Month: November 2016

Closing Thought–22Nov16

Labels…..

Before anyone gets all butt hurt….I am not accusing anyone of anything…..all I am saying is…….. it is a perception….if you take one person at their word then why not everyone?

For over a decade there has been a label used by uneducated dolts to describe anyone that does not agree with their ignorance….socialist/Marxist/ Commie….on and on….

I will agree that I use terms like d/bag, a/wad, moron etc etc…..but those are not labels for me….they are observations.  Plus I was a socialist and to lump me in with Dems is an insult…but people would know that if they had any idea of what they speak.  There is little socialistic about a Dem…you cannot be a socialist and embrace capitalism…..it is really simple…..again that would be known if there were half a brain working on the Right.

After the Trump victory I have seen a label turning up more and more…..Fascist….to be clear I do not believe that Trump is a Fascist….(please read that again so that you do  not embarrass yourself)….

Those using such label do so because they have seen a list of characteristics for Fascism and find some of them in the Trump camp…..


If one would remove one’s head from one’s ass and use a wee bit of commonsense then one could see where this could be believed….what is that saying…”If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck” then you are probably looking at a duck.

And stuff like this does not help the conversation what so ever…..

A private banquet dinner, a reality-TV star, and a tweet showing a Nazi salute have placed a DC Italian restaurant in the center of controversy. Maggiano’s Little Italy hosted a dinner Friday for a group that had a conference in DC the next day, apparently without knowing the group was the National Policy Institute, known for its white nationalist members, Washington City Paper and the Washington Post report. How the restaurant became clued in: a protest against NPI that formed at the eatery, followed by dinner attendee Tila Tequila sending out a tweet showing herself and two men performing the Nazi salute along with the caption “Seig [sic] heil!”

I still will not use the term…I may change my mind at a later date….but for now I will not use them.

On the other hand the uneducated dolts on the Right keep using a term they do not understand then they should not be offended when the other side does the same.

Do I need to use another awful cliche?

The Demise of Anti-War Liberals?

After my stint in Vietnam I returned home to a society that did not like me much (deep down they still do not like the Viet vet very much)….I also became an antiwar activist because I did and do not think that war is a good thing…it usually creates more problems that it solved…..

I have noticed that the antiwar movement does not have the same impact it use to…..especially within the ranks of so-called liberals…..one reason is because war nowadays only effects 1% of the population…..basically there is NO shared experience and the media used to control ALL info about our numerous wars……

The liberals aka Dems, are now as entrenched with the money of the “defense” industry that they have turned a blind eye to anything resembling right……

This last election proved this point…..and a little historical perspective at the liberals and the antiwar movement…….

Senator Sanders may now have sounded the death knell for the liberal anti-war movement.

During the post-World War II period, opposition to U.S. militarism and involvement in dubious military conflicts has usually been stronger on the political left than the right.  Left-wing, anti-war sentiment reached its peak during the Vietnam War, when groups opposed to that conflict could sometimes mobilize tens of thousands of demonstrators.  Opposition to subsequent U.S. military crusades was less robust, but even as late as the Iraq War, there were sizable anti-war demonstrations in the streets.

There have been warning signs for some time, though, that opposition to unnecessary armed conflicts has lost its appeal to much of the political left.  For one thing, there was always a partisan bias to anti-war movements.  Even during the heyday of resistance to the Vietnam War, the criticism became more intense after Republican Richard Nixon took over the White House than it had been when Democrat Lyndon Johnson occupied the Oval Office.  The bias was even more apparent in later decades.  There was far more criticism of Republican George H.W. Bush’s Persian Gulf War than there was of Democrat Bill Clinton’s wars in Bosnia and Kosovo.  Indeed, a distressing number of prominent liberals found reasons to praise Clinton’s military crusades in the Balkans.

Source: The Demise of Anti-War Liberals? | Cato @ Liberty

Americans need to pay more attention to the wars we start and why….if for no other reason than it could be a family member that has to fight the battles…..

