Hunter, Putin's Pipeline and Doofus. A Connection? Kim's Portrayal of "Schmuck" Schumer. Salena Interviews A RINO. Witless Oregon. AHOY- Abandon Ship.

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One has a legitimate right and an intellectual obligation to ask The White House is Doofus caving to Putin and allowing him his pipe line because of Hunter the depraved sexual predator son's behaviour?

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Now let's turn our attention to Kim's portrayal of "Schmuck" Schumer who is busy caving to a slick, busty bar tender.  Pelosi seems to have created the monster then cowed and passed the AOC ball to the Senator from New York who has become AOC's lap dog. What a pathetic scene and this is how low life Democrats govern America. 

But then who cares, what difference does it make. 

Why is he so afraid of AOC? Ask the ghosts of Joe Crowley and Eliot Engel.

By Kimberley A. Strassel

Potomac Watch: Democrats' budget blueprint includes funding for Medicare expansion, the Green New Deal, and huge new family and education entitlements—and if it becomes reality may be the largest expansion of the federal government in U.S. history. Images: Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly

“Me and my shadow / . . . Not a soul can bust this team in two / We stick together like glue.”

If Sinatra reveled in his shadow, Chuck Schumer lives in semicomical fear of his. It’s hard to know who runs the Senate these days—the majority leader, or his harrier from the Bronx, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Mr. Schumer released the Senate to recess this week, having accomplished the AOC and Bernie Sanders plan for the most audacious expansion of government in U.S. history: a $3.5 trillion budget outline that proposes to create new permanent entitlements, lay the foundation of the Green New Deal, take the first steps toward Medicare for All, and soak the rich and the middle class with a new tax regime. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has hailed it as “absolutely a progressive victory.”

What AOC wants, Mr. Schumer delivers. A few days earlier, the majority leader had joined Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley (an original member of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s “Squad”) to complain that President Biden’s new order to “pause” student loan payments didn’t “go far enough.” AOC has been pushing for outright debt cancellation, and Mr. Schumer is now so all in that he wears a face mask emblazoned “#CancelStudentDebt.”

Or witness Chuck last week jogging across the Capitol to congratulate Missouri Rep. Cori Bush, another Squad member, for her sit-in that pressured the administration to extend its illegal eviction moratorium. “You did this!” Mr. Schumer roared, hugging Ms. Bush and AOC for the cameras. “You guys are fabulous!”

What Mr. Schumer meant to say was: “You guys are terrifying!” The 70-year-old New Yorker has had a lock on his Senate seat since 1998. But these days he’s suffering the ghosts of Joe Crowley and Eliot Engel. Those powerful, longtime (and old, white and male) representatives were both defeated in primary upsets—the former in 2018 by AOC, the latter in 2020 by progressive Jamaal Bowman.

The Ocasio-Cortez team within months of AOC’s taking office hinted she was hungry for more. Progressives have since become more brazen with the threat to run against Mr. Schumer in the 2022 primary. Her decision “is dependent on what Schumer does,” Waleed Shahid, communications director for Justice Democrats (which recruited AOC for her House run) told Politico in February. Adopt the AOC agenda, or prepare for retirement.

Mr. Schumer made his choice, and there’s not an issue on which he’s willing to let AOC get to his left. He’s proposed to kill the filibuster and pushed a federal takeover of elections. AOC wants the Green New Deal; Chuck does too. AOC wants to decriminalize marijuana; Chuck does too. At least Sinatra’s shadow took him to jazz clubs. Mr. Schumer’s signed him up for paid family and medical leave, free community college and subsidized child care.

The AOC threat has produced one of the more rapid and disturbing political transformations in Washington. While always a liberal, Mr. Schumer’s career was defined by New York pragmatism. A self described “angry centrist,” he could as easily be found in a Wall Street boardroom as at a labor rally. His primary interest was his state’s industry and residents, making him a modulating voice against higher taxes or excessive regulation of banks, hedge funds or private equity. Bidding to succeed Harry Reid as Democratic leader, he even sought to define himself by working with Republicans—most notably as part of the bipartisan immigration Gang of Eight. Before he became minority leader in 2016, New York’s Daily News wrote that he was “expected to use peacemaking style to unite Congress.”

