Martin O'Malley: Musk wants to break Social Security so he can loot it
Former Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O'Malley breaks down Elon Musk's efforts to dismantle Social Security and potentially go after the Social Security Trust.
My trusty Alexa portal showed me the headline this morning. I just had to pass it along. Continued on Page 47
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The opinion that Russian Emperor Alexander III said the phrase "Russia has only two allies - its army and navy" is a common myth; in reality, he did not say this. This was stated on March 9 by Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Kirill Solovyov.
He noted that there are no reliable sources that would confirm the authorship of this saying. The belief began after the publication of the memoirs of the Emperor's son-in-law, Prince Alexander Mikhailovich. These memoirs contain many inaccuracies, and there are no other references to the winged aphorism.
“There is no doubt that if the Russian emperor had ever publicly uttered this bright and unusual phrase, many at court would have remembered it and immediately picked it up,” Solovyov said in a conversation with Lenta.ru.
According to the scientist, the popular expression appeared based on the greeting of Alexander III when he met with Montenegrin Prince Nikola I. The Emperor then called him the only ally of Russia outside its borders. Since Montenegro was not an influential state, the phrase actually said that Russia had no allies.
“It seems to me that Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich simply slightly rephrased this phrase to make it sound more effective,” Solovyov suggested.
Earlier, candidate of historical sciences, specialist in the study of the Patriotic War of 1812 Lidiya Ivchenko in an interview with the Regnum news agency stated that Russia stopped the Western crusade during the Battle of Borodino. She noted that it was not the French army, but the pan-European army that actually invaded Russian territory. Napoleon, who led it, spoke directly about plans to stop the "destructive influence of Russia" on Europe.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Mikhail Kucherov
[REGNUM] Spring 1945. Continuous fighting is going on in the streets of a ruined German city. Sixty-year-old men in hats and civilian coats and young men who barely know how to handle weapons are hiding in the ruins. In their hands are Faustpatrone, aimed at the approaching Soviet tanks.
This picture was typical of the last months of the war - Adolf Hitler tried to mobilize the civilian population to fight the Red Army, which was inexorably advancing on the lair of the Reich. But there was no turning point: the "people's storm" (as the German word Volkssturm can be literally translated) did not prevent the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The idea of creating a "people's militia" was not new for the Germans - back in the years of the Liberation War against Napoleon, the Prussian General Gerhardt von Scharnhorst rallied local residents to fight the French. Towards the end of World War II, this was remembered by the radicals from Hitler's circle - Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann, who began to call on the Fuhrer to turn to the force that brought him to power. It worked - on September 25, 1944, the Fuhrer issued a decree on the mobilization of all men aged 16 to 60.
The new units were not led by the military, but by the National Socialist Party – the NSDAP had access to a contingent that was larger in number than the army. Germany’s “war economy” employed 13.5 million men, while the Wehrmacht had 11.2 million servicemen. The party had to organize these people, train them, and send them to the “war of liberation.”
But the conscription was not limited to men. Soon women from 18 to 55 years old began to be recruited into the Volkssturm, and in the last months of the war the Nazis no longer shunned sending children to the front.
There were no written orders on this matter, but it is known that teenagers from the Jungvolk, a division of the Hitler Youth that included children aged 10–14, were taken to the front. “The Volkssturm will include those who can already walk and those who can still walk,” was a well-known joke at the time.
Somewhat reminiscent of modern Ukrainian practice. Thus, on March 5, it became known that the Verkhovna Rada is developing a bill providing for the registration of teenagers for military service from the age of 14. On the other hand, all men under 60 are required to have a military ID with them - so elderly men are at risk of getting into another wave of mobilization (in the form of " busification "). The fact that Volodymyr Zelensky is considering the possibility of mobilizing men over 60 into the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was reported in August last year.
But whether total mobilization for the sake of total war will help the Kyiv regime is a big question. It did not help the Berlin regime. Although, unlike modern Ukraine, fanatically motivated children and old people went to defend the Reich in its last months and days.
