Day: January 25, 2017

Closing Thought–25Jan17

The end of “net neutrality”?

DAMN!  I was slow on the uptake on this issue….I want to thank my friend at “The Ripening Wanderer” for his post to grab my attention……

Source: Some People Are Saying Trump Might End Net Neutrality | The Ripening Wanderer

I am a strong supporter of a regulation free internet and so are many others….looks like we could lose this battle with the new President….

Trump’s pick for control of the FCC is a disturbing one……

President Donald Trump has picked a fierce critic of the Obama-era “net neutrality” rules to be chief regulator of the nation’s airwaves and internet connections, the AP reports. In a statement Monday, Ajit Pai said he was grateful to the president for choosing him as the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Pai had been one of the two Republican commissioners on a five-member panel that regulates the country’s communications infrastructure, including TV, phone, and internet service. There are currently just three members on the panel. The Republicans’ new majority at the FCC, along with their control of Congress and the White House, is expected to help them roll back policies applauded by consumer advocates that upset many phone and cable industry groups, including net neutrality rules that bar internet service providers from favoring some websites and apps over others.

Pai has long maintained that the FCC under former Chairman Thomas Wheeler had overstepped its bounds, suggesting that he would steer the agency in a direction more favorable to big phone and cable companies. In a December speech, he expressed confidence that the 2015 net neutrality rules would be undone and said the FCC needed to take a “weed whacker” to what he considered unnecessary regulations that hold back investment and innovation. Consumer advocates have been concerned that a deregulation-minded FCC could potentially allow more huge mergers, overturn new protections for internet users, and lead to higher costs for media and technology companies that rely on the internet to reach consumers.

I wonder how the Right will take this news……I do not see how they can keep up a brave face in favor of Trump when he is about to screw their net connectability….somehow they will justify this in some warped way or another.

But enough of that…we will just have to wait and see who does what to whom.  But whenever there is a profit to be made it will win out over service……every time.

  Just saying.

“You Scratch Mine And I Will Do You”

How to secure job security…..

We all remember the FBI involvement in the 2016 election, right?  Or was that just too long ago for some of you people?

Well it looks like the head of the FBI gets a thank you from our new president…..

James Comey will stay on as FBI director under President Trump, reports the New York Times. Neither the White House nor the FBI has announced the news, but Comey has been telling top aides of late that the president wants him to remain. The Washington Post and ABC News have confirmed it. The decision has been closely watched, given Comey’s controversial role in the election: Hillary Clinton supporters say he cost her the election with a last-minute inquiry into her email that ultimately yielded nothing, while Trump had criticized his earlier decision not to bring criminal charges against her over the email.

Funny how that worked out, huh?

Nobody likes a “brown noser”….a “cheese eater”……

Twitocracy

A new word for the annals of political thought……”Twitocracy”….(God I love that term)…..

Now people will do what they do best…define this to fit their paradigm…..but I am talking about the use of Twitter…..nothing more…..

Our new prez did something that few other politicians, and yes he is a politician, at least now have been capable of doing…using Twitter to do his work for him.

I think it was brilliant in the beginning but now he is using it like most trolls use it….as an immature way to try and slap down any opposition…..a shame….he could use it for good but instead he rather act like a 5th grader in the school yard mash down….immature and juvenile…..

John Peeler: As long as his Twitter followers will follow, Trump will be able to instantly shape reality to suit his needs.

It surely was fun watching House Republicans fold before the Trump Twitternaut. They only wanted to gut an independent ethics watchdog panel, but they didn’t reckon with The Donald’s Tweet Power. Within hours of the closed-door vote, congressional offices were deluged by outraged constituents after Trump tweeted his disapproval. We are in a new era.

As long as his Twitter followers will follow, Trump will be able to instantly shape reality to suit his needs. As with the House GOP, he can crystallize a judgment that will resist evidence and force conformity. As with the CIA and Russian hacking of the election, he can, with no evidence whatsoever, cast doubt on the considered judgment of intelligence professionals, even while resisting being briefed by those same professionals. As with Hillary’s emails, he can magnify and distort an issue without regard to truth, to his own advantage.

Source: Twitocracy: The Trump Era – LA Progressive

So is the 24-hour media failing the public?

Yes it is…….every time they respond to his Twitocracy then he has won and their reporting is bogus……

Trump is media fodder. Every day he offers two scoops of drama with a hearty dash of intrigue.

And while Trump is great for TV ratings, commercial success comes at a cost. He uses the mass media—especially the 24-hour news networks—for self-serving advantage.

He can do that because he’s crafty, having lived in the media space for so many years. He knows that many Americans get news from social media (60%+ according to a recent Pew study). And he knows that 24-hour news networks serve as a primary news source for many folks around the country.

Source: Why 24-Hour News Channels Are Failing America – LA Progressive

By giving Trump what he wants then the media is failing the public….they take the bait and run with it….giving the slugs more bait to keep the media occupied and moving in an approved trajectory…

Was Obama A Transformational President?

