Comparing Elizabeth Warren to Actual American Indians

Elizabeth Warren's claim of affirmative action status based on being an American Indian was completely bogus. Almost any tribal affiliation requires 1/8. Warren has 1/64 tops, and more likely 1/1024.  That likely means Warren in 99.9% white. The affirmative action status is supposed to compensate for past discrimination. I doubt Elizabeth Warren experienced any.

From 1957 to 1963 I spent my summers on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Western Montana. My family owned a ranch there. In about 1960, I knew we had become unpopular with other ranchers, but I didn't understand why. I was about 9, so I asked my Uncle Knute why. He told me we were paying an Indian haying crew 5 cents a bail to pick up our hay. This was the going rate for white workers. Uncle Knute told me Indians got only 3 cents a bail. I told Uncle Knute that the work was the same, so the pay should be the same. Uncle Knute said that's what we thought, but not everyone agreed.

I mention this to show you that Indians faced a lot of actual racial discrimination. I very much doubt that Elizabeth Warren faced anything like what I saw in Montana. She took personal advantage of a preference designed for people who had faced actual discrimination by lying about her background. Given how much discrimination the Flathead Indians faced when I lived there, I find Elizabeth Warren's claim insulting and selfish.

When I lived there, the Flathead Indians had almost nothing.  Fish and game laws didn’t apply to them, so sometimes they shot fish to get enough to eat.  Even if you miss with a .22, the shock wave knocks the fish unconscious, so you can net the fish. The houses they lived in barely kept the winter out.  The tribal organization wasn’t a noticeable presence.

The Flathead Indians, aka Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, are now the most successful American Indian tribal organization in the US. (The Alaskan Native organizations are richer, because they sold access for the Alaska Pipeline, but as an employer and as a social service organization, I think the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are overall more successful for their members.) They achieved this by pursuing education with a passion, so they could learn how to make the best of what they have. They own and operate their own 4-year college. Their tribal annual report looks like they are a conglomerate, not a tribe. They have a large timber operation, a beautiful hotel on Flathead Lake that I stayed at with my family once, an electronics factory and a recently purchased hydroelectric dam. They added casinos as an afterthought.  The timber operation was how they got their start.

My respect for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes' accomplishments is why I find Elizabeth Warren's affirmative action claim so despicable. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes overcame poverty and prejudice by study and hard work to become extremely successful. Elizabeth Warren lied about her background to use an affirmative action shortcut she didn't really qualify for to achieve her success.

Just to be clear, Proudfoot is a Scottish name.  That part of my family came from Dumfriesshire, Scotland.  I am not claiming any American Indian ancestry.  Proudfoot is also my pen name, so if you don’t remember my family on the Flathead reservation, it’s because they weren’t called Proudfoot.

Winning Strategy for Afghanistan

As a former Air Force Systems Analyst Officer (1972-1976), the part of Vietnam that I remember is that in 11 days of unrestricted bombing and air dropped mines, Operation Linebacker II put all of North Vietnam's ports out of business.  This cut off all supplies, because the Red Chinese skimmed 90% plus of what was shipped overland.  If Linebacker II had been launched in 1965 instead of December, 1972, it would have saved a lot of lives and made Counter Insurgency (COIN) a lot more effective, a lot earlier.  We lost in Vietnam because between 1973 and 1975 Congress cut aid to South Vietnam by 75% and outlawed US air strikes anywhere in Southeast Asia.  Congress and the American people lost patience with the Vietnam War.  If we had bombed in 1965 and kept bombing, we would not have had Congress outlaw air strikes after we had won in 1967 or 1968.

The part of strategy in guerrilla war that the US has forgotten is that without supplies, guerrillas die. Guerrillas don't have the luxury of growing food or manufacturing ammunition for themselves.  They're on the run.  Rangers in the American Colonies originally got their name because they ranged through Indian territory and attacked Indian farming villages, which were the base of Indian supplies.  The US beat the Plains Indians by almost exterminating the American buffalo, which the Plains Indians used for food, clothing and shelter.  Hunting the American buffalo to extinction was an intentional strategy originally proposed by General William T. Sherman.  It was carried out ruthlessly, and it worked exactly as planned.  The Plains Indians moved onto reservations because they had nothing to eat.

Recently, we have watched ISIS go from strong to dead because we eliminated their source of income, oil sales, by bombing their tanker trucks, oil fields and oil handling facilities.  I don't mean to make light of the combat efforts it took to eliminate ISIS, but I do want to point out that ISIS was far less formidable broke than they were when they were rich.  Eliminating their financial resources made them far easier to defeat.

