Day: July 20, 2016

The Three Shadows Of Trump 2016

I admit it…..as a political junkie I relish all the silly BS of the conventions…..neither is an island of sanity…..

I will be writing different posts on both conventions….trying to point out where all the crap is stored and why a sane voter should be searching for an alternative route…..(Think Green)…..

When Donald Trump’s Republican Party convenes in Cleveland, three shadows will haunt the arena. They won’t talk about these shadows on television, but if you look closely you’re sure to see them.

The first shadow is that of the extremist Republican right. Since the infamous Lewis Powell memo of 1970 it has invested billions in think tanks, academia, and politics to promote its agenda of individual greed over the common good.

Their free-market voodoo and corporate pandering is promoted by wild-eyed believers and cutthroat cynics who know that their ideas are unpopular and their theories disproved. That’s why they rely on deception and disenfranchisement.

Source: Trump 2016: The Three Shadows Haunting Cleveland – LA Progressive

The GOP offers the people of this country very little…..and their candidate is on an ego trip (but then aren’t all politicians?)

Turn The Page!

Terrorism: A Defining Moment

Not a subject that many want to read about these days…..but what the Hell…………

I have been blogging for 10 years….nope does not make me some sort of expert…..just that is a long time to suffer from the regurgitation of the uninformed……if I see crap I have to say something……

Terrorism…speaking of crap.  I have decided to white a white paper on terrorism….there is enough misinformation…..I will be writing a series on the subject……

I have been writing about terrorism since the mid-70’s when there was a rash of plane hijackings and now with the threat of terrorism an ever present threat it has gotten no easier.

When you try to help people understand most times you will run into a brick wall…..first when one tries to analyze the situation in a rational thought provoking way you will inevitably be resisted by those that feel that you are giving  some sort of aid and comfort to the enemy….and sometimes you are accused of having sympathy for those that commit these acts of barbarity.  These days terms like “politically correct” or “apologist” are the most common.

The problem is to most this is not a serious problem that needs to be understood….but rather a chance to pile lots of info that has been arrived at from some bias or another….

Even with all the resistance people like me still continue to inform and analyze…..most of us write off the resistance to ignorance.

Since the attacks of 9/11 the country has been obsessed with the defeat of terrorism…..there is one problem with that cute slogan…..terrorism is a tactic not an entity….we cannot defeat a tactic…..all we can do is learn about the tactic and use knowledge to lessen the effectiveness……

The definition of terrorism is all over the map….there is NO one acceptable definition…..what works for the military is not so straight forward when the PD gets a hold of it…..and then there are the public voices…these people have NO idea of what the definition is….they work off emotional rhetoric not facts.

Let’s begin with the definition of terrorism…..it is not as simple as that….examples below…….

State Department definition, Title 22 of the U.S. Code, Chapter 38, Section 2656f(d)(2): “Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.”

FBI definition: “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

Defense Department definition: “The unlawful use of violence or threat of violence to instill fear and coerce governments or societies. Terrorism is often motivated by religious, political, or other ideological beliefs and committed in the pursuit of goals that are usually political.” (JP 3-07.2)

My definition is “Propaganda By Deed”…..simple huh?

Those are the definitions that different agencies work off in this country…..but what about internationally?

United Nations Definition:

“…any act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.”

As you can see just defining terrorism is a problem and yet someone wants to defeat a tactic……

But for such a widely used word, there’s actually no single definition of what “terrorism” means. There are many, and often, they’re incompatible.

Not only is the public confused about what to call “terrorism” — the U.S. government is as conflicted as anyone.

Then there is the color code for the chance of terrorism….

But for those that are not afraid of learning then maybe this article will be interesting than my rattling…..

Ramadan has ended peacefully with no ‘terrorist’ attacks in SA but is it safe to go out? Reports of ‘terror attacks during Ramadan’ in South Africa initiated by the US State Department sent waves of confusion and concern throughout the country.

The warning stated that ‘the government has received information that terrorist groups are planning to carry out near-term attacks against places where US citizens congregate in South Africa, such as upscale shopping areas and malls in Johannesburg and Cape Town’.

Source: Media Review Network » Riaz Gardee: Defining Terrorism

Turn The Page!

Lamest Show On Earth–Day Two

Day two of the drama known as the GOP convention…..Cleveland may not ever be the same……and I am still waiting for some sort of actual issues….the theme of the day was “Make America Work Again”…..and I heard nothing that would address that issue…I did hear just about every hateful thing I could stand about Clinton….that oughta make for a sizeable paycheck (but not for the working class)…..

First it is official…Donald J. Trump is the GOP nominee…

– It’s official: The Republican Party has nominated Donald Trump for president, completing the New York billionaire’s remarkable rise from political outsider to major party nominee for the White House, the AP reports. With 89 delegates, New York state put him over the top in the delegate count Tuesday evening at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, with Trump’s four oldest children—Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka, and Tiffany—joining the delegation on the Quicken Loans Arena floor, with Donald Jr. served as the announcing delegate. “We’re going to put New York into play this time around,” Trump Jr. noted, adding, “It’s not a campaign anymore, it’s a movement” before ending with “Congratulations, Dad—we love you!”

