Trump Trial by Fire Revving Up

 

Donald Trump has barely had the votes counted and has yet to even been elected officially into the office by the Electoral College, let alone been sworn in and the tests he will be facing from day-one onward are already manifesting themselves. In a fair and basically sane world an incoming President elect could expect the current administration to work with their transition team and address the most threatening and serious problems in order to maintain a smoother transition of power. That is very unlikely to be what we will be witnessing. President elect Trump can fully expect that in its final two and a half months in office that President Obama and his top cabinet officials and others in his administration will be want to raise a finger to remedy any situation. Instead we can expect inaction at best and complete failure to resist or hold any ground with withdrawals seemingly so poorly planned as to give the appearance of having been routed and lost all nerve to stand to defend any position anywhere. The announced suspension of routine services by the United States Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in response to increasing terror threats as a “temporary precautionary measure” will set the pattern for the remainder of the time until the Inauguration in late January of 2017. These partial and potential complete closures of embassies, consulates, smaller military instillations and virtually anywhere that American foreign based personnel even hear a loud “Boo!” in the night will simply make hitting the ground running impossible as much of the advanced frameworks will need extensive re-manning and rebuilding before they will even return to normal operations, let alone execute any needed actions.

 

This should be no surprise as it has been the modus operandi of the entire Obama eight years in the Presidency. We witnessed this with the immediate pull down and collapse of everything accomplished in Iraq, the debacle which was Libya, the response when bluff was called by Bashir al-Assad in Syria as well as reactions to Syria generally, the lack of coordination within NATO to the obvious infiltration of Europe and starting in the United States with embedded terror forces included as a fair percentage of the “refugees” allowed to enter in torrents. This resulted in waves of unvetted and unchecked immigrants against any terror watch lists. We saw it as the response to the situation in Benghazi which cost the lives of Ambassador to Libya John Christopher “Chris” Stevens and four others (pictures below) left unaided and alone to fight a hopeless battle holding on desperately waiting for the cavalry to ride over the hill and rescue them, but the cavalry was never even permitted to try. The assault on the Benghazi Consulate and Safe House will be recorded by history as an embarrassment not of Embassy staff or the meager security attachment as Former Navy Seals Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty put up a resistive fight holding a surrounded position under both direct and indirect fire for up to eight hours through the night before succumbing to a withering mortar barrage backed by significant RPG fire coordinated on their position all but destroying the entire structure. Theirs was a herculean and heroic stand which deserved being rescued and given, at a minimum, air support from the Mediterranean Fleet or any of numerous United States military operation throughout Europe. The abandonment of these four individuals was an unconscionable act of pure cowardliness and dereliction of duty on both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her superior, President Barack Hussein Obama. This will also be the model for any coming security threat, pull out all unessential personnel or even simply flee completely leaving everything behind, even those printouts with a large letter ‘C’ in the top corner classifying the document as sensitive information contained within. There will be no holding of ground between now and the inauguration under the guise, the excuse, of not wishing to establish policies and impose them on the incoming President though that is exactly what they are doing, imposing a policy of tucking tail between legs and scampering away and never fight any day.

 

Ambassador John Christopher Stevens and Information Officer Sean Smith
Former Navy Seals Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty

 

Meanwhile, as the enemies and others seeking to make threats and force the hand of the United States into complete routing before even the slightest of offensive gestures will be gaining more and more courage as these cowardly tepid responses at best and flight responses at worst become more and more evident as an actual policy. This will place incoming President Trump in a tighter spot than was necessary, but that is the whole idea. When your rules of engagement (ROE) read something along the lines of when facing any threat to security or personnel, at all costs do not discharge weapons as this may provoke a situation. The proper response is to hastily pack your personal belongings and any pictures adorning your cubicle or office, grab your awards and then make all haste to departing vehicles and depart. Those with weapons and charged to guard the building and personnel should depart last as once the people have left the building, why guard the building. Any classified State Department documents inside have likely already been pilfered from selected computer systems within the State Department which were cracked way back during a previous Secretary of State whose computers in her basement or wherever fed on the darkest recesses of the State Department and who knows where else, the White House, Pentagon, Joint Chiefs of Staff and even NORAD central command. Whatever was left behind is not worth defending as it is only information which has reached around the world twice over after being hacked. The new mission statement for overseas personnel is please do not make waves or cause a need for anybody to make a stand or protect anything as if it has value, just stay out of the way and maybe the President will get out of Washington D.C. without any further legacy, oh, wait, we mean damage, not necessarily legacy, that would have been mean spirited and we are supposed to be magnanimous because, hey, anybody remember why we’re supposed to be magnanimous? Well, somebody suggested we be nicer from now on and we promised, well, promised absolutely nothing of the kind, we will remain the mean-spirited skeptics we’ve always been. As the saying goes, “It’s worked this far, why change now?”

