Monday, December 19, 2016

Life Without Hope



Vincent J. Curtis

19 Dec 2016


Could anyone be more hopeless than Michelle Obama?  Could anyone be more out of touch than Michelle Obama?  I mean, other than those Hollywood celebrities calling on Trump Electors to be faithless – as an act of conscience and patriotism!

Today, an Oprah Winfrey show is going to have Michelle Obama tell Oprah that the current mood of America is what “not having hope feels like.”  She then amplifies her statement by saying something about hope being necessary and some such, a quality of statement that belies the education she received at Princeton and Harvard.

In 2008, after the Democrat party had nominated husband Barack at its presidential nominee, she famously said that this was the first time in her life she felt proud of her country.  She meant that for the first time in her life, that racist chip on her shoulder slipped off.  Soon enough she replaced it, however, because the racist ambush is about the only method of argument she has confidence in delivering.

Michelle has lived a life of cosseted privilege.  In 2006, her salary was $273,618 from the University of Chicago Hospitals, while her husband had a salary of $157,082 from the United States Senate. The Obamas' total income, however, was $991,296, which included $51,200 she earned as a member of the board of directors of TreeHouse Foods, and investments and royalties from his books.

Advancements through her career are mysterious for a person without connections and of modest attainments.

In 1996, at the age of 32, Michelle served as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago.  In 2002, she began working for the University of Chicago Hospitals, first as executive director for community affairs and, beginning May 2005, as Vice President for Community and External Affairs.  Note the dates and the status of husband Barack’s career at the same time.

In 1991, at the age of 27, she worked in the Chicago city government as an Assistant to the Mayor and as Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development. In 1993, she became Executive Director for the Chicago office of Public Allies, a non-profit organization encouraging young people to work on social issues in nonprofit groups and government agencies.

In 1981, she entered Princeton University.  Her graduation thesis was entitled Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.  Part of her research consisted in sending a questionnaire to African American graduates, requesting they specify when and how comfortable they were with their race prior to their enrollment at Princeton and how they felt about it when they were a student and since then. Of the 400 alumni sent the survey, “fewer than 90 responded, and the findings did not support her hope that the black alumni would still identity with the African American community, even though they had attended an elite university with all of the advantages that accrues to its graduates."  She majored in sociology and minored in African American studies, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1985.

Obviously, race consciousness and feelings have been central to Michelle’s thinking since college days.  A voluntary survey of 400 to which fewer than 90 responded does not provide scientific results.  The purpose of the survey was to test a thesis, not a hope; and you would not be wrong to rub your eyes at what the thesis was: that blacks still identify as “blacks” despite being Princeton graduates and having the advantages of an Ivy League education.  Nevertheless, Michelle graduated, and was admitted to Harvard Law School.

Michelle earned a J.D. (Juris Doctor – a fancy name for a lawyer with another university degree) from Harvard in 1988.  It was at Harvard that Michelle allegedly concluded that she could be “both brilliant and black,” according to her faculty mentor Charles Ogletree.

She graduated from Harvard Law and landed a job at the law firm Sidley Austin, LLP, where she met Barack.  They were married in 1992.

Michelle Obama got into Princeton with a lot less than non-minority students, and I’m guessing that it was on full, or nearly full, scholarship.  She takes a bird course, does a half-assed thesis, and they give her a degree and send her out the door; and Princeton gets credit for graduating a black female.

On the strength of a mere cum laude sociology degree, Michelle lands a spot at Harvard Law, but don’t think for a moment that being black and being female had anything to do with her admission.  No more so that being female and being 1/32 Cherokee had anything to do with Harvard Law hiring Elizabeth Warren.

Anyhow, after barely three years in practicing law, she is already working for government in the city of Chicago doing those non-technical soft things – Assistant to the Mayor, Assistant to someone else.  Within five years of graduating Harvard Law, she placed her law license into voluntary suspension, and is wife of up and coming Barack Obama, another story of modest attainments being inflated to epic proportions for reasons of race.

If it weren’t for prevalence of race-guilt in America, a person of Michelle Obama’s talents would never have made it to Princeton and Harvard Law.  She has benefitted personally to a degree she cannot imagine on account of the fact that she is a black female who is culturally a step above a ghetto-mama.

