Day: December 1, 2016

Closing Thought–01Dec16

As December begins and Trump is putting together his cabinet…one thing jumps out…..Americans will be attacked on many fronts….health care, education, and quote possibly veterans……his appointees do not fill me with optimism…..

On to “Fake News”……

The “news” has been flooded with stories on the “fake” news that was used during the past election….I wrote a piece as a Closing Thought…..

Media distrust and Fake News…… This past election illustrated just how much social media can play in the election of a president…. Take Facebook for instance…..on a personal…

Source: Closing Thought–18Nov16 – In Saner Thought

Since I wrote that op-ed 10 days ago….more news about the fakes has been published….

No one outside of a few obsessed cranks would’ve noticed it if the Washington Post hadn’t given it front page prominence last week: a formerly obscure web site, propornot.com, which purports to identify a “Russian active measures” campaign with some very specific goals in mind As Post “reporter” Craig Timberg put it:

“The flood of ‘fake news’ this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.”

Source: The Witch-Hunters – Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com

The WaPo is not a site that I use much…..I do not trust them or the NYTimes….too corporate and too much propaganda for the government there.

My friends at the American Conservative have weighed in on this developing story……

“Fake stories” are in the news. The narrative goes something like this: fabricated accounts that misrepresent “the truth” are proliferating on the internet, and once they appear on a social networking site, they are frequently spread far and wide, often doing serious damage along the way to whatever or whomever was the target of the initial posting. Reportedly, Google and Facebook are now alert to the problem and doing their best to monitor and eliminate such material. How exactly that will work is not yet clear, as it would be blatant censorship, and the relative openness of the internet is a major part of its appeal.

Source: The Fake News Fake Story | The American Conservative

In my opinion a lot of the news in the MSM is fake news……and it is just now coming to light….for whatever reason.

There has been a shit storm about the “fake news” around this past election.

There are many opinions on who, what, where and how.

Below is an opinion piece on the situation…..

Consider for a moment the oxymoronic concept of “fake news,” which we have been hearing so much about lately. This isn’t your typical disinformation or misinformation — generated by the government, or foreign adversaries, or corporations — to advance an agenda by confusing the public. It isn’t even the familiar dystopian idea of manipulated fact designed to keep people lobotomized and malleable in some post-human autocracy. Those scenarios assume at least an underlying truth against which nefarious forces can take aim.

Fake news is different. It is an assault on the very principle of truth itself: a way to upend the reference points by which mankind has long operated. You could say, without exaggeration, that fake news is actually an attempt to reverse the Enlightenment. And because a democracy relies on truth — which is why dystopian writers have always described how future oligarchs need to undermine it — fake news is an assault on democracy as well.

Source: Who’s Really to Blame for Fake News? Look in the Mirror, America. | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

That is about enough on this subject….I mean really….NO one cares…now do they?

Who Will Lead The VA?

Nothing is more needed than supreme leadership for our millions of veterans…..the VA is tasked with making sure that our vets get the best service and care possible.

So far I have not been impressed with the choices our new prez has been making for his new government….I see very little change from the days of Obama…he has made dismal choices so far in my opinion…..

Word has leaked out on just who he may task to lead the VA…it is a person that cannot finish a job once it is started……a person with more mouth than clout.

Does Donald Trump have a big job lined up for loyal supporter Sarah Palin? The former Alaska governor is a candidate to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, a Palin aide and a Trump transition team official tell ABC, which notes that the VA is the largest government agency, with more than 300,000 employees. USA Today reports that Palin appears to be very keen: In a Facebook post Wednesday, she praised Trump as a “commander-in-chief who will champion our vets.” She also shared a video from her SarahPAC political action committee on her ideas to fix the agency’s problems, along with an endorsement from son-in-law Dakota Meyer, a Medal of Honor recipient who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chicago Tribune reports.

A spokesman for Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan tells Alaska Dispatch News that the senator would like to see Palin head the VA. “Alaska has more veterans per capita than any other state, making this position critically important for our state,” he says. Palin would be the first non-veteran in the role, though her son Track Palin is an Iraq veteran. ABC notes that former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who spent 35 years in the Army National Guard, is also being considered for the post and, unlike Palin, has visited Trump Tower for meetings. Rep. Jeff Miller and Gen. Keith Kellogg have also been connected to the role.

If this is truly Trump’s choice then it will make me sick.  A loud mouth without guts or principles…..to look after our veterans.

I believe that only someone that has actually served in the military can know just what are the needs of a veterans.  I thought is Sen Chuck Hagel he is a conservative and has actually fought in a war and served as a soldier.

Palin’s service to Alaska only lasted a half term before she cut and ran…..the VA needs people of conviction and courage….of which she has NEITHER!

The Electoral College Wasn’t Meant to Overturn Elections

I recently got an email from a friend that asked me to contribute to the debate about the Electoral College….I turned her down because I was not interested because for years I had been writing about the need for its elimination and as usual NO one was reading or listening….and then 2016 happened and there was a renewed interest in the elimination……

I decided to do a short series on the EC….trying to give both sides of the debate…….

Electors were intended to be faceless hacks whose independent exercise of judgment was neither wanted nor permitted.

Here is Question One on this year’s Constitutional Law exam.

The “electoral college” is

  1. a terrible idea that has gone wrong repeatedly and now bids fair to destroy the Republic.

  2. a wise creation of all-wise “Founding Fathers” who foresaw precisely this moment and set up the “college” to protect the People from themselves.

