I can’t believe this happened, but I know damned well it happened. That dumb ass didn’t have a clue what was signed in his name. First of all, I find it hard to understand why anyone should have the ability, let alone the authority, to use that machine for anything other than BS congratulatory letters sent out. Hell, his Executive Orders could have been written by some aide. Unbelievable!!
Tag Archives: woke
Aaron Menche
With all the artificial intelligence BS flying around today, you can’t believe anything anyone is saying or showing you. We have really gotten ourselves into a pickle. Something has to be done about it, and I don’t have a damn clue. That shit is far above my pay grade. I have trouble with real intelligence, let alone the artificial stuff. That has much to do as to why I have not posted much lately. You can’t believe anything anymore, and I don’t have the time to vet everything. But, having said that, I did some research on this fellow and I believe everything he writes. Something has to be done about all these Muslim. All I will say is keep your goats locked up, as they will rule the world someday!
More concerning Aaron I found: Aaron Menche, at The Blogs (timesofisrael.com)
I am sitting in my office here in Israel, 9 days after the barbaric attack on Jewish communities in the south. I am writing to you so that you can share our story. I watch international news and am appalled by what I see. I watch the anti-Israel protests and am sickened. I see the silence of most of corporate America and the grotesque support on college campuses. I see the silence of some of my friends and family.
First, let me tell you what has happened. I am not sure that you understand the full extent of this horror. We do not parade our dead for propaganda purposes as our enemy does. We respect those who have been slaughtered and their families. The next few lines may be hard to read, and I would understand if you were not able to:
Entire families were slaughtered in their homes—men, women, children, infants, and the elderly. Israel has now found copies of the Hamas orders to their men, and this is what was planned.
Children under the age of 10 had their hands tied behind their back and were shot in the head in front of their parents.
Infants were beheaded.
Whole families were dismembered, their bodies strewn in the street.
Women were raped next to the bodies of their dead friends.
A 90-year-old woman who survived the Holocaust was tied up and shot in the head. Her killers then uploaded the murder to her Facebook account so her family could see.
Those who managed to go to their safe rooms were burned alive.
I could go on, but I won’t. It is too hard to think about, let alone write. 1200 innocent people annihilated with a barbarity not seen in modern times.
Yet when I turn on the news, the majority has shifted to the plight of the Palestinians. Not Hamas, but those stuck in Gaza that Hamas is hiding behind. Trust me when I say no one here relishes the idea of the murder of civilians. Unlike the Palestinians’ reaction, none of us will be dancing in the street and giving out candy. In fact, the Israeli army has not started a ground invasion precisely because they are trying to save as many Palestinian civilians as possible. Even if you do not have a military background, you can understand that every hour that goes by gives Hamas more time to dig in and will cause the death of more Israeli soldiers. Israel has not invaded Gaza fully, even though they knew Hamas was getting stronger, to avoid civilian casualties. Yet Hamas is telling people not to leave. They are saying that it is a Zionist trick to get them to leave their land, like in 1948. Their real purpose is to show the world the barbarity of the Jews when civilians die. This was the plan from the beginning. This is always the plan with Hamas.
A few facts: Gaza is not occupied territory. Israel moved every troop and settlement out of there in 2005. In 2007, Hamas was elected to run Gaza by the Gazan people. They did this knowing that the Hamas charter calls for the elimination of Israel and all the Jews (for some reason the latter is never mentioned). Some will say that Gaza was in effect occupied because of the strict blockade that Israel imposed. The fact is the blockade was attempted by Israel and Egypt, never Israel alone, another thing never mentioned. It was clearly not effective. If it was, would Hamas have been able to secure all the weapons they have? Would they have been able to build miles and miles of underground tunnels? They could have used this cement to build schools, hospitals, or bomb shelters. Was this done? Some say that they needed to protect themselves. From who? Israel had no intention to reconquer the Gaza Strip. When Israel left, the Palestinians were given a choice. They could build a free society, schools, hospitals, etc., or they could prepare kill Jews to free Palestine because, for them, Palestine is not what is outlined in a two-state solution, Palestine is Israel.
