Day: December 4, 2017

Closing Thought–04Dec17

A few weeks ago the Right Wing media was all outraged by the senseless attack on some ICE agents on the border….it was so damn important that it lead Fearless Fosdick to Tweet out his outrage at this savage attack by those damn “illegals”….this went on for a couple of days until something else popped up to grab the Right wing’s attention….like a shiny set of keys.

I want to know if they are so dedicated to the “truth” how they will handle this news…..

A Texas sheriff who was among the first people to reach two badly injured US Border Patrol agents said he thinks they were hurt in an accident, not an attack, the AP reports. The injured agents were found Nov. 18 next to Interstate 10 near Van Horn, which is about 30 miles from the border with Mexico. Agent Rogelio Martinez succumbed to traumatic head injuries and broken bones. His partner, who has not been identified, was seriously injured and hospitalized for several days. The agent has no memory of what happened that night. Culberson County Sheriff Oscar Carrillo said he thinks a tractor-trailer may have accidentally sideswiped the pair, the Dallas Morning News reported. I-10 is a heavily traveled route for truck drivers and accidents regularly occur, Carrillo said.

“From the beginning we were radioed to assist in the incident as an injury, not an assault,” Carrillo said. “If this was an assault, believe me, as sheriff, I’d be the first one out there emphasizing safety in our community and with our deputies.” It’s not clear why Martinez and his partner were along the highway and US Customs and Border Protection only said in a statement that they “were responding to activity.” A Border Patrol union, the National Border Patrol Council, has said the pair was attacked and struck with a rock or rocks. President Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also have said the two were attacked. Special Agent in Charge Emmerson Buie Jr. in the FBI’s El Paso office said last week that investigators were treating the incident as a “potential assault,” but they could not rule out other scenarios.

Don’t bother looking for they will ignore this news and just keep push their brand of hate and vile….as always…..they got their hate out of the original story….so no need to report on the rest of the story if it craps on their hate filled rants.

Can You Name The Rifles That Made America?

That time again….the old professor’s history lesson….(heavy sighs and eye rolls)…..

We know all the people that have made America great, right?

And since the 2nd amendment is that preeminent rule of the land……….but can you name the rifles that made this country great?

Ever since the 13 colonies gathered enough gumption to form a union, U.S. soldiers have carried an evolving range of weapons, from flintlocks pistols to lever actions to assault rifles. The American soldier has fought many battles through the generations. The first line of defense has always been the rifle.

The earliest European settlers brought matchlock muskets to American shores, but by the 18th century these had been replaced with flintlocks, which used flint to ignite gunpowder. These flintlocks armed the minutemen and the new Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

At the outbreak of the war, the Continental Army was desperate for weapons, and American gunsmiths scrambled to manufacture copies of the British Brown Bess. Meanwhile, Britain’s age-old rival France was eager to undermine Britain’s grip on the North American colonies (and none-too-pleased about how the Seven Years War turned out, either.) So, in 1776, France began in secret to supply smoothbore, flintlock muskets. These muskets, made at France’s military arsenals like the one at Charleville, worked much like the Brown Bess. When the trigger was pulled, a flint struck a spark and ignited the powder charge, firing a round lead ball.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a13938194/history-of-us-military-rifle/

There you have the guns that made this country great….and continues to do so….

Terrorists Are No Longer Needed

There was a time when the Islamophobes needed a terrorist attack or the threat there of for them to spread their hatred to the rest of the Americans that fear whatever it is they fear.

Those days are gone!

The Right Wing has sanctuary cities to demonize……and still have immigrants to hate…..without an attack somewhere they hit all the old stand-bys…..

Fearless Fosdick decided to retweet some racist bullshit….. President Donald Trump’s decision to retweet a series of anti-Muslim videos from a British far-right account.  Then afterward his press secretary defended the president saying……”Whether it is a real video, the threat is real,” Sanders told a small group of reporters after appearing on Fox News. “That is what the President is talking about, that is what the President is focused on is dealing with those real threats, and those are real no matter how you look at it.”

