Day: October 14, 2016

Hillary Has a Plan For Poverty

I have had my fill of gossip in this election…..this is a reoccurring phenom in every election since Jefferson….it is getting sickening.

Instead of mentioning her plan for poverty on the campaign trail she issued an op-ed in NYTimes…….

Hillary Clinton penned an op-ed in today’s New York Times outlining her anti-poverty plan. She often talks about issues related to poverty, but this may be the first time in the general election that she has put forth a plan to address it. (she has been running for a year or more and it is important now…why?)

Clinton writes:

The best way to help families lift themselves out of poverty is to make it easier to find good-paying jobs. As president, one of my top priorities will be increasing economic growth that’s strong, fair and lasting. I will work with Democrats and Republicans to make a historic investment in good-paying jobs — jobs in infrastructure and manufacturing, technology and innovation, small businesses and clean energy. And we need to make sure that hard work is rewarded by raising the minimum wage and finally guaranteeing equal pay for women. (what part of this is a plan?  Sounds like the same platitudes we always hear)

Source: Clinton’s anti-poverty plan – AEI | Poverty Studies Blog » AEIdeas

The American Enterprise Institute…..whose main concern is the maximizing of corporate profits…..

These are the same promises we always hear at election time…..where is the plan to actually get this done?

But to be fair…here is a link to the original report……

Source: Full-Report.pdf

It is a lengthy report and if you read it then tell me where the promise can be fulfilled.

All this is just a re-hash of the bullshit from the DLC in the 1990’s……her plan will benefit no one but corporate interests…..

Please DO NOT be fooled by the bullshit passed off as a “plan”.

But speaking of a job…..let’s say Clinton wins the election and you would like a job in the White House….what must you do?

If you’re wondering how to get a job in a Hillary Clinton White House, start by reading campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails.

From a billionaire plugging a federal official for a cabinet appointment to Podesta himself plugging the daughter of a friend for an internship, the trove of Podesta’s correspondence posted by WikiLeaks is a portrait of Washington insiderism, showing powerful people turning into supplicants using connections and flattery.

In other words…DREAM ON!
I am out….gone to start my weekend…..hope all have a wonderful weekend….

Game Of Drones

The antics of candidates have driven the War on Terror from the front pages…..maybe that is a mistake……

There has been lots about the US use of drones for targeted killings….those unmanned vehicles that are being used for just about everything from intel gathering to assassinations……the justification is that they saved soldiers lives….which is true…..but it is also true that they are cheaper than a soldier………..

In case you would like more info on this program there is a list of articles that you could use to further your knowledge…..

Source: Drone Program

But now the Pentagon is dealing with a “secret” weapon of the terrorists…….drones…go figure……

In a development that some security experts say the Pentagon should have seen coming, ISIS is now using drones to kill people on the battlefield. The Guardian reports that according to French media, two Kurdish peshmerga fighters were killed and two French special forces soldiers were badly injured in Iraq last week when a small drone rigged with explosives blew up after it was intercepted and brought down. ISIS has been known to use drones of the kind easily bought online for surveillance, but this is thought to be among the first times the group has successfully used them to attack its enemies.

“We should have been ready for this, and we weren’t,” a robotic weaponry expert at the New America think tank tells the New York Times. With the battle for Mosul looming, US military experts fear that ISIS plans to deploy more explosive-laden drones against coalition troops, though the US has launched at least eight airstrikes in Iraq and Syria over the last 18 months to try to wipe out the group’s drones. The Pentagon is working on ways to combat attacks from small drones and has developed devices to disarm them, though these are not generally available to Iraqi or Kurdish fighters on the front lines.

ISIS is showing an adaptability that the Pentagon has been reluctant to acknowledge……

If Only They Had The Info

I have stated several times that I think this election is all about foreign policy and the direction of this country for the next 10 years……and as important as it is there is very little talk on the campaign trail about it……and the talk we get is not very accurate at all……

If only the candidates would have a document that would help them with this issue……

They do!  But no one would take the time to garner a bit of information to help the voter……granted it does have a distinctly neo-liberal lean….but at least it would give the people something to think about and a better understanding of world situations…..

