITURAS

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed his pleasure on Monday for the impending Senate vote on the Green New Deal, Democrats’ expansive anti-climate change plan.

“I could not be more glad that the American people will have the opportunity to learn precisely where each one of their senators stand on the “Green New Deal,” McConnell tweeted. “A radical, top-down, socialist makeover of the entire U.S. economy.”

McConnell revealed in February that he will force a vote before the August recess, and the vote could be held as early as Tuesday, according to NBC News.

“The proposal we are talking about is, frankly, delusional,” McConnell said on the Senate floor earlier in March. “It is so unserious that it ought to be beneath one of our two major political parties to line up behind it.”

While Democrats have largely rallied in support the of the Green New Deal, it has been a wedge issue among voters for its radical policy prescriptions. With a goal of moving toward net zero emissions over a 10-year period, the proposal calls to “totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”

Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who introduced the resolution along with Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, attacked Republicans on Saturday for bringing her proposal to the Senate floor for a vote.

“The GOP’s whole game of wasting votes in Congress to target others “on the record”, for leg they have no intent to pass, is a disgrace,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Stop wasting the American peoples’ time + learn to govern. Our jobs aren’t for campaigning, & that’s exactly what these bluff-votes are for.”

Two pseudo-conservative groups’ presidents, Ryan Alexander of “Taxpayers for Common Sense” and Thomas Schatz of Citizens Against Government Waste, lied to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on February 5th.

In an attempt to fool the Congress into agreeing to deep, harmful defense cuts – whacking at the military’s muscle, not fat – they lied to the Congress by calling a host of crucial, desperately needed defense programs “waste.” This has recently become the Left’s favorite tactic in its campaign to gut America’s defense.

Instead of overtly saying “let’s disarm ourselves unilaterally and then everyone else will be nice enough to do so” or “let’s disarm ourselves; we don’t need a strong military”, most leftists – other than the most strident liberals in Congress – have shifted to labelling every defense program they oppose (i.e. the vast majority of defense programs) as “waste.”

This is supposed to justify deep, crippling defense cuts and to fool fiscal conservatives into agreeing to such disastrous cuts.

We conservatives must not be fooled by this. The vast majority of what the Left, including TCS, calls “waste”, are actually needed, well-justified defense programs – not just weapons, but also the facilities that support them and the troops.

Specifically, TCS lied to the Congress that the planned CMRR (chemical metallurgy research) facility (intended to produce plutonium pits, crucial components of nuclear warheads) and other planned nuclear facilities are “wasteful”, and that the programs targeted by TCS and POGO (which is funded by George Soros) are also “wasteful” and deserving termination (these proposals included the cancellation of the badly-needed nuclear facilities listed above). They furthermore lied that their proposals would save $800 bn (which they would not).

The reason why their claims are blatant lies is simple – because the vast majority of the defense programs they’ve targeted are not “waste”, but crucial, NEEDED, and well-justified programs. Specifically:

1) The CMRR facility is absolutely necessary to produce plutonium pits – crucial components of nuclear warheads – in sufficient quantities for America’s geriatric nuclear stockpile, which is long overdue for such modernization. The facility currently responsible for the production – the Los Alamos National Laboratory – is dilapidated beyond economic repair and in dire need of replacement, and its plutonium pit production capacity is woefully inadequate to sustain even a reduced nuclear arsenal of 1,000-1,550 warheads, let alone anything larger.

Likewise, the Uranium Production Facility is needed to produce highly-enriched uranium for America’s uranium-based nuclear warheads, at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. These two facilities are NOT anyone’s pork projects – they are urgently needed national security priorities. They were both promised by President Obama during the Senate debate on New START ratification, and the requirement that these facilities be built was included in the Senate Resolution of Ratification of New START (and is thus the law of the land). The requirement for the CMRR facility was recently reaffirmed by the entire Congress in the FY2013 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed both houses of Congress by overwhelming margins. Thus, the requirement for these facilities is the law of the land.

2) The Next Generation Bomber/Long Range Strike Bomber is an urgently needed replacement for the USAF’s B-1 and B-52 bombers, both of which have huge radar signatures and, as a result, cannot survive in anything other than benign combat environments where the only opponents are insurgents or primitive countries unable to contest airspace control. They cannot survive in any situation where the enemy has advanced (or even upgraded Soviet) air defense systems, such as the S-300, S-400, S-500, or even the SA-5 and SA-6. Any airspace defended by such systems, including that of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela, is firmly closed to them.