When pressed on whether it matters if the video is real, Sanders said reporters were “focusing on the wrong thing.”
“The threat is real,” she said, later adding that “the threat needs to be addressed. The threat has to be talked about and that is what the President is doing in bringing that up.”
So you see terrorists are no longer needed in this country to help drive the Islamophobia……but in case you still cannot see it……
When asked by reporters on Wednesday about President Trump’s retweets of anti-Muslim videos, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “what the President is talking about is the need for national security, the need for military spending.”
Her talking points are out of date. The videos are not about “national security” at all. The first supposedly depicts a Muslim migrant beating up a Dutch boy on crutches. (The assailant may have been neither a migrant nor Muslim). The second supposedly shows a Muslim man destroying a statue of the Virgin Mary. It appears to have been filmed in Syria. The third apparently shows an “Islamist mob” pushing “a teenage boy off a roof.” It comes from Egypt. None involves terrorism against the United States or even Europe. None could have been prevented by more “military spending.”
As disgusting as Fearless Fosdick was by retweet these worthless turds of lies…. the outrage was greater in the UK than it was here in the US.  Did you hear anyone from Congress criticize….from the GOP that is?
That is just so sad on so many levels.
WE live in the so-called “Digital Age” and social media is very conducive for the spread of lies and hate….and NO one does it better than Fearless Fosdick……
For many Americans who woke up to President Trump’s tweets Wednesday morning, these videos seemed unduly hateful, and in the case of the video of the boy on the crutches, even fraudulent. (According to Dutch authorities, the assailant was born and raised in The Netherlands.) But for researchers of propaganda, the historical parallels within the videos were more chilling than anything else. There are, they say, just two differences between the German caricatures and the President’s tweets. First, the social media age has given Trump more readers on Twitter than the Der Stürmer or Der Untermensch ever had. And second, we have no way of knowing how this chapter in history will end
Don’t let yourself be fooled by these types of people and their followers……and anyone that retweets their crap is a follower…..they spew nothing but hate…..every word they utter are lies and every thought is hateful.

Would You Believe It Is North Korea Again?

You know there is not a lot to write about these days…..sex, investigations or just the sheer stupidity of the president…..I guess this post would fall in the last category.

I cannot tear myself away from the whole North Korea drama…..it has everything a good false flag should have…..the end game is that if we do not act then the missile with our name on it is headed for downtown Chicago.

Well the continuing saga…..North Korea fired a new ballistic missile…..and now we pick up the story as it unfolds…….

North Korea released dozens of photos Thursday of the Hwasong-15, a new intercontinental ballistic missile it claims can reach any target in the continental US. The AP reports the photo dump, published in the paper and online editions of the ruling party’s official daily, is a gold mine for rocket experts trying to parse reality from bluster. Their general conclusion is that it’s bigger, more advanced, and comes with a domestically made mobile launcher that will make it harder than ever to pre-emptively destroy. But there’s a potentially major catch: It might not have the power to go much farther than the West Coast if it’s loaded down with a real nuclear warhead, not a dummy like the one it carried in its test launch on Wednesday. Here’s a closer look:

  • The Missile: The new missile appears to be significantly bigger than the Hwasong-14 ICBM tested twice in July. It dwarfs North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who stands about 5 feet 7 inches tall. Size is important because a missile targeting the US would have to carry a lot of fuel.
  • The Launcher: North Korea boasted that the Hwasong-15 was fired from a domestically made erector-launcher vehicle. The photos back that up. Being able to make its own mobile launch vehicles, called TELs, frees the North from the need to get them from other countries, like China, which is crucial considering the tightening of international sanctions that North Korea faces.
  • The Payload: North Korea claims the Hwasong-15 can carry a “super-heavy” nuclear payload to any target in the mainland US. But the heavier the load the shorter the range. Michael Elleman, a leading missile expert, has suggested that Hwasong-15’s estimated 8,100-mile range assumes a payload of around 330 pounds, which is probably much lighter than any real nuclear payload the North can produce.

Okay their boasting has been confirmed….now enter the clueless ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley……she adds to the drama…..

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said Wednesday that North Korea’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile that some observers believe could reach Washington and the entire U.S. Eastern Seaboard “brings us closer” to a war the U.S. doesn’t seek.

Haley, speaking at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, said that if war comes as a result of further acts of “aggression” like Tuesday’s launch, “make no mistake the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed.”

“The dictator of North Korea made a decision yesterday that brings us closer to war, not farther from it,” Haley said. “We have never sought war with North Korea and still today we do not seek it.”

You know I bet if we could ask Li’l Kim he would have a different opinion than Haley….all he needed to do was quote Trump and Haley on several events and he would conclude that war was eminent.

Moving on with the script….after this most recent test what can the US do?  More sanctions?  What is left that we have not already sanctioned?  But please tell the audience what is there to do?

Will our protagonist will turn to his nemesis China…..

China’s main leverage point with North Korea is the supply of oil — but Beijing is wary of shutting it off out of concern that Pyongyang could turn on Beijing.