Get the full Election Guide here.

Or browse by topic:

  1. China

  2. Cuba

  3. Iran

  4. North Korea

  5. NATO and Russia

  6. ISIS

  7. National Security

  8. Trade

  9. Immigration

  10. Energy and the Environment

It is just that simple….it takes no time……then formulate a plan or a campaign….but that would assume that you really want a plan for dealing with situations beyond the platitudes we get all the time….(as I wrote that I could not stop laughing)

This proves that it is seldom about the issues or policies but rather who is the most popular…..and that has always been a shitty way to pick a leader…..but after all….it is the American Way.

Greed & War

I am always going on about the Military-Industrial Complex (M-IC)….how it is this sector of American industry that controls our foreign policy especially when an armed conflict is called for…..

Wars are fought with profits as the bottom line….not ideology……”an used weapon is a useless weapon” sort of thing……

President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his most powerful speech as he left office in 1961. He warned the American people about an emerging military-industrial complex, a complex that was already beginning to erode democratic rule in America. Originally, Ike had Congress as a collaborator with and enabler of that Complex, but he deleted the reference in the final version, apparently deciding that by alienating Members of Congress, he’d only push them further into the Complex’s corner.

The military-industrial complex, the Complex for short, has only grown in power over the last half-century. Today, more than half of Federal discretionary funding goes to it. With the post-9/11 addition of Homeland Security and more and more intelligence agencies (seventeen of them at last count), the Complex continues to grow like Topsy. It consumes roughly $750 billion each and every year, a sum likely to grow whether Trump or Clinton wins the presidency. (Trump has promised to rebuild an allegedly shattered military; Clinton, meanwhile, is a steadfast supporter of the military as well as neo-con principles of aggressive foreign interventionism.)

Source: Greed-War: The Power and Danger of the Military-Industrial Complex – Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com

We were warned about the effects of the M-IC on our country and the world….we chose to ignore it and now we have war and death as a daily reminder of our ignorance.

Where The Hell Is Kyrgyzstan?

Inkwell Institute

First, that is a rhetorical question.

Most Americans cannot find Central Asia on a map…..

I recently was commissioned by a man to do an assessment of this Central Asian country…..he was very secretive……I had to do all my research on his computer and sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Apparently this person was about to enter into a business agreement that would put him and his company in the country and he needed to know the facts about the situation on the ground.

As part of this report I gave him a copy of an op-ed I did for a website called “Legationes”

Source: Inside Kyrgyzstan – In Saner Thought

My op-ed gave the general information about the country that anyone interested in visiting would need to know.

He also wanted more information about the society and the trends that are prevalent…..

I found a report that would help this person out….I also made sure to tell him that it is a site that many “think tanks” that do research on the possibilities of crisis……

Kyrgyzstan models itself as Central Asia’s only parliamentary democracy, but multiple challenges threaten its stability. Divided ethnically between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks and geographically north and south, the state is deeply corrupt and fails to deliver basic services, in particular justice and law enforcement. Its political institutions are under stress: the October 2015 parliamentary elections had a veneer of respectability but were undermined by systematic graft at the party and administrative level, and presidential elections will test state cohesion in 2017. The 30 August suicide car bomb attack on the Chinese embassy in Bishkek underscored Kyrgyzstan’s security vulnerabilities. There is need to prevent and counter the threat of growing radicalisation by bolstering the credibility of its institutions and adopting a more tolerant attitude toward non-violent Islamists.

In the absence of political pluralism, a reliable state and economic opportunities, growing numbers of citizens are taking recourse in religion. Islam has become a central factor in public life since the end of the Soviet era.

Source: Kyrgyzstan: State Fragility and Radicalisation | International Crisis Group

I also included an op-ed I did for Legationes on the country……

Source: Inside Kyrgyzstan – In Saner Thought

After a couple more weeks of presented my findings and report to the man and he was happy and dismissed me….I told him that he might want to follow-up for the situation in Central Asia changes almost daily……

His last words were….”I will be in touch”……

I cashed the check and had a beer……we both were happy.