 

These actions of retreat first will collectively be one item which will have a definite and hard-hitting effect on the incoming administration as well as on President Trump. Hopefully the damage can be mitigated and a reversal can be implemented. Such a policy directive on day one or two can prevent further damage and should Trump manage to have any input before being sworn in, this should be high on the priority list as it will parallel with his intent to restore military funding and strengthen American forces making them more readily deployed. Trump would be advised to have ready to submit to the Senate an entire list of Ambassadors, chiefs of operations where the position is an appointee, any changes to the General Staff and other high ranking military positions, placement of ranking and overseeing staff for intelligence gathering and making the President’s daily briefings and all the major cabinet and other positions such as Attorney General. President Trump should also announce the name of the person to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by the unfortunate and untimely passing of Antonin Scalia and pass it along to the Senate. These items need to be a top priority and Trump needs to find where to strike the balance between established political entities and bringing in people from the private sector in order to make the changes promised and run the government as a profit making entity as far as productivity and strict budgeting. Granted, we understand that President Trump is somewhat stuck with the budget as it has already been laid out and approved but that does not mean that this is a completed job. Just sticking to the budget as written will be sufficient challenge. That said, President Trump’s first major hurdle where the bar could be raised higher than desired will be the next yearly budget and though it is not necessary to get approval until the fall, starting to propose and work with Congress as soon as possible will pay off in that the excessive lead time will permit using the secret weapon possessed by this administration, the people who voted for change.

 

Donald Trump’s Presidency may require utilizing the public pressure method of pressing Congress to ally with the President’s efforts. President Trump might consider making prime time (6:00 PM on the West Coast) addresses to the nation every three weeks or even more frequently and lay out his plans on what need be accomplished in the ensuing period. A President Trump should announce appointments he feels are necessary and explain who and what each appointee brings to the table. Such announcements will work best for those people Trump can convince to take the bite of a huge drop of income and placing their investments with a trusted investment agent who manages their financial affairs while they serve the people and the President. These actual civilians who are not beholden to any party or lobbying groups will be the greatest tool that Trump will be able to pursue and we hope he succeeds in getting those people he most desires and trusts. Vice President elect Mike Pence is going to be an indispensable assistant and advisor on who from amongst the political community can be trusted to perform in a position serving to cut waste and trim the budget with skill and ample enthusiasm. People brought from the business world already understand the idea of getting the most possible for the least treasure spent, allocated rather than the spend as much as possible so we can demand even more next year in order to finally take a stab at last year’s set goals. Trimming the government does not mean less services for the population, it means doing more with fewer employees and having only one team of four people to present a simple report instead of eight teams of five people and a committee to hear all the proposals and choose which three get to spend yet another year working on the project before the final team is selected and then set off to start from the beginning because objectives changed over the two and a half years it took to get this far. That is much of the current system which produces some of the greatest boondoggles known to mankind; oh, sorry, not mankind, peoplehood, that’s the word from the newspeak dictionary of double-plus good and approved words.