What to watch: If China does not at least reduce the oil supply to North Korea, expect the U.S. to sanction a major Chinese financial institution, such as China Merchants Bank or the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, to “punish” Chinese inaction. But that could backfire, as the anger in Beijing may lead China to halt any cooperation with the U.S. over North Korea.

The bottom line: China is not going to fix this problem. The U.S. either accepts a nuclear North Korea and sits down for negotiations once Kim is willing to talk, attempts a deterrence strategy that allows the region to live with a nuclear North Korea, or launches a pre-emptive war.

So what will be the next chapter of this saga?

“I want your listeners to know that by the end of this week there’s gonna be some strong signals to China and North Korea that the military option is very viable,”Senator Lindsey Graham told Tony Perkins on his radio show Wednesday.

The South Carolina Republican, who in recent months has conveyed President Trump’s most chilling threats to the Kim regime, did not specify what he had in mind, but he did lay down a marker. As Graham told Perkins, “Now, nobody wants a war with North Korea, thousands, maybe millions, could get hurt or get killed but the president has to pick between our homeland security and regional stability and he has told me, he has told the Chinese, that he’s not going to live under the threat of a nuclear attack from North Korea and if he has to use military force he will and if there’s going to be a war it’s going to be in China’s backyard.”

https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2017/12/01/is_donald_trump_getting_ready_to_attack_north_korea_112645.html

Is there something missing with the Trump strategy?

US President Donald Trump certainly has a point when he complains that he inherited the difficult problem in North Korea. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has shown no interest in negotiation, or even in listening to what anyone has to say about his reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles needed to deliver them.

But the fact that Trump inherited the problem does not absolve him of responsibility for addressing it. So far, he has failed even to articulate, much less implement, a strategy for dealing with North Korea. Almost one year into his presidency, his only achievement has been to secure additional sanctions at the United Nations. Worse still, his bitter complaints about his predecessors suggest that he has no idea what to do next.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-north-korea-terrorist-list-by-christopher-r-hill-2017-11

This saga continues….our protagonist being the loud mouth bully that he is cannot help himself but make the situation worse….but how much worse can this get before it boils over in the fires of war?

Check out Lindsey Graham on Face The Nation…..

https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2017/12/03/lindsey-graham-talks-war-coming-north-korea/

Scary stuff!

But with all the rhetoric there are still options that could be taken….if only the loud mouths would consider them……takes little effort to read the proposal…..

https://www.usip.org/publications/2017/11/united-states-north-korea-stuck-dangerous-zero-sum-game

Please do not let “STUPID” rule the day.

Am I high?

Look who is president….STUPID is all we have.

Merry Christmas Suckers!

GOP is smiling with joy for they made their rich clients happy this holiday season….

For a couple weeks now the GOP has been running around to try and get the votes that need to shove a tax plan up the butts of most Americans……even Fearless Fosdick has been telling  his adoring mobs what a good deal this bill will be for most of us (will explain that pile of manure a little later in this post)…..even the so-called “mavericks of Flake, Collins, Graham and McCain have decided that party politics is more important than the people they serve…..who am I kidding?  They serve their rich masters.

“We have the votes.” So declared Mitch McConnell Friday on the GOP’s bid to push a $1.4 trillion tax bill through the Senate. The final vote in the chamber is expected to come later Friday. The Senate majority leader’s comment came soon after the No. 2 Senate GOP leader, John Cornyn of Texas, said the same, per the AP. With the party controlling the Senate 52-48 and Democrats uniformly opposed, Republicans need 50 votes to win approval; VP Pence would break a tie. The measure’s momentum was boosted Friday when Sen. Ron Johnson said he’d vote for it after leaders agreed to his demand to make tax breaks more generous for millions of businesses. Sen. Steve Daines also backed the legislation after winning an increase in the business income deduction from 17.4% to 20%.

The bill seemed to be sailing toward passage Thursday, until a report out of the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the package would produce budget deficits totaling $1 trillion over the next 10 years. Advocates say the measure’s tax cuts will spark enough economic growth to pay for the lowered levies. The projection left the votes of several GOP senators in doubt, including Tennessee’s Bob Corker and Arizona’s Jeff Flake; Maine’s Susan Collins is also up in the air. Cornyn said leaders are still working on any holdouts. Senate passage would push Congress a step closer to the first rewrite of the nation’s tax code in 31 years. Unlike the House tax bill recently passed, the Senate measure would end the Obama requirement that people pay a tax penalty if they don’t buy health insurance.

Of course the boot lickers of Fearless Fosdick will be in awe of this bill and all it does for us mere mortals but most of it is fracking lies!