She sees the race guilt of America everywhere she looks, and her comment about the America of Donald Trump being a place without hope reflects her view from the bubble of privilege she has lived in her entire adult life.  It chokes people more talented and less lucky than she has been to listen to her disparage the first sign of hope they have seen in a decade or more – Donald Trump.

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Friday, December 16, 2016

Russian Hacking Story Obama's Payback for Birtherism



Vincent J. Curtis

16 Dec 2016


President Barack Obama is a small man who never forgets a slight.  The evidence of it abounds from his time in office.  One deeply wounding slight to him was the issue of birtherism that was driven to a conclusion by none other than Obama’s successor as president, Donald J. Trump.

Yesterday, at the White House daily press briefing Josh Earnest delivered himself of this message to the media that came direct from his boss:

“Earnest turned up the heat on Trump and his transition over Russian interference following media reports citing CIA sources that the purpose of Russian-backed hacking was to help Trump.

'It is just a fact – you all have it on tape – that the Republican nominee for president was encouraging Russia to hack his opponent, because he believed that would help his campaign.'

'It is not a controversial statement,' Earnest continued. 'I'm not trying to be argumentative. But I am trying to acknowledge a basic fact,' Earnest said at Thursday's White House briefing.” Quoth the UK’s Daily Mail.  (“Sfunny that you won’t find this on American media.)

Well, sorry Josh.  It is a controversial statement because it simply isn’t true.  None of it is.  Trump did not encourage the Russians to hack into Hillary Clinton’s private email server because, by that point, it had been destroyed five months previously and everybody knew it.  Trump asked Putin to help out the American media and the FBI by releasing Hillary’s 33,000 deleted emails because Trump assumed that Putin had hacked Hillary’s private server before she destroyed it and he already possessed them.  Trump was being his usual provocative, sarcastic self.  Trump actually pointed at the media present at the back of the hall and said to Putin that he would become their hero, referring to the media, if he released them, embarrassing the FBI who couldn't find a copy.

Charles Krauthammer at the time noted the clever trap that Trump had set for the Democrats.  The standard Democrat defense was to condemn Trump for encouraging the Russians to hack American secrets – full stop.  Nothing was to be said about American secrets being on a secret, unsecured private server in violation of American espionage laws, out there naked waiting to be found.  The Democrat defense was simply to brazen it out.  Even Leon Panetta, former Director of the CIA, Obama’s Secretary of Defense, and partisan Democrat hack parroted the line, though he knew better because he is not that stupid.  Now Obama repeats it to a still gullible White House press corps.  And still nobody wonders about the possibility of blackmail – of a US president – that might exist in those 33,000 deleted and bleach-bitted emails.

The birther issue was started in 2008 by Sid Blumenthal, a Hillary Clinton hack, who put it into the mind of the McClatchy News service that it ought to look for Barack Obama’s birth records in Kenya, because he had heard that Obama was actually born there and not in Hawaii.  The search came up empty, and Obama was able to use the issue to his advantage, saying that birtherism was a kind of racism directed at him.  Until Trump forced the issue, Obama never took steps to put the issue to rest because he could always use it to his political advantage as a kind of race card and a sign of nuttiness in his critics. 

In 2011, Trump forced Obama to release his authentic, long form Hawaiian birth certificate.  Trump was apparently proven wrong, though he did a public service.  Obama felt humiliated because public pressure brought to bear by Trump forced him to do something he didn’t want to do.  Famously, Obama humiliated Trump at the Washington Press Corps dinner in 2011 as payback.

If Obama had been born in Kenya, his being president would be illegitimate because the U.S. constitution requires that the president be a natural born citizen.  Being born in Hawaii makes Obama a natural born citizen.  If he were born in Kenya, he would not be.

The storyline of ‘Russian hacking to aid Donald Trump’ being encouraged by the Obama Administration, first via CIA leaks and yesterday by Josh Earnest, is Obama’s final payback on de-legitimacy.  The fact that the CIA refused to meet with the House Intelligence Committee or to brief Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) of the Senate Intelligence Committee proves that they don’t have any evidence worthy of the name to show (a) hacking by Russia, and (b) with the intent of helping Donald Trump to win the election.  As a mere point of logic, without a confession from Putin himself these things are practically unprovable.  And that’s why “the CIA” doesn’t want itself subjected to examination on its evidence and findings.  More to the point, even if both were true, it in no way means Trump owes Putin anything.