 

There is one set of events which are seldom talked of but which can break a President and fill them with such dread that they are reduced to inaction. These are the briefings from Military Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an alphabet soup of agencies and departments we have and never will hear about that exist in the darkest crevices of the world and country. An incoming President earns one-third of their grey hairs on these first days and the briefings they receive. A few weeks or even months the President will awaken sweat pouring off his body, eyes fluttering, breathing hard and unable to speak immediately. Once relatively composed he tells his wife to go back to sleep, it’s nothing and then goes to his study in the White House and grabs the secure phone and sets up meetings for 6 A.M. and everybody better be there and be sharp. Then the President will demand an update on what was first discussed right during that first week where everything was a whirlwind and the memories are blurred some. The President will know it is important when Generals and other advisors are made to leave the briefing due to not having ample clearances. These are the briefings we the people will never learn about but are behind a rare few of the conspiracy, world is about to end, martial law is coming lunatic fringe stories. That’s right, there are little grains of truth the size of a grain of sand within that gallon can of end of the world stories. The secret is finding that little grain and combining it with other grains of sand plucked from an hourglass, just one grain, and from a sandbox around the corner, another single grain and then there are many along the beach, the trick is knowing which grain and where it fits in the great sculpture which nobody has ever viewed the entirety all at once. There are those working on the knee joint, another on the big toe and yet another the parting of the hair but all except three never see beyond where their piece is to fit, the three seeing it all are the appointed head of the agency, the head of the entire project and the President, and the President gets to see most of these programs and their designs and this is what ages them, knowing exactly how close the world is to falling beyond the cusp and into the chasm of oblivion. Such knowledge and then watching the insane dancing with nuclear weapon of Kim Jong-Un, the North Korean Dictator and Supreme Leader; the bombastic proclamations for the destruction of America and death of Zionism by the Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei of Iran (what is it with this ‘Supreme Leader’ titles?); the madness of island building and militarily arming them to the teeth by Chinese President and an up and coming choice for Paramount Leader (they stress this term should not be translated incorrectly as Supreme Leader, whew, that’s a relief, not!) Xi Jinping, and Bashir al-Assad and Islamic State and Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (isn’t Caliph kind of like supreme leader?) or Putin or who knows who or what else as for all we know there might also be the Supreme Leader Gnodsnarkch who rules the Seven Planets and Three Systems of the Lizard Elites Empire who are negotiating with the leaders, all the other Supreme Leaders of Earth and we expect Presidents not to completely lose it from time to time. The only thing I can think to add is to pat Donald Trump on the shoulder and state, “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!”
full poem Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling.

 

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

North Korea Threat Update

 

Recent satellite surveillance of North Korea has shown a greater number of vehicles parked and coming and going from the nuclear test control center just a few kilometers away from their actual test site though little activity has been photographed at the test site. The lack of photo evidence of deliveries or activity at the actual test site could be timed to only be visible between the known scheduled overfly times of the satellites which are not exactly a well-kept secret. This activity is additionally suspicious as the Party hierarchy has opened the first full congress of its ruling party since 1980. Ruling Dictator Kim Jong Un will be in attendance but the media will not as the Party Congress is being held behind closed doors. This has raised the suspicions that Kim Jong Un may be using the Congress to shuffle leadership positions and a capping of the Congress with another nuclear test of a hydrogen thermonuclear device as exclamation point launch. This would be their fifth nuclear test and possibly the third of their hydrogen bomb.

 

Taking all of these events and potential for a shakeup of the leadership along with the mixed but largely successful testing of launching of ballistic missile from a submerged, it has become obvious that virtually every city on Earth has now become within strike range from North Korean missiles. The size and range of such a submarine launch has not been determined but it is thought the current proven booster used in the tests only have about a two hundred kilometer range. Still, this placed most Capital Cities of Western World nations within range, particularly the United States. The progress made in new weapons and weapons delivery technologies has made North Korea a threat to many nations in their immediate area from Japan to China and Russia and beyond with their submersed launch capability. Should there be a nuclear test by North Korea then much of the bellicose sabre rattling may require a more serious consideration as to whether any of their threats may have actual substance.

