Day: October 20, 2015

2016: First Dem Bites The Dust

While the Dems have been running for their nomination as long as the Repubs they have been less amusing and scary than their counterparts…..the biggest story on the Dem side is whether VP Biden will eventually succumb to the BS and announce that he is running for the nomination.

Clinton is still the odds on fave and Bernie is hot on her tail (at least in some states) and then there are the also ran……O’Malley, Chafee and Webb…..and that is where I pick up this post……Jim Webb.

Jim Webb has complained that the Democratic race is “rigged” for Hillary Clinton, and he’s apparently done playing along. The former Virginia senator will announce that he’s dropping from the Democratic race at 1pm Eastern today, reports Politico. As for a rumored run as an independent, we’ll have to wait and see. The New York Times doesn’t expect that to happen, and Fox News predicts that Webb will “take some time after his announcement to talk with people from across the political spectrum before making a decision.”

Seriously?  An independent for president?  This is the height of self-worth……he could not break the single digit approval ratings in polls and now he is thinking of running as an independent…..

At what point does he, Webb, start looking needy for attention?

Mr. Webb…..may I suggest….Go home and write another novel….leave politics to the adults…..tah tah!

Trump, The Bush Slayer

I know it is too early to care about the 2016 election and the GOP circus of errors….but there is something that I just cannot turn away from…..the Trump V Bush saga……

Recently Trump accused GW as NOT keeping the country safe….simply based on the fact that he was president when the attack happened……I can see where he is coming from on this….I mean if anything that happens is Obama fault simply because he is prez…….. then……. why not GW?

Of course Jeb took the bait and lashed out at Trump in defense of his brother…..when that happened I said then that Trump had set a trap for Jeb…..gets him defending his brother and not talking about his policies and plans….kinda brilliant.

Donald Trump continued his recent attacks on the Bush family by implying today that he would have prevented the 9/11 attacks, CNN reports. The Republican presidential contender said on Fox News Sunday that he’s “extremely, extremely tough on immigration,” which may have thwarted the 9/11 terrorists. “There’s a good chance that those people would not have been in our country,” says Trump. (The Guardian, however, notes that all of the terrorists legally entered the US on tourist or business visas—except one, who used a student visa.) “I’m not blaming George Bush,” adds Trump. “But I don’t want Jeb Bush to say, ‘My brother kept us safe,’ because September 11 was one of the worst days in the history of this country.” Cue the reactions:

  • “My brother responded to a crisis, and he did it as you would hope a president would do,” says Jeb Bush on State of the Union. “He united the country, he organized our country and he kept us safe. … And I don’t know why [Trump] keeps bringing this up.”
  • “I would probably ask [Trump] what he meant by that. I seriously doubt that he’s saying that—that George W. Bush is to blame for [9/11],” says Carson, per ABC News. “I certainly—I certainly don’t think so.”

And Jeb recently fired back at Trump (who’s been attacking the Bush brothers on Twitter) with a video that mocks Trump as a foreign-policy lightweight while fanciful clarinet music plays in the background.

Jeb is suppose to be an astute politician…..after all that has been said by Trump about Jeb…..he, Jeb, should have seen this coming and prepared for it…..he did not and he will be destroyed……

If you followed political headlines over the last few days, you know that Donald Trump has been going after Jeb Bush by attacking his brother. After noting that 9/11 occurred on George W. Bush’s watch, Trump boasted that his policies would have prevented the attacks. Essentially blaming Bush for 9/11 is “laughable,” but it’s also “brilliant politics,” writes Ben White at CNBC. In a post at Vox, Ezra Klein has a similar take. Even if Trump doesn’t end up the nominee, “it’s increasingly clear he’s going to destroy Jeb Bush before he loses.” Trump has realized that Bush’s biggest weakness is his brother, and he’s relentlessly piling on. On Twitter, Trump asked, “Jeb, why did your brother attack and destabalize the Middle East by attacking Iraq when there were no weapons of mass destruction? Bad info?”

Bush, meanwhile, is defending his brother while twisting himself in knots trying to answer questions like this one from CNN’s Jake Tapper regarding 9/11: “If your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all, how do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?” Trump is reminding Republicans that if they choose Jeb Bush, they’ll have to answer questions like that one—and answer for George Bush’s polices—all through the general election, writes Klein. Click for his full column.

Trump may well not be the nominee……and he is doing everything possible to make Jeb damaged goods so that he will not be the nominee either……

Plus Jeb is destroying himself……

Source: Jake Tapper stuns Jeb Bush: If your brother is blameless for 9/11 why is Hillary Clinton responsible for Benghazi? – Salon.com

Like I have said….kinda brilliant!