It is in a way a fitting final act of his presidency that Barack Obama undertake a whispering campaign aimed at de-legitimizing his successor.
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Thursday, December 15, 2016

CIA, Big Media Try Disinformation Against Trump



Vincent J. Curtis

15 Dec 2016


“Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”  asked King Henry II of England in respect of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, in a moment of drunken pique.  His young, loyal knights took the remark as a hint and murdered Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.

President Barack Obama is without doubt royally annoyed at the selection of Donald Trump by the American electorate to succeed him as President of the United States.  Trump promises to undo Obama’s “legacy,” such as it is.  Trump is already in control of the headlines, and is fulfilling campaign promises before he is inaugurated.  He saved jobs at Carrier; Ford Motor Company has decided not to move a production line to Mexico; a Japanese banker has pledged to invest $50 billion in the U.S., and tech giant IBM has announced plans to hire 25,000 workers.  Trump is putting together a cabinet of surpassing competence.  His approval rating has jumped 17 points since Election Day.

How to discredit this rising star?  How to put fight into Obama’s defeated and exhausted party?

An important factor in the loss by Hillary Clinton was the disclosure of the depth of corruption surrounding her.  This corruption came to public attention through WikiLeaks that posted about a thousand emails a day to a total of 50,000 from the account of Hillary’s campaign manager, John Podesta in the latter part of the campaign.  The defense the campaign mounted against this tsunami of truth was to refuse to discuss the content of the emails themselves and to focus instead on the speculation that the Russians had released the emails to WikiLeaks for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.

This total allegation contains three simple allegations: that the release was done for the purpose of helping Donald Trump; that the hackers were acting under the guidance or control of the Russian government, specifically Vladimir Putin, and the emails themselves may not be authentic.

The CIA is a highly political institution; it went to war against the Bush Administration beginning in 2004 to discredit the war policy in Iraq.  Its technique was to leak salacious information to the major media.  Since the leak came from “the CIA” the opinions contained in the leak were assumed to be likely true.  That the information could be, in reality, ass-covering, finger-pointing, and unverifiable half-truths were not cautions expressed in an ostensible “news” story.  The leak was newsworthy and was treated as “news”; the difference between the truth of a news story faithfully reported and the truth of the content of the story itself – that the actual content of the story may be somebody’s ass-covering, finger-pointing half-truth – was lost on the general public, or at least upon the media talking heads who had political axes of their own to grind.

Thus when “the CIA” leaks that Russian hackers were behind the WikiLeaks revelations about Hillary Clinton for the purpose of helping Donald Trump in the election, you have to wonder who is playing what game.  This is the same “CIA” that yesterday refused to appear before the House Intelligence Committee to explain what’s behind these findings of ‘CIA determines Russian hacking for the purpose of helping Donald Trump’ appearing in the big media but those responsible in the Congress for such things not being briefed on it.

The FBI have refused to endorse the “CIA’s” determination.

Who is “the CIA” in respect of these leaks to the major media?  Could it be outgoing CIA Director John Brennan?  Are these leakers acting upon the presumed will of President Barack Obama, in the manner of Henry II in respect of Thomas Becket?  Are they acting upon the specific instructions of Barack Obama?

Good reason exists for casting deep suspicion on this so-called “CIA determination.”  The first concerns that the WikiLeaks exposure was for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.  Unless the CIA has a human spy close to Vladimir Putin, or hold an authentic communication of his, they cannot say “for the purpose of…” because saying that means you know the mind of that person.  It is reasonable to say you think it is for the purpose of, but to say it is for the purpose of requires a high level of confidence that is unwarranted here.  There is no doubt that WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange wanted to hurt Hillary Clinton, and that such hurt would tend to help Donald Trump, but in that case the help entails no debt on Trump’s account and much would turn upon the authenticity of the emails.  If the emails were not authentic, then there is no help at all.  But Hillary’s campaign would say nothing about their authenticity, and after a while silence meant affirmation.

The CIA has no newsworthy proof of Russian hackers being responsible for accessing the DNC computers and John Podesta’s gmail account.  Such information would have to come from the NSA, and the NSA isn’t leaking, the FBI isn’t agreeing, and a “false flag” operation cannot be disproven at this point (A “false flag” occurs when evidence is left behind that points at someone else being the wrong-doer).  Thus somebody at the CIA is getting way over his skis in saying that Russians did the original hacking of John Podesta’s account.

