So….

Who is REALLY in control of the Dems? Hildabeast? Bernie? OR???

Former President Barack Obama will re-emerge on the national scene this fall, though Democrats expect him to do so with caution.

One aide describes the beginning of a “delicate dance” that aims to put Obama in the Democratic fray but prevents him from remaining the face of the party.

Although he’s been running a ‘shadow’ government per se, running around meeting with world leaders ahead of meetings that President Trump has been having, like the Saudis, the G-20, and Germany, apparently he’s coming out of the closet again. Full article, HERE.

In other news, the war of words (if you will), between the NORKs and the US continue…

This time is significantly different however. This time, the US president is NOT bowing to political pressure and ‘playing the game.’ If you don’t follow Virtual Mirage, you should… HERE is his latest peek behind the curtain so so speak, and he ‘knows’ what he is talking about.

Of course the left is melting down, accusing President Trump of being crazy, among the more ‘polite’ things they’ve said this week. But he’s crazy like a fox…

He has a strong and well qualified SECDEF, SECSTATE, and UN Ambassador who are all working various issues in their swim lanes. There is a new set of sanctions in place, and C7F has been moving assets as necessary within their AOR. And doing FONs in the South China Sea, including a 12nm pass off Mystery Reef, currently a reef being claimed by China. Of interest, maybe accidental, maybe not, the ship that did that was the USS McCain. 🙂

Guam is one of the seventeen democratically self governed US Territories, and IS under the protection of the US, in addition to being a strategic military location in the second island chain in the Pacific. It is home to both US Navy and USAF bases, and roughly 170,000 people. Effectively, shooting at Guam IS shooting at America.

China has refused to support/enact the last EIGHT UN resolutions against the NORKs, and this has, IMHO, given the NORKs the ‘belief’ that China supports their actions. But both China and the NORKs, what happened in Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria under President Trump.

He’s not playing games, and the sooner China and the NORKs realize it, the better. 20 years of appeasement has ended.

Comments

So…. — 8 Comments

  1. It’s my impression that China as a member of the UN Security Council voted for the most recent resolution concerning North Korea.

    • Problem is, China will do what China will do. What they say they will do often bears no resemblance to what their actions actually are.

      In some respects, they still consider themselves “The Middle Kingdom” with the rest of us poor shlubs quite a ways down the ladder of things they really care about.

      You see it all the time in their business. “Yes, we will make your secret item for you and we promise not to copy it.” Next day Alibaba has 600 different versions of said item.

      The only way we may know what China is thinking is to see what happens. And even then, don’t quite trust the observable results.

  2. Hey Old NFO;

    Yes it is interesting times we live in. Kim Jon”Oh Boy” has been told that he is the greatest thing since sliced bread, he saw how his dad and grand dad were fawned upon. Nobody has told him “NO” and he is like a kid throwing a tantrum in the walmart aisle. he doesn’t realize that there will be pain if he continues pushing. The South koreans ain’t slouches either, from what I was told in the past, we restrain the south from going north and kicking the crap out of them.

  3. When I was in Seoul ~10 years or so ago, the prevailing opinion given in the briefings was a lot like the old buffet joke: “You’ve been here 5 decades. You go now.” Let ’em deal with their own crazy cousin.

  4. WSF- LOL

    Ed- They may have ‘voted’ for it, but they don’t ‘enforce’ it!

    Andrew- Good point!

    Bob- TRue…

    Iso- If only… ROK doesn’t WANT to deal with them by themselves. They remember how close they came to losing everything in 53, before we came in a bailed them out…

  5. Where did I out those damned KOR-ENG/ENG-KOR dictionaries Uncle gave me? I have a feeling I may be needing them again…

    when I first arrived in the ROK the consensus was that we were there to hold the ROKS back.

    After the reunification of Germany the ROKs spent a lot of time and money studying the aftermath, and decided they weren’t so eager to reunify after all; the economy of West Germany took a hit that they are only just now recovering from,if at all, and the difference between north and South Korea is far more extreme, which means all those South Koreans who have been buying cars and sending their kids to school overseas will be set back decades.

    Then the famines hit in the 90s and the ROKs had to face the fact that their cousins were literally dying. (Not that they didn’t know: The ROK guards at PanMunJom are beefy 6 footers,and their nork counterparts are weedy little guys 5’4″-5’6″.)

    So they are caught between a ROK (heh) and a hard place: Their brothers and sisters and cousins are suffering, there does not seem to be a peaceful way out, and any military solution would lead to tens or hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths.

    Absent Nukes, the ROKs could probably handle the north on their own, at a helluva cost. Still, they recognize that with our assistance they have access to INT assets and a nuclear deterrent they don’t have on their own. (A commander of mine said a ROK general told him that the last US commander on the peninsula would be MI.)

    OTOH, when I left the ROK the last time (2000) it was coming out that the ROK military was not what it once had been. Discipline was no longer as strict as it had been, which by our standards was not necessarily a bad thing, but there were reports of near-mutinous conditions. Remember that sub full of nork commandos that ran aground in the mid-90s? Two taxi drivers saw it and it took them hours to find someone who cared… Two of the commandos were caught on a ROK Army camp, in the PX arcade, playing video games.

    OTOH, one was caught when he was spotted by a farmer; it never occurred to him that a “peasant” out in the country would have a telephone…