Day: October 13, 2016

Dear Congress: You Guys Suck!

How many times during this election or for that matter any election have you heard the candidate tell you what they will do to improve our daily lives….let me see….they will fund education or they will do all they can with health care or…..well you get the point….they promise the world and usually do not deliver.

There is a reason that most of the promises go unfulfilled….the Congress.

In case you are not aware of the way it works…..the prez proposes and the Congress delivers…..and since these guys work less than 6 months a year they deliver nothing……in essence they work part-time for full time pay…..did you know that roaches have a better approval rating than Congress?

Just weeks before Election Day, less than 1 in 5 Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a new Gallup poll released Wednesday.

Congress has an 18 percent approval rating, the survey found.

The approval rating for Congress has remained below 25 percent since 2009, the year President Obama took office.

Democrats are slightly more approving of Congress, the poll found. Twenty-two percent of Democrats approved of Congress, while just 14 percent of Republicans did. The GOP controls both the House and Senate.

The poll was conducted from Oct. 5 to 9, and surveyed 1,017 adults. It has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

What does this mean?  Not a goddamn thing!  Why?  The stupidity of the American people keeps these lazy bastards in Congress for as long as they want….and we fall for their crap every election….even though we piss and moan about Washington we do not want to change a thing……we even fall for the same lies during a general election and then we revert to the pouting and bitching…..only to wait for the next election and the next batch of lies that we will believe…..a vicious cycle.

“Stupidity is the Deliberate Cultivation of Ignorance”……..

It Is Mostly Homegrown

I wish I was talking about fresh produce but in this case I am referring to those idiots that carry out those terror attacks….

I am still lecturing on terrorism and the class is going well……sadly this has slid from the headlines because of the antics of these silly elections…..but as usual I am not easily diverted from my subject by gossip or stupidity……

We all are well aware of the recent attacks in California Florida, New York and New Jersey…as well as the ones that proceeded them….but regardless of what the minions of hate would have you believe these attacks were basically “lone wolf” attacks……meaning that they were perpetrated by individuals not groups……

There has been some evidence that the actions this country takes internationally may have some influence of these attacks…..

A study done by the FBI has the finger on the phenom……

A secret FBI study found that anger over U.S. military operations abroad was the most commonly cited motivation for individuals involved in cases of “homegrown” terrorism. The report also identified no coherent pattern to “radicalization,” concluding that it remained near impossible to predict future violent acts.

The study, reviewed by The Intercept, was conducted in 2012 by a unit in the FBI’s counterterrorism division and surveyed intelligence analysts and FBI special agents across the United States who were responsible for nearly 200 cases, both open and closed, involving “homegrown violent extremists.” The survey responses reinforced the FBI’s conclusion that such individuals “frequently believe the U.S. military is committing atrocities in Muslim countries, thereby justifying their violent aspirations.”

Source: U.S. Military Operations Are Biggest Motivation for Homegrown Terrorists, FBI Study Finds

This will not be a popular study for it craps on the paradigm that the hateful have spent a decade forming into political advantage…..

Europe has not been spared from the round of attacks and acts of terrorism and these also are mostly from individuals that have found it necessary to commit these barbaric acts……

The lines between terrorism and criminality are becoming blurred as an increasing number of former criminals join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and create a “gangster jihad,” according to a British report released Tuesday.

Nearly 60 percent of European jihadists studied by researchers had been jailed previously, in essence creating a “super-gang,” said the report from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London.

Source: Europe criminals easy converts to ISIS as “gangster jihad” creates “super-gang” from prisons – CBS News

This is a post that some will not be willing to read or even try to understand…..regardless who pouts and bitches will not change the findings……”lone wolves” are just that alone.

What The Polls Won’t Tell Us

Let’s be honest…..the MSM has nothing going for them in the journalistic world of politics but polls…….without polls they have very little……even gossip takes a back seat to polls….