 

Facebook Fake News & America’s Cultural Crisis

I recently touched on the “fake news” becoming mainstream in my Closing Thought…..I read a post later that went into more detail and its effect on the culture of the country.

It appears that “fake news” made the rounds of the MSM as real news…..did it influence the election….not a question I can answer and others will not admit the deception……I know of at least two blogs that I visit that ran with at least one of the fake news items…..and yet they will not admit that they were fooled into believing crap.

Technology has changed culture. It has empowered new voices, but also permitted our political fights to invade many other worlds once exempt from partisan combat: celebrities, beauty pageants, and arguably even our churches, from the Right’s point of view and the Left’s.All the places where we once gathered to celebrate the idea of a world outside of politics are increasingly split by the same hyper-partisanship that characterizes our political culture, which this week is traveling under the cover of what the Left calls a “fake news” crisis.Even corporate culture, which needs to be reality-based to succeed, is increasingly pushing itself in a one-sided way into political combat with half its customers. The Chamber of Commerce declared war on conscience protections for gay-marriage dissenters in deep-red states. Atlanta-based Coca-Cola decided it had to deprive former U.S. solicitor general Paul Clement of his law partnership for the crime of defending the House of Representatives in DOMA litigation. The corporations that run sports entertainment decided to punish the state of North Carolina for its so-called bathroom bill, relocating events they had planned to hold in the state. ESPN is enthusiastically covering and debating those who refuse to stand for the national anthem.Technology, by facilitating the spread of outrage, created the backlashes that led to all of these punitive actions. It has also enabled people’s worst impulses to bully and shame, and unleashed formerly contained voices of open racism and anti-Semitism, as well as open “progressive” racism in universities and elsewhere.RELATED: Report on Scourge of Fake News Turns Out to Be FakedIn the week since Donald Trump was elected, the Left has been quick to hype the crisis of “fake news” on Facebook, complaining that the social-media giant swung the election by allowing the spread of false pro-Trump stories. There is no doubt a kernel of truth to the charge — fake stories were shared on Facebook during the election, and that is worrisome — but insofar as it allows the mainstream media to avoid even a moment’s introspection in the wake of Trump’s victory, it is a convenient distraction. The much bigger problem is we no longer have a consensus, centrist view of what is true and not true: There is no mainstream media anymore.What do I mean by that? Just take a look at the past week’s worth of false media narratives:1. The Trump administration is in disarray. The purge of Chris Christie, apparently for filling the transition team with business-as-usual lobbyists — or possibly as Jared Kushner’s revenge on Christie for prosecuting his father — was, of course, news. But the idea that the Trump administration is behindhand in orderly transition is just fantasy, as David Axelrod acknowledged.2. Trump is already showing signs of unsavory nepotism. Yes, there are laws against employing family members. But they do not apply to the president, and even if they did, they would not prohibit Trump from talking to Kushner, his children, or anyone else in his family about policy, strategy, or legislation.3. Steve Bannon is a white nationalist like David Duke. Yes, Breitbart has championed the alt-right. But the evidence is not nearly as clear as the media have made it seem.Surely, we can and must do better. But trusting the mainstream media to decide what is real and fake news, or asking Facebook and Twitter to sort it out for us, is not the answer.Jonathan Rauch has written, I think rather persuasively, that the absence of authoritative institutions, including political institutions, is a new problem. The fake news “crisis” is emblematic of the cultural problem we have: There appears to be no mainstream any more. The center is not holding. We have few agreed-upon truths that unite us in this Internet age. We don’t have agreement, above all, on who has the power to decide what is true and false and right and wrong.That’s what a culture war is, as James Davison Hunter taught us: a struggle over who has the power to name reality. And, all reports to the contrary, America’s has not gone away; it’s just metastasized.— Maggie Gallagher is the author of four books on marriage and a longtime contributor to National Review.

Source: Facebook Fake News & America’s Cultural Crisis | National Review

Where do we draw the line?  I agree with freedom of the press….but is outright lies covered in that freedom?