Some of the people I talk with think that Obama was a very transformational president….others think that the country went down the toilet under his leadership….me?

I do not think he was all that transformational…..his admin was very similar to that of Bush and that of the Clinton one…..he did give us a health care law….the problem as I see it is that it was too weak and controlled by the industry it was suppose to control…his signature trade deal, the TPP, was horrible in the vane of NAFTA…his financial regulations were weak at best…and thise are just the ones off the top of my head….

This all brought up an interesting thought….so I do what I always do….go looking for answers….and I found an article in the Politico that covers this question….

For weeks now, the impending departure of Barack Obama from the White House has inspired a run of paeans to his greatness, a flood of laments about how much he’ll be missed. Everywhere there are bouquets to his classy family, tributes to his avoidance of scandal, toasts to his decency, appreciations of his dry wit. Even his reading habits are cause for celebration: “Not since Lincoln has there been a president as fundamentally shaped—in his life, convictions and outlook on the world—by reading and writing as Barack Obama,” wrote the book critic Michiko Kakutani in a front-page New York Times story. (Really? More than Theodore Roosevelt, who read a book a day and wrote more than 30 himself? Or Woodrow Wilson, our only Ph.D. president and one of the leading political scientists of his era?)

Source: Was Obama a Transformational President? – POLITICO Magazine

Sorry but I do not see where anything got better for the people of this nation under the leadership of Obama…..well beyond the top 1% that is……

Now we move on and wait to see if Trump will be all that transformational…..so far it appears that it will not be so much….but it is early in his rule….we will just have to wait and see.

Be patient….we are told…..something we Americans are not that good at doing…..the country and the world are watching….

Libya: Blood And Sand

It has been years since the fall of Qaddafi and in those years Libya has become a battlefield for terrorists, Westerners and ideologies….the country has sunk into a deadly civil war with different factions claiming control of the country….

We have a new president and the foreign policy toward Libya with his ascent to the tower of power….no one is sure what will come….

Just days before he left his digs in DC Obama called for a massive airstrike in Libya…….

As he’s done several times since last summer, Barack Obama, in one of his final acts as president this week, ordered a bombing raid against Islamic State (IS) militants “in conjunction” with Tripoli’s UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA).

The raid on militants who were fleeing the former IS stronghold of Sirte reportedly killed more than 80 fighters and sent a clear message on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration that the Pentagon is fully committed to the fight against the terrorist group. Just as significantly, the Pentagon’s statement highlighting the GNA’s role reminded the incoming administration that the United States has a Libyan partner in that fight.
No one has any idea what the future holds for Libya…that is a future that America will dictate…..
Will Libya find unity or will it slide further down the ladder of civil war?

On January 11, 2017, Field Commander Khalifa Haftar, the head of the Libyan National Army (LNA), was a guest aboard the Russian aircraft carrier The Admiral Kuznetsov, docked off the Libyan coast at Tobruk, en route from Syria back to Russia. During his tour of Russia’s only aircraft carrier, General Haftar held a closed-circuit video conference with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. It was the third time in seven months that Haftar was hosted by Moscow and spoke with Shoigu. Haftar is seeking Russian weapons, banned under a still-in-effect United Nations arms embargo. Russia did provide General Haftar’s LNA with medical equipment and other non-lethal aid during the carrier visit. And in 2016, Russia printed 4 billion Libyan dinars, equivalent to $2.8 billion, in a formal contract with the Libyan central bank. The funds were delivered to a location in eastern Libya under General Haftar’s control. 

Since September 2016, Haftar’s LNA has controlled the four major oil ports in the Gulf of Sirte and two of the country’s largest oil fields in the east.  He enjoys the backing of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and France. Now, with the strong addition of Russia, General Haftar is testing his ability to consolidate military control over parts of western Libya that have been outside of his control since the start of the power struggle, following the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime in late 2011.

Source: Libya at the Crossroad: New National Accord or Full-scale Civil War | Middle East Briefing

Libya has a future but will that future be at the hands of a CIA operative?

The 10th session of Libya’s neighboring countries meeting held in Cairo urged dialogue as the only solution to put an end to the Libyan crisis.

The meeting was attended by the foreign ministers of Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Chad, and Niger, and the head of the UN Special Mission to Libya, Martin Kobler, Arab League’s Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit, African Union Special Envoy in Libya, Jakaya Kikwete and representatives of international organizations.

The final official communique of the meeting reiterated rejection of any military action or foreign military interference in Libya, highlighted the importance of cooperation among Libya’s neighbors in border security and agreed to hold their 11th meeting in Algeria, but the date has not yet been decided.

Source: Will Haftar Accept a Role in the Libyan GNA Government? – Middle East Observer

You see Haftar has been on the payroll of the CIA for over 20 years…..so is he a agent working for the agency or is he just a Qaddafi-esque mad man waiting to seize total control?