Another ‘tell’ is that Barack Obama did absolutely nothing to the Russians in the course of the campaign in response to their alleged hacking and leaking.  He apparently had no diplomatic conversations with the Russians about it, he did not retaliate against the Russians, and he said nothing himself about it at all.  If incontrovertible evidence existed, you would think the President of the United States would himself caution the Russians about interfering in the U.S. election.  (Hypocrisy would drip from such a warning from Obama, but never mind.)

This source in the CIA has said nothing about the authenticity of the leaked emails.  If it admitted that they were authentic, that would change the trajectory of the story from the Russians helping Trump to Hillary’s circle really being that cynical and corrupt.  Helping Trump or not, Hillary deserved to lose.

After “the CIA” refused to appear before the House Intelligence Committee to share with them what they knew about Russian hacking, the political partisanship of that narrative became clear.  No good evidence exists that Russian hackers were the ones who gained access to John Podesta’s gmail account.  No evidence exists that Vladimir Putin ordered Podesta’s email trove to be released to WikiLeaks and that he did so for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.  The WikiLeaks disclosure likely did help Donald Trump because the emails it released were authentic, and the content of these authentic emails was damning against Hillary and her circle.  Julian Assange was motivated to hurt Hillary’s campaign, but his final motive is unclear.  He may have hoped merely to cripple her Administration by giving the Republicans ammunition for impeachment.  Donald Trump may have been helped by WikiLeaks, but the extent of it is unknown and unmeasurable. 

At this point, the obvious purpose of the CIA leaks that give legitimacy to old Democrat allegations is to give Democrats and their many friends in the major media ammunition to de-legitimize incoming President Donald Trump, implying that he is in the debt of Russian president Vladimir Putin.  But nobody owns Trump, and if Putin thinks he does he is in for a rude awakening.  And nobody is disputing that Americans actually elected Trump over Hillary with valid votes.

It is not clear whether the CIA leaking campaign to de-legitimize Trump is done at the behest of Barack Obama, or whether it is his loyal minions in the CIA performing work they think he would like to have done but can’t say so.
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Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Obama Disses America on Way Out the Door



Vincent J. Curtis

13 Dec 2016

Last night, President Barack Obama dissed the country he has led for the past eight years.   He maintained it was still a racist country.  Appropriately, he did so on a comedy TV show.

“America is still struggling to overcome its legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, colonialism, and racism," he said on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart’s old show.

Comedy Central’s new host, Trevor Noah, then, in all seriousness, asked Obama how does he "skirt that line between speaking your mind and sharing your true opinions on race whilst, at the same time, not being seen to alienate some of the people you are talking to?”

Obama answered,  "You know, my general theory is that, if I was clear in my own mind about who I was, comfortable in my own skin, and had clarity about the way in which race continues to be this powerful factor in so many elements of our lives.  But that it is not the only factor in so many aspects of our lives, that we have, by no means overcome the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow and colonialism and racism, but that the progress we've made has been real and extraordinary, if I'm communicating my genuine belief that those who are not subject to racism can sometimes have blind spots or lack of appreciation of what it feels to be on the receiving end of that, but that doesn't mean that they're not open to learning and caring about equality and justice and that I can win them over because there is goodness in the majority of people."

Got that?  If Obama seriously thinks that you have a problem with race, then you should hear what he has to say about your blind spots, about what it’s like to be on the receiving end of racism, that you ought to be open to what he has to say if you care at all about equality and justice.  That is, if you are a good person.  Never mind that he has no personal experience of adverse racism himself.

So, after eight years of Obama, America has by no means overcome the “legacies” of slavery and Jim Crow and colonialism and racism, though extraordinary and real progress has been made.  What is extraordinary to me is that Obama was ever seriously considered as a public intellectual; and that he was calls into question the intellectual seriousness of those scholars who did.  Let’s dissect what Obama just maintained.

Insofar as slavery and Jim Crow belong to the history of the United States, there will be no overcoming of the legacies of those things.  You can’t change history, and legacies are about history.  Slavery and Jim Crow themselves however, since they have been abolished, have been overcome.  But so long as there are race hucksters like Michelle Obama, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the Congressional Black Caucus, and Barack Obama himself (to say nothing of the Democrat party) exploiting the memory of the injustices of the past for their benefit in the here and now, there won’t be an overcoming of the “legacies” of those things.

