Day: April 18, 2016

How NOT To Win Friends

Let the Games Begin!

For a couple of months we have been told by the MSM about the mini civil war been fought within the GOP….the war of words has gotten a bit out of hand….RNC is trying behind the scenes to thwart Trump’s appeal with the great unwashed masses…..and in that time Mr. Trump is hitting back……

Donald Trump has already expressed his anger over Colorado’s primary system, which handed Ted Cruz all of the state’s delegates, and in a new Wall Street Journal op-ed, he goes into more detail. Republicans in the state weren’t allowed to vote, and ever since the results came out, politicians have been defending the process because “that’s just the system,” Trump writes. “Let me ask America a question: How has the ‘system’ been working out for you and your family?” In Trump’s opinion, the system benefits politicians and related parties (consultants, pollsters, pundits, special interest groups) while hurting average Americans.

“Responsible leaders should be shocked by the idea that party officials can simply cancel elections in America if they don’t like what the voters may decide,” Trump writes, adding that Cruz has been celebrating his win despite the fact that it symbolizes the disenfranchisement of voters. “How have we gotten to the point where politicians defend a rigged delegate-selection process with more passion than they have ever defended America’s borders?” The solution? A “bold infusion of popular will.” The people are right when it comes to opinions on taxes, immigration, foreign policy, and the size of government, while politicians and other “elite” are wrong, Trump says. “Why should we trust the people who have made every wrong decision to substitute their will for America’s will in this presidential election?” His full piece is here.

All this rhetoric and all the speculation by the media has turned something as boring as the nomination process into a segment well suited for Reality TV…..

Let’s not leave good old Ted out of this……back at the beginning of this process Ted was in Iowa trying to make points with the peasants and he railed against Trump and his “New York Values”…..got lots of applause and smiles….but Teddy forgot that he had to go to New York to campaign….and this happened……

Ted “New York values” Cruz faced a tough crowd Thursday at the New York State Republican gala, BuzzFeed reports. According to NBC News, the crowd of 800 Republicans was “stunningly distracted” during his speech, which was “almost entirely ignored.” Talking Points Memo is a bit gentler, stating Cruz received a “cool reception.” Things started off badly when Cruz’s opening joke about Donald Trump “only drew muted laughter,” as BuzzFeed puts it. After that, attendees walked around, took selfies, and chatted with each other, the noise of talking and silverware growing louder as Cruz’s speech wore on. It was the worst response any speaker received. “Attendees … are talking over Ted Cruz waaaay more than they did with Trump, Kasich, or even New Mexico Gov. Martinez’s yawner speech,” one journalist tweeted.

One attendee says Cruz’s criticism of “New York values” hurt him with the crowd. “I think people have had … difficulty forgetting that,” he tells BuzzFeed. Another says Cruz’s decision to stick to his normal stump speech showed he didn’t bother to understand his audience. One Republican voter tells NBC Trump simply had a home-court advantage. “This is Trumpville; this is Trump town,” he says. NBC estimates that out of hundreds of attendees, Cruz received applause from only two dozen or so people at any given time. One Cruz supporter blames the fact that Cruz was speaking last and attendees were hungry and waiting to eat. But CNN points out attendees had already gotten their food and were nearly finished eating by the time Cruz took the stage.

Playing cute with words and rhetoric does have its consequences…..

Looks like neither Trump or Cruz is winning many friends these days…..

Thanx to the stupidity of candidates the media has turned this into a psycho-drama for the convention……(and the peasants danced)…..

Hey A/holes, Better Do What The Saudis Say!

15 years after the fact the attacks on 9/11 are still making the news.  But the “news” has moved from the Congress inaction on the first responders bill to the country that may be at the heart of the attacks….Saudi Arabia.

There is a major story brewing about some of the pages that have taken out of the official report….28 of them to be exact.

It appears that the US may be covering up the extent of Saudi in the attacks of 9/11……not a story that the media is willing to cover….now ask yourself why…..but more on this situation…..

This is from an article in the NY Post….now take it at what it is worth for some think that it is nothing more than a scandal sheet and a rag…..

In its report on the still-censored “28 pages” implicating the Saudi government in 9/11, “60 Minutes” last weekend said the Saudi role in the attacks has been “soft-pedaled” to protect America’s delicate alliance with the oil-rich kingdom.

Actually, the kingdom’s involvement was deliberately covered up at the highest levels of our government. And the coverup goes beyond locking up 28 pages of the Saudi report in a vault in the US Capitol basement. Investigations were throttled. Co-conspirators were let off the hook.

Source: How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11 | New York Post

Apparently Obama has been summoned to the Kingdom and the “official” report is that the meeting is about regional security…..sorry I do not buy that…how about you?

Okay let’s say that the official pages are released….then the question would be….”what can the Saudis do to the US?”

I am so glad you asked……

How many times have you heard the mental midgets rant and rave about the debt that the Chinese own and how bad it would be if they decided to act on our debt….how many times?

It is true that the Chinese own a bunch of our debt…..but they are not alone.

Did you know that the Saudis own about $750 billion….. that is billion with a “B”…..?

Okay but what of it?

Saudi Arabia is threatening to sell $750 billion worth of American assets if Congress passes a bill that could lead to it being tried for the Sept. 11 attacks, the New York Times reports. According to RT, the bipartisan bill, which passed the judiciary committee in January, would tweak the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, nullifying the immunity granted to some countries when terror attacks in the US are involved. If passed, the bill could allow the families of Sept. 11 victims to bring the Saudi royal family and Saudi charities, who they believe funded the attacks, to court. Saudi Arabia claims it would need to sell its US assets if the bill is passed, lest the US government freeze them. Some economists are skeptical the Saudi government would follow through on the threat, as it would destroy its economy.

