With a series of edicts, speeches and martial ceremonies, President Xi Jinping has over the past six months unveiled China’s biggest military overhaul since the aftermath of the Korean War.
The plan seeks to transform the 2.3-million-member People’s Liberation Army, which features 21st-century hardware but an outdated, Soviet-inspired command structure, into a fighting force capable of winning a modern war. China is shifting from a “large country to a large and powerful one,” Xi explained in November. The restructuring will be a major focus of the country’s new defense budget, which will be announced Saturday as the annual National People’s Congress gets under way in Beijing . . .
Here are the key elements of Xi’s plan:
The first piece of the overhaul — announced by Xi during a grand military parade through Tiananmen Square on Sept. 3 — calls for eliminating 300,000 PLA personnel by 2017. While Xi presented the cutbacks as proof of China’s commitment to peace, they’ll largely target non-combat personnel and should make the country’s forces more focused and efficient . . .
Advanced military actions such as intercepting rival aircraft, carrying out drone strikes and using special forces to extract hostages, demand the sort of close collaboration China’s army-centric military has lacked. Xi intends to fix that by reorganizing the armed forces into five branches under a joint-command structure modeled after that of the U.S. (Read more from “Inside China’s Plan for a Military That Can Counter U.S. Muscle” HERE)
00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-03-04 00:14:202016-04-11 10:51:58Inside China’s Plan for a Military That Can Counter U.S. Muscle
Though Detroit voters overwhelmingly described Thursday’s GOP debate as “sophomoric,” when Republican pollster Frank Luntz asked the Michigan focus group who they thought won the night, the group said only one candidate rose above the “disappointing” rhetoric.
Many came into the debate supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, but after the showdown, it was GOP hopeful John Kasich who emerged as the winner.
My 25-person focus group’s picks for winner tonight:
When asked for a show of hands, the majority of members agreed on Kasich, who they said was the “only adult in the room” and was “mature” in his discourse.
The voters revealed very negative feelings about the debate, saying it was an “embarrassment,” “shameful” and “despicable,” voicing disapproval over the tone of the discussion and the personal attacks that ensued. One even described the evening as a “schoolyard brawl.” (Read more from “Focus Group Asked Who Won Debate – Members Shock With This Candidate” HERE)
00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-03-04 00:13:592016-04-11 10:51:58Focus Group Asked Who Won Debate – Members Shock With This Candidate
Two extremely significant stories broke [recently] in The Washington Post and The New York Times regarding the FBI’s investigation into the Hillary Clinton email scandal. The deep-fat fryer is just heating up. Both stories are excerpted below, but here are the key new pieces of information:
• Bryan Pagliano, the IT employee who set up Clinton’s server and pled the 5th to avoid cooperating with investigators was granted immunity for cooperating.
• What the Clinton campaign has called a “security review,” but according to both reports, the FBI investigation has become criminal in nature. One official told The Post “There was wrongdoing.”
• According to The Times, “F.B.I. agents have sought to compare electronic timestamps on classified sources to figure out whether the aides reviewed the sources and then retyped the information into emails that were sent or forwarded to Mrs. Clinton’s private server.”
• The latter report said Clinton and her aides could be interviewed by the FBI “within weeks”
The Justice Department has granted immunity to the former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server, a sign the FBI investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing is progressing.
A senior U.S. law enforcement official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009.
As the FBI looks to wrap up its investigation in the coming months, agents will likely want to interview Clinton and her senior aides about the decision to use a private server, how it was set up, and whether any of the participants knew they were sending classified information in emails, current and former officials said… Spokesmen at the FBI and Justice Department would not discuss the investigation. Pagliano’s lawyer also declined to comment…
The New York Times, Steven Lee Myers and Matt Apuzzo, March 2, 2016
WASHINGTON —
As Hillary Clinton moves toward the Democratic presidential nomination, she faces legal hurdles from her use of a private computer server as secretary of state that could jar her campaign’s momentum in the months ahead.
Foremost among a half-dozen inquiries and legal proceedings into whether classified information was sent through Mrs. Clinton’s server is an investigation by the F.B.I., whose agents, according to one law enforcement official, could seek to question Mrs. Clinton’s closest aides and possibly the candidate herself within weeks.
It is commonplace for the F.B.I. to try to interview key figures before closing an investigation, and doing so is not an indication the bureau thinks a person broke the law. Although defense lawyers often discourage their clients from giving such interviews, Democrats fear the refusal of Mrs. Clinton or her top aides to cooperate would be ready ammunition for Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner…
(For more from the author of “BOOM: Huge New Developments in Clinton Email Scandal” please click HERE)
00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-03-04 00:13:372016-04-11 10:51:58BOOM: Huge New Developments in Clinton Email Scandal
While Ann Romney wouldn’t necessarily name her favorite candidates running for president, she did praise Donald Trump while talking to Sean Hannity last night.
“This country’s important. Where we’re going, where we’re headed right now is critical. These are critical things that we’re talking about,” Romney said.
While refusing to name her favorite candidates, she did say, “There’s a lot of good candidates, you know it’s a long race — a lot of up and downs. Important discussions happening.
