Mike Pence Says His Role Model Vice President is Dick Cheney

Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence discusses his VP role model and his debate prep on “This Week.”

Let’s stop pretending what he ( Pence) is talking about. Cheney was the “grownup” in the relationship and Bush was the “spoiled kid”.

We can see from where Mike Pence is coming from. He will have to run the country and become the commander-in-chief, because, like Bush, Trump isn’t up to it. He is not completely ignorant, but stupid.

Bush, in a stupor, had to have his Chief of Staff run the war in Iraq, because he, Bush, thought it was about another Crusades.

My guess is that Pence will continue the war against Islam, while ignoring Nixon’s connection to Globalization, while Trump moves America towards authoritarianism. #fail

Source: Mike Pence Says His Role Model Vice President is Dick Cheney

Armed group’s leader refuses private FBI talk.

Bundy arrived Friday at the airport in Burns, where the FBI has been monitoring the occupation, but left shortly afterward because federal authorities wanted the conversation to be private.

Doesn’t Bundy know that nothing is private before God? The thought of prison must have been getting too real for him.

Some of the greatest world leaders did their best work in prison, no?

Oh ye of little faith!

Source: Armed group’s leader refuses private FBI talk | News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News | KATU

US Air Force shelves Warthog plane retirement amid IS fight: media

Washington (AFP) – The US Air Force will delay retiring the A-10 — a stalwart attack aircraft beloved by ground troops — because of the ongoing fight against the Islamic State group, a military news site reported Wednesday.

So basically, the USA is going to invade Iraq as it did Afghanistan, i.e. it will eliminate the competing insurgency, ISIS, with Iraqi troops. The significant factor will be that these troops will be Arab instead of Iranian.

Doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

In other words, we are creating another Afghanistan.

While those already  fighting in Afghanistan will be ahead of the curve, I wonder about the POTUS nominations. Will they be prepared?

Another 10 years in Iraq?

Source: US Air Force shelves Warthog plane retirement amid IS fight: media – Yahoo News

The Operational Level Of War Does Not Exist

Armies are destroyed or defeat by tactics. Wars are won and lost by strategy.

Yes but, all strategy is flawed, so to win at war you always need to keep up with the process, i.e. the OODA loop, and change, i.e. Destruction and Construction (D&C in the context of quantum movement of energy that the OODA loop represents). Strategy give war structure (the machines of war are very good against structure) between both Ends (End,Way, and Means of strategy), but the OODA loop (process) gives strategy its Means to bridge the gap between Observation/Action or Past/Future.

Meanwhile, change (D&C) gives strategy the Way to complete the process.

There is no force in the movement of mass, and when you are talking the OODA loop we are talking the movement of mass.

As Boyd would say: it’s about people stupid (I am paraphrasing here of course).

Mass (people) simply moves from where it has been (the past) to where its volume can (the future). The force developed in Observation only adds the potential of the mass. not direction, i.e. force can move in a different direction (feedforward or feedback) than the mass in a OODA loop.

The mass in the OODA loop has to keep moving forward, as it is able, unless something collapses, such as its Orientation.

An Orientation is a position of advantage in the environment Observed. The Orientation itself doesn’t need to collapse to cause problems, only its position that gives it an advantage.

I mean at the same time you are relying so heavily on strategy, one needs to be able to look at the energy not available in the system and compare it to the energy available, and decide, “how healthy are you?”

Hannibal couldn’t do it, neither could Napoleon.

Today’s military commanders can do it, because they not only have access to open-source intelligence (OSI) that are able to Observe the flaws in the narrative (its the narrative that strategy uses to build structure with), but military commanders are also able to judge what they are doing, because OSI are able to compare the narrative to a specific time/space in the future/past, and make available the entropy of the system in their judgement, or they are judged by and with the entropy of the system itself.

via The Operational Level Of War Does Not Exist.

The Economics of the Indo-Pacific Pivot

As I have said before, all war is about economic considerations and fought by people with few economic consideration.

Much has been said, in our pivot towards the Asian Pacific, about the people with few economic considerations.

We have heard about the saber-rattling of China in the disputed South China Sea and elsewhere.  This saber-rattling doesn’t really seem to be much about economics. Perhaps now is the time we need to talk about the economic considerations in the Pivot.

Basically, economically we are going to do for those nations under our Indo-Pacific pivot what we did for the Middle East. We are going to use our military to uphold the relevancy of the US dollar.

Perhaps the quip used by one of the characters in the movie “Tinker, Tailor,  Soldier,  Spy” can be used to clarify what I mean by “doing” to the Indo-Pacific what we did for the Middle East.

In the movie there was a change of leadership in the “Circus”. The Circus is where  the odd performers of the British secret service get together and put on a show for everyone else in the Service to see. The new Ringleader, to show his knowledge of how things are in the world made the statement that, “you can rent an Arab, but never buy one.”