  3. Both of the above, even though that makes no sense at all.

  4. WTF? How did we get here?

At least from now until December 19, when the electors will meet in the state capitals to vote, we are likely to hear a good deal about answer 3 from Democrats and supporters of Hillary Clinton. (In the spirit of disclosure, I am both.)

Source: The Electoral College Wasn’t Meant to Overturn Elections – The Atlantic

In my opinion, the EC has outlived its usefulness as part of the process….now it only serves the two party system and the media….it is used to drive the conversation and determine which states will be important.

The popular vote is the only logical way to elect a president in the 21st century.

Even a supporter of the EC has changed his mind and says time for it to go!

The man who would have been the 43rd president if the Electoral College weren’t in place thinks it’s time to ditch it. Al Gore, who won the popular vote but lost the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000, tells NBC News that he’s changed his mind about how America picks its leader. “I think moving to a popular vote system is not without peril, is not without problems,” he says, per the Hill. “But I think the balance has shifted, in my mind at least, and I think that we should go to a popular vote.” Among other things, he says it would “stimulate public participation” like no other election reform, adding that it’s “pathetic how our system is not working today.”

Time for this dinosaur (the EC not Gore…but it is a thought) to be put in a museum where it belongs…

Is The TPP Finally Dead?

From the beginning I was opposed to this TPP that Obama and so many others championed….I recall what damage Clinton’s NAFTA did to the American economy….

There were a few issues in the Trump agenda that I could embrace….but I liked his rhetoric on international interventionism and especially his rhetoric on trade….both NAFTA and TPP……

Mercifully it appears that the TPP is finally dead…..

In spite of the hopes of many elite types for a last-minute resurrection, it appears that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is finally dead.  This is good news, but it took a long time to kill the deal, and the country is likely to pay a huge price for the execution.

The basic point that everyone should know by now is that the TPP had little to do with trade. The United States already had trade deals with six of the 11 other countries in the pact. The trade barriers with the other five countries were already very low in most cases, so there was little room left for further trade liberalization in the TPP.

Instead, the main purpose of the TPP was to lock in place a business-friendly structure of regulation. The deal was negotiated by a series of working groups that were dominated by representatives of major corporations. The regulatory structure was to be enforced by investor-state dispute settlement tribunals. This is an extrajudicial system that would be able to override US laws with secret rulings that were not bound by precedent or subject to appeal.

Source: The Slow, Painful Death of the TPP

We will have to wait and see if Trump will be true to his word……my optimism is at a low ebb right now.

Presidential War Is Unconstitutional

With the latest election I have been rather kind to the Obama admin….I have been busy trying to decide it the Trump admin will be better or worse for American involvement overseas……

But I shall rectify that oversight on my part…..

The wars that were are fighting now have NOT been authorized by Congress…..it stretches all the way back to the Bush admin…..if you think the Constitution is the law of the land then these wars are unconstitutional….period!

But let us take a look at the Constitution and war……

More generally, after 9/11, rather than following the congressional authorization and focusing like a laser beam on countering the original al Qaeda group and their patrons, the Afghan Taliban, the George W. Bush administration launched a general “war on terror,” which covered all terrorist groups of international scope, regardless of whether or not they focused on attacking US targets. In the end, this massive Bush administration violation of the narrow 2001 authorization led to illegal US drone wars and airstrikes in countries all over the Middle East and Southwest Asia, Somalia (against al-Shabab), Yemen (against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), Pakistan (against the Pakistani Taliban), and Iraq, Syria, and Libya (against ISIS). The Obama administration then accelerated all these unconstitutional wars. Now Obama is trying shore up the already thin legal fig leaf, so that it can pass such travesties – which actually make Islamist groups more rabid each time the US intervenes – onto the incoming Trump administration. When Obama took office, he complained that he inherited from the Bush administration an economic meltdown and a military quagmire in Iraq, but he in turn is bequeathing a legal quagmire to his successor.

Source: Presidential War Is Unconstitutional – Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com

Have you noticed that the Congress has refused to do its job and vote on the authorization of war….and since they have not done their job….all these “wars” are unconstitutional and should be halted until such time as the Congress acts on the authorization thing.

Will Pres. Trump uphold the Constitution?  Or is it just a prop like with all other politicians?

Trump, Putin, and the New Middle East

The 2016 election has diverted my attention from the Middle East and conflicts to more mundane stuff like….POLITICS (yuk)…….

I have been keeping track of the situations in the region….but have not written too much for I am watching the development of the Trump cabinet……

His election will change things a bit in the Middle East and with the changes will come a storming Putin……

By Maged Mandour | ( OpenDemocracy.net ) | – – The election of Trump will give second wind to autocrats …

Even though Trump remains a wild card, his campaign as well as his cabinet choices to date offer a glimpse on the direction of the policies he intends to follow in the Middle East.

The Trump campaign revolved around the notion that America had become international laughing stock because it had been taken advantage of by its allies. Trump struck more of an isolationist tone arguing for the need for American allies to do more. He has also oscillated to more extreme and militaristic positions, which reflect a more aggressive stance; he stated, for example, that he would use torture, even if proven ineffective, resort to massive bombing campaigns against IS as well as expand Guantanamo bay prison.

Source: Trump, Putin, and the new Middle East

The Middle East will remain a focus of American foreign policy….but will it be for good or will it embrace a worse scenario?