Which brings us to Afghanistan.  The Taliban runs on opium sales.  Everybody knows it.  To eliminate the Taliban, we need to eliminate their opium sales.  We can either legalize opium world wide, which would lower the value of the opium sold, or we can destroy all Taliban opium exports coming out of Afghanistan.  Since legalizing opium is highly unlikely, the only alternative is destroying all opium exports.  Anything less and we still have a rich Taliban who can hire soldiers and pay for food, guns and ammo.  We haven't done this because Afghanistan's main foreign exchange earning export is illegal opium sales.  However, unless we do something about Taliban opium, the best outcome we can hope for in Afghanistan is a steady state of what the Israelis call "mowing the lawn."  We can use air power and special forces to limit the Taliban to controlling 40% of Afghanistan.  We can't win in Afghanistan unless the Taliban can't sell their opium to finance operations. 

To defeat the Taliban, we would have to eradicate opium systematically, using air power, in all areas the Taliban controls or even partially controls.  If the Taliban controls your poppy field, the US will destroy your crop.  If you want to keep your crop, keep the Taliban out of your area.  Otherwise, the US puts napalm on your poppies.  Displaced farmers will move to areas under government control.  There will be no people, and no money, for the Taliban to use to support their operations.  At that point, COIN (COunter INsurgency operations) will work a whole lot better.

Original article I reacted to.

Weiner Laptop, Obstruction Of Justice in the DOJ

The DOJ is participating in a massive cover up for Hillary Clinton. The Weiner laptop is the smoking gun. Contrary to what Comey said, it was never fully investigated. The rule of law means that everybody is subject to the same laws. It doesn't mean one law for Republicans and a free pass for Democrats. Under Obama, the Justice Department became a partisan tool for protecting Democrats and prosecuting Republicans.  The Justice Department participated in a massive obstruction of justice to clear Hillary Clinton of crimes that include 100 felony counts of mishandling classified information and also lying to the FBI.  Anthony Weiner did not have a security clearance, but the FBI found classified material on his laptop. Why wasn't he indicted? Because he is a Democrat and Huma Abadin's husband. Huma is a close friend and aide of Hillary.  Here's a link on the Weiner laptop.
 
As Attorney General, Sessions has the standing to bring obstruction of justice charges against Clinton and all of her aides. Sessions could start with the people inside the Justice Department and the FBI who clearly didn't want to find anything when it came to Clinton's crimes, so they didn't seriously investigate any of them. These people are guilty of obstruction of justice, starting with Strzok, Ohr and McCabe and moving on up to Lynch and Comey. This probably requires a special prosecutor because it's clear the Justice Department itself is severely tainted.
 
There is no equality before the law.  If you are a politically connected Democrat, you can violate the law with impunity.  If you are connected to Trump, you get extra scrutiny.  If you are an ordinary person, one count of mishandling classified information sends you to jail.  I'm not saying that Manafort and Cohen are innocent, because they aren't.  I'm saying that Lois Lerner, John Koskinen, Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Samantha Power and Susan Rice are guilty, and they have been given a free pass, at least so far.
 
Tony Podesta was in the same business of lobbying for the same Ukrainian oligarch as Paul Manafort, but Podesta is a Democrat. The FBI raided Manafort's house with drawn guns in the middle of the night, like it was a meth lab. Podesta hasn't even been investigated.
 
If this lack of equality before the law continues, the rule of law in the US is over. The Justice Department becomes a bureaucratic struggle for power, not an agency for enforcement of the law. The US becomes a banana republic, not because of Trump, but because of Obama and the bureaucratic mess he left in the Justice Department.

Sun May Attack Our Electric Grid

Electromagnetic pulse isn't the only reason, or even the best reason, to harden the grid.  Geomagnetic storms from the sun can have similar, but even bigger, catastrophic effects.  The last really big storm, in 1859, would be a severe disaster if it occurred today.  It caused sparks that jumped the gaps in telegraph keys. severely shocked telegraph operators and set telegraph paper on fire in 1859.  We almost had one in 2012, but luckily it missed us by 9 days of orbit position.   The odds of getting hit with a solar storm in the next decade might be over 10%.  An 1859 sized storm would destroy transformers all across the electric grid.  It would take months to restore service.  In the meantime, distibution of running water, natural gas for heating and gasoline to drive our cars would all stop, because all of them depend on electric pumps.  The electronics in our cars might be fried as well.  Please see the links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_2012
http://www.businessinsider.com/solar-storm-effects-electronics-energy-grid-2016-3