Yet, the USAF has to be able to strike deeply into these countries, from over the horizon to be credible in any contingency involving them, or in nuclear deterrence scenarios. Today, its only bombers capable of that are its 20 B-2s. Such a number is woefully insufficient, due to the sheer number of targets among other things.

The requirement for an NGB has been validated by two successive Quadrennial Defense Reviews, successive Defense and Air Force Secretaries, Chiefs of Staff, other USAF generals (e.g. David Deptula and former CSAF Gen. John M. Loh), and numerous think-tanks and analysts, including the CSBA, the Heritage Foundation, and Dr Rebecca Grant. The USAF says the new bomber is an absolute requirement, that deferring or cancelling it would be “very high-risk”, and that it’s a crucial part of their mission (CSAF Gen. Mark Welsh). Indeed, the bomber is the central part of the AirSea Battle plan to defeat anti-access/area denial threats. Without the bomber, the whole plan collapses and the US won’t be able to counter such threats.

3) Kill the V-22 Osprey, which has proven itself in THREE different war theaters (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya), saving countless lives, delivering troops and supplies into and out of combat zones and accumulating over 150,000 flight hours. Marine pilots love it; the USMC Commandant praises and supports it; and it is twice cheaper to buy and operate than its proposed replacement, the CH-53. It can fly twice farther and twice faster than any helicopter. It’s needed to replace the C-2 COD aircraft, the USAF’s CSAR helos, and the presidential helo. Yet, TCS and POGO anti-defense hacks want to kill it.

4) Permanently cut the Navy’s carrier fleet to 10 vessels (by retiring the USS George Washington in 2016 26 years early) and eliminate an entire carrier group – not just the flattop itself. This would significantly weaken the Navy and undermine its power projection capability by reducing the number of platforms serving this purpose. Only a carrier or a long-range bomber can deliver strikes against enemy targets wherever and whenever needed without host country basing. With just 10 flattops, the Navy would have no more than 5-6 available for duty globally; this means either 2 for the Persian Gulf and only 3-4 or the Pacific, or just one in the Gulf and 4-5 in the Pacific.

5) Cut the Navy’s current and planned SSBN fleet to just 8 boats, which means only 4-5 would be at sea at any given time, i.e. America’s enemies would have to sink only 4-5 of them, while the rest would be in port, being easy targets. This would gut the naval leg of the nuclear triad.

6) Eliminate the DOE’s reserve stock of highly-enriched uranium for nuclear warheads. (See above.)

7) Cancel the F-35B Marine Corps variant (along with the Navy’s C variant), leaving the Marine Corps with no attack jets to fly from the Navy’s small carriers (amphibious assault ships) when its Harriers retire. As USMC Commandant Gen. Amos has said, this would cut the Marine’s combat aviation power by 50%!

8) Closing the Army’s tank production line in Lima, OH… when the Army’s Abrams tanks need refurbishment and upgrade, and when the Army plans to reopen the line in 2017 to produce Ground Combat Vehicles.

9) Withdrawing the remainder of US troops from Europe and laying them off (i.e. more jobless, homeless veterans), thus cutting the force structure further and significantly undercutting the military’s power projection capability, because units based in-theater, closed to the combat zone or area of action, are much CHEAPER to deploy and operate, and can react much faster and more effectively, than units based in the CONUS. (Similarly, one warship based in-theater, e.g. in Europe or Japan, is worth four warships based in the CONUS.) The principal reason why is precisely because they’re based in-theater – they don’t have to waste money and time flying in from the CONUS and then returning to the CONUS.

10) “Freeze” funding for the Ground-Based Midcourse Missile Defense system protecting the US from ballistic missile attack and not build any more such interceptors or siloes for them – whether in the US or anywhere else. This would leave the US totally unprotected from any ICBMs Iran fields in the future (it is projected to field them by 2015-2016).

These are just the most damaging, most crippling of the defense cuts that POGO and TCS have proposed. Implementing them would gut the military and make it unable to counter anti-access/area-denial threats – the most pervasive and ubiquitous threats the US faces today – because TCS and POGO have targeted the very weapons and capabilities needed to counter these threats.

