Day: September 21, 2018

Closing Thought–21Sep18

An American institution is heading for a fall.  American agriculture is heading for a fall.

It is time for the harvest!

I have been watching this sector of our economy closely….one because the new tariffs could have a lasting effect on the farming in this country…..I have written a couple posts recently….

https://lobotero.com/2017/12/18/closing-thought-18dec17/

https://lobotero.com/2018/07/25/the-coming-farm-aid/

The Wall Street Journal is also watching this sector and their insights are not very good for the coming year…..

The Farm Belt is hurtling toward a milestone: Soon there will be fewer than two million farms in America for the first time since pioneers moved westward after the Louisiana Purchase.

Across the heartland, a multiyear slump in prices for corn, wheat and other farm commodities brought on by a glut of grain world-wide is pushing many farmers further into debt. Some are shutting down, raising concerns that the next few years could bring the biggest wave of farm closures since the 1980s.

The U.S. share of the global grain market is less than half what it was in the 1970s. American farmers’ incomes will drop 9% in 2017, the Agriculture Department estimates, extending the steepest slide since the Great Depression into a fourth year.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-american-farm-bust-is-upon-us-1486572488

How sad that a true American institution is slowly withering away….the government will step in but it may be too late for it to save this way of life.

Leave It To Bubba

It is no secret that I was NOT a supporter of Bill Clinton by any stretch of the imagination…..I believe it was his policies that caused so many of the problems we have today….his push to repeal Glass-Steagall ( GLASS-STEAGALL ACT OF 1933) lead to the crash of 2008….his push for NAFTA lead to the rush of immigrants…..his conservative policies have lead us to this point in our history.

But the biggest screw up was his wimpy pursuit of Osama bin Laden after the bombings in Kenya….and if he had been more aggressive then there is the possibility that 9/11 may not have happened.

The White House Situation Room was buzzing. It was fall 1998 and the National Security Council (NSC) and the “intelligence community” were tracking the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, the shadowy mastermind of terrorist attacks on American targets overseas. “They’ve successfully triangulated his location,” yelled a “Sit Room” watch stander. “We’ve got him.”

Beneath the West Wing of the White House, behind a vaulted steel door, the Sit Room staff sprang into action. The watch officer notified National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, “Sir, we’ve located bin Laden. We have a two-hour window to strike.”

Characteristic of the Clinton administration, the weapons of choice would be Tomahawk missiles. No clandestine “snatch” by our Special Operations Forces. No penetrating bombers or highspeed fighter aircraft flown by our Air Force and Navy forces. No risk of losing American lives.

http://humanevents.com/2006/09/11/how-bill-clinton-compromised-americas-national-security/

Clinton’s hesitation did nothing to make the US safer…..and allowed Osama to function worldwide.

Further Reading:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/16/bill-clinton-and-the-missed-opportunities-to-kill-osama-bin-laden/

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/80966001-157.html

https://dailycaller.com/2016/09/10/pre-911-flashback-how-bill-clinton-missed-bin-laden/

 

What Did That Cost?

We have been bombarded in the last couple of weeks on the nominee for the Supreme Court….and more recently about the accusation of sexual misconduct….and now there is even more news on this subject…..

A former classmate of Christine Blasey Ford has changed her tune a bit after initially stating, “This incident did happen” in a Facebook post about Ford’s allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school. You can see a screenshot of Cristina King Miranda’s Wednesday post, which has since been deleted, here; in it, Miranda says she knew Ford, Kavanaugh, and Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge (who Ford says was in the room during the alleged assault) in high school and describes a “completely out of control” drinking environment. She says she was one of the more than 200 alumnae of Maryland’s Holton-Arms School who signed an open letter supporting Ford, and that “many of us heard about [the Ford-Kavanaugh incident] in school.” But in a new interview with NPR, Miranda denies knowing whether the assault happened.