The Obama administration, warning it could lead to legal retaliations by other countries, has been trying to stop Congress from passing the bill. It’s a move that’s upsetting some families of Sept. 11 victims. “It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens,” the Times quotes a woman whose husband died in the World Trade Center as saying. Meanwhile, Obama is also deciding whether or not to declassify 28 pages of a 2002 report allegedly containing information tying Saudi officials to the Sept. 11 attacks, Fox News reports. Both Bush and Obama have said those pages would be harmful for national security, but others say the government is trying to hide the involvement of a longtime ally.

The Obama admin is using the usual reason……national security as a reason for the pages to remain classified.  So why would the truth be dangerous?

The Senate bill is intended to make clear that the immunity given to foreign nations under the law should not apply in cases where nations are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on United States soil. If the bill were to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi government to be examined in the Sept. 11 lawsuits.

Obama administration officials counter that weakening the sovereign immunity provisions would put the American government, along with its citizens and corporations, in legal risk abroad because other nations might retaliate with their own legislation. Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate panel in February that the bill, in its current form, would “expose the United States of America to lawsuits and take away our sovereign immunity and create a terrible precedent.”

National security……one of those dog whistle slogans like “political correct”…..that conjures up visions of gloom and doom.

So are the Saudis bluffing?……Can the US take that chance?

Now why would you think that Obama has gone to Saudi Arabia…..( I have heard he packed his reliable knee pads)…..

The New Propaganda War

I have written many times about the use of propaganda…..I have even shown my readers how to spot propaganda….with the hope that they would take the time to see what is being fed to them by the government and its agent, the MSM……(in case you may have missed my mini-series)……

Source: What Is Propaganda? – In Saner Thought

Source: Propaganda 2.0 – In Saner Thought

I reiterate……We Americans need to know and recognize propaganda and know when we are been fed it by our “leaders”……

Despite Western media dominance, the U.S. government wants to stop the world from hearing the “other side” on foreign disputes by “countering” or discrediting those voices, explains Jonathan Marshall.

“[Russia] is conducting an intensive propaganda campaign directed primarily against the US and is employing coordinated psychological, political and economic measures . . . The ultimate object of this campaign is not merely to undermine the prestige of the US and the effectiveness of its national policy but to weaken and divide world opinion to a point where effective opposition to [Russian] designs is no longer attainable by political, economic or military means.”

With that justification, the Truman administration secretly authorized the start of covert operations by the CIA against America’s wartime ally, the USSR, in December 1947. It was one of the seminal decisions that launched the Cold War.

Source: The New Propaganda War – Consortiumnews

Propaganda is all around us…..we can spot it if only we look at what is and what it hopes to do…….ask questions and find the answers that you seek…..even if they scare you.

Or you could just roll-over and play dead……something we excel at doing.

“They keep you doped up with sex and TV,

Until you think you are so classless, clever and free.

But you are still fucking peasants,

As far as I can see.”

(Working Class Hero–Lennon)

Truer words were never written.

What Do Our Presidential Candidates Know About Foreign Policy?

I know that I hit my reader around the head on foreign policy, especially now because of the 2016 election…..I do this because the US gets further and further involved in the situations around the world that could and most likely will make the US on a war footing for the rest of my life……

One of the most important things that a person can do this year is to vote for the next president…..for that reason I think that the voter needs to be aware of any shortcomings our candidates may have.

And I believe that ALL of our candidates are not what is needed in this world that we have created in the 15 years or so…..

The question needs asking…..what do our candidates know about foreign policy?

Micah Zenko poses eight questions for the presidential candidates on foreign policy to test how realistic and substantive their positions are. Here is the first one:Is their proposed policy action

Source: What Do Our Presidential Candidates Know About Foreign Policy? | The American Conservative

Appears that ALL are about as knowledgeable as my dog…..BTW she is more astute than 90% of the people I know…..but if you must vote for one of these “unqualified” people then here is a test…..

Candidates, one of you will be the fifth consecutive American president to make war inside Iraq. What will you face on day one of your administration?

You learned with us recently of the death of a Marine in Iraq, which exposed that the United States set up a fire base in that country, which exposed that the Pentagon used a twist of words to misrepresent the number of personnel in Iraq by as many as 2,000. It appears a second fire base exists, set up on the grounds of one of America’s largest installations from the last Iraq war. Special forces range across the landscape. The Pentagon is planning for even more troops. There can be no more wordplay — America now has boots on the ground in Iraq.

Source: Candidates, Here’s Your Iraq/Syria/Libya Mess To Fix – Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com

Any confidence and/or optimism that I may have had in the past is long gone…….

All I can say at this point is……I am NOT optimistic at all……I weep for the future of this country.

Is Hillary Clinton vulnerable over her vote for the Iraq War?

The 2016 battle has been long and tedious, especially on the Dems side….there seem to be a case to be made by Sanders against Clinton over her vote in 2002 to go to war in Iraq.

But let’s say she wins the Dem nomination and Trump wins the GOP…..does all this finger pointing over the Iraq vote give Mr. Trump a leg up if they face each other in November?

To the horror of almost everyone in mainstream US politics, it seems increasingly likely that by the close of the Republican National Convention in July, Donald Trump will have snatched the prize he has long coveted: the Republican presidential nomination. The party’s leadership is no longer asking whether Trump can win, but whether he can be stopped.

Although quickly lost among the string of controversies that have punctuated his campaign, in late February Buzzfeed released a 2002 radio interview with Howard Stern, who asked Trump whether he supported Saddam’s overthrow. “Yeah, I guess so,” replied Trump.

Source: Is Hillary Clinton vulnerable to Trump over her 2002 vote for the Iraq War? | Informed Comment

Will this be her Waterloo?  Will her vote in 2002 come back to bite her in the butt?