Meanwhile, CAGW’s Thomas Schatz, while also lying that “the Pentagon is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse”, specifically targeted the Medium Extended Area Defense System (MEADS) for killing (the DOD has agreed but wants to complete the R&D phase so as not to leave taxpayers with no return on their investment).

While MEADS’s opponents falsely claim that MEADS would be ineffective and unneeded, it IS very much needed and has passed its tests. It is needed to replace the woefully obsolete PATRIOT system, whose radar can look only at 90 degrees, not all around itself (360 degrees) and has been less than spectacularly effective. Moreover, despite Schatz’s lies that MEADS program partners Italy and Germany wouldn’t mind if the US quit the program, the truth is exactly the opposite: their governments just recently sent the US government a letter warning the US not to withdraw from the MEADS program.

In other words, the claims of TCS and CAGW and their presidents about defense spending are blatant lies. By lying to the Congress, they have committed a serious offense, and they should be prosecuted and severely punished for it.

A 2016 interview with CNN President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen shows he appears to have lied during his Wednesday congressional testimony, when he said he did not want to work in the White House.

When asked by CNN’s Chris Cuomo if Trump would ask him to go to Washington D.C. to work for him, Cohen told Cuomo “I certainly hope so,” Cuomo followed up and asked if he would want to go, Cohen responded saying, “One hundred percent,” when asked about his future job, Cohen said “Hopefully it’ll be in Washington.”

WATCH: 

This comes after Cohen told the House Oversight Committee that, he “did not want to go to the White House, saying “I was offered jobs.”

CNN reporter Dana Bash called Cohen out after the hearing Wednesday saying, ‘he very much wanted a job in the White House.” Trump’s family also weighed in, “Michael was lobbying EVERYONE to be ‘Chief of Staff.’ It was the biggest joke in the campaign and around the office. Did he just perjure himself again?,” Eric Trump tweeted Wednesday.

Cohen is set to go to prison for 36 months, starting May 6 for lying to Congress.

This week my mother was talking about ID theft. Several of her friends had their credit card information stolen and used. Fortunately, the credit card companies caught the fraud and helped each cancel the accounts. Mom is worried about her own credit and the safety of her accounts.

And well she should be.

Yesterday it was reported that even the First Lady, Michelle Obama, had her personal information hacked and posted on a website. Some are saying this may be a hoax though it is being reported as valid information. She’s not alone. Similar ID theft has happened to other celebrities including Beyonce, Mel Gibson and even former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Obama’s are fortunate and have the Secret Service investigating. Other celebrities are able to get FBI response but for most of us it’s not so easy.

So, short of getting the Secret Service’s ear what can you do?

• If you do nothing else, you can become more aware of where you share personal information online and elsewhere.
• Make sure your wi-fi connections are secure.
• Monitor your bank and credit accounts. Many banks and credit card providers offer monitoring plans (sometimes at a cost.)
• Be sure to take advantage of the free annual credit reports from AnnualCreditReport.com and monitor your credit  standing along with your free credit scores using Credit.com’s free Credit Report Card.
• For a fee you can enroll in a identity monitoring program.

You can read more at ABC Local andYahoo News. For more prevention tips visit IdentityTheft911.

 

 

Today is May 1st, also called the “International Workers’ Day”, a communist feast par excellence, celebrated by communists and socialists, indeed by Leftists of all stripes, around the world. So I would like to ask you, Dear Readers, if you can recognize which socialist party had the following platform? Whose party platform is it? (No looking it up in Google!)

“We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. (…)

All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.

The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all.

In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries.

We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.

We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.

We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on landand prevention of all speculation in land.

We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. (…)

The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program (…)The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.”

Don’t recognize whose platform is it?

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union? Of China? Of Italy? Of the USA? The French Communist Party? The French Socialist Party? The UK Labour Party? The Argentine Justicialist Party?

Nope, nope, and nope. This is the platform of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), AKA the German Nazi Party, planks no. 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, and 21.

You see, despite all the attempts by the global Left to tar the Right with responsibility for and ideological kinship with the Nazis, for all their attempts to stick the Nazi tag to the Right, for all their false claims that the Nazis were “far-right”, the Nazi Party was thoroughly LEFTIST through and through.