 

Analysis from 38 North said the imagery of the Punggye-ri test site control center has shown really heavier than usual activity as noted above. The suspicions were raised as this increase in activity coinciding with the Party Congress and the fact that Kim Jung Un would be personally leading the Party Congress and that it was an all-inclusive Congress, a rarity in North Korea. The fact that both events appear to be scheduled so close together, this has raised the interest of the experts and amateurs in putting forth their thoughts on the reasoning and what the results might be. Prognostications are always a tricky business, especially for bloggers whose sources do not exactly include Pentagon experts, but we try anyways. We are expecting some shake-up of the Party mid-level officials altering the preferred individuals for future top Party positions. The high level Party officials will likely not be shuffled though some alterations of responsibilities may be switched from one department to another most likely to improve efficiency. If there are higher level changes, they will rotate around military commanders. We expect the officers who worked on the submarine submerged launch capabilities to be honored at the meeting and perhaps some leading people put on their next project while junior commanders will take charge of completing and perfecting the submerged firing capability to assure it approaches perfection and dependability and potentially attempting to attempt launches from deeper depths.

 

Should there actually be another test of a thermonuclear device, we can expect the leadership to perfect a miniaturized warhead deliverable through the submerged launch booster thus making the weapon truly a threat worldwide. They may also have them working on a thermonuclear warhead which will have a selectable yield programmed before deployment thus permitting selecting the desired yield such that any additional collateral damage could be minimized. The one side effect from any test will be the providing of the United States and other nations to gather more data and perhaps discern the intended use of the weapons. There are those who theorize that the hydrogen device is not being used as a thermonuclear device in the traditional blast-wave destruction mode but as a super EMP (electromagnetic pulse) device. The amount of damage a normal atomic bomb produces as an EMP would be capable of bringing down the North American electric grid blacking out Canada as well as the United States. The advantage of using a thermonuclear warhead as a super EMP device is quite frightening as the additional power for any usage would also apply to it being utilized as a Super EMP which could be detonated even at any height and simply relatively close to the optimum location and still produce sufficient EMP energy to more than make-up for any miss of the optimum location and height for the detonation.

 

Those whose job it is to worry and discern all things North Korea and has to keep everything updated will necessarily be watching, listening and monitoring as things progress and then making the reports, some of which will hopefully be made public so we all can use it. Meanwhile, we will keep an ear to the ground and listen for the reverberations as well as the ramifications of any nuclear test, missile launch or artillery barrages emanating from North Korea which has become less stable and even less predictable under Kim Jung Un which likely has added to their cooperation and technology sharing with Iran which makes both nations additionally dangerous. The world must contemplate Iranian missile technology married to North Korean nuclear weapons technology and additionally North Korean submarine submerged launch capability and both North Korea and Iran have become dangerous and hegemonic in their ends of Asia and the Middle East. They are a constant threat to all nations anywhere near either one and only India and Israel are capable of challenging them, and those could become hard pressed should an arms race be launched, especially in the Middle East which any such race will see Saudi Arabia buying all the devices they would initially require from Pakistan and then use whatever plans they would need from Pakistan and potentially raw materials as well. Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, UAE (United Arab Emirates), Oman and potentially any combination of MENA (Middle East North Africa) nations could develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weaponry and the delivery systems turning the MENA tinder box into a nuclear tinder box where everyone is smoking, heavily and too many are being careless with where they throw their lit matches. There is one situation paralleled to this which makes North Korea seem less threatening which can be found simply looking past India to the heart of the Middle East. There you find Iran threatening all and backing the worst of the worst all while making promises to wipe all of Israel from the map. Iran has recently tested some modified and improved ballistic missiles which have sufficient range to strike France but when having an exercise with testing launches of ballistic missiles they had on them “Israel should be wiped off the Earth” written on the missiles in Hebrew and Arabic, after all, must have the easy to read propaganda for the home front. Sure frames their mindset, doesn’t that!

 

 

When having an exercise with testing
launches of ballistic missiles they had on them
“Israel should be wiped off the Earth”
written on the missiles in Hebrew and Arabic,
after all, must have the easy to read propaganda
for the home front. Sure frames their mindset, doesn’t that!

