To-Do List for President Trump

We wait in joyful hope for the beginning of the New Dispensation. Roll on January 20th. If you're talking or writing to the Donald, please pass on Walt's suggestions for things he should do on Day One... or Days Two through Six. In no particular order...

Start finishing the Wall. Cancel Senile Joe's sale of the building materials and get the contractors working 24/7... pronto, Tonto!

Start rounding up the illegals, especially the 1000s of criminals among them, for deportation ASAP. Texas has offered a tract of land on which to build holding camps for them. Why should they live better here than in the shitholes they came from?

Cancel all federal funding of NPR and PBS. Why should taxpayers have to pay for anti-American, woke propaganda? Let them raise their own bucks with a never-ending "pledge week".

Authorize the refurbishing and public display of statues, flags and symbols of the Confederate States of America. Maybe Mr Trump didn't actually say there were good folks on both sides of some recent unpleasantness, but when it comes to the Glorious War of the Secessaion, that's the truth!

Make it illegal to display flags or symbols or any country or political group or "social movement" at odds with America and American values. No more "pride/progressive" or ISIS or Russian or Iranian or Communist flags, especially on American campuses or public buildings.  

Drill, baby, drill! Reverse the Dumbocratic cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, and let the Canadian oil and gas flow freely to promote energy security for the US of A.

Restore Presidential Prayer Breakfasts. Let Dr Franklin Graham lead our leaders in prayer. If some politicians are uncomfortable with that, that's good!

Get transgender "men" our of women's sports, and vice versa. God created two sexes... only two... et vive la différence.

So also with the military. Women do not belong in combat roles in the armed forces. Putting women on the front lines with men has been a disaster from the get-go. Putting the LGBTQ types anywhere in the services weakens our fighting forces. Let American men... ONLY... fight for America!

Invite, on a Be-There-Or-Else! basis, Presidents Putin and Zelenskyy, and Prime Minister Netanyahu and Hassan Ben Sober (or whoever is leading Hamas at the moment), to Mar-a-Lago for compulsory arbitration. Lock them in a room and bang their heads together until they agree to stop fighting.

On Day Seven, President Trump can rest.

That's my list... for starters. Readers are invited to click on the headline to open the "Comments" window to add more. 

Recommended reading: In Trump and the American Future, written before the 2020 election, New Gingrich asks: Will...President Trump lead us back to strong economic growth, a foreign and trade policy of putting American interests first, dismantling the deep state, and dramatically reforming the bureaucracies? Four years later, that's still a good question, to which we look for an affirmative answer. Mr Gingrich's book is available, in a Kindle edition, on Amazon.

Join the celebration! Make Independence Day great again!

Ever been to a Bastille Day parade? I have, years ago, in the City of Light itself. So has President Trump, recently... like last year. He came away very impressed with the show of power and glory [not to mention pomp and circumstance. Ed.] put on by the French armed forces. Evidently he came away thinking, "If these cheese-eating surrender-monkeys can put on a show like that, when they haven't won even one war without help since the Middle Ages, why can't we have a bigger and better celebration of American power and glory... like next year?!"

And so it shall be. To hell with the beatniks, peaceniks, refuseniks and fascist antifas! Join the celebration! Make Independence Day great again!

WALT WHITEMAN, POOR LEN CANAYEN

[AND ED.! ED.]

WISH ALL OUR AMERICAN

FRIENDS AND READERS

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

VIDEO: Hi ho! Hi ho! It's off to war we go...

Ed. here. We try to avoid reposting items from other blogs without at least adding an introduction or other pertinent comment by Walt. However, Walt is under the weather -- suffering from the Grey Goose flu [a particularly severe form of avian flu] perhaps -- and the text introducing this video featuring Dr. Ron Paul is sufficiently disturbing that nothing more need be said. Here's what they say.

The new, bi-partisan authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) introduced by Senators Kaine and Corker is billed as evidence that Congress is finally taking its Constitutional war-making authority seriously. This could not be further from the truth. Congress is about to grant the president "forever war" power and return to its slumber. Bad for America.




Further reading: Liberty Defined, by Dr. Ron Paul, Grand Central Publishing, 2011. A comprehensive guide to Dr. Paul's position on 50 of the most important issues of our times, from Abortion to Zionism.

Dr. Paul writes that to believe in liberty is not to believe in any particular social and economic outcome. It is to trust in the spontaneous order that emerges when the state does not intervene in human volition and human cooperation. It permits people to work out their problems for themselves, build lives for themselves, take risks and accept responsibility for the results, and make their own decisions. It is the seed of America.