Nazism is a mere shorthand for “national socialism”, and that brand of socialism, while being nationalistic, was still SOCIALIST and thoroughly leftist. The Nazis advocated, and implemented, nationalisation, land reform, outlawing child labor, and the division of corporate profits.

Not only that, but their leader, Adolf Hitler, publicly said that he and other Nazis were SOCIALISTS:

“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions”

– Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s speech on May 1, 1927. Cited in: Toland, John (1992). Adolf Hitler. Anchor Books. pp. 224–225. ISBN 0385037244.

No matter how hard leftists around the world deny it, national socialism was a thoroughly LEFTIST ideology, and the Nazis were their ideological, national socialist cousins. The only difference between them and communists is that communists are “international socialists.”

Part 1

Every day we hear more tales of woe from college students who are inundated in debt due to their huge student loans.  Paying off student loans is a factor affecting lifestyle choices for many. More recently, the loans have become a larger influence on graduates, impacting decisions about home buying and even marriage.

Some believe that the sudden jump in college tuition is directly related to the government taking over the student loan program and advertising easier options for students to attend college. Is this so? There does seem to be precedence. Look at the sudden, sharp increase in house prices when so many were able to get non-principle loans through government sponsored programs. Or, the drastic rise in prescription drug costs since the implementation of Medicare Part D. There may be something to this argument. Others will point to the severe financial situation of states which forced them to cut college funding.

No matter the cause, what can be done to fix the problem?

Lower interest rates, which may help in the long run, still leave students with loans and long term repayment plans. (Interest rates for undergraduate loans were approved to remain at 3.4% for one more year in the recently passed Highway Bill effectively kicking the can down the road until after the election.)

In 2007, Public Service and Public Service Loan Forgiveness was enacted. This program allows graduates who work in the public service sector full-time for ten years and make qualifying payments during those years to have the rest of their loan forgiven.

A new House bill The Student Loan Forgiveness Act, introduced by Rep. Hansen Clarke (D-MI) offers a unique solution. The Income Based Repayment plan offers: Students pay 10% of their ‘discretionary’  salary for 10 years at which time the remainder of the loan is forgiven. As expected, this bill is wildly popular with college students, especially when so many graduates are competing with experienced unemployed workers resulting in lower pay jobs. In its current form, this bill is retroactive for those who have made qualifying payments; only available for federal loans; and places caps only on future loans.

With many government programs a fairness question causes discord among those who find themselves just outside the benefits of the potential bill. If the bill passes this year students who graduated ten years ago and paid their 10% will find their loans forgiven. Qualified students who graduated over ten years ago will also find their loans forgiven but will have paid a much larger portion of their personal debt. Students who received private loans are not eligible. And students who consolidated their loans may find their repayment plan starts over from the consolidation point.

These forgiveness programs aside, one might ask why the government is responsible for both offering student loans and for offering forgiveness? Wouldn’t it make sense just to offer college at a lesser cost? Some theorize that this is further evidence of the government wanting direct involvement in one’s life choices; including employment and housing options. Some are concerned that the commitment to work ‘for the government’ is part of a hidden socialist agenda; that the more ties one has to the government the more dependent he will be on its benefits.

Fiscal conservatives and those who want smaller government look at these forgiveness programs and ask why taxpayers are again having to foot the bill? Older generations look at today’s young graduates with disbelief. Student loans are not new but were often looked at as a hold on personal growth and something that should be paid back as quickly as possible, even if necessitating working more than one job. Many believe this generation has had high expectations give them; that they should not have to start at a beginning wage for a job. They mistakenly believe they should immediately on graduation be able to afford a new car, a new home and all the good things they grew up with but without having to wait and save as their parents did.

Tuesday, Part 2 of this article will look at some options for the new high school grad: How can a student become qualified for quality employment without wallowing in school debt and how to make common sense decisions.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed Saturday that former President Ronald Reagan used certain rhetoric to pit white working class Americans against brown and black working class Americans.

“A perfect example of how special interests and the powerful have pitted white working class Americans against brown and black working class Americans is Reaganism in the ’80s when he started talking about welfare queens,” the New York Democrat said while speaking at a conference in Austin, Texas.

“So you think about this image of welfare queens and what he was really trying to talk about was … this like really resentful vision of essentially black women who were doing nothing, that were ‘sucks’ on our country,” she continued. “That’s not explicit racism but still rooted in a racist caricature.”