“I would say that Trump is bringing more people to the table than we’d ever though,” Romney said, as Hannity interjected, “That’s a good thing — I think that’s great.” (Read more from “Mitt Romney’s Wife Is Praising Trump, Here’s Why” HERE)
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered nuclear weapons to be readied for use, the state-controlled Korean Central News Agency reported Thursday.
The shift in military posture would allow North Korea to carry out pre-emptive attacks, and deprive “the enemies to sleep in peace till the moment they meet their final end in their land,” KCNA reported, citing a speech by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
KCNA continued: “The only way for defending the sovereignty of our nation and its right to existence under the present extreme situation is to bolster up nuclear force both in quality and quantity and keep balance of forces,” he said, stressing the need to “get the nuclear warheads deployed for national defense always on standby so as to be fired any moment.”
The move follows the U.N. Security Council’s unanimous approval Wednesday of tough new sanctions against North Korea in response to its recent nuclear and long-range missile tests. The resolution contains the toughest set of sanctions imposed by the Security Council in more than two decades, Secretary of State John Kerry said.
The sanctions require North Korean cargo ships and aircraft to be inspected before entering and after leaving the reclusive country. They would also prohibit small arms and other conventional weapons sales to North Korea. (Read more from “North Korean Leader Wants Nukes Ready to Fly” HERE)
Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. said he believes President Barack Obama has damaged race relations in the United States and that he looks forward to when “we can finally turn the page on the Obama reign of terror” and heal some of the divisions Obama has created during his presidency.
“It’s been a very destructive period of time for the country as a whole and I’ll be glad when we can finally turn the page on the Obama reign of terror, as I call it, and we can go back to start healing some of this divide between the classes, between the races, between the sexes and some of these other demographics,” Clarke told CNSNews.com on Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor, Maryland.
CNSNews.com asked Clarke about the notion that as the first African American president, Obama would improve race relations in the United States, whether that had happened, and what the next president could do to bring Americans together.
“He never had any intention of bringing people together,” Clarke said. “He had the opportunity to do that.”
“I think a lot of people, including me, were hopeful that he would take the gains that we’ve made – because race relations will never be perfect, alright?” Clarke said. “But we’ve made great strides in bridging that divide, in bridging that gap and he came along and deconstructed the bridge that existed there because that’s part of his shtick , all right, to strike up animosity, you know.” (Read more from “Sheriff Clarke: Obama’s ‘Reign of Terror’ Has Divided the American People” HERE)
00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-03-04 00:09:462016-04-11 10:51:58Sheriff Clarke: Obama’s ‘Reign of Terror’ Has Divided the American People [+video]
One of the 3,348 women who are part of The Justice Foundation’s amicus curiae brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in the Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt case compared the harm abortion causes to the trauma following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, which killed almost 3,000 people.
“Nothing wounds you like being responsible for the death of your child,” Myra Jean Myers said at a press conference on Tuesday at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. “Do you realize today and every day is the daily equivalent of 9/11, when across America women and men are deceived and wounded?”
According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 1.06 million abortions performed in the United States in 2011, which averages to 2,904 abortions every day.
The press conference at the Family Research Council was held in advance of the oral arguments in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt at the Supreme Court.
Myers recalled at the event that she was married with children in 1973, the year the high court legalized abortion across the United States in the Roe v. Wade case. When she became pregnant, her husband convinced her that she should have an abortion, which she did. (Read more from “Woman Reveals the Terrifying Truth About Abortion to Supreme Court” HERE)
00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2016-03-04 00:09:232016-04-11 10:51:59Woman Reveals the Terrifying Truth About Abortion to Supreme Court
Twelve people were arrested Thursday in connection with a 2014 armed protest on the Bundy Ranch in Nevada — including two more of rancher Cliven Bundy’s sons and a New Hampshire man linked to Donald Trump’s campaign.
The arrests marked the first law-enforcement sweep since Bundy, two other sons and two other men were charged last month in the armed confrontation with federal agents. The five previously charges were already in custody when they were indicted.
In a dramatic showdown, federal agents who seized Bundy’s cattle over unpaid grazing fees backed off after being confronted with armed protesters and snipers on Aug. 12, 2014.
“This investigation began the day after the assault against federal law enforcement officers and continues to this day,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada Daniel Bogden said in a statement. “We will continue to work to identify the assaulters and their role in the assault and the aftermath, in order to ensure that justice is served.” (Read more from “More Bundy Sons, Trump Campaigner Charged in Nevada Ranch Standoff” HERE)
A recent scientific paper on the movement of the human hand has faced strong criticism for referring to a ‘Creator’ throughout.
The paper, titled: ‘Biomechanical characteristics of hand coordination in grasping activities of daily living’ was written by a team of four researchers, three from Huazhong University in China, and one from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
Published in the PLOS ONE journal, the fairly conventional study looked at the mechanics of how we grasp things, and involved the measurement of the hand movements of 30 participants.
However, members of the scientific community have demanded the paper be retracted, for its several perceived references to the pseudoscientific theory of intelligent design and a possibly divine ‘Creator’.
In the opening sentences of the study, it claims the link between muscles and hand movements is the product of “proper design by the Creator.” (Read more from “Scientific Paper Says the Human Hand Was Designed by a Creator” HERE)
00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-03-04 00:08:342016-04-11 10:51:59Scientific Paper Says the Human Hand Was Designed by a Creator