Israel has been accused many times of dealing a heavy hand to the Palestinians by imposing a cruel and inhumane occupation. We have been called Nazis. We have been accused of genocide, apartheid, and war crimes. In fact, the UN Human Rights Commission has only one standing agenda item for a specific country, and that is Israel. Israel is the most inhumane country in the world.
I was once asked by someone why the Jews need their own country; why can’t it be for everyone? I asked him if he knew his grandparents. He replied that he did. I told him I never met mine; they were thrown in an oven. The Palestinians have done everything they can to take Jewish national trauma and turn it on its head, but I have never heard of Israeli death camps. I have never heard of the murder of millions of Palestinians. On the contrary, the Palestinian population has grown faster than almost any on earth. If this is what Israeli genocide looks like, we obviously are not good at it.
Yes, the Israeli occupation has been harsh, but unlike the rest of the world, we knew what we were dealing with. In 1929, 1936, and 1948, the Palestinians raped, murdered, beheaded, and mutilated Jews. We knew if given the chance, they would do it again. So after Israeli independence, we made sure it couldn’t. We lost part of our humanity to stay alive. The Palestinians have been offered peace on seven occasions, and they have turned it down each time. The last time was in 2008; they were offered more than 95% of the territory taken in 1967 and a capital in East Jerusalem. This was rejected because Israel would not give in on two points. One was the right of return. This calls for all Palestinian refugees to be able to return to their ancestral homeland. Unlike any other refugee group in the world, only Palestinians have generational refugees, sometimes up to the 5th generation. This means that there are currently over 5 million Palestinian refugees when only 700,000 left in 1948. If granted the right of return, Israel would cease to be a Jewish state. Even knowing this, Israel offered, as a symbolic gesture, to have 100,000 Palestinians return.
The second issue is Jerusalem. Sharing Jerusalem was not enough they wanted all of it including west Jerusalem which is entirely Jewish. A few quick facts:
Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran.
Jews have been praying to return to Jerusalem for over 2000 years.
The Koran recognizes that Israel was given to the Jews.
For the Jews, Jerusalem and specifically the Temple Mount are the holiest places on earth. When Israel conquered these areas in 1967, what did they do? Did they bar Muslim prayer? Did they build a third temple? No, They prevented Jews from praying there and gave the authority of the Temple Mount to the Muslim Waqf.
What we in Israel know is that the Palestinians will never accept anything less than our destruction. They have said so, poll after poll confirms this. Not a poll of Hamas members, a poll of Palestinians..
I am asking everyone I know to try to help. If you know people who are cheering our raped and dismembered, I hope you can now explain to them why this is not the same as occupation. The idea that anyone would support these heinous crimes is unfathomable, and yet we see this happening all over the world. Join rallies in support of Israel. In the coming months, we will need all the support we can get. Let your customers, clients, and suppliers know. This is not the time to hold back. When the photos of dead civilians from Gaza and Lebanon (yes, I think that will start soon) start pouring over the media, the pressure on Israel to stop will be relentless. Remind people that Palestinian resistance is only accomplished when every Jew in Israel is dead, and the days of us going like sheep to the slaughter are gone.
This time, Israel will not stop under international pressure. We will continue until Hamas is destroyed because the alternative is that we will be destroyed. We are being given the choice between our children or theirs. A choice that they have thrust upon us. A choice that no one will rejoice in, but we know what we must choose.
If anyone would like to discuss this further (as long as you can civilly) or would like any proof of some of the things I am saying, please let me know. If you think that you know some people who may not truly understand what is going on here, please feel free to share this, and if you feel that you just want to delete this email and move on, I understand. You think it is not your fight. I hope you are smarter and understand that ultimately it will be.
Aaron Menche
Sent from my iPhone
Originally posted 2024-02-01 16:13:02.
Taxes
Once again, I am remiss in posting anything. My only excuse is age-related – I guess having turned 83, I’m just slowing down. Otherwise, my health is good. I find this latest from my friend and fellow Marine Greg earth-shattering as well. I cannot believe the Supreme Court can find anything in the Moore case to go along with the government. Absolutely crazy and could change everything about a capitalistic economy.