Beyond the Cusp

 

Who to Believe Over North Korea H-Bomb Test

 

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un’s word is truth, at least in North Korea where even looking at him askance will put you before a firing squad within the hour providing Kim Jong-Un doesn’t just have you shot on the spot. Knowing this, the rest of the world cannot put any real weight behind any unverified claims coming from any sources in North Korea including any journalist, western or otherwise, reporting from Pyongyang. Still, any explosive tests which register as in excess of a five on the Richter scale had to come from a very impressive explosive test. I remember when the North Koreans first tested a nuclear bomb and the measurement showed a yield of between four and five kilotons where some Western experts suggested that the North Koreans had simply loaded four or five kilotons of high explosive in the test chamber and detonated the entirety of the charges within a few milliseconds. Personally, I would find pulling of such an explosion using high explosives in a single mass more impressive and far more difficult than building a nuclear bomb producing the same yield. Within days there were the final reports which showed that the North Koreans had truly tested a nuclear device but it was relegated to being a crude device which was not likely a deliverable device. It took a couple of weeks before some experts put forth the premise that if the North Korean device had been designed to generate an EMP output, it would have been a fairly high radioactive signature and low yield of the size detected and that their having accomplished this would have been quite an impressive and threatening development. When the North Koreans tested another device with only a slightly higher yield, more in the range of the devices first used against Japan ending world War II, there was official admissions that there had been sufficient radioactive measurements detected by both satellite and earth bound test instruments.

 

 

North Korean President for Life Kim Jung-Un
Signaling that He’s Number One!

 

 

So, where does all this leave us, the average and confused person worried about our stock prices, the new boss at work and all the other life troubles and mysteries? Honestly, waiting for more information on which to base a credible assessment, but since when had lack of concrete data ever stop us from giving it the old college try, whatever that is. There was one piece of so very vital and unbelievably obvious information in two out of every three articles we read informing us the reader that Hydrogen bombs are much more powerful and much more difficult to make than nuclear bombs. Well, thank you Captain Obvious. Now that we are all so vastly more well informed, let us venture forth. We also had the boilerplate reaction from South Korea expressed so succinctly by South Korean news agency Yonhap reporting that the South Korean government issued the following response to the test, “South Korea will cooperate with regional partners to make North Korea pay a price for its hydrogen bomb test. We strongly denounce the North for conducting the fourth nuclear test as the North pushed ahead with it despite repeated warnings by the international community.” Additionally there was the report that the United Nations Security Council will be holding a special meeting to discuss the recent test, which has garnered significant international worry. Well, guess we can rest assured that the Ace number one whiz kids from New York in Turtle Bay are on the case so we can all sleep assured of absolutely nothing.

 

Perhaps we should find out what the experts have to say now that the political absurdity class has chimed in with their normal blather. Despite the seismic shockwave of moderately impressive magnitude, we did not feel a thing so we are with the experts here; experts say a hydrogen bomb most definitely would have had to generate one many times as greater than what was measured, OK, with them on that as attested, nothing felt here. Oh, strike that, our science advisor said not to be silly, we were way too far to have felt anything, and we are reporting from the wrong planet, what? Oh, wrong side of the planet, whew, was getting worried. Bruce Bennett, an analyst with the Rand Corporation was quoted telling the BBC, “The bang they should have gotten would have been ten times greater than what they’re claiming. So Kim Jong-Un is either lying, saying they did a hydrogen test when they didn’t, they just used a little bit more efficient fission weapon, or the hydrogen part of the test really didn’t work very well or the fission part didn’t work very well.” Chinese military expert Du Wenlong made a similar statement which many have taken as further proof that the test was a dud or simply not as advertised, a hydrogen bomb. This sounds so much like the initial reporting on the first nuclear test by the North Koreans where they claimed they would have gotten an explosion nearly a factor of ten times with a real nuclear device only to find out later that there are actual nuclear devices which such a low yield is the exact signature their test or even use would produce. When further data was gathered it became obvious that there were anomalies still present at the test site which might have been induced by an extremely large magnetic pulse, exactly what would have resulted from an EMP device, or so many nuclear scientists reported. I was waiting to hear from President Jimmy Carter as he, after all, received a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946 in physics and in the Navy he became a submariner, serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and rising to the rank of lieutenant. He was also chosen by Admiral Hyman Rickover for the nuclear submarine program. He was assigned to Schenectady, N.Y., where he took graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics, and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the second nuclear submarine. Would we have finally had him speak on something he was actually trained to know? Maybe not, we might have been expecting too much from old Jimmy.