For instance these people……

With the controversy over fake or deliberately misleading viral stories making headlines, the Washington Post and the New York Times each have interesting features on the topic:

  • The Post profiles two twentysomethings who were unemployed restaurant workers six months ago but have since struck it rich by creating the fast-growing LibertyWritersNews website. Paris Wade and Ben Goldman churn out quick stories from their couch with headlines like “THE TRUTH IS OUT! The Media Doesn’t Want You To See What Hillary Did After Losing,” promote them via their Facebook page (now with 805,000 followers), then watch them go viral. They collect money from a slew of ads on everything from Viagra alternatives to acne solutions. “We’re the new yellow journalists,” says Wade, at another point explaining their headline-writing process thusly: “You have to trick people into reading the news.” Read the full story.

The Times, meanwhile, deconstructs how one false story in particular went viral. The difference is that this one wasn’t intentionally fake. It began when 35-year-old Eric Tucker in Austin, Texas, posted an image of parked buses near an anti-Donald Trump rally on Nov. 9, after leaping to the conclusion that the protesters had been bused in. (Turns out, the buses were completely unrelated.) He had just 40 followers on Twitter, but his tweet suggesting the protests were manipulated got picked up on Reddit, then on conservative forums including the Gateway Pundit, and, soon resulted in headlines like “They’ve Found the Buses!” ricocheting around the web. (Trump himself seemed to buy into the sentiment.) Looking back, “I might still have tweeted it but very differently,” says Tucker of his original image. “I think it goes without saying I would have tried to make a more objective statement.” Read the full story.

It has become all too easy to get Fake News into the national conversation…..but I am positive that this “fake news” is here to stay…..what can be done?

Major Internet companies, such as Google and Facebook, are being urged to censor such articles and to punish alleged violators. Also, teams of supposedly “responsible” news providers and technology giants are being assembled to police this alleged problem and decide what is true and what is not.

But therein lies the more serious problem: who gets to decide what is real and what is not real? And – in an age when all sides propagate propaganda – when does conformity in support of a mainstream “truth” become censorship of reasonable skepticism?

Source: What to Do About ‘Fake News’ – Consortiumnews

I am sure there is another post lurking in there some place……

Trump Needs Good Advice

We now have a new president-elect and he is in the process of putting together a government for the nation……and its people……

So far I am not sure about some of his choices, although it is by NO means complete, but since he has no direct experience in governing then he needs good advisers with good advice….not yes men….he needs advice that will be the best for the nation and its people…..

The American Conservative has a good article on this situation….I may not agree with them on everything but they do have some excellent writers and analysts………this article makes some very good points…..

I would very much like to see the White House revert to a George Marshall type of foreign policy, in which the United States would use its vast power wisely rather than punitively. As Donald Trump knows little of what makes the world go round, senior officials and cabinet secretaries will play a key role in framing and executing policy. One would like to see people like Jim Webb, Chas Freeman, Andrew Bacevich, or even TAC’s own Daniel Larison in key government positions, as one might thereby rely on their cool judgment and natural restraint to guide the ship of state. But that is unfortunately unlikely to happen.

Source: Trump Needs Good Advice | The American Conservative

Everyone needs to remember that Trump is the president for all Americans not just the ones that will kiss his ring.

The Islamic State Threat in Somalia

Time for me to get back to real issues…..there is enough hearsay these days to make one dizzy……

News about ISIS has been slow in coming with the exception of the chest thumping about how it will be defeated…..but while Americans were celebrating and whining over the results of the election….ISIS has been quietly expanding.

First it was expanding into Libya…the conflict there was the perfect set of conditions and then they sneaked into Afghanistan and have been quietly making head way in capturing territory.

And now they have found a foothold in Somalia….al-Shabaab, an AQ affiliate, has been making noise in the country for decades….but now the conditions were ripe and ISIS has come calling…..

On 26 October, about more than 50 heavily-armed Somali Islamic State (IS) fighters seized Qandala, a sparsely populated town in Somalia’s Puntland federal state on a rugged mountainous coastal strip overlooking the Gulf of Aden. It was a small, but highly symbolic, step forward for the group and demonstrates again how armed extremists exploit state disorder and local tensions to develop safe havens and rebuild after otherwise debilitating defeats. Unless Puntland treats this threat seriously and resolves internal tensions like that in the Qandala area and conflicts with neighbouring federal states, IS in Somalia could grow in strength and destabilise much larger parts of Somalia.