Ocasio-Cortez — who was born nearly nine months after Reagan left the White House — made the comments during an interview at the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals. The swipe against the country’s 40th president was not the only controversial statement she made while speaking to The Intercept’s Briahna Gray.

The self-identified democratic socialist also claimed that “where we are” as Americans amounts to “garbage.”

“So when someone’s talking about ‘our core,’ they’re like, ‘Oh, this is radical,’ but it isn’t radical. This is what we’ve always been,” Ocasio-Cortez said, arguing against the notion that her proposals are too radical. “I think all of these things sound radical compared to where we are,” she continued, “but where we are is not a good thing. And this idea of like, ten percent better than garbage, it shouldn’t be what we settle for.”

Ocasio-Cortez went on to criticize the concept of political moderation.

“Moderate is not a stance. It’s just an attitude towards life of, like, ‘meh,’” she said. “We’ve become so cynical that we view ‘meh’ or ‘eh’ — we view cynicism as an intellectually superior attitude, and we view ambition as youthful naivete.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham is requesting an FBI briefing about the circumstances of a pre-dawn raid of Trump confidant Roger Stone’s home in Florida last Friday.

“I am concerned about the manner in which the arrest was effectuated, especially the number of agents involved, the tactics employed, the timing of the arrest, and whether the FBI released details of the arrest and the indictment to the press prior to providing this information to Mr. Stone’s attorneys,” Graham, a South Carolina Republican, wrote FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday.

Graham is requesting a briefing from the FBI by Feb. 5 into the raid, which he asserted matched the tactics typically used to arrest a violent criminal.

He is also demanding to know whether the press was tipped off about Stone’s impending arrest. CNN cameras were rolling as a swarm of armed FBI agents and U.S. marshals stormed Stone’s property shortly before dawn on Jan. 25.

Stone was indicted under seal on Jan. 24 in the special counsel’s investigation.

He is charged with five count of making false statements to Congress, one count of witness tampering and one count of obstructing an official proceeding.

The charges center mostly on Stone’s conversations with associates and Trump campaign officials about WikiLeaks, which published emails stolen from Democrats during the 2016 campaign.

Stone is not charged with conspiring with WikiLeaks or Russian government operatives, who are alleged to be behind the hack of Democrats’ emails. He is also not accused of making false statements when he told the House Intelligence Committee on Sept. 26, 2017 that he has had no contact with WikiLeaks or its founder, Julian Assange.

Stone, a longtime GOP operative who has known President Donald Trump for 40 years, has complained about what he calls the FBI’s heavy-handed tactics. He’s said that he would have voluntarily turned himself into authorities had his lawyer been contacted by prosecutors.

In an arrest warrant filed under seal on Jan. 24, prosecutors expressed concern that Stone could destroy evidence and that he posed a flight risk. Stone has pushed back on that argument, saying that while he has destroyed no evidence related to the special counsel’s case, he has had two years to destroy evidence if he wanted. He also said that he does not have a valid passport and could not flee the U.S.

Graham wants to know why the FBI chose to raid Stone’s home rather than contact his attorney and if the arrest is consistent with arrests of defendants facing similar charges.

He also wants to know whether anyone at the FBI, Justice Department or special counsel’s office tipped off CNN to the arrest.

CNN has claimed that its reporters saw a flurry of activity at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., last week and guessed Stone may have been indicted. The network claims it dispatched a reporter to stake out Stone’s house in case he was to be arrested.

Stone pleaded not guilty to the charges on Tuesday and says he plans to take his case to trial.

 

Gen. Chang Wanquan, the current Chinese Minister of National Defense. Photo by the Central Military Commission of the PRC.

On Tuesday, May 28th, the Washington Post and the Washington Free Beacon reported, and the DOD confirmed, that designs and performance parameters (and other classified information) for dozens of US weapon systems had been stolen in recent weeks by Chinese hackers, as warned by a Defense Science Board report.

Among the weapons whose designs have been stolen by Chinese hackers are top-drawer systems such as the V-22 Osprey, the THAAD and Aegis missile defense systems, and the F-35 strike jet, as well as some older and obsolete systems like the PATRIOT air and missile defense complex and the F/A-18 naval strike jet.