All those Ay-rabs look the same!

American pilots have earned a reputation -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and now in Syria -- for being quick on the draw but sloppy on the aim. On 17 April 2002, "friendly fire" from the USAF killed four Canadian soldiers near Kandahar, Afghanistan. US Air National Guard Major Harry Schmidt dropped a laser-guided 500-lb bomb from his F-16 on the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry regiment which was conducting a night firing exercise. Major Schmidt was charged with negligent manslaughter, aggravated assault, and dereliction of duty.

He blamed the "incident" on his use of "go pills" (authorized stimulant drugs), combined with the "fog of war". He was found guilty of the third charge (only) and a negative comment was entered on his permanent record. The Canucks stayed in Afghanistan for another ten years or so, but were noted for for their propensity to duck and cover at the sound of approaching jets.

Fast forward a dozen years or so to the fight against The Enemy Which Cannot Be Named -- its initials are IS or ISIS or ISIL -- in, errr, Iraq and Syria. The Canadians sent a half dozen of their aging but still airworthy CF-18s, but no ground troops, on the theory (Walt supposes) that if there were going to be any similar "incidents", it would be better to be on the bombing end than the incoming end. The RCAF flyboys flew missions for about a year without killing any allies... or any Islamic terrorists... or anybody. They did succeed in hitting a couple of dump trucks and what might have been an oil tank. Or not. Then, this past March, they went home, leaving the air war against the jihadis to the Americans... and the Russians... and, errr, the Syrian Air Force.

A ceasefire in the civil war between the Syrian government and assorted rebels went into effect (more or less) on Monday. It was clearly understood, though, that air attacks on the jihadis would continue. So it was that the USAF (or Air National Guard -- who knows... planes with a white star) dove down on a collection of hovels called Deir al-Zour, where the bad guys -- Syrian troops -- were said to be battling the even worse guys (ISIS).

But you know how it is. The damned Ay-rabs all look the same. They wear those same shit-brindle clothes and have rags on their heads. And then there's the "fog of war". Turns out the American pilots couldn't tell them apart and... ooops!... damn!.... did it again!!! According to the Russian army, the Yankees killed 62 Syrian government soldiers before calling a halt to the attack. An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, convened by Russia, is discussing the crisis. Meanwhile, a spokesthingy for the Obama administration expressed "regret" for the "unintentional loss of life".

Why I believe Chen Guangwen

Yesterday afternoon, in "What happened to MH370: a Chinese theory", Walt shared a narrative developed by a Chinese blogger, Chen Guangwen, as to the fate of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared on 8 March 2014. Only 5 pieces of wreckage have been found in the 2+ years since then, all far from the supposed crash site.

Mr Chen theorizes that, using drone technology, the American military seized control of the aircraft, diverted it to their base on Diego Garcia, and then flew it into the western Indian Ocean. They did this, he thinks, to keep the Chinese from getting their hands on the remote control devices, which fell into the hands of the Taliban when the Americans decamped from Afghanistan.

Not 12 hours later, I have already received questions. Who in hell is Chen Guangwen? Is his supposed blog real? And how did an article accusing the Chinese government of buying stolen military secrets get through the Great Firewall of China?

I had some doubts myself, but slept on it, and in the cold light of dawn am still inclined to accept that Mr Chen's post is real. Here's why. Suppose his story about the Chinese government making a deal with the Taliban to buy American military secrets is true. Suppose the Chinese put up the money and arranged for the "black boxes" to get as far as Malaysia. Then the Americans intervened and the plane, the black boxes, and Chinese avionics experts wound up in the briny deep.

The Chinese can't say anything officially, see, because to admit they were using the Taliban to steal American military technology isn't helpful for China-US relations, already strained over Chinese claims to larger and larger parts of the South China Sea. But they're really pissed off, and want to get the story out there. So they leak it to Chen Guangwen who puts it in his blog.

Walt reminds the doubters that there is no freedom of speech in China. All, all Internet activity is monitored and censored the 10s of 1000s of assiduous Communists whose sole function is to make sure that nothing is said that the Party doesn't want to be said. Yet Mr Chen's article was all over the Chinese Internet like a rash, to the point where Agent 78's dear old mother saw it and brought it to our Agent's attention. I rest my case.

What happened to MH370: a Chinese theory

A year and five days ago Walt reported that the search for the Malaysian Airlines B777 operating as flight MH370 was being quietly scaled down. Now comes news that the search in the southeast quadrant of the Indian Ocean will come to an end in July, according to Martin Dolan, the chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. (Christine Negroni, who writes about aviation and travel for Forbes, points out that Mr Dolan will retire on the very same day. What a coincidence.