As Senate Republicans proclaimed on Friday that they have the votes to pass a $1.5 trillion tax bill whose contents have been kept secret from virtually everyone except corporate lobbyists, progressive lawmakers and activists are once more warning that the GOP is planning to use the massive deficit hole its plan would create to justify taking a sledgehammer to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—a ploy one group has termed the “tax two-step.”

Indivisible released a video explaining the tactic, which has been utilized by Republicans for decades—but which might now be deployed on a scale never seen.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/01/gop-tax-scam-two-step-explode-deficit-cuts-rich-then-screw-poor

Forget campaign promises and White House propaganda about prosperity via tax cuts. The GOP is poised to show every American who isn’t wealthy that it couldn’t care less about their daily economic struggles.

That message comes in the $1.5 trillion tax bill that is on the verge of Senate passage, following a slightly different version the House passed a few weeks ago. Fiscally, the legislation gives temporary minimal tax cuts to the middle-class—on the order of 1 percent or so—while giving increasingly larger and permanent cuts to corporations and wealthy Americans, whose financial portfolios are not commonplace.

https://www.alternet.org/economy/gop-tax-plan-giant-middle-finger-hundreds-millions-americans

Oh there is so much more……

Republicans plan to pass a bill this week to allow churches to engage in political activity. And they plan to pass a bill that limits state spending on education. And a bill that caps state health care. And a bill that cripples public transportation. And a bill that will end the individual mandate on healthcare and drive up insurance prices. And a bill that would halt abortions.

And, incidentally, they plan to pass a bill that gifts trillions to millionaires and corporations while driving up both costs and taxes for the working and middle class. Because all of this, and more, is rolled into the Republican “tax bill.”

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/monstrous-details-republican-tax-plan-trump-doesnt-want-you-know-about

And there is the endless use of the term “trigger” when this bill is talked about….would you like to know what that is all about?  Good.  ‘Cause here it is……

As Senate Republicans barrel toward a tax vote, lawmakers worried about the national debt are in search of some kind of last-minute fix — except no one knows what that fix will be.

The idea is still in a conceptual stage: If the rosy deficit forecasts from this tax bill prove to be inaccurate, and the economy does not grow as fast as Republican leaders are saying it will, then they want a trigger mechanism in place to in some way address that.

Matt Yglesias explained how that would work in theory, but “in practice, the economic impact of some kind of backstop provision is going to hinge on the implementation details.” Those details are far from final.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/30/16716860/senate-tax-bill-deficit-trigger

Now they will hammer out the final bill between the two houses….God only knows how much more screwing will come out of that session.

But this should tell you all you need to know about your new “tax cut” bill……

Republicans have already made few bones about the fact that this bill was basically a payoff to their wealthy donors, but Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley took things to another level when he openly displayed the contempt for ordinary Americans that is the beating heart of his party’s politics.

In an interview with the Des Moines Register, Grassley said that people who “invest” are more deserving of tax cuts because they don’t waste their money on frivolities:

“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley said, “as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

Congrats!  If this is signed into law, and it will, then the Congress has just fucked the entire nation that has to work for a living….this will go down as one of the biggest rip-offs in American history.

And YOU VOTED for it…..now live with it!

ISIS leader al-Baghdadi makes headlines yet again…….

Guess what……He’s alive yet again?

I have written about this mystical person, the spiritual leader of ISIS, al-Baghdadi….it seem this guy has more lives than an alley cat……one of my recent posts explains this situation…..

https://lobotero.com/2017/11/30/hes-not-dead-hes-our-leader/

And then when the last word was that he was dead came out another report surfaced about this person…according to this report he is alive yet again but serious injured….

 The leader of the Islamic State group (ISIS), now in retreat across the Mideast, remains alive, albeit wounded, and hiding near the Iraq-Syria border, according to intelligence gathered by Iraq’s Ministry of Defense (MOD).

“We have a lot of information. He is alive, moving between the Iraq and Syria border in desert areas,” Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, the spokesperson for the MOD and for Joint Operations Command, in partnership with the U.S.-led coalition, told Fox News in Baghdad on Tuesday. “There are still ISIS sleeper cells scattered in these desert areas.”

More specifically, MOD intelligence indicates the self-styled caliph lurks between the border city of Al-Qaim in the Anbar governorate in Iraq and Abu Kamal in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor governorate, on the bank of the Euphrates River.

Do read on…….

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/11/28/isis-leader-baghdadi-hiding-near-iraq-syria-border-alive-but-injured-iraqi-military-says.html

Like I said….more lives than an alley cat.

Believe the hype when we see his body or him tap dancing across the desert sand.

This is getting boring.