Voters Should Demand a Strategic Vision in Foreign Policy From Candidates

Let’s not pretend that this coming election, 2016, is anything but a foreign policy election…..yep domestic problems are important but the country is focused on the problems with ISIS and the refugee crisis.

So far all candidates, both parties, are giving the voter nothing….but platitudes and slogans…..believe me that will do NOTHING to stop the spread of ISIS or solve the refugee crisis…..

At what point is slogans not the answer?

For once the people need to demand that they hear something sound and something workable in our dysfunctional foreign policy.

Source: Voters Should Demand a Strategic Vision in Foreign Policy From Candidates by — Antiwar.com

Syria: Stupid Is Alive And Well

Yep I know….you guys think that I may be a bit hard on the US and its choices of plans being implemented in Syria in its fight against ISIS and Assad…..

If you will recall our dynamite plan to train rebels was a bust….so bad that the Defense Department threw their hands in the air and said they would go back a re-evaluate the strategy and look for an alternative…..

After a very short evaluation period a new plan has come up….at least a partial plan that is…….

Syria’s largest Kurdish militia, the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), have announced they are joining a new rebel faction, initially dubbed the “Syrian Arab Coalition,” but subsequently renamed to the Democratic Forces now that they are dominated by a Kurdish faction.

The faction includes a handful of smaller Arab tribal militias, along with an Assyrian Christian faction. The group is said to be made up of about 3,200 fighters overall, though this is likely primarily the YPG itself, who controls significant territory in the Hasakeh Province.

Ironically, the YPG’s main city, Hasakeh, is co-defended by it and the Syrian government, so its ties to the rebellion in general are unclear. The promise of a massive influx of US weapons into this new faction, however, likely was sufficient to get them on board

In case you are interested…..Amnesty International has accused the YPG…….

Amid the bevy of armed groups fighting in Syria, none has received the sort of fawning heaped on the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and its political arm, the Democratic Union Party (PYD). Their prowess against the Islamic State, embrace of secularism and non-Muslims and emphasis on gender equality have made them the darlings of the international media and top allies of the United States. So it may come as a shock that the London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International is accusing the autonomous administration that runs the areas of northern Syria under Kurdish control known as Rojava of committing war crimes.

Just which mental midget is in charge of strategic plans for Syria?

Let me see if I have it all right……we abandoned a program of arming and training Syrian rebels because it was going nowhere….and the new plan is to arm a whole new group of rebels….do I have it right?

Here is the new plan…….

After ditching the $500 million “train-and-equip” program, the Obama Administration rapidly started making high-profile pronouncements about new arms shipments to assorted rebel factions. Dubbed “Arab groups” in Pentagon statements, the program is creating a lot of confusion, primarily over who they’re arming.

“Arab groups” aren’t really a specific thing in a largely Arab country like Syria, and while some airdrops were reported in Hasakeh Province, Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions openly talking up terrorist attacks are also claiming stepped up shipments of missiles from the US.

The Pentagon doesn’t seem to be really specific about anything involving this new program. Yesterday, they insisted that the rebels don’t need to be vetted because they’re fighting ISIS, but today they assured al-Jazeera that the unnamed leaders of these unnamed groups were vetted.

Seriously?  Just how much thought went into this “new” plan?

There is another part that confuses me a bit…..our good ally Turkey has finally stepped up and started getting involved in the action and have started by taking their vengeance out on the Kurds…..and we are now supporting the Kurds in Syria…..does that smell to you?

Wait there is more…..we do not want Assad to stay in power yet his army and the Kurds are cooperating with each other at least in the one region….just how does that work out in the grand scheme?

Sorry but I see NOTHING that would give me any confidence the US has any idea what it is doing….at least in Syria…..how about you?

I believe it was Einstein that had a though on this type of plan…….”Stupidity is doing the same thing over again and again and expect a different outcome”…..sounds like he hit this on the head, huh?

Without a good battle plan the chances of a successful completion of the intended goals is never going to work out…..it is that simple, people!

Is it time for a surge in Syria?

If you have been watching the Iraq situation from the beginning in 2003 then you ought to remember the “Surge” as it was called by the media and the Bush Admin……it was that influx of extra American troops and the bought cooperation of some of the Sunni tribes….the whole affair catapulted Gen. Pratraeus into the limelight as a genius….military that is…..yes it was successful…as successful as it was ever going to be……

And now there are those that are clamoring for some sort of “Surge” to be used in Syria…….

A group of current and former US officials concludes that current US policy toward the Islamic State is not working, and that more needs to be done in both the diplomatic and military spheres to end the Syrian civil war.

Source: Is it time for a surge in Syria? – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East