In any case, this is arguably the biggest breach of classified information – and certainly the biggest theft of US weapon designs – in US (if not world) history, overshadowing the theft of US nuclear weapon designs by Soviet spies in the 1940s and Chinese spies during the Clinton years.

(And yet, lawmakers and the Obama administration want to downgrade and soften the US export control system, to make it even easier to export weapons to China and other hostile countries. Thus, the US is essentially giving China the gun with which to kill American troops.)

The meteoric rise of China’s military might has been partially aided by espionage, including cyberespionage. Sun Tzu, who devoted an entire chapter of his Art of War to spies and believed that knowledge of the enemy can be provided only by citizens and officials of the enemy country, would’ve been amazed by the espionage possibilities that hacking has opened – and Chinese hackers’ success in doing so.

How can the US counter this Chinese cyber onslaught? Here’s how.

Firstly, the US needs to publicly recognize China as an adversary. Top US officials, including the President, need to state this publicly and unambigously, and rally the nation to take action against China. It is time to do away with the suicidal, leftist policy of appeasing China practiced by all administrations of both parties since 1989.

It is time to push aside the leftist propagandists and pseudoanalysts like Henry Kissinger, James Cartwright, Joseph Nye, Dennis Blair, Joseph Prueher, and Eric McVaddon, whose idiotic policy of appeasing China, adopted by all administrations since 1989, led to this disastrous cyberattack – the cyber version of Pearl Harbor – and to China’s dangerous military rise in the first place. China is an adversary of the US and should be treated as such.

Over 23 years of appeasing China and trying to “make it a responsible stakeholder in the international system” and trying to bring it into that system have utterly failed. China has no interest in being a “responsible stakeholder in the international system” – it has a vested interest in expanding its territory (especially at sea), subjugating its neighbors, growing its military and economic power, and pushing the US outside Asia in order to become the uncontested hegemon of that continent.

THAT is why China has amassed all of the anti-access/area-denial military capabilities that Washington is now worried about. Cyberwarfare is one of them.

China is a dangerous adversary. It has the historical grudges of a Weimar Republic, the militant nationalism of an Arab state, and the expansionist agenda of the Soviet Union – all at the same time.

It is also time to cast aside any notions of Sino-American “cooperation” on cyberspace when China is America’s adversary and the perpetrator of most cyberattacks against the US. Naive fools who advocate such attacks, such as Gen. Martin Dempsey, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, must be removed from office. It is time to publicly recognize China as an adversary and the perpetrator of these cyberattacks, and to name and shame it.

It is also time to recognize that China’s attacks on the US are but a part of a much greater struggle between China and the US, and it will not end until either side succumbs to the other. It will be a struggle similar to the Cold War. The US needs to develop a long-term grand strategy to win it.

Next, the US needs to leverage all means at its disposal to force China to stop these attacks. The US should start by developing better cyberdefenses. This means extending obligatory protection to all critical industries (or, at minimum, all those that have or want to receive federal contracts), acquiring better protective software (including better firewalls), making passwords on government computers tougher, frequently changing these passwords, signing cyberdefense pacts with allies, and most importantly, finally passing a cybersecurity bill like the CISPA passed by the House this year and last year. There is no excuse for Congress not passing a cybersecurity bill. Such bill must allow for seamless, unlimited sharing of information between the government and private companies.

Also, the US government should hire top IT specialists and consultants, such as Kevin Mitnick, Morpheus, Neo, et al., and even this man.

But mere cyberdefenses will not solve the problem. Defensive war is very difficult, although not entirely impossible, to win (how many wars have been won by staying solely on the defensive and never going on the offense?). That is because in a defensive war, the enemy – the attacker – has the initiative, and war is very difficult (although again, not entirely impossible) to win when the enemy has the initiative. Cyberwars are no different.

Thus, the US should frequently conduct massive cyberattacks of its own against China, especially the PLA, especially its hacking units.

The US should also utilize other, non-cyber, means of pressure. The scheduled, utterly suicidal sequestration defense cuts, and any cuts in the US nuclear deterrent or missile defense systems, must be completely cancelled and prohibited by law. The US military should shift, as quickly as possible, from a short-range force heavily dependent on in-theater bases, satellites, and cybernetworks, to a force wielding primarily long-range weapons and much less reliant on those assets.