What about the overcoming of colonialism?  Obama here reveals his Bill Ayers/African perspective.  Of course America is guilty!  Never mind the details!

Europeans colonized America, a continent practically empty of human beings in the 16th century.  The Thirteen Colonies relieved Great Britain of the guilt of colonialism in the territory of the United States in 1784, so who in America exactly is guilty of colonialism today, and in what sense?  America herself never had an empire as that term is conventionally understood, and stood for the end of European colonialism before and after World War II.  If Obama means that America colonized its own territory with Americans and displaced native American Indians in the course of doing so, then Obama reveals a rarified, peculiar, and utterly impractical sense of the meaning of colonialism.  In that sense, Europe itself was colonized by the barbarians between the 3rd and 6th Centuries, A.D.  Does guilt still attach to that, and to whom does it attach in this worldview – the Europeans of today?  The Mongols?

In Obama’s view, there is no escaping the guilt of something.  He says that “extraordinary and real progress” has been made in overcoming the “legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, colonialism and racism” but he holds out no hope of ever getting past the legacies of these things.  How much progress must be made before a legacy is overcome, and who is to judge when these legacies are overcome?  Obama offers no answer, which is why I question the depth of his alleged intellectualism.  He must either have some answer in mind, or his words are simply means of putting a class of white people on an endless treadmill of guilt and atonement.

For a man who has not a drop of slave blood in his veins, and who is himself half white, Obama is extraordinarily conscious of race.  He admitted in his own memoirs that he could exploit white guilt over racism and slavery to his personal benefit.  Witness his career at University.  Witness his claim to be president.  Obama is a past master of exploiting America’s legacy of racism for his personal benefit.

In the 2016 presidential election, over 200 counties that voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 voted for Trump, and this difference is what led to Trump’s triumph.  He told his supporters that he would regard it as a personal insult if Donald Trump were elected president as a result of their actions or failures to act.  Well, Trump was elected and Obama is about to see his own legacy destroyed.

Appearing on a comedy show and telling America it remains guilty of racism, colonialism, Jim Crow, and slavery is Obama’s retort and rebuke of the country that twice elected him president, and that rejects what he did while in office.

Obama is nothing if not modest!
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Monday, December 12, 2016

Russian Hacking Influenced U.S. Election?



Vincent J. Curtis

12 Dec 2016


What has been bruited for months broke into the open last week when the Obama White House released a CIA assessment that Russians were the hackers that broke into the DNC computers and the email account of John Podesta and released them to WikiLeaks.  The object of the hacking and leaking, allegedly, was to influence the outcome of the presidential election to favor Donald Trump.

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton – who is one of the names in the mix to be named as Trump’s Secretary of State – threw out the possibility that the Russian angle was a “false flag,” meaning the hackers planted evidence that the hacking originated in Russia as a means of distracting attention away from the true identity of the hackers.

Fox News Chief Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano has for months been speculating that the hacking was actually done by America’s own National Security Agency (NSA), an agency who chief expertise is SIGINT and electronic eavesdropping.  Judge Napolitano believes the NSA is behind it partially as revenge against Hillary Clinton for her use of an unsecured private server that compromised human intelligence assets overseas, and against Barack Obama for conversing with Mrs. Clinton about highly classified matters via her secret server.  Napolitano believes the high level of sophistication in covering up the hack is additional evidence that points at the NSA. 

Let’s also not forget that President Obama fired NSA chief Lt.-Gen. Michael Flynn in 2013 for being publicly at odds with the Administration on the assessment of ISIS.  Flynn, who is going to be Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, may be popular enough among the rank-and-file NSA personnel that payback on that account could also be a motivator.

That an intelligence agency may go to war against the Administration is it supposed to serve is not unprecedented.  Between 2004 and 2007, the CIA went to war against the Bush Administration, doing everything in its power to undermine his policies in Iraq, and collaterally in domestic issues also.  What Napolitano describes is criminal in nature.

The FBI, on the other hand, has been reluctant to name the Russian government, and specifically Russian President Vladimir Putin, as being behind the release hacked emails.

What to make of all this?

In the first place, that the CIA would allow itself to be used in a blatantly partisan manner shows how politicized the CIA remains.  The purpose of pinning the hacking on the Russians is to de-legitimize Donald Trump, and to draw a number of red herrings across a path that leads to Hillary Clinton.