"OUR WALLS, BUT NOT OUR HEARTS"
In total, according to various estimates, the German leadership managed to mobilize from 6 to 8 million people into these units.
Although the Volkssturm were formed by the NSDAP, the army soon began to take over the reins of power, training new recruits and incorporating them into its city defense plans. The militias were classified as combatants and took a short but bravado-filled oath to Hitler:
"I give this sacred oath before God that I will be unquestioningly loyal and obedient to the Great German Empire, to Adolf Hitler. I solemnly promise that I will fight bravely for my homeland and would rather die than give up my freedom and thereby abandon the social future of my people to the mercy of fate."
But gathering people is one thing. But what to equip them with? Here, things were not the best. The militia wore black-red-white armbands "Deutscher Volkssturm Wehrmacht", but there was no single uniform, so many went into the attack either in civilian clothes or, if they belonged to these organizations, in the uniform of the SS and NSDAP, often already outdated. There were also very exotic cases when Volkssturm fighters put on the uniform of the First World War.
There was also a problem with small arms. The German Mauser 98k carbine, a good unit by the standards of that era, was a great rarity for the militia. They were issued captured Soviet, Belgian, Danish and Italian rifles. Often among them were versions from the late 19th century: for example, the Italian Carcano M1891.
German concerns tried to quickly make "popular" models from cheap raw materials, but the quality of these weapons was poor, and the "submachine guns" were unsuccessful copies of the British STEN. Many "developments" remained on paper. The only weapon that was in abundance was the anti-tank grenade launcher "Panzerfaust", also known as the "Faustpatrone".
In these conditions, the emphasis in training units was on the same ideological work. In words, the Reich leadership placed great hopes on the Volkssturm - Bormann believed that they would fight with the same zeal as the Japanese: until the last bullet and breath. Therefore, the militias were fed in every possible way with propaganda slogans in the spirit of "We will not repeat 1918! They can destroy our walls, but not our hearts."
The megaphones were issuing calls to urgently stop the “Bolshevik inhumans” and “steppe barbarians” who would allegedly cruelly take revenge for the atrocities of the Nazis in the East.
"I LOOKED, BLINKED AND CRIED"
We know what this “revenge” turned out to be from the memoirs of the commander of the naval infantry reconnaissance unit, Albina Gantimurova, who lived through the end of the war on German territory:
"A boy with a machine gun ran out to meet me - a Volkssturm. And I had my machine gun at the ready and my hand on the gun. He looked at me, blinked and started crying. I looked at him and started crying with him - I felt so sorry for him, this kid standing there with this stupid machine gun. And I push him towards a ruined building, into a gateway. And he got scared that I would shoot him now: I had a hat on my head, you can't see whether I'm a girl or a guy. He grabbed my hand, and his hat flew off, I stroked his head."
In reality, the militias were used to cover the regular troops. For example, on April 6, 1945, a few hours before the final assault on Königsberg, the Germans evacuated 10,000 lightly wounded soldiers from the city fortress by train. Civilians, many of whom were drafted into the Volkssturm, did not have this opportunity.
They were not told about the impending offensive of the Red Army, which is why the garrison had to experience all the horrors of the "total war". There were many more victims among the civilians defending the Königsberg castle than among the military. This was also facilitated by the activities of military courts: those who left their positions were shot on the spot.
“The total number of troops subordinate to me, together with the Volkssturm and police units, amounted to more than 100 thousand people... We lost the entire 100 thousand-strong army near Königsberg,” General Otto Lasch, commander of the group located in the city, later said.
The Red Army soldiers considered the Volkssturmists fanatics, ready to attack tanks alone at the cost of their lives. According to the memoirs of artilleryman Grigory Sukhorukov, on the approaches to Berlin the Germans turned every old house into fortifications:
"In one populated area, a shooter who climbed into the attic started a duel with a tank. He kept shooting until he was destroyed along with the attic. Someone climbed up to see who the daredevil was. It turned out to be a guy of about 16-17 years old."