Taxing Tremors By: Greg Maresca
A 7.6 earthquake and its resulting tsunami on New Year’s Day that shook Japan set the stage as the faultless metaphor that will reverberate throughout 2024 and beyond. With the impending presidential election aside, the tremors of improbability arrived a month earlier when the Supreme Court decided to hear a case with profound implications for the federal income tax.
Moore v. U.S. will decide if the federal government can tax unrealized capital gains not yet received under the 16th Amendment. The justices agreed to hear the Moore’s appeal as the couple wanted their $14,729 refund that the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against. The Ninth Circuit, known in legal circles as the “Ninth Circus,” has the worst record of any appeals court before the Supreme Court.
Like Roe v. Wade did last year, this case will have a huge and lasting ripple effect regarding future taxation that should concern everyone.
It is no secret that the nation is accruing debt that is unsustainable. The day of reckoning approaches. The irony is the case is named Moore – indeed “more” income through taxation.
Over a century of income tax laws has resulted in thousands of pages of decrees that carve out craters of exemptions in a labyrinth of directives. The tax code is a bloated, crony orchestrated, lobbyist measured disaster for those unable to manipulate it by hiring all those cunning accountants and attorneys who are paid handsomely to circumvent it.
When was the last time a member of Congress did their own taxes?
A fundamental reckoning from the ground up is long overdue to bury the income tax along with the IRS and replace them with a consumption tax or flat tax.
To tax unrealized capital gains not yet received is extreme. The power to regulate and tax is the power to destroy. Congress’s authority to tax does not include reinvested capital and personal property as income.
Income is money received.
Assets may increase in value, but until they are collected as interest, dividends or sold, there is no income. If you cannot spend it, it is not income.
You can’t pay the rent or fill your gas tank with paper gains or the appreciation of your home. When you gain on any financial instrument but do not sell you earn a “paper profit.” If unrealized gains are taxed, and the taxpayer has no cash to pay, a forced liquidation would be necessary for payment.
Are you prepared to pay a tax because your assets go up in value? House, car, pets, trading cards, comic books, Auntie Estelle’s antique coffee table – where does it end? Provided market values decline would monies be refunded? Stop laughing, that was no joke.
Uncle Sam wants all the golden eggs without having to buy the hens, the henhouse, and the chicken feed. The power brokers in Washington believe everything is subject to taxation real or imagined.
It is pitiful that this case is even necessary.
A tax in bad faith resulted in a revolution nearly 250 years ago. Such taxation realizes the socialist dream of equal outcomes regardless of effort, ingenuity, innovation, or lack thereof. Ayn Rand’s nightmare is finally realized.
The Supreme Court’s job is not about maximizing taxable income for Uncle Sam but to interpret if this tax is constitutional.
A ruling in favor of Uncle Sam will unleash Congress’ taxing power and devastate our economic system as we know it. Going forward, all unrealized income will become whatever the government says it is.
The Supreme Court’s decision is expected in June right in the middle of the presidential campaign. Provided the government loses and refusing to allow what they perceive as a crisis; Democrats will condemn the decision as a political red herring.
A Moore victory would also challenge other sections of the tax code that stands at nearly 7,000 pages. Provided they are unconstitutional; they must fall, too.
The income tax has been around since 1913 and its ability to produce revenue has never been assuaged by politics. The hardcore issue is the United States does not have a taxing problem, but a spending problem. Revenue is up but it can’t compete with current spending levels.
A ruling in favor of the government would only exacerbate such spending.
Postscript: I have given up on all the latest coming out of the military and especially our Corps. Absolutely sad! I am simply too old to even bother with it anymore. My stress level is more important to me.
In case you have not read your copy of the latest “Semper Fidelis, or if not retired and don’t get it, I always look at the “Taps” column looking for friends with whom I served. I saw MajGen Dennis Murphy listed this month. Sad, I considered him another Ernie Cheatham – a warrior. He gave me Huxley’s Whores.
Well, this is election year. Do we really believe the liberals are going to allow a legal, valid election? I don’t!
