A SERIOUS WARNING – AT 12:33 P.M. ET:  While the White House press corps frets over the president's weight, and his mental health, serious people are thinking about serious things.  From Fox:

The U.S. military's advantage over Russia and China is "eroding," according to an unclassified summary of the Pentagon's new National Defense Strategy unveiled Friday by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Washington. The document also says that ISIS no longer remains a top threat.

“Great power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security,” Mattis said. “We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia, nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models.”

Mattis named the rogue regimes in North Korea and Iran as top threats as well. But the strategy does not ignore the ability of terrorist groups to persist and evolve. ISIS has largely been defeated in Iraq and Syria, but Mattis warned the group will keep trying to reestablish itself and make a comeback like Hezbollah and Al Qaeda.

He warned that America's ability to respond to threats has diminished.

"Our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare - air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace - and is continually eroding,” Mattis warned, adding at one point: “America has no pre-ordained right to victory on the battlefield."

COMMENT:  Fortunately, Secretary Mattis is devising a new national-security strategy that will counter thre threats we face.  Problem is, most of the press isn't interested, or is far to the left, and the Democratic Party is hostile to national defense.

The legacy of Obama is haunting us.  It is a defeatist legacy.  Mattis is a brilliant secretary of defense who understands what needs to be done.  But will he have Congress with him?

January 19, 2018