In "Search Ending For MH370 But Mysteries Grow", Ms Negroni expresses consternation at the selection of the Australians to lead the underwater search for the airplane. Who knows, she asks, what political manoeuvering was going on behind the scenes? And why did the Australians give the contract for the operation to a Dutch company, Fugro World Wide, which had no real record in the search and salvage industry, and no equipment at the time? And how did Fugro get away with not producing any publicly available data for two years?

The answer to those questions may well be, as Walt has suggested more than once, that the Powers That Be didn't want the wreckage of MH370 to be found. If that were so, it would make sense to let innocents and incompetents do the looking. It would make even more sense to point them in the wrong direction, towards a deep part of the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia. I'll say it again. They've been looking in the wrong place! If proof is wanted, consider the finding of five (count 'em, 5) pieces of debris, all on the shores of southern Africa and adjacent islands.

So what really happened? What is it that the "authorities" and "experts" don't want the world to know? Agent 78 has walked me through a blog by Chen Guangwen, a Chinese writer, who reckons that both the Americans and the Chinese know the truth of it, but won't tell for reasons which will be apparent momentarily. This is going to take awhile, so stay with me....

It all started (Mr Chen writes) when the Americans pulled out of Afghanistan, leaving behind some highly sophisticated drone software which would enable the user to take over any plane's avionics and fly it by remote control, turning it into a guided missile. That software fell into the hands of the Taliban, who didn't know what to do with it, but did know that it would have enormous value to any country seeking military superiority for whatever reason. So who could they sell it to? The Americans already had the technology. The Russians were enemies. So how about... wait for it... the Chinese?

Mr Chen says that the Taliban, through the agency of its branch in Pakistan (possibly with the connivance of the Pakistani government) sold the lot to the Chinese. But there remained the question of how to get the "black boxes" to China. The solution? Send them via Pakistan to Malaysia -- both countries being sympathetic to Islamic militants -- thence onward to Beijing by... Malaysian Airlines.

Of course! The "black boxes" -- engines of digital sabotage -- were in the cargo hold of MH370! This theory would account as well for the presence on the passenger manifest of several Chinese computer and electronics experts.

Trouble was, it's hard to keep something like this a secret. There are spies everywhere. Chinese spies, Russian spies, British spies, not to mention American spies -- the CIA. Chen Guangwen theorizes that the CIA got wind of the deal and made it a priority to keep the Chinese from getting their hands on the devices. The problem was how to interdict the shipment without admitting that they (the Americans) had not only developed the technology but carelessly let it fall into the hands of a bunch of crazy Muslim extremists?

The answer? Give the invention a trial run, using MH370 as the test vehicle and its passengers as human guinea pigs! It was the American military, then, using an AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System -- my emphasis) plane operating from the American base on Diego Garcia, who caused MH370 to deviate from its flight path and turn to the west-northwest, towards the Maldives, the Andaman Islands (Indian territory) and ultimately Diego Garcia.

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because I wrote something along those lines not a month after MH370 disappeared from the radar screens. See "MH370: Suppose it was a test..." WWW 5/4/14

What happened next (back to Mr Chen now) is that, under the control of the Americans, MH370 landed in the Maldives to refuel and (possibly) some of the pax. (There were a couple of Americans and Israelis on board.) Walt doubts that the plane actually landed, but remembers a report in Paris Match by French author Marc Dugain -- a former CEO of Proteus Airlines -- whose investigation took him to the Maldives, where residents told local media on March 9th (the day the plane disappeared) that they had seen an airliner fly in the direction of Diego Garcia.

"I saw a huge plane fly over us at low altitude," a fisherman on Kudahuvadhoo island told M Dugain. "I saw red and blue stripes on a white background" –- the colours of Malaysia Airlines. Other witnesses confirmed the sighting, but their claims were promptly dismissed by "the authorities". See "MH370 - Just fancy that!"

Mr Chen also thinks that the B777 eventually reached Diegp Garcia, where, he says, the Americans refuelled it, and then flew it -- still by remote control -- to the south, somewhere over the south-western part of the Indian Ocean, where they caused it to plunge into a very deep watery grave. That would account for the five pieces of debris which have washed up on the shores of Réunion, Madagascar and South Africa. What happened to the pax and crew? They, or at least their bodies, were probably still on board when MH370 was sunk.

So there you have it. Except for the part about landing in the Maldives, I find Chen Guangwen's narrative entirely plausible. Will the Chinese and/or the Americans confirm or deny it? Errr, probably not. (Lifetime pct .981.)