Day: November 14, 2018

Closing Thought–14Nov18

I read an op-ed a couple of days ago and I had to give it time to sink in….someone thinks that Hillary is poised to run again for president………

A longtime adviser to Hillary Clinton has made a prediction in the Wall Street Journal that will be very good news to some Democratic voters and very bad news to others: Hillary Clinton is running again. So writes Mark Penn, a pollster and adviser to the Clintons from 1995 to 2008, in an op-ed co-authored with Andrew Stein, president of the New York City Council. Their premise is that Clinton will return to the Hillary Clinton of old, “the universal-health-care-promoting progressive firebrand of 1994.” Think of it as “Hillary Clinton 4.0.” In earlier iterations, version 2.0 lost to Barack Obama as a centrist and version 3.0 lost to Donald Trump after blowing it with white, middle-class voters. The new version of Clinton, however, has learned from all these mistakes.

“Clinton has a 75% approval rating among Democrats, an unfinished mission to be the first female president, and a personal grievance against Mr. Trump, whose supporters pilloried her with chants of ‘Lock her up!,'” the authors write. “This must be avenged.” She’s also had two years to assess her defeat to Trump and what she did wrong. What about the new generation of Democrats? They proved they’re not ready for prime time with the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Meanwhile, Mike Bloomberg will support her rather than run against her, they write, and Joe Biden wouldn’t stand a chance. Clinton might not announce early, perhaps not until after Iowa, “but rest assured that, one way or another, Hillary 4.0 is on the way.” Click to read the full op-ed.

Seriously?

Why?

Please stop!  Let the country move passed the Clintons….

She will be a point of contention and will invoke the ire of that guy that sits in the White house as I type….the Dems need new blood…the Clintons are old hat and should go the way to the do-do.

The same for Pelosi….she will be a focal point of attacks and the Dem agenda will be pushed to the background…..again the Dems need new blood in the House leadership if they truly want to make a difference….looking to the past will give them nothing but heartache…Clintons and Pelosi are the past please Dems move on to the present and look to the future.

“Making America Great Again”–Part 16

The series written by historian Maj. Sjursen has taken the reader through the early day, the revolution, the convention and the days as the country come to terms with itself……and now he touches on the decade before the outbreak of hostilities that led to what was to be called the American Civil War…….

Part 16 of “American History for Truthdiggers.”

“Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators … mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation.” —Sen. William Seward of New York (1858)

“It is difficult to achieve a full realization of how Lincoln’s generation stumbled into a ghastly war. … To suppose that the Union could not have been continued or slavery outmoded without the war … is hardly an enlightened assumption. If one questions the term ‘blundering generation,’ let him inquire how many measures of the time he would wish copied or repeated if the period were to be approached with a clean slate and to be lived again.”—Historian J.G. Randall (1940)

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-history-for-truthdiggers-a-broken-union-1851-1861/

The war is coming……Abe( a name he hated) Lincoln is coming, so much history and so much change is coming…..

Learn Stuff!

Class Dismissed!

Who Owns The GOP?

Well to answer that question I would say pick a large corporation and the GOP has fingers in their wallets….but the one that owns the most spineless representatives of both parties is the Military-Industrial Complex (M-IC)……

These vultures are making record profits……feeding the Saudis weapon systems so the Saudis can destroy the poorest country in the Middle East, Yemen…..

There have been a few in the House that are trying to curtail the US involvement in this conflict….but now the GOP has stepped up and done what the M-IC wants….kill as much attempts to end the US involvement as possible…..

…a measure is being advanced at the behest of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) aiming to derail House Continuing Resolution 138, a War Powers Act challenge which would force an end to the US military involvement in the Saudi-led War in Yemen.

Under the War Powers Act, any individual lawmaker is intended to be able to raise the matter of an unauthorized war for debate and a vote on the floor. Efforts to do so have failed, however, as the House leadership has used the Rules Committee to sidestep the issue.

This move to derail the debate is part of the first day of lame-duck House business, and Rep. Ryan and the other leaders seem to be hoping to turn the legal challenge of the war into a partisan issue. Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) accused the Republican leadership of shirking Congressional responsibility.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), however, is hoping to drum up enough Republican support for the legal challenge to prevent this, arguing that the legality of the Yemen War deserves a full debate and vote in the House.

(antiwar.com)

Those wishing to contact their lawmakers to tell them to vote against the attempt to strip privilege from H. Con. Res. 138 should do so quickly, as the vote is expected on Wednesday. You can do so by calling the Capitol Switchboard at 202-225-3121, or find the phone number for their specific representative here.

Speak up!  The US does not need to be part of the Saudi genocide of Yemen.

Secrets The Dead Reveal

I once heard a major say that the “dead reveal their secrets”….he was referring to the Viet Cong that been killed and the intel that was garnered off their bodies…..but the same could be said for many other dead….like those Americans killed around the world or more specific in Africa…..