They use this to drive whatever agenda they have signed on to……matters not whether pro or con……it is their “spinach” that gives them the strength to report crap.

I read an excellent article about this phenom of American elections……

The media’s obsessive preoccupation with polls is a ritual that propels the laughable coverage of US elections.

You’d think that the 24/7 cable “news” networks could spare a few moments during this odious, interminable election for the millions of Americans who have to endure the kind of daily, grinding poverty that is decidedly at odds with the aspirational and largely mythical American “dream”.

You’d think these journalists might be able to pay at least a passing, if symbolic, nod to the fourth estate’s increasingly anachronistic clarion call: to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Source: US elections: What the polls won’t tell us – Al Jazeera English

Polls are used to make the agenda as they, the media, sees fit……in the election of 2012 the polls were proven wrong when they predicted that the race was dead even…..just as in yester-year……they are wrong today.

If you are a voter then please do NOT be swayed by the con job of the polls and the media…….do your own research and vote accordingly……

The Legacy of United States Interventionism

The US has been practicing interventionism for decades and most of it not very successfully……in all that time…..what has the country learned?

The following in an edited version of a paper I presented two weeks ago in a debate on the topic “When should the US use force abroad and what lessons should we learn from America’s use of force in Iraq and how should those lessons inform decisions on future military missions abroad?”

There are really two questions here – when is the use of force justified in the context of the key word “abroad” and what have Americans learned regarding overseas interventions from the Iraq experience. As a foreign policy adviser for Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012, I lean in a non-interventionist direction, but that is at least somewhat due to that fact that recent interventions have not worked very well and have in fact increased the number of enemies rather than reduce them while also killing nearly 7,500 American soldiers and more than a million inhabitants of the countries Washington has become entangled with. One might also reasonably argue based on post 9/11 developments that destabilizing or attacking other countries consistently makes bad situations worse and has a tendency to allow problems to metastasize. This is sometimes referred to as blowback.

Source: The Legacy of United States Interventionism – The Unz Review

Keep in mind that The Unz Review has a Libertarian lean to their reporting…..

Interventionism has been proven to be not in the best interests of the country….and yet with this crop of candidates it will continue unabated….

Vote Accordingly.

What does success in the Middle East look like for the next president?

So very soon we will have a new president…..the polls are back and forth and art the time of this writing it appears as if Clinton has the upper hand……

The new one will have to face two major issues….Russia and the Middle East……My opinion is that the Middle East is far more pressing than this mash up with Russia……if true then what will Middle East success look like for the next prez?

ISIS. Syria. Iraq. Iran. It’s no secret that many of the top challenges for the security and stability of the world lie in the Middle East. On day one of their administration, the next president will be forced to make major strategy decisions in the region. Will the U.S. choose to engage militarily in Syria? How will the U.S. move forward with the Iranian nuclear agreement? After four years of the next president’s first term, what would success in the Middle East really look like?

Brookings Senior Fellow and former Iranian nuclear negotiator Robert Einhorn has released a new set of recommendations to the next president on Iran on how the U.S. can reinforce support for the Iran nuclear deal at home and abroad and promote stability in the region. Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon recently delivered a policy recommendation on the Syrian conflict, and spoke to how the next president can balance the dual goals of U.S. security and the protection of Syrian lives.

Source: What does success in the Middle East look like for the next president? | Brookings Institution

This is a good piece….I may not agree with it in totality but well thought out anyway.

Foreign policy should have been foremost in the minds of these candidates but as usual the election has degraded into personal attacks, platitudes, catch phrases and applause lines…..no matter who wins they will must deal with the Middle East and if they want a lasting legacy then there needs to be serious thought about a plan that will end most hostilities and a workable government.

My guess is that is NOT the plan as they see it today…..more intervention is the plan and the more we intervene the more danger another attack on our soil becomes likely.

Sadly most voters cannot see past party politics….that ignorance will likely become very expensive in the future.