But let’s get to the part Americans adore…the winners and the losers of the night………

Tuesday was “Make America Work Again” day at the Republican National Convention, though there was easily as much talk about Hillary Clinton as there was about the US economy. Still, the convention seemed to run far more smoothly than on Monday—it was as if they “had brought in an entirely new team of organizers,” according to Politico—and the GOP was unified enough to deal with the matter of choosing its nominee. Among the winners in another eventful day at the Quicken Loans Arena:

  • Donald Trump. New York state’s delegation put Trump over the top, making him the official GOP nominee 13 months after he launched what was seen as a long-shot bid. He “did the unthinkable on Tuesday night. And, whether you like him or hate him, he deserves a massive amount of credit for that,” writes Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post.
  • Donald Trump Jr. He “brought down the house” with a speech that put him on the national stage and added a personal touch to his father’s business successes, the Hill reports. It briefly looked like there might be a repeat of the Melania plagiarism controversy, but it quickly emerged that a Francis Buckley line in the speech had been put there by Buckley himself, a friend of Trump Jr.’s who worked on the speech with him.
  • Chris Christie. The New Jersey governor may still be smarting from VP rejection, but the crowd loved how he denounced Clinton from the point of view of a former federal prosecutor. They chanted “Guilty!” and “Lock her up!” as Christie made the case against Clinton.
  • Avocado growers. Discussion of jobs largely fell by the wayside, but soap opera actress Kimberlin Brown, who has an avocado farm in California, managed to deliver both an in-depth discussion of jobs and a passionate call to help US growers by restricting avocado imports, Politico reports.

Among the losers:

  • Party unity. Trump won the nomination, but some 721 delegates voted against him in the evening roll call, making it the most divided vote of its kind since the contested convention of 1976, the New York Times notes.
  • Never Trump. The movement “succumbed to multiple causes of death” on Tuesday, with many rebels deciding they had no choice but to support the nominee, the AP reports. The Utah delegation announced that all its 40 votes were going to Ted Cruz, but they ended up going to Trump because Utah GOP rules require ballots to be cast for active candidates only.
  • Paul Ryan. The House speaker has been trying to signal to party elites that he’s uncomfortable with Trump and is “still the smart conservative they’ve come to love,” but the balancing act fell apart on Tuesday, according to Dylan Matthews at Vox. “When the chips are down, when the nomination was being decided, Ryan was out there in front, pushing Trump forward,” he writes.
  • Ben Carson. He “quickly went off script—and not in a good way,” writes Cillizza at the Post. His linking of Clinton to Lucifer via Saul Alinsky was a strange moment, writes Tina Nguyen at Vanity Fair, though since Carson has “accidentally” insulted Trump numerous times over the last few months, the campaign must have been relieved “that Carson’s meandering thoughts went straight to hell, and not somewhere closer to home.”

Onto day 3…..(a warning not a threat)…..

Turn The Page!

“Onward Christian Soldiers?”

After the horrible and deadly attack on the police in Dallas and then on the police in Baton Rouge there has been a wealth of accusations by some on the Right mostly those without a brain, that all that was made possible by the #Black Lives Matter movement….and some have even stated that there is a hatred and a desire to kill all police….

Usually it is the same people that hate anyone with a brown skin….but make sure to note that they are not racists……blog after blog have tried to convince everyone who will try and read their crap that this is systematic of the black mentality….But I cannot blame them for I realize that they are incapable of having more than one thought at a time….much less writing about something else.

But have any of these “well informed” morons mentioned this incident? Or these people?

Nine people federal prosecutors say belong to a “Christian warrior” militia were accused Monday of plotting to kill a Michigan law enforcement officer and then attack other police at the funeral.

Six Michigan residents, two residents of Ohio and an Indiana resident were indicted by a federal grand jury in Detroit, Michigan, on charges of seditious conspiracy, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, teaching the use of explosive materials and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence, U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade and FBI Special Agent in Charge Andrew Arena announced.

Source: ‘Christian warrior’ militia accused in plot to kill police – CNN.com

Where’s the outrage for this group planning to kill as many police as possible?  Oh that’s right they are white and claim to be Christian….my bad.

Don’t look for these white racist to admit that it is all just different domestic terrorists doing this……it has nothing to do with anything but HATE and BIGOTRY!

Thomas Paine On War

I have been a real fan of Thomas Paine most of my life…..my grandfather gave me a copy of “Commonsense” when I was 10 years old(I still have the copy in my library) although it did not mean much to me until I was 14 and I read it cover to cover….from that day on he has been a big influence in my life and my thinking…..I began reading everything the man ever wrote and I finally got a copy of his “Rights of Man” and his views on war changed everything for me…..

The more one reads Paine the more one will see how he predicted a lot of the BS that is happening with this country……especially our unquenchable thirst for war…..

Around the globe, the United States faces more enemies than ever before. American troops are deploying to Syria and Libya, and returning to Iraq to combat maniacal ISIS terrorists, among others. American forces are shipping out to the Baltic States and Ukraine to contain a revanchist despot in Russia. America’s navy is steaming into the […]

The list goes on and on. Never in its history has America confronted so many adversaries at once. It’s unprecedented. Even World War II, with 50 times the number of US military casualties, had only two theaters of operation.

New foes pop up faster than old ones can be dispatched. An entire generation of American soldiers is fighting twice as long to liberate Afghanistan from tyranny as it took their forefathers and mothers to liberate themselves from the tyranny of a British king.

Source: Tom Paine Warned About America’s Perpetual War – Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com

Our elections are suppose to help keep America safe from our enemies…..in the last 50 years they have done the opposite…

I know I just had to get my historical perspective so how, right?

And the peasants dance

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