Originally posted 2024-01-19 13:08:35.
Treason?
Having spent half of an Okinawan 13-month tour at Camp Courtney as the S-3/S/4 of HQ Bn, 3rd MARDIV, so I know the view Greg talks about very well, and yes the legend is true. Not just soldiers, but many civilians as well took advantage of the view to die for.
But then I digress and must at agree wholeheartedly with Greg about the POS of whom he writes. He was one of Trump’s mistakes during his first tour. He should have listened to Mattis and Dunford, but now he can make amends. Charge the POS for treason!
A General’s Consensus By: Greg Maresca
Legend said the cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Okinawa, Japan’s Camp Courtney, the headquarters of the commanding general of the Third Marine Division, was where Japanese soldiers committed harakiri rather than be taken prisoner during World War II.
You could say the view was to die for.
It was also my introduction to the palatial digs of MajGen. Steven Olmstead, as the food delivery detail I was assigned to made it obvious this wasn’t your typical stopover on mess duty.
Fast-forward to December 2018 when President Donald Trump nominated Gen. Mark Milley for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCOS), against the wishes of Secretary of Defense and former Marine Gen. James Mattis and then-JCOS chairman Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford. Milley would serve as chairman from 2019 to 2023 under Presidents Trump and Biden.
Mattis and Dunford were vindicated when in Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book, “Peril,” revealed how Milley called Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the presidential election and again on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after Trump supporters marched on the U.S. Capitol.
Milley stated, “General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable, and everything is going to be OK. We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you. General Li, you and I have known each other for five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
This is not treason?
Sen. Marco Rubio responded in a letter to President Biden that was obviously ignored.
“I do not need to tell of you the dangers posed by senior military officers leaking classified information on U.S. military operations, but I will underscore that such subversion undermines the President’s ability to negotiate and leverage one of this nation’s instruments of national power in his interactions with foreign nations.”
In Woodward’s book: “War,” Milley declared Trump was the “most dangerous person ever” and a “fascist to the core.” Such statements violate Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering the commander-in-chief.
When questioned about Woodward’s books, Milley claimed he hadn’t read any of them.
Who believes that?
Such candor defies credulity.
Perjury anyone?
Moreover, Milley made himself a part of the chain of command for January 6th and issued an order to the commander of the D.C. National Guard that he was in charge. Milley also assessed the Afghan army believing it capable to stand on their own and that Ukraine would fall in 72 hours. Milley was not shy in defending the teaching at West Point of Marxist-based Critical Race Theory, saying, “I want to understand white rage and I’m white,” at a House Armed Services Committee hearing.
Milley’s treason, disloyalty and incompetence were inexcusable.
During the last four years, accountability in the Defense Department has been MIA.
Before leaving office, President Joe Biden pardoned Milley.
Since then, Hegseth ordered the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate Milley to determine if he “undermined the chain of command during President Trump’s first term.”
Many generals are chairborne desk jockeys concerned more with politics than with military preparedness. Milley is another in a long line of flag officers who carried water for the Military Industrial Complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about.
Like presidents, generals are not all created equal, where only a few leave a historical footprint, while most just fade away – Douglas MacArthur notwithstanding.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has revoked Milley’s security detail and suspended his security clearance while exiling his two portraits from the Pentagon.
If justice is to be served, Milley should be court martialed for treason having betrayed allegiance to the United States by giving aid and comfort to a foreign power in a state in open hostility with us.
A compromised general was pardoned by an equally compromised president.
Treason is the one exception to a presidential pardon. The act of pardoning someone who committed treason is also treason.
Milley most likely never took in the view at the general’s mess at Camp Courtney but being a DEI warrior, I am sure he is familiar with how any Asian culture would handle his situation having only himself to blame.
The New USMC
While I have pretty much remained silent about CMC Berger’s FD 2030, there has been and continues to be a plethora of verbiage about it. And as far as I have been able to ascertain none of it has been good. I reckon I considered it a long gone conclusion with the new CMC simply carrying on his predecessor’s image of the new Corps. In nine days the world is going to change, make no mistake about that; the proverbial shit will hit the fan globally, not just here in the US. Our mainstream nerds will have so much to talk about it isn’t even funny. I will start watching the news again, except it will be either CNN or that ridiculous MSNBC. I can’t wait to hear their spins.