Also, Chinese politicians and government officials should be completely barred from entering the US until China completely stops its cyberattacks. The invitation to Gen. Chang Wanquan, the Chinese Minister of National Defense, to visit the US should be revoked.

Moreover, the US should construct an alliance of nations surrounding China in order to counter Beijing. Participants should include, but not be limited to, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, India, and China’s western neighbors (former Soviet republics). These allies should be allowed to buy any weapons they want and receive US defense commitments if they haven’t received them yet. Existing commitments should be reaffirmed.

The US should, if possible, also try to sever Russia’s informal alliance/partnership with China.

Furthermore, the US should impose a complete embargo on Chinese products. China needs the US more than America needs China. Beijing does have a huge annual trade surplus with the US, but it also has a large annual trade deficit with the rest of the outside world.

In other words, Beijing is running huge trade surpluses with America to be able to afford large trade deficits with the rest of the world (outside the US). The US is effectively subisidizing China’s ability to do that. This is because, outside the US and China itself, few people want to buy Chinese products; and most other countries of the world don’t give a hoot about Friedman and Hayek and try – with various degrees of zealousness – to protect their industries.

If the US were to stop buying Chinese products and start buying American ones, China’s economy would suffer dreadfully, as China would now be running huge trade deficits every year. Outside the US, few people in the foreign world want to buy Chinese products.

The latest Gallup polling shows that 64% of Americans are quite willing to pay more for American products – if it means buying American instead of Chinese ones. In other words, 64% of Americans would wholeheartedly support Buy American trade policies.

Thus, America has HUGE economic leverage over China – it just needs to use it. So far, it hasn’t.

And last but not least, the US should continually shame China around the world for its abysmal human rights record and support all opposition groups in China, including the Tibetans, the Uighurs, and the residents of Inner Mongolia seeking to unite with independent Mongolia to the north.

The US has many forms of leverage it can use over China. It just needs to use them. But first and foremost, it needs to publicly recognize China as an adversary. It will never win any kind of competition – let alone Cold War style rivalry – over an adversary it is too afraid to even name.

CNN has bungled another story that was based on leaks the network received while a House Intelligence Committee witness was testifying behind closed doors.

On Wednesday, CNN reported that Michael Cohen provided documents during a House Intelligence deposition showing that President Trump’s Russia lawyers made edits to false testimony that the former Trump fixer gave to Congress in 2017.

In a public House Oversight Committee hearing last week, Cohen said that one of Trump’s lawyers, Jay Sekulow, made changes to the testimony.

“There were changes made, additions — Jay Sekulow, for one,” Cohen said. “There were several changes that were made including how we were going to handle that message, which was — the message of course being — the length of time that the Trump Tower Moscow project stayed and remained alive.”

Cohen pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s investigation on Nov. 29 to making several false statements in his House and Senate Intelligence testimony, including that he ended negotiations to build a Trump Tower Moscow in January 2016. Instead, Cohen continued working on the project through June 2016.

CNN’s initial report raised the possibility that Trump’s lawyers suborned perjury from Cohen, who will begin a three-year prison term on May 6.

But at 7:35 p.m., CNN ran an update that drastically changed the implications for its story.

Lanny Davis, an attorney for Cohen, told CNN that Cohen himself, and not a Trump lawyer, claimed in a draft of his 2017 testimony that the Trump Tower negotiations ended in January 2016.

Cohen’s lawyer at the time of his initial testimony, Stephen Ryan, helped him edit the document, according to CNN’s update. Ryan shared the draft with other lawyers who were party to a joint defense agreement with Cohen. Those lawyers provided suggested changes, which Cohen and Ryan approved, CNN’s sources said.

According to the updated report, the lawyers involved in editing Cohen’s testimony had no indication that the initial draft had inaccurate information.

This is not the first time that CNN has published a story in the midst of closed-door House Intelligence testimony that turned out to be wrong.

On Dec. 8, 2017, the same two reporters who worked on the Cohen story reported that Donald Trump Jr. received an email on Sept. 4, 2016, containing a link to a batch of WikiLeaks documents. The story was considered a bombshell because the WikiLeaks emails had not been made public when Trump Jr. purportedly received the email.

But hours later, Trump Jr.’s lawyer released the actual email, which showed that Trump Jr. received the document on Sept. 14, 2016, a day after WikiLeaks published the documents linked in the email.