“That it happened or not, I have no idea. I can’t say that it did or didn’t,” Miranda says. “In my [Facebook] post, I was empowered and I was sure it probably did [happen]. I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter.” She says she played soccer with Ford and that she still supports her and believes her, but she wasn’t expecting to be contacted by staff from the Senate Judiciary Committee after posting on Facebook. She says that if the committee asks to interview her, she will decline. She also posted on Twitter (though her account appears to have since been deleted) that she does “not have first hand knowledge of the incident” Ford describes. But, she tells NPR, she remembers a “buzz” going around involving a serious incident at a party involving students from her school and Kavanaugh’s school.

When I read this story the first thing that entered my mind was…..wonder how much that cost the team?”

As I always try to say….he is accused of misconduct….this needs to play out and cut the theatrics (which is impossible in DC for theatrics is all they have)…

The GOP seems to be in a rush to confirm for the good of the court…..seriously….they allowed the court to function with a judge down for damn near a year and it is important now but not 2 years ago…..this is what I point to when I call them all hypocrites…….

Personally, I do not trust the guy…his hair looks like that of a Baptist preacher and I do not trust a preacher as far as I can toss them.

Turn The Page!

Will The War On Terror Succeed?

The deadly attacks of 9/11 marked the beginning of a new war declared by DC….the War On Terror.

We Americans declared war on many things….on drugs, on poverty, and now on terror…..and of the wars we have declared after 1945 have NOT brought about a victory.

The War on Poverty was a heady idea and was a flop at best….the war on drugs has been nothing short of a massive failure that we still fund with the hopes that something good will happen.

And now we have another “War” to fund…the War on Terror.

After 17 years can we declare victory…or at least a success?

It has been a great success…..a success at creating far more terrorists than it eliminates.

In the 17 years since the events of Sept. 11 2001, after which the United States declared a “global war on terror,” there has not been a terrorist attack of similar size or magnitude on American soil.

However, according to findings in a new congressionally mandated report by the United States Institute of Peace—authored by members of a federal task force focused on extremism—nations around the world have suffered a five-fold increase in terrorist attacks following the post-9/11 policies unleashed by the U.S. and its allies.

The focus of the report—titled Beyond the Homeland: Protecting America from Extremism in Fragile States—maintains a very U.S.-centric worldview. And while it does little or nothing to critically challenge the widely criticized policies pursued by the Bush, Obama, or Trump presidencies, its tabulation of the dramatic rise in destablized states and growing terrorist violence throughout the regions where the U.S. military has been most active since 2001—namely, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa—is nonetheless revealing.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/09/17/us-led-global-war-terrorism-has-succeeded-creating-more-global-terrorism

I mean look at Al-Qaeda….they were the bastards that attacked the US in 2001……destroyed and killed much……and yet this same organization, AQ, is being protected in Syria by the US military……

In a rare and unprecedented speech delivered on the House floor just two days after the nation memorialized 9/11, Democratic Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard on Thursday slammed Washington’s longtime support to anti-Assad jihadists in Syria, while also sounding the alarm over the current build-up of tensions between the US and Russia over the Syria crisis.

She called on Congress to condemn what she called the Trump Administration’s protection of al-Qaeda in Idlib and slammed Washington’s policies in Syria as “a betrayal of the American people” — especially the victims and families that perished on 9/11.

https://theantimedia.com/tulsi-gabbard-trump-al-qaeda-syria/

The War on Terror is doing the same thing as our War on Drugs…….siphoning off much needed funds for social programs and giving it to the M-IC that has NO intention to ending these wars.

Since the original attacks the US has spent $2.8 trillion on fighting terrorism……that is $2.8 trillion with a “T”…..the War on Drugs has cost this country about $1 trillion over 40 years.

But I must answer the question asked in the title…….NO!  Our track record would indicate that we have NO intention on winning this war…..these wars.

Further Reading:

https://www.brookings.edu/research/are-we-winning-the-war-on-terrorism/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-mullen/its-time-to-end-the-failed_b_11965170.html

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/13/ap-impact-years-trillion-war-drugs-failed-meet-goals.html