But I digress. FD 2030 is a disaster; our Corps is not the same and there is some serious doubt that it never will again be America’s 911 Force. The divestitures were HUGE, so much so that anyone who thinks it can still respond to an urgent crisis somewhere in the world is living under a rock. Do you actually know what all was given up?
Here is an article written by Captain Dale Dye, USMC (Ret). In case you don’t know of him, once he retired he became a favorite consultant in Hollywood for any producer who wanted to show or talk about Marines. In fact, he convinced producer Oliver Stone to let him put the principal actors—including Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp, and Forest Whitaker—through an immersive 30-day military-style training regimen before the filming of Platoon. He limited how much food and water they received; when the actors slept, he fired cartridge blanks to keep them awake. Dale who had a small role in the movie as Captain Harris, also wrote the novelization based on Stone’s screenplay.
Here, in his usual uncensored style, is a good recount of everything that has happened since Berger’s stroke of his pen behind closed doors.
Marine Swords Beaten into Puny Plowshares
Not likely anyone in authority will be influenced by a long-retired Mustang bitching about the state of today’s Marine Corps, but I feel compelled to lob a few grenades at Force Design 2030. That’s the radical restructuring of the Corps ordered by former Commandant General David Berger in a sleazy backroom deal that demanded all the sycophants involved sign non-disclosure agreements. Since it was announced three years ago, the revamping of Marine missions, tactics, and techniques has created a defecation deluge from opponents who believe—as I do—that the whole thing has a lot in common with a jet engine. It sucks and blows.
Before I get into the weeds here, let me say a thing or two about the general mission and offensive ethos of the United States Marine Corps. Simply stated, the Corps is—or was—always designed to be the country’s 911 force, most ready to fight when the nation is least ready. It’s meant to be the crash crew in crisis response anyplace and anytime around the world. The key asset for global combatant commanders was a Marine Corps air-ground team (MAGTF) always forward deployed—usually aboard Navy amphibs—trained, equipped, and instantly ready to handle any mission in the full range of military operations.
For some reason known only to General Berger and his clones, that wasn’t good enough for a force facing China in the Western Pacific as the perceived priority threat. Rather than tweak weapons, training, and positioning to meet that challenge as Marines typically do, they decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater and ordered a tactical shift to defense with primary focus on small teams of missile-armed Marines who would jump from island to island in efforts to damage or deter a growing Chinese blue-water fleet in the event of a shooting war in the Western Pacific. The Navy—and certainly the Army—currently has a plethora of missiles capable of sinking ships. Here’s a hint. If you want to avoid redundancy arguments, don’t try to do something another service already does and probably does it better than you can.
Not much thought—if any—was given to moving these small vulnerable Marine detachments, much less resupplying and otherwise supporting them under the ever vigilant eyes of Chinese radars, satellites, and cyber capture networks. And apparently never mind if the sovereign nations that claim the territory Marines would need to launch their ship-killer missiles want no part of a super-power fight. What if—as entirely likely—those sovereign nations deny the Marines those operational bases? I’ll wait while someone thinks that through.
Under this misbegotten concept, the US Navy has a huge vote as the provider of small, fast amphibious ships needed to move Marines. And they voted no. Not only do we have insufficient gator freighters in our current fleet, but the Navy has no apparent plans to produce the smaller inter-island transports called for under FD 2030.
Screwing around with the Marine’s central mission—locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver—threatens to turn the US Marine Corps into a single-mission niche outfit ready to die in place on remote islands and unready to handle crises anywhere else. It puts Marines in a defensive posture when our time-tested ethos has always been the offense, forward deployed and eager to fight any enemy. It’s that attitude that used to permeate Marine ranks and kept us supplied with avid young recruits. Seems to me given the puny recruiting numbers we’re seeing from all the other services, the Marine Corps can ill-afford to sacrifice this aspect of their gung-ho, first-to-fight reputation.