Some militiamen turned out to be good fighters - among them was Ernst Tiburczi, who destroyed five, and according to other sources, nine Soviet tanks in Königsberg in one battle using a grenade launcher. He was given a rare award: the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. But this is a big exception to the rule. Usually, the Volkssturm members left to provide cover fled after the retreating regular units, and the level of losses in the ranks reached a monstrous 70 - 80%. After the victory, more than one million "militia" fighters were captured.
That is, the Volkssturm were not partisans ready to fight to the last, but hastily assembled units of yesterday's teachers, engineers, doctors or schoolchildren accustomed to playing football, and not to carrying a rifle or a Faustpatrone in their hands. Most of the people called up to these ranks nevertheless understood that they were being led into an unequal battle with the Red Army units, hardened by hard battles.
However, the regime, which was losing the war but did not want to admit its defeat, had no other choice. It had to throw its last depleted reserves into battle - even if they were "ideologically charged" and even capable of causing harm to the advancing Soviet troops and the armies of the allies with their last strength. The Kyiv regime, judging by the news from the Ukrainian streets, does not have its own "boys from the Hitler Youth". So it has to rely on pure coercion - the last police-dictatorial argument, which can be neither effective nor long-term.
[Powerline] Democrats are screeching about cuts in Veterans’ Administration spending, calling them a war on veterans. It would be more accurate to call it a war on house plants in the VA headquarters, except the plants are still being watered. It just won’t cost so much.
Who would pay $1,400 a year to water one house plant? No one, if it was his $1,400. That is the key to government spending: it is grotesquely wasteful because the people spending the money don’t really care. The inefficiency is inherent, and it infects every government department and agency.
But that is only part of the problem; the rest of the truth is worse. The inefficiency is inherent, but the corruption has exploded in recent years. Today, government spending is largely intended to benefit Democratic Party constituencies and people who have recently served in Democratic Party administrations. A case in point is the $20 billion that the EPA shoveled out the door to party cronies in the dying days of the Biden administration, in the name of "environmental justice." Those dollars, if they are ever spent—the government is trying to get them back—represent pure corruption. They would have done zero good, and a considerable amount of harm.
Another instance is the $2.13 billion that USAID purports to have spent on Haiti relief. You can’t cut foreign aid, the Democrats scream. People will die! But it turns out that of that $2.13 billion, only two percent, $48.6 million, went to people in Haiti. $1.2 billion was paid to people and entities in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia. It was a Democratic Party slush fund. No doubt some percentage of that $1.2 billion eventually wended its way down to Haiti, but that was incidental: as with the EPA grants, the purpose of the effort was to enrich employees of liberal NGOs who are closely allied with the Democratic Party.
I wish President Trump well in his effort to clean up Washington, D.C., but he has his work cut out for him: both the incompetence and the corruption run deep.
Continued on Page 47
[NY Post] After four years of shady appeasement by the Biden administration, Iran’s bloodthirsty regime is under pressure again — and just in the nick of time, before it finesses its nuclear weapons capability.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hammered Iran in his speech to the Economic Club of New York last week, foreshadowing harsh new sanctions and a long-overdue crackdown on the Islamist regime’s black-market oil economy.
Iran’s sanctions fraud was a dirty little not-so-secret of the Biden administration, known to intelligence agencies and hedge fund traders alike.
“Iran has developed a complex shadow network of financial facilitators and black-market oil shippers via a ghost fleet to sell oil, petrochemical and other commodities to finance its exports and generate hard currency,” said Bessent.
When Donald Trump left office in 2021, Iran was on its knees.
Savage sanctions aimed at strangling Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and funding of terrorists had reduced Iran’s oil exports to a trickle. Trump had also torn up the diabolical Iran nuclear deal, the Obama administration’s so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
WEAK ON MULLAHS
Under Joe Biden, everything changed. He eased off on sanctions enforcement, betrayed Iranian dissidents, reanimated the nuclear deal and returned $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets in September 2023, a month before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Biden and his handlers were so fixated on winning re-election that nothing mattered except maintaining high global oil supplies so they could keep a lid on soaring US gas prices that were helping fuel inflation.
