Day: August 10, 2017

Closing Thought–10Aug17

Finally!  Call It What It Is!

Our fearless leader gets a daily intel briefing once a day…..but he gets two briefings that massages his ego…..

President Donald Trump has a folder delivered to him twice a day that’s full of positive headlines, tweets, interviews, and sometimes photographs of him on TV “looking powerful,” VICE News reported on Tuesday.

The folder, dubbed “the Propaganda Document” by some in the White House, is prepared by the communications team. The only feedback the White House press shop has ever gotten about the folder, VICE said, was that “it needs to be more f—— positive.”

The process of putting the folder together is long and tedious, and starts at 6 a.m. ET every morning in the Republican National Committee’s “war room,” according to VICE. Staffers keep tabs on the morning shows on three major cable news networks — CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News — while searching for positive headlines about Trump on the internet. They then email the White House communications team proposed tweets, transcripts, and headlines to include.

(Business Insider)

The “Folder”……..Consisting of about 20-25 pages, the packet is filled with screenshots of positive cable news headlines, admiring tweets, transcripts of positive TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of the president on TV looking powerful, Vice News reported, citing White House sources.

The folder is said to be compiled from the clippings that are sent to the White House from the Republican National Committee’s “war room,” which monitors local and national news, cable television, social media, digital media, and print media.

Twice a day he gets his ego massaged….at 0930 and 1630 hrs…..

Intel reports are not important enough for 2 briefings but his ego is……we now know what is important and what is not…..

STOP!  The parade I want to get off this float!

Day draws silently to an end…..the grill is hot and the chicken awaits…..have a wonderful evening….see you guys later….chuq

Was The Big Bang Necessary?

August is the month that we celebrate the end of WW2 by defeating Japan…..we all know about this event…..but there are others that involved Japan that we are nor privy to…..I will expand that historic event a bit……

I recently posted, on Gulf South Free Press, an op-ed on the nukes dropped on Japan that ended WW2….there was a spirited back and forth in the comments section.

In case you missed the op-ed……

Source: That Big Bang – Gulf South Free Press

Points were made before pro and con……then I read a piece about the Soviet Union’s enter into the war against Japan…..

At the Tehran Conference in Nov 1943 and at the Yalta Conference in Feb 1945, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had agreed declare war on Japan three months after Germany would be defeated. On 5 Apr 1945, the Soviet Union informed Japan that the Soviet Union would not renew the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact of 1941, which ensured non-aggression between the two nations through 13 Apr 1946. At 2300 hours Transbaikal time on 8 Aug 1945, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov informed Japanese ambassador Sato that the Soviet Union was revoking the neutrality pact with a declaration of war effective on 9 Aug; at this point, the neutrality pact was still six months from its natural expiration.

At one minute past midnight on 9 Aug 1945, or 61 minutes after the declaration of war, Soviet troops organized in three fronts poured into Japanese-occupied northeastern China, a region also known by its historical name of Manchuria. Northeastern China had been governed by the Japanese-sponsored puppet regime of Manchukuo since 1932. The Soviet troops were of the Far Eastern Command under the overall command of Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, who devised a giant pincer movement against the unprepared Japanese troops. In Vasilevsky’s plan, the Transbaikal Front under Marshal R. Y. Malinovsky was to attack from the west across the Inner Mongolian desert and over the Greater Khingan mountain range, with Mukden (Shenyang), Liaoning Province, China as the primary target; the attached 36th Army was to break off after the initial invasion and head toward Harbin and Qiqihar to meet the 2nd Far East Front. The 2nd Far East Front under General M. A. Purkayev attacked in the center largely in a support role only, with the primary objectives of securing Harbin and Qiqihar, upon the successful completion of which, the front was to move toward the port of Lushunkou (Russian: Port-Artur; Anglicized: Port Arthur) of the city of Dalian, Liaoning Province after the 1st Far East Front completed its primary objectives. Finally, from the east over the Lesser Khingan mountain range, the 1st Far East Front under Marshal K. A. Meretskov was to capture the cities in east, including Changchun; its secondary objective was to cut off Japanese escape routes into Korea, and its tertiary objective was to invade and occupy northern Korea. In total, 1,577,725 men in 89 divisions with the support of 3,704 tanks, 1,852 self-propelled guns, 27,086 artillery pieces, and 3,721 aircraft were utilized in the invasion.