In order to twist itself around this maypole of new war fighting concepts, General Berger cooked the books in what he called “divest to invest” which basically amounts to robbing Peter to pay Paul as my Dad used to call false-economy measures. That little bookkeeping maneuver made some $16 billion available which the new model planners spent on long-range missile batteries, drones, and other high-tech goodies to equip what are now proudly called Marine Littoral Regiments. Fine if all future fights are in littoral areas of the world but history begs us not to bank on that.
Most stunning in an outfit that focuses on the combat power of basic infantry, FD 2030 orders a reduction of three full battalions from the point of the Marine Corps bayonet, or a loss of 14 percent of combat strength. If that wasn’t dumb enough in formations that face inevitable casualties in ground combat, the end-strength for a Marine infantry battalion has been reduced by 200 Marines across the board which translates to a loss of 4,200 frontline war fighters. Marine Corps Reserves won’t be there to fill in the gaps. The reserves lost two full infantry battalions under the FD 2030 axe.
None of this seemed to bother force designers all that much as they also eliminated all—that’s correct all—Marine Corps tanks. So much for lessons learned in Ukraine or the Middle East. Supporters say if the Marines need tanks in a future fight, the US Army will provide them. That’s unlikely to be any kind of high priority for an Army outfit that might well be engaged in its own fight. And even if they were willing to cough up a platoon or two of Abrams, it would likely be at the end of a lengthy and complicated pipeline. Marines need tanks at hand, not in some remote Army motor pool.
Which brings me kicking and screaming to the matter of fire support for what’s left of Marine Corps maneuver battalions in the next fight. God help the grunt commander who needs quick and accurate artillery fire support, a reliable staple of infantry combat in modern times. He might not get it as FD 2030 cut a full 16 battalions of cannon artillery for a firepower reduction of a whopping 76 percent. Savings were spent to stand up 14 rocket artillery battalions which is OK if you’re shooting over the horizon at Chinese ships, but not worth a damn to a grunt outfit pinned down and in need of rapid steel on target at close ranges in crappy weather. We will hopefully live to regret this emasculation of versatile, reliable tube artillery. If you have any doubts about the utility of cannons and howitzers on the modern battlefield, let me direct your attention to the Ukraine where artillery on both sides is proving to be a deciding factor.
Another dumb-ass divestiture under FD 2030 came in Marine Corps aviation. One of the most brilliant assets of forward-deployed Marine units is that they come to the fight carrying their own air support. Both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aviation was quickly available to a MAGTF commander who could call it up and then down on an enemy without having to ask the Air Force or compete with other battlefield priorities. Not so simple these days.
FD 2030 cut almost 30 percent of tactical and logistical aviation support. Offensive aviation cuts included at least two of seven light attack helicopter squadrons which will be sorely missed by grunts on the ground who always appreciate the quickly available support of helicopter gunships. Also eliminated were three of the current 17 Osprey tilt-rotor squadrons and three of eight heavy-lift helicopter units. With the Corps struggling to field a reliable sea-shore connector—the new Amphibious Combat Vehicle is still not approved for deployment—now seems like a hell of a time to be cutting aviation logistic and transportation support.
I could go on here about the elimination of engineer support units such as bridging and breeching units that are always a valuable and versatile piece of the battlefield toolbox, but my morale might not survive it. What’s keeping me afloat as an old but loyal believer in the spirit and inherent value of the Corps, is the controversy at very high and influential levels that surrounds the changes mandated by FD 2030. Wiser heads than mine are arguing for a return to sanity. It may take some long and bloody time to correct our course, but I believe we will do just that.
In the end active-duty Marines, veterans, fans, and friends of the Corps will demand it. As General Brute Krulak wisely said back in 1957, “America does not need a Marine Corps. It wants one.” And the one it wants is not the one that’s being shaped by Force Design 2030.
I was fortunate enough to meet Dale while I was at Marine Barracks, NAS, Lemoore CA. It was during an attempt to have Brian Dennehy as our guest for a birthday ball. Quite an impressive guy to represent our Corps to Hollywood.