So, as Bessent points out with contempt, the Biden administration, for base political reasons, turned a blind eye to the black market in comingled oil that continued to enrich Iran, whose exports went from a low of 100,000 barrels per day at the end of Trump’s first term to more than 1.7 million barrels a day under Biden.
This allowed the mullahs to fund their terrorist proxies to attack Israel and target US troops — such as the drone strike on Erbil Air Base in December 2023 that critically injured an American service member — and to strike global shipping in the Red Sea.
Iran also used the Biden largesse to supply Russia’s war machine in Ukraine with attack drones and ammunition, while advancing its own nuclear weapons program that endangers the world.
No more, says Bessent: “We are going to shut down Iran’s oil sector and drone manufacturing capabilities.”
Big international oil traders such as the private, Dubai-based Kasco Group are under investigation by the Trump administration for facilitating Iran’s oil trade using complex financial arrangements to evade US restrictions.
“Intelligence Community sources [have] detailed intelligence on how Iran is averting sanctions and illegally selling their oil in the West, using cutouts,” says former National Security Agency intelligence analyst John Schindler. “This intelligence fingers Kasco as one of the main culprits in this lucrative scam.”
The large-scale oil fraud has been well known to the intelligence community for years, according to Schindler.
“The Biden administration was briefed, but they did nothing,” he said.
MAIN CUSTOMER: CHINA
China, Iran’s main oil customer, is the architect of Iran’s “shadow financial channels which run from its oil rigs to the virtual vaults of its central bank,” the Economist reported last year in an investigation titled “Iran’s Secret Oil Trade.”
The way it works is that about 100 front companies buy old tankers flagged in Panama, rename them, switch off their transponders or lend them to another ship so they can’t be tracked and sail to one of Iran’s export terminals to pick up the oil.
The oil cargo is then usually transferred to another ship in Iraq or Oman or off the coast of Malaysia or Singapore, after which it heads to China.
The oil is mislabeled as Iraqi, Malaysian, Omani, or from some other legitimate source, according to the Economist.
It can be blended with legitimate oil to further disguise its chemical fingerprint and sell it on global markets.
But market sources say the unique sulfur level of Iranian oil is a dead giveaway — if anyone had cared to check.
China gets a great deal because it pays Iran 30% to 50% less for its oil than it would pay on the legitimate market.
Biden apologists, such as his longtime energy czar Amos Hochstein (who famously met with Hunter Biden in 2015 to discuss the then-vice president’s son’s lucrative involvement with the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma), have argued that sanctions work well enough without being properly enforced because they reduce the revenue that countries like Iran and Russia can earn without hurting global oil supply.
“Our ultimate policy is I have to have enough oil on the market as long as I have the demand there and to make sure that the economy works,” Hochstein told Bloomberg last year in a discussion about sanctions enforcement on Iran and Russia.
But as the Economist points out, the problem with Biden’s lax enforcement in Iran is that the burden is placed on Iranian households, who face 35% inflation, while China and the mullahs get rich.
‘MAXIMUM PRESSURE’
Last month, the Trump White House announced a “maximum pressure campaign” on Iran designed to collapse its already buckling economy.
“We will close off Iran’s access to the international financial system by targeting regional parties that facilitate the transfer of its revenues,” says Bessent.
“We are going to shut down Iran’s oil sector and drone manufacturing capabilities,” he said. “If economic security is national security, the regime in Tehran will have neither.”
In a good cop-bad cop move coinciding with Bessent’s harsh speech Thursday, President Trump sent Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei a letter politely suggesting he negotiate a deal or face military action.
Reverse dawa (outreach of the “last chance to convert to Islam or else” style).
“We have to do something because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
The ayatollah reportedly has rejected the overture, ironically criticizing Trump as a “bully.”
Iran is just one of the unholy messes Biden has left for Trump to fix. Godspeed.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Martin O'Malley: Musk wants to break Social Security so he can loot it