Source: Manchurian Strategic Offensive | World War II Database

The war was won…but did it have to end the way it did?

There Might Be A Problem

Note:  This draft was written before the latest mash-up and threats against North Korea.

As a geek for all the stuff in the Middle East I found myself becoming drawn into the situation with North Korea…especially these days with all the hype about their missile tests.

The days of their nuke tests is over…that is until they detonate another one and then the hype will start all over.

These days it is all the missile tests that NK is conducting…..the hype is that they can reach our allies of Japan and SK and now with the ballistic tests they could reach as far inland as Chicago.

Of course this hype has lead to a wealth of hysteria and hyperbole…..

But there is a small problem with the most recent test…..

North Korea’s latest missile launch was seen as a worrying success that means much of the US mainland is now in reach of Pyongyang’s missiles—but analysts have seen signs that not everything went according to plan. Video shows that the mock warhead on the intercontinental ballistic missile apparently breaks up during re-entry, suggesting that North Korea has so far been unable to create a warhead capable of surviving the extreme heat of re-entry, the New York Times reports. Missile expert Michael Elleman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London says it could take around six months for North Korea to fix the problem, buying the US more time to plan missile defense systems.

The need to fix the warhead problem also means the North is likely to have to carry out more ICBM tests, giving the US more opportunities to respond. “We will handle North Korea. We are gonna be able to handle them,” President Trump told reporters Monday. “It will be handled. We handle everything.” In addition to the ICBM test, the US says it has detected “highly unusual and unprecedented levels” of North Korean submarine activity, along with signs of a missile “ejection test,” a defense official tells CNN.

This will not play well with all the garbage we are fed daily.

In reality, experts say the video footage of the ICBM shows that it broke up upon re-entry, and hit the sea in pieces. Lack of re-entry capability, along with lack of advanced guidance technology, were both cited as problems with the previous test as well.

Indeed, some have argued this makes North Korea’s missile an ICBM only in the loosest sense of the word, as it lacks necessary technology to be accurately fired at such a long range. At its core, these missiles are just medium range missiles with an extra stage of fuel that makes them seem like they’d go farther.

Funny this was not important to the MSM…..but then I would not expect it to be worthy of their attention for it does not fit the paradigm of the day.

As I said before…..hype and hyperbole.

Trumponomics

I recently read a fellow blogger and friend’s post about the Pres. Trump and the MSM on economics…..and it got me to thinking….but before I throw my couple of pennies into the fray…here is his post….

Source: Lame Stream Ignores Record-Breaking Stock Market Performance Under Trump | The More Than Unlikely Kingdom Of An Imaginary Billionaire Named John

I have said many times that Trump needs to hype the excellent market figures and the unemployment stats when he makes his on-the-road speeches.

There will be some that will say that the good economic news is just hold overs from Obama….but Trump is doing what every president, nay every leader has done….if you are the sitting leader then take credit for the good news…nothing wrong there.

After I read my fellow blogger’s post I got to looking into the thing some will call “Trumponomics”.

I found an interview that was posted on the pro-Libertarian site, The Unz Review……

SHARMINI PERIES: It’s the Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. The rise of stock prices in the US stock market could be an indication of economic growth and prosperity, but it could also be an indication of the concentration of wealth of the rich and powerful. Which is it? To answer that question, we need to look at other economic indicators. In the press conference that President Trump had just a few days ago announcing his new chief of staff, General John Kelly, Trump took the opportunity to give himself credit for the rising stock prices. Let’s listen.

Source: Trumponomics and the Stock Market – The Unz Review

I found another op-ed that covers the phenon called “Trumponomics”

It has been six months since US President Donald Trump took office.

Amid a slow and disorderly White House transition – including a string of prominent departures – and an ongoing investigation into his Russia ties, Trump is trying to divert the world’s attention to the US economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average just hit the 22,000 mark for the first time in its 121-year history. Stocks headed higher even as Wall Street lost confidence that Trump’s election proposals like tax cuts and infrastructure spending will be pushed through Congress.

Source: ‘Trumponomics’: Making America great again? | USA | Al Jazeera

Trump needs to focus on these small successes and less on who said what about him…..make the case for Trumponomics…..it will force the MSM to cover and comment.