Donald Trump’s election and the ascendancy of the Democratic left changed the calculation. Progressives are Mr. Schumer’s true problem. In the not-so-long-ago days of raw New York political power, a Senate leader would have simply ordered state political bosses to gerrymander AOC out of political existence. To do so today would be to earn animated progressive wrath and guarantee a primary challenge.

Mr. Schumer’s other, obvious option is to show some backbone and lead in a way that doesn’t harm the country or his party’s political prospects. Polls show only about 15% of Americans self-identify as progressive, and most voters reject the progressive agenda, from the Green New Deal to open borders. Even the Democratic primary electorate chose the “moderate” Joe Biden over Mr. Sanders. The AOC agenda could make Mr. Schumer minority leader again.

Mr. Schumer seems happy to take that risk if its spares him losing his job altogether in a primary fight. The Democratic establishment, including the White House, is running scared of the progressive bogeyman. And Ms. Ocasio-Cortez isn’t about to give up her leverage. Asked this week if she’d decided on a primary challenge, AOC was noncommittal. “Senator Schumer and I have been working very closely on a lot of legislation and that, to me, is important,” she said, grinning. “And so, we shall see.”

Meanwhile:

Do not forget Doofus caved to AOC's maidens , allowed the rent moratorium to be extended and, in doing so, violated his oath of office and gave feckless Republicans an opportunity to legally impeach him, by his own admission.

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Salena interviews a Rino:

WYOMING Dispatch: wide ranging interview with congresswoman Liz Cheney.

By Salena Zito

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney on  conservatism, Trump, Jan. 6th, her race for re-election and all the crisis the country faces under the policies of the Biden Administration. 

Click here for the full story.

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White guilt, stupid progressive liberalism and affirmative action nonsense laid the foundation for this:

Dumbing Oregon Down

The soft bigotry of low progressive expectations for minority students.

By The Editorial Board

Why didn’t we think of that? Politicians and school officials in Oregon are embarrassed that too many minority children fail tests designed to confirm they’ve mastered the “essential skills” that high school is meant to teach. So in the name of racial equity, they’ve now done the progressive thing. Instead of lifting graduation rates by boosting student performance, they’re eliminating the proficiency requirement.

Gov. Kate Brown signed the bill on July 14, but the Oregonian reports her office never issued a press release and the bill was not entered into the legislative database until two weeks later—a “departure from the normal practice” of entering bills the same day they are signed.

The Secretary of the Senate blamed the delay on a staffer experiencing medical issues. But it’s hardly surprising that Gov. Brown and the Democratic Legislature would not wish to draw attention to this attempt to dumb the state down.

The new law extends until 2024 a temporary suspension of the state requirements that kids demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing, and math to graduate from high school. Previously, in addition to demonstrating proficiency via Oregon’s Assessments of Knowledge and Skills test, students had the option of taking other standardized tests or submitting a work project to teachers. The new legislation gives the state’s Department of Education until 2022 to write new standards.

The purpose of public education is to provide students with the skills they need to succeed in the world. It is a terrible disservice to issue a diploma that fools them into believing they’ve mastered basic skills they haven’t. It is particularly cruel for the minority students who will pay the highest price when the real world confirms that their high schools have defrauded them of a real education.

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AHOY! What's new? A feckless, divided West and awesome Chinese numbers and dedication combine to make up the driving force behind this predictable future.

The Danger of Shrinking American Naval Power

China may invade Taiwan within six years, admirals warn. Is the U.S. ready?

By Seth Cropsey

The Chinese military will likely attack Taiwan within six years, Adm. Phil Davidson, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress in March, just before retiring from the Navy. More generally, he said, Beijing’s long-term objective—supplanting the U.S. and remaking the global order to benefit the Chinese Communist Party—will feature confrontation.

Adm. Davidson’s assessment is the clearest articulation of contemporary strategic realities by a major government or military official in the past decade. China is showing its ambitions, increasing its assertiveness in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and ratcheting up military pressure against Taiwan. The Chinese strategic tradition prizes both patience and decisive action when the balance of forces appears favorable.

