COVID-19

About That New York Times Article…

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There is a lot of hubub on the nets concerning the NY Times article outlining the three-year history of the relationship between the US and Ukraine militaries during the Russian invasion. It’s fascinating, and while the larger strategic issues of the war are pushed into the background in favor of tactical and operational considerations, it fills in important details. Given the length (13,000 words) and the research involved, I’m sure there is a book in the works somewhere.

Given that, there’s something strange going on.

There is little in the article that should be shocking to anyone who has been paying attention for the past three years. It doesn’t take a proverbial “leaked Signal chat” to know that we have been providing the Ukrainians not only with supply, training, and planning support but also with ISR plugged right into the kill chain. We were everything but (officially) boots on the ground.

Problems in paradise between American and Ukrainian military planners? A staple of coalition warfare. The details are interesting, but the overall tenor is not surprising

That there were opportunities on the battlefield lost through miscommunication and political meddling? These dangers are present (and realized) in every war, and it’s the mark of a general’s ability to navigate those shoals at the highest levels of policy that gives them their place in history. George Marshall was a grandmaster at it. Mark Milley, not so much.

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The Final Four of Villainy

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Two threads….

The first is that through the years I have, without quite realizing it, become a student of political anthropology. Much like an intrepid explorer in the depths of the Amazon, observing the strange rituals of local tribesmen, I observe the strange rituals and habits of the Left and their various auxiliaries.

Right now the media is playing its “French Resistance” card. No, I don’t mean by being brave and fighting the “Orange Hitler” as if it was 1942. I’m talking about finally coming out, after years of kissing up to the Left, and “breaking” stories as if they were mythical (and I’m quite serious about mythical) Woodwards and Bernsteins. Of course anybody who has connected the dots in a pre-K coloring book already figured out those stories years ago.

Take Jake Tapper, who is doing his star turn as the 21st Century equivalent of the local Gestapo officer’s girlfriend, who has decided to greet Patton by yelling “Vive De Gaulle!” In his upcoming book, Original Sin, Tapper will reveal to the world the untold story that… Biden wasn’t in the best mental shape. Sacre bleu!

This month we are observing the five-year anniversary of the COVID lockdowns, and just as impressively the media has come to life, revealing to the world things that we figured out… well, five years ago. That COVID leaked from a lab, that the lockdown policies were a 180-degree turn in long-established policy, and that it all stunk to high heaven.

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Investigations To-Do List

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Regarding my previous post, I want J6 investigations to determine the numbers that engaged in the following:

  1. Attacked the defensive perimeter between the Capitol grounds and the area of the permitted Capitol protest
  2. Of those cited above, those who did and did not enter the Capitol grounds, and those who did and did not enter the Capitol building
  3. Engaged in assault to gain access to the Capitol building itself, or to areas within
  4. Other assaults by civilians
  5. Engaged in vandalism to gain access to the Capitol building or to areas within
  6. Other vandalism
  7. Entered the Capitol through unattended doorway (e.g. Chansley and his entourage)
  8. Entered the capitol through attended doorway with permission
  9. Accessed the Capitol grounds by climbing the west wall
  10. Of those cited above, those who did and did not enter the Capitol building (my own impression is that most were content to stay outside)
  11. Attempted to approach lawmakers while inside Capitol
  12. Did not attempt to approach lawmakers while inside Capitol
  13. All convictions of nonviolent persons who were never on Capitol grounds
  14. Capitol defenders lobbing tear gas canisters into the area of the permitted Capitol protest
  15. Capitol defenders lobbing tear gas elsewhere
  16. Assaults by non-civilians not involving tear gas

And now, on to other investigations the Trump administration or other parties should undertake.

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Controlling the Archives

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There is news that Jay Bhattacharya may be appointed to run NIH. Bhattacharya has a history with that agency:

“Bhattacharya teaches medicine, economics, and health policy at Stanford University; he became a national voice in 2020 as one of the coauthors of the Great Barrington Declaration. The open letter- signed by thousands of health professionals- called for an end to mass lockdowns and focused efforts on protecting the most vulnerable while letting the rest of society get back to living. The statement was met with harsh criticism from leading health officials at the time, including former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, who privately described the authors as “fringe” and was urging a quick rebuke of their message, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.”

The suppression of Bhattacharya went even further with revelations that the Biden Administration coordinated with social media to censor him.

There have been times when, upon the fall of a regime, there is a scramble to control that regime’s archives. After all, while a regime may lie to you, it won’t lie to itself regarding certain things. In 1944 Parisians knew their liberation was on hand when they saw the Gestapo burning its papers.

Not only does the opening of archives reveal corruption, it also leads to a reconsideration of history. Journalism (especially these days) is often merely the reporting of what other people have said or is pure conjecture, while historians who later go through primary source material have a much better grip on what went on. The opening of the Soviet archives in the 1990s led to a re-evaluation of many parts of Soviet history as well as past US-Soviet relations. Next time you want to evaluate a historian’s work, take a look at their bibliography and see if they did any original research, or if they are merely replicating the methodology of journalists by quoting other historians or engaging in conjecture.

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2024 Election Plus/Delta

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Pluses: admittedly much the shorter list, but we did resolve a few things.

  1. Thanks mainly to vote shifts in California and New York, the popular vote outcome was not at variance with the Electoral College vote, and it wasn’t particularly close (over 4-1/2 million votes).
  2. Largely as a result, the losing side, and VP Harris herself, have indicated cooperation with formal certification and transition processes.
  3. Harris is gone. She’ll get a chunk of money for a book and retire to the lecture circuit.
  4. Walz, same, and given the likelihood that he would have been a 21st-century version of Henry Wallace, with Chinese instead of Soviet agents in his inner circle, that might be more important than getting rid of Harris.
  5. Taking a somewhat longer view, Trump is gone too (perhaps not a much longer view; see the final Delta item below).
  6. By extension, there is some chance that ’28 will not have the electorate choosing between a crook and an idiot for President.
  7. Whatever one may think of prediction markets, and there are arguments on both sides regarding their functionality, the biggest prediction market of all, the US stock market, was forecasting a Trump victory all year (not coincidentally, the same thing happened in 2016).
  8. By the way, the media will actually report negative economic news now.
  9. I could have put this in either category, but I’ll leave it here: your Cluebat of the Day is a reminder that Trump is as old as Biden was in ’20, and notwithstanding some of my more apprehensive items below, to expect anything much of him is a waste of time.
  10. Likely continuation of relatively good space-industry policy across Administrations, which should be the only thing that matters several decades from now.

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