I don’t know if that statement is true or not, but by literally throwing billions of dollars into the environment of Iraq, after our invasion,  we “rented” thousands of Arabs. (I know the dollars in my wallet are mainly there for me to rent. They never stay in my wallet long enough to actually own.)

In other words, economics is not just about interest (which collecting interest is not popular in most areas of the Middle East) but a strong economy also depends a great deal on whose hard currency runs the show.

While there were many reason made for going to war in Iraq, strategically it was in the US’s interest to make sure “petrol dollars” also meant the US dollar.

As many experts have said, the Iraq war wasn’t about the US grabbing Iraq’s oil. The US doesn’t get its oil from the Middle East. The oil coming out of the Middle East is mostly going to China and other developing nations.

But what is important,economically for the US is that whoever buys oil in the Middle East uses US dollars. The US economy depends on the fact that they do.

With Turkey threatening to join the EU, France heavily into buying oil from Saddam, and rumors of Russia and China making gold the currency for oil, the relevancy of the US dollar was disappearing. I suggest that is no longer true.

While all strategy is flawed, and there is an on-going civil war throughout the Middle East, in the most part the US currency is still “the” currency of the world.

My guess is that the US dollar is the most relevant it has ever been in the Middle East, but the same cannot be said in the Asian Pacific.

http://www.ibtimes.com/sorry-mates-strictly-business-australia-wants-cut-out-us-dollar-trade-china-1161287#

A 1.6 billion infusion of US dollars and an occupation of US Marines may counteract that train of thought.

How Obama Is Unraveling Reagan Republicanism

Republican libertarians have never got along with social conservatives, who want to impose their own morality on everyone else.

I think this is the exact split I was talking about that happened when the “Dixiecrats” of the South joined the Party of Lincoln.

The Southern Democrats turn from home-team-blue, to the away-team-red, and the Republican Party is just now adjusting.

via How Obama Is Unraveling Reagan Republicanism.

Congress: Wanna get away? – First Read

Reid’s job is to help move President Obama’s agenda through the upper chamber, but he must also protect his five-seat Senate majority, and gun-rights groups are threatening to go after vulnerable Senate Democrats who back the president’s calls for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.”

So why call for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines? Why not just give the assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines to the militias,  and let the militias worry about the collection of weapons? Wasn’t forming militias a big part of the 2nd Amendment to begin with? If the majority of the people think we need to arm ourselves with automatic weapons, then let’s arm ourselves with automatic weapons.

If not, then let us keep supporting our first responders. Not really sure there are the funds to do both.

via Congress: Wanna get away? – First Read.

The Flag

A General on a mission is called a flag-general. In today’s world, of video games and simulations, it is important for a flag-general, especially with a Red team under his/her flag, to understand not just when he loses, but that when he wins is also an important event to note.

Because it is harder to prove a negative than a positive, the flag-general may not remember whose side he is on, and, because all flag-generals are winners, it is doubly hard to prove, by their Red team, that they are losers.

As an example, if you are a flag-general and just bought a house and,  if you are on your hands and knees, crawling around under that house looking for only God  knows what, then, perhaps, you haven’t really won.

If this is true that you didn’t actually win, it is because you didn’t know your enemy. The reason you didn’t know your enemy is because the Red team hid the enemy from you. That is what Red teams do, they hide things from you.

But what we do know is that a flag-general would do only what his God knows, to complete his mission. This is because his God is under his flag, and, of course, because the reverse of that is true, they are both positives.

TSA on the Quick and Cheap

SCMP report: “Following the ill fate of taxis and fruit knives, toy planes in Beijing are also facing a crackdown ahead of the 18th party congress.

The title of the SCMP reports should read, “The Chineses show Mitt’s team how to do it”.

“It” is the protection of a segment of a society that is terrified, and has a  strategy that says countrywide:  screw everyone else, protect those who matter, in the cities that matter.

I’m not saying that the 53% don’t matter. I am just saying that they are a long ways from being  job creators, so don’t look for too much help from a “new” and “approved” TSA.

Without much help from Washington, we may need to start relying more on the help of our own National Guard. They can provide mission-based security that private contractors can only dream of.

I mean who are those in Washington; job creators or job takers?

As it is, they are a little bit of both.

via China: Ridiculous security measures for 18th party congress « China Daily Mail.

Iran Said Ready to Talk to U.S. About Nuclear Program

The United States and Iran have agreed for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Obama administration officials, setting the stage for what could be a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.

Probably too little, too late.

“It has the potential to help Mr. Obama make the case that he is nearing a diplomatic breakthrough in the decade-long effort by the world’s major powers to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, but it could pose a risk if Iran is seen as using the prospect of the direct talks to buy time.“

That said, there is probably not much time to buy.

via Iran Said Ready to Talk to U.S. About Nuclear Program – NYTimes.com.