Source: The Islamic State Threat in Somalia | World Affairs Journal

The US already has troops operating in Somalia…..will this be an escalation in the making?

It feels good to get back to work after all these months….

Closing Thought–21Nov16

During the Obama years there was lots of lip popping about the coming NWO, New World Order….how he and his cronies were setting the stage for the coming horror of the movies…..

A great term but only used by the semi-literate that have NO knowledge of anything beyond the headlines on Breitbart or Infowars…silly conspiracies and all that.

The origin of the term has its birth with conspiracy nuts and fundamentalist Christians……but in case you do not pay any attention to bullshit let me help………..

According to popular conspiracy theories, this authoritarian world government plans on replacing sovereign nation-states, and the organization features an ideology that believes that the establishment of a New World Order is the culmination of history. Conspiracy theorists speculate that significant occurrences in politics and finances are orchestrated by an influential cabal that works behind-the-scenes to achieve their own agenda. There are numerous historical and current events that conspiracy theorists see as steps in an active plot to achieve world domination through decision-making progresses and secret political gatherings.

Before the 1990s, New World Order conspiracy theories were limited to two primary countercultures in America: the militantly anti-government right-wing and fundamentalist Christians concerned with the end of the world scenario in relation to the Antichrist. Skeptics have noticed that such conspiracy theories have not only been embraced by many individuals seeking stigmatized knowledge but also seeped into instances of popular culture.

Now every nut wad that can spell will be pointing at those “hidden” socialists and the coming of the New World Order.

I bring this all up for I would like to see just how these “people” handle this subject now that they so astutely elected an “Outsider”….(did that sound like sarcasm?)

How long will Pres. Trump have before these nutjobs start accusing him of trying to implement the NWO?

I Remember Trent

Nine years ago this month the US Senate no. 2 Repub, Trent Lott, offers up his resignation….26Nov07 to be exact……

This took the country by surprise…..

Lott, 66, said he had notified President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on Sunday about his plans. Barbour, a Republican, will name someone to temporarily replace Lott.

This was not unexpected……you see a couple years prior he had made some inappropriate comments……

The smooth-spoken Lott found himself in hot water in December 2002 after Thurmond’s party.   Lott said Mississippi voters were proud to have supported Thurmond when he ran for president on a segregationist platform in 1948, and added: “If the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.”

A few days later, Lott issued a statement saying he had made “a poor choice of words” that “conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the discarded policies of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement.”

But the damage was done. President Bush distanced himself from Lott’s remarks, telling an audience the comments “do not reflect the spirit of our country.”

Sad to see a good man good down right?  Not to worry he became a super high paid lobbyists……

I stroll down this nostalgic path because of the choice Trump has made for his AG….Sen. Jeff Sessions……

Donald Trump has made two more key picks for his administration: He’s chosen GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama for attorney general and Republican congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas to lead the CIA, reports Politico. Both will require Senate confirmation, and the AP notes that Sessions could run into trouble because he has been by dogged by accusations of racism over the years. More coverage on that and more:

  • When the 69-year-old Sessions was up for a federal judgeship in 1986, four different lawyers testified that he made racist comments. One black prosecutor accused Sessions of calling him “boy” and of joking that he thought the KKK was fine “until I found out they smoked pot.” Sessions, who also allegedly called the NAACP “un-American,” didn’t get the post. See CNN.
  • In a “10 things to know” post about Sessions, the Washington Post notes that he was in 2014 called “amnesty’s worst enemy” by the National Review for his hardline positions on immigration. See the full list here.
  • A take from Politico: Sessions “is well-regarded by his Republican colleagues, although his breed of hardline conservatism falls outside the GOP mainstream. He is opposed to creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and a vocal critic of marijuana legalization, though he worked with the Obama administration and Democrats on legislation supported by civil rights groups that reduced the sentencing disparity for cocaine possession.”
  • Sessions was Trump’s first supporter in the Senate, and he played down Trump’s comments in the infamous Access Hollywood leaked tape, notes the Huffington Post.
  • Sessions’ official Senate bio is here.