Because of American dead we learned that we have troops operating in countries like Niger and Mali to mention only a few……in Niger we had 4 Americans killed in an ambush and in Mali we had friendly killing friendly…..

Further Reading:

https://lobotero.com/2017/10/27/what-are-u-s-forces-doing-in-niger-anyway/

https://lobotero.com/2018/11/07/suspicious-death-in-mali/

As the Pentagon was in the midst of reviewing new plans for special operations missions in Africa reducing overall troop numbers on the continent, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis designated three new named contingency operations.

The most recent quarterly report from the Department of Defense Inspector General notes the creation of Operation Yukon Journey, a counterinsurgency operation, and counterterrorism operations in both northwest and east Africa.

Those were named in February, according to the report. The report covered activities in Operations Inherent Resolve from July to September.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/11/06/report-reveals-few-details-about-new-named-contingency-operations-in-africa/

Another report is out and it looks like AFRICOM will be losing some of its operating overhead…..

The Pentagon is mulling plans to wind down special operations missions on the African continent and reassign troops to other, more in-demand regions.

The plans, submitted by a top U.S. military commander, align with the Trump administration’s strategy to focus on near-peer threats from countries like China and Russia.

“No decision has been officially made regarding the U.S. counterrorism forces operating in Africa,” a Pentagon press official told Military Times. “In light of the [2018 National Defense Strategy’s] updated priorities, the [DoD] is reviewing plans, operations, and military investments across the globe to develop the best options that address the evolving threat to U.S. national interests.”

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/08/02/report-africom-looks-to-cut-special-ops-missions-pull-out-hundreds-of-troops-from-africa/

I for one would like to see more of our troops return home…..we already have enough wars we are fighting why look for more?

Meanwhile Back In North Korea

About 6 months ago Our Dear Supreme Leader (people you do realize that I am being sarcastic when I type that title, right?) stood before the world and told us that NK would be an ex-nuke developer soon…..that we have a handshake agreement.

And while we are being lied to the North Korean leader keeps building his missiles to carry those weapons that he has promised to give up……

A Washington think tank released a report Monday identifying more than a dozen hidden missile bases North Korea has kept up and running even as President Trump touts his work on denuclearization with Kim Jong Un. The Center for Strategic and International Studies says it suspects North Korea has 20 missile operating bases that are undeclared by the government, and it has located 13 of them. The New York Times says the revelation “suggests a great deception,” with Pyongyang quietly continuing its ballistic missile program and even making improvements at these secret sites while publicly declaring its intention to dismantle its main missile launch site. Fox News notes that the report comes as denuclearization talks between the US and North Korea have stalled—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s planned meeting with his North Korean counterpart last week was delayed indefinitely.

“What everybody is worried about is that Trump is going to accept a bad deal—they give us a single test site and dismantle a few other things, and in return they get a peace agreement” that formally ends the Korean War, says the North Korea expert who leads the CSIS’ Beyond Parallel program, which released the report. Another expert on nuclear nonproliferation called the program’s analysis “excellent” but disagreed with the Times‘ assessment of the situation, noting on Twitter: “To call this a ‘deception’ is deeply misleading. Kim Jong Un publicly stated that North Korea would shift to the mass producing nuclear weapons in 2018. These bases and their missiles are well-known, long-standing and have never been offered for dismantlement by the DPRK.” Per CNBC, the largest ballistic missiles possibly housed in the bases identified in the report are believed to be able to reach the US. (Read more North Korea stories.)

But Dear Trump just cannot admit that he was played like a cheap drum by Kim……..

A story emerged Monday suggesting that North Korea was violating the spirit of promises to reduce its nuclear arsenal. Not so, says President Trump. “The story in the New York Times concerning North Korea developing missile bases is inaccurate,” he tweeted. “We fully know about the sites being discussed, nothing new – and nothing happening out of the normal. Just more Fake News. I will be the first to let you know if things go bad!” The Times story he’s referring to was based on a new study by Center for Strategic and International Studies, whose researchers say they have found more than a dozen secret ballistic missile bases in North Korea. The newspaper acknowledges, however, that US intelligence agencies have long known about this network.

Here is how the Times frames the issue: “The satellite images suggest that the North has been engaged in a great deception: It has offered to dismantle a major launching site—a step it began, then halted—while continuing to make improvements at more than a dozen others that would bolster launches of conventional and nuclear warheads.” South Korea objected to this characterization even before Trump did, also using the phrase “nothing new.” A spokesman for President Moon Jae-in adds: “North Korea has never promised to dismantle its missile bases, nor has it ever joined any treaty that obligates it to dismantle them. So calling this a ‘deception’ is not appropriate.” That didn’t stop Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, who sits on the Foreign Relations panel, from asserting that Trump was “getting played by Kim Jong Un,” per Bloomberg.

Yet another pile of bovine fecal matter fed to the American public.

Enjoy your meal!