 

Every expert simply had to show us their credentials were valid by pointing out that nuclear bombs are fission and hydrogen bombs are fusion, glad they cleared that up. Now let us muddy their simplistic description. A regular nuclear bomb actually detonates in two stages. The first stage is a high explosive charge which either propels a bullet into a core forcing them to reach critical mass and produce the nuclear fission or shaped charges are carefully triggered using flash detonators as they provide the separation of detonations such that only the triggered section of shaped charge explodes when its particular detonator is triggered and these flash detonators fire with very accurate timing far beyond the capability of a normal detonator and this compresses the fissile material which cause the nuclear explosion. Despite there being two stages to the nuclear fissile explosion due to critical mass being achieved, only the nuclear explosion would be detected by satellite monitoring as they monitor the flash wave of light. For a hydrogen bomb there is the a nuclear fissile explosion, a normal nuclear bomb, which then forces the fusion by reaching sufficient pressures and temperature for the fusion of hydrogen atoms and these emit two separate, though closely sequenced flashes which can be detected by satellites. These satellites use a system referred to as ‘bang meters’ which if they receive the double strike with the correct separation they know a hydrogen bomb has been detonated. The United States, Russia and probably China if not others have such detection satellites in orbit so if the North Koreans did detonate a hydrogen bomb successfully these and other satellites would have reported the test almost immediately and the main nuclear powers would have received such data almost immediately so any ambiguity on their part is completely intentional.

 

On the completely trustable front, White House press secretary Josh Earnest suggested Pyongyang was lying, according to comments carried by Business Insider quoting him as saying, “We’re obviously going to continue to look at this by monitoring the situation, assessing the available data and evidence,” Earnest said, adding, “But the initial analysis is not consistent with the claims that the regime has made of a successful hydrogen-bomb test. There’s nothing that’s occurred in the last 24 hours that has caused the U.S. government to change our assessment of North Korea’s technical and military capabilities.” Well, that ought to settle it and we bet that President Obama likely called President Carter and after speaking about his brush with cancer got down to the important stuff, like if President Carter had viewed the tapes of President Obama and his problematic sand trap golf swing and as a side not requested President Carter’s expertise on the North Korean hydrogen bomb test at which point President Carter likely blamed the test on Netanyahu and the IDF. Then there was the State Department spokesman John Kirby who issued a statement positing that, “The United States government judges North Korea to have conducted a nuclear test yesterday. We strongly condemn this violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions.”

 

What do we know for sure? North Korea has definitely tested a nuclear device magnitudes more powerful than any past nuclear test. Whatever knowledge was gleaned from this test will be, if it already has not been, shared with their scientific fellow scientists in Iran. Additionally these two powers have shared technical developments and carried out test for each other for quite a number of years now. Both sides are gaining knowledge without having to test these items within their own national borders thus North Korea gains rocket and missile as well as other weapons systems while Iran can test new nuclear designs in North Korea thus appearing to have observed at least that part of the nuclear agreement. Whether the device was fission or fusion, it was considerably more powerful than any previous test. The Western World is playing down any significance of the test despite whatever nervous feelings may be being felt in Europe knowing that Iran will benefit from this North Korean tested nuclear device. We have not received a straight answer about the complete knowledge that Western Intelligence Agencies actually know about this nuclear test in North Korea right down to whose design was being tested. We cannot rule out the probability that this was a joint effort between Iran and North Korea and if this was just a more efficient nuclear test, then we need to ascertain if the device was weaponized through miniaturization such that the device can readily be fitted to the Ballistic Missiles both Iran and North Korea possesses. There are more additional questions than there have been official statements and this is not likely to change in the near future and will only come to the surface if somebody leaks the true reality to the news services and they see fit to run with this potential bombshell of information. We cannot rule out Russian assistance in these events or anybody else. So, all we can do is pray and wait to see what comes next. North Korea has previously tested such devices twice in rapid succession; so we can expect a second test within the next four to six weeks. Such developments are simply further proof that the world keeps getting more and more dangerous and we are rushing forward without a care that the brakes are out and the downhill grade has increasing steepness and the only consolation we can take is it will be a wild and dangerous ride.

 

Beyond the Cusp