Sessions is more than qualified by his experience to be AG…..but I ask will his racist rants hold the same weight as they did when Lott made them?

My guess is…they WILL NOT!  His disqualification before was 30 years ago and the country has become more tolerant of racist thought in those years.

Is There A Trump Mandate?

First, is anyone else sick of the term “Black Friday” yet?

I have read and heard so much about this past election that it is now getting damn right boring….his supporters keep telling me about the mandate he and the GOP have now that he is prez…….

Okay, what exactly is Trump’s mandate…not what you think it is but what is his stated mandate?  Or does that matter?

Mandate is a command or authorization to act in a particular way on a public issue given by the electorate to its representative…..

(I will pause here for a quick Google search for his supporters because they have NO idea other than his social media ramblings)

Within days of the U.S. general election, central elements of the result have already entered into American mythology: the revenge of the “white working class voter”; the unprecedented anti-establishment character of the President-elect; the populist revolution that led to Trump’s victory; and the years in the wilderness now facing Democrats and progressives in America.

But the endless repetition of these themes by the corporate media deserves a great deal more skepticism and scrutiny before they worm their way into all our heads to form the established and accepted narrative of this election. Let’s first review some basic facts about what happened on Nov. 8:

Source: The Non-Existent Trump Mandate – Consortiumnews

I listened closely to all his speeches and tried to follow his Tweets but I have a life and it was beyond tedious……there was so much contradictory stuff from his lips that I am not sure about anything he has on his mind…..

And then there is his search for the SecState…..there are so many factions jockeying for the inside position….I worry about who will be the winner…..

In recent history, a presidential election which puts the other major party in power has led to a pretty orderly transfer of power, with each party having its own collection of usual suspects that quickly and predictably fill in all the top spots. President-elect Donald Trump’s outsider status, and the number of Republican leadership figures openly opposed to his campaign, means he doesn’t have such a ready-made cabinet, nor likely the inclination to install one.

Instead, Trump’s cabinet is being assembled very publicly, amid a battle that includes neo-conservatives and establishment hawks arrayed against a group of outsiders including the libertarian right, Tea Party Republicans, and a bloc of realists who would normally not be in line for top positions.

Many of the neo-cons and the rest of the establishment had a substantial “Never Trump” bloc that opposed his election  appear to feel entitled to the top positions in the cabinet, and indeed, Trump seems to be entertaining candidate like ultrahawk John Bolton for some of his biggest positions.

Source: GOP Factions Battle Over Control of Trump’s Foreign Policy — News from Antiwar.com

This position and DoD will tell me all I need to know about the direction that our foreign policy will travel……

His choices point to a mandate to this writer….but I am not positive so I will withhold me impressions ….for now.

Maybe this is something we all should worry about and not what star is dancing to what song…..just a thought!

The Myth Of The Women’s Vote

During the campaign of 2016 the public was bombarded almost daily about the women’s vote…..how Trump had lost them and they were the way forward for Hillary….

All those polls were a bit off…..as they always are….only this time the public was more gullible than in the past.

This is a good op-ed on the myth of the women’s vote……

Among the clichés that deserve to be thrown out after the recent presidential election in the US is the idea of “women’s vote.”
It may seem surprising that only 54 percent of the female electorate voted for Hillary Clinton, the first woman nominated for president by a major party. But while gender is a strong marker for how Americans think about certain issues, it is not the best predictor of how they will vote. It turns out that female candidates do not face a single gender gap, but rather multiple gender gaps.

Source: The myth of the women’s vote | Arab News

According to all the surveys Hillary had all the major demographics…..women….Latinos….Asians…..Blacks……Millennials and yet she had her ass handed to her by Mr. Trump……at least in the Electoral College….and that is where it counts (more on that in a later post)……