In Hillary’s first email scandal, the one involving her secret server, some 33,000 “private” emails were deleted from her server despite a congressional subpoena.  Because her email archive had been bleach-bitted, the FBI were not able to ascertain whether or not that server had been hacked.  Those private emails contained incontrovertible evidence of the quid pro quo that existed between contributions to the Clinton Foundation and actions by Hillary Clinton in her role as U.S. Secretary of State.  The Clinton campaign always maintained that the FBI’s failure to find evidence of hacking in the ruins of her server was proof that her server had never been hacked.

Every new release of hacked emails tended to show that Hillary’s server was likely hacked, and only the destruction of her email archive contrary to the subpoena enabled her to maintain a semblance of defense.  To bolster that defense, the Russian angle in other hackings was harped upon.  Never mind the content of the material, look at who did the hacking and why: the Russians to help Donald Trump defeat Hillary.  Such was the Democrat mantra, repeated with the regularity of an alarm clock.  A media utterly and unprofessionally hostile to Donald Trump accepted the line, and never tried to look beyond it.

The content of Hillary’s second and third email scandals brought people low.  The hacking of the DNC computer proved that the Committee, and specifically the Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, were rigging the system to help Hillary win the nomination.  The first WikiLeaks disclosure forced the resignation of Wasserman-Schultz from the position as Chair on the eve of the nominating convention.  Nobody denied that the content of the emails of the DNC hack were true.  The emails released by WikiLeaks weren’t going to change the outcome of the Democrat Convention, however; all it showed was that Hillary was, by God, going to be the Democrat nominee this time, and the DNC was going to make damn sure of it.  Russians being the hackers in this case was kicked around, but nobody then made a big issue of it.  The embarrassing content of the emails was offset by speculation about who the hackers were.  (Shades of the Benghazi cover-up scheme!)

Hillary’s third email scandal and the second major WikiLeaks disclosure undermined her campaign.  Whatever her campaign had to say about her platform was subsumed between its attacks on Donald Trump’s fitness for office and answering questions about the details of the hacking of John Podesta’s gmail account.  Donna Brazile, who replaced Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as Chair of the DNC after the latter’s resignation, was herself forced to resign and she was fired from her job as a commentator on CNN after the emails revealed that she had fed debate questions to Hillary’s campaign prior to debates.  Trump likened this to giving the questions to the contestant before filming an episode of the $64,000 Question, with Hillary being culpable for not disclosing that she had been fed the question beforehand.

In the face of the massive release of emails by WikiLeaks that revealed how deep the corruption ran in Hillary’s world, the candidate and the campaign refused to discuss the content of the emails and play up the storyline that the Russians did the hacking to help Donald Trump.  By now, the possibility that Hillary’s private emails had been hacked and that she could be blackmailed by the Russians who had proof of quid pro quo was forgotten because the emails of this release were so salacious.  The campaign would neither confirm nor deny the content of the emails, they would immediately change the subject to Russian hacking to help Donald Trump.

Well, Donald Trump won the election in part because of the deep corruption exposed by the emails.  Suppose the Russians were behind the hacking, what does that change?  The emails released by WikiLeaks were actual, and they gave the American electorate a lot of things to think about.  In particular, that Hillary would look upon the presidency as her Eldorado; that American policy would be up for auction; that the favor of America’s president could be bought.  The content of the leaks was devastating.

Regardless of the source of the hack, none of the content was made up.  Whoever was responsible gave the American electorate a lot more information than they would have got from the American media left to its own devices and if it weren’t prodded along by the salaciousness of the leaks.

The claim of Russian origin is simply a means of de-legitimizing Trump because he is made to appear as their favorite.  The hypocrisy of Democrats holding that Russia is a dangerous foe is too much to discuss at this point.  Anyhow, Russian payback against Barack Obama and his precious legacy can’t be dismissed out of hand.

But if the Russians thought that they could own Donald Trump because of this hacking, they are in for a surprise.  Trump may want to try a new, friendlier diplomatic tack with Putin, but if Putin makes Trump look like a loser or a sucker, Trump will react violently and unpredictably.  Nobody owns Trump.