The implication of Adm. Davidson’s assessment—and a similar one offered this spring by his successor, Adm. John Aquilino —is that any major reduction in U.S. combat strength, particularly naval power, will tempt the Chinese Communist Party to strike.

This assessment should inform the Navy’s recently announced “divest to invest” plan. The Navy will “divest” from older, larger platforms such as the Ticonderoga-class cruiser and reduce its large surface combatant force, including Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, by around one-third.

In turn, the Navy will “invest” in smaller, more numerous platforms, specifically a new Constellation-class frigate and a variety of unmanned surface combatants and undersea vehicles. The Navy will also speed up production of its Virginia-class submarines, the most modern in the fleet, and develop a yet-to-be-defined new submarine class. The Navy hopes “divest to invest” will make the fleet more distributed, more survivable and more lethal.

A more modern fleet is central to any U.S. deterrence or war-fighting strategy. But the “divest to invest” strategy is dangerous, for at least three reasons.

First, there is no guarantee that the Navy will reap any of the savings it expects. Washington’s budget battles will intensify in the coming five years, after trillions in emergency Covid spending. A Navy that voluntarily cuts its outlays will be at the mercy of partisan politics.

The Air Force and Army will be competing for dollars to fund their own efforts. The Navy has failed to produce a 30-year shipbuilding plan that justifies any strategy. Ever since the Trump administration identified great-power competition, particularly with China, as its primary focus, the Army has sought to justify its role in a Pacific conflict. The air and land branches will siphon off these dollars if they make a better case than the sea service does.

Second, it is unclear whether the defense industrial base can execute the “investment” portion of the Navy’s plan quickly enough to avoid a major drop in fleet numbers. The Navy plans to shrink its large surface combatants to about 60 ships from 90, retiring cruisers and likely cutting back on building destroyers.

Meanwhile, the Navy says it will build 15 Constellation-class frigates by 2026 and support them with unmanned ships and perhaps a modified littoral combat ship, which is designed to operate in shallow waters in support of sea control operations. These would be deployed close to the First Island Chain, within the range of China’s arsenal of land-, air- and sea-based missiles intended to deny U.S. forces access to the region.

The shipbuilder Fincantieri Marinette Marine won the contracts for the first three Constellation-class frigates. Fincantieri built littoral combat ships at a pace of about one a year—and that ship was half the size of the new frigate. Even if Austal USA, another shipbuilder, receives frigate contracts, and both builders keep up the pace, the Navy would receive only eight to 10 frigates by 2026, not 15.

The picture is no better on unmanned vehicles. The Navy last year received funding for only two of 10 planned large unmanned surface vehicles, the first in the fleet. The Navy’s unmanned aerial refueling tanker, the MQ-25, has been in the works for years but is still awaiting its maiden deployment in the fall. There’s no reason to think other unmanned vehicles will reach the fleet more quickly.

In other words, the Navy is on track to divest by 2024 to 2026—but the investments may not arrive until one to five years later. The U.S. could be very vulnerable in this gap. Will the People’s Liberation Army sit by watching American military modernization before it acts?

The Navy should instead maintain its surface fleet, extending the life of the cruisers and integrating more-advanced, longer-range systems into its missile-launch cells. The Navy can also build—or buy from allies—many small, highly lethal combatants and unmanned platforms. This will require a 30% annual bump to the Navy’s shipbuilding budget every year for the foreseeable future. That may sound expensive, but an additional $6 to $8 billion next year is a fraction of the overall Pentagon budget and a rounding error in President Biden’s infrastructure package.

Maintaining the fleet at its current size of about 300 ships throughout the 2020s will allow the defense industrial base to catch up to the demands of great power competition. Accelerating submarine construction—building three Virginia-class attack subs a year—must also be a priority. Surface ships, whether large or small, manned or unmanned, will be far more vulnerable to Chinese military capabilities than undersea forces.

America’s most senior naval officers have warned of a Chinese attack against Taiwan in the near future. “Divest to invest” is an invitation to attack.

Mr. Cropsey is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower. He served as a naval officer and was a deputy undersecretary of the Navy in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

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