Month: August 2019

2019–Another One Bites The Dust #5

There is one less candidate on the Dem side for 2020…..the crowd running for president is getting thinner by one….

Shortly after news broke that Kirsten Gillibrand likely wouldn’t meet the requirements for the next Democratic presidential debate, the New York Times reports the New York senator is dropping out of the 2020 race. Gillibrand, 52, tells the paper that missing the debate cutoff was a pivotal moment: “I think being able to have a voice on a debate stage, when other candidates have that, is really important,” she says. “And without it, I just didn’t see our path.” She added that she will eventually endorse someone else, though she hasn’t decided who yet, and while that person could be male or female she said: “I think that women have a unique ability to bring people together and heal this country. I think a woman nominee would be inspiring and exciting.”

There may be more departures after the next debate in Houston for some of the donor cash should dry up for some.

As Newsweek reports, the other 2020 candidates who have not yet qualified are: Tulsi Gabbard, Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock, Tim Ryan, John Delaney, Bill de Blasio, Marianne Williamson, Joe Sestak, and Wayne Messam……

Wayne Messam?  Who the Hell is Wayne Messam?

AS per my tradition I shall let Queen show them the stage door exit….

The DNC has succeeded in allow only those corporatist candidates to qualify….Warren and Sanders are in because they are newsworthy…..the voter is getting fewer and fewer actual candidates.

Now the media will set about making the voter think that only the chosen few for Houston are capable of winning….that may be true but it is not the place of the media to decide whom the candidates will be.

The 10 candidates that have made the field for Houston are corporate shills…what is being packaged and sold as “centrists”.

Please do not let the media pick your candidate for you!

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“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Social Security 2100

As an old fart I am always watching to see what measures are proposed then taken by this government that would effect us elderly people.

Social Security has been a battlefield for generations…..the big lie that seems to surface with every election is that SS is going bankrupt…..

Arguably the biggest Social Security lie is the idea that the program will soon be bankrupt and not able to provide a benefit to future retirees. This lie is perpetuated by the latest annual report from the Social Security Board of Trustees, which calls for a major shift come 2022. In four years, the program will begin paying out more in benefits than it’s generating in income for the first time in 40 years. This shift is a result of a growing number of baby boomers entering retirement and thus lowering the worker-to-beneficiary ratio, an increase in longevity over many decades, and growing income inequality that has allowed the rich to live substantially longer (and collect a bigger Social Security check) than lower-income folks.

By 2034, a dozen years later, Social Security’s approximately $3 trillion in asset reserves is expected to be completely exhausted. It’s this excess cash depletion that has 51% of Americans, according to a 2015 Gallup survey, confident that they won’t receive a dime from the program by the time they retire. Thankfully, more than half of all Americans are wrong. 

Social