Even if all the Democrat allegations are true, that the Russians did the hacking for the purpose of Donald Trump, that isn’t going to help the Russians much in dealing with Trump.
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Thursday, December 8, 2016

Trump’s Triumph and Canadian Defense



Vincent J. Curtis

10 Nov 2016


With the election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States, the world can expect a large recapitalization of the U.S. military over the next four to eight years.  We can also expect the Trump Administration to pressure NATO allies to increase their defense expenditures to 2 % of their GDP.

Trump famously campaigned on the theme that the United States was not going to carry a heavier share of the defense burden of the western world than was justified by economics.  If NATO allies expected the assistance of the United States, then they needed to do their part.  Some of that pressure will undoubtedly be applied to Canada, for Canada is one of those not spending up to the agreed level of 2 % of GDP.

What does that mean for Canadian defense?

In the first place, it would mean that the Canadian defense budget needs to be in the range of CDN $48 billion.  The budget track released by the Trudeau government in its maiden budget forecasts decreases in defense expenditures – the amount projected for 2016 was $29.4 billion with a decrease to $14.4 billion by 2020-2021.  In the eyes of Trump, we are moving in the wrong direction.

Yes, defense is one of many competing priorities for Federal tax expenditures, but national defense and maintaining good relations with allies are among the most fundamental of priorities of any national government.  Those priorities have a higher call for money than new spending to make life more comfortable for a minority of Canadians.  The needs of all take priority over the needs of the few.

What use could be made of additional defense expenditures?

There is no question that the Canadian Armed Forces are in need of recapitalization.  The navy needs to be completely rebuilt, and soon.  The fighting capacity of the RCAF is aging rapidly, and the replacement for the CF-18 fleet is late and nowhere in sight.  The army could also use a new store of capital equipment for general purpose combat operations.

The government is dithering over whether it should acquire ten or twelve frigates to refight the Battle of the Atlantic, should it ever come back.  The naval brass is still in the grip of the old-school small ship navy mentality that has dominated Canadian naval thinking since the days of the Niobe and the Rainbow.  The RCN brass need to have in their top drawer a plan for a real battle fleet, a fleet consisting not just of frigates but of one or more battlecruisers as well.  And if battlecruisers seem to be too war-like for political tastes, then missile-cruisers in the 10,000 ton range can be had off-the-shelf from the United States at $2 billion apiece, less than the cost of a 5,000 ton custom-built frigate.  Anyhow, a capitalization project in the range of $40 billion should be ready to go.

The RCAF is caught between the failure of Lockheed-Martin to deliver a viable F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in a timely and cost efficient manner, and a new government that wants to start the bidding process for the CF-18 from scratch.  The solutions are easy: buy off the shelf F-16s, or the updated F/A-18E/F Super Hornet off the shelf, both of which are also still in production.  These are Gen 4.5 fighters, not Gen 5 fighters, but they can be had soon; they are still current and viable for modern combat air operations, and should be seen as an interim purchase until the Gen 5 fighters are finally available.

The army could also use a store of useful equipment, in particular modern artillery.  The M-777 proved spectacular in Afghanistan, and no army has been able to succeed in modern combat operations in the absence of dominant artillery since the Thirty Years War.

The problem of joint operations between air and surface has and will continue to bedevil CAF combat operations.  If it flies, it is said to belong to the RCAF.  But what about rotary aviation?  What about a naval aircraft carrier?  The United States solved this inter-service problem by assigning rotary aviation to the army and the Marines, and carrier aircraft to the navy.  The USAF was assigned responsibility for long-range bombers, intercontinental missiles and space operations, and that satisfied the inter-service rivalry problem.  That solution is not possible for Canada, since we have no long range bombers, ICBMs, or space operations.

If the army is going to overcome its deficiency of rotary combat aviation, the question of ownership needs to be solved.  Nevertheless, the development of combat aviation under the direct control of army command is something Canada may need to resolve, and the pressure of increasing CAF combat capability would be an impetus.

The pressure of Russia on NATO and of China in the South China Sea is not going to disappear under a Trump Administration.  They will be resolved by increasing the combat power of NATO, which will add firmness to diplomacy.

Canada is being looked to as a bigger player in the world.  We are no longer the fireproof house far from the sources of conflagration.  Greater combat power in the CAF is necessary for Canada to play its proper role in keeping peace in the world.
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 A version of this appeared in the Vol 23 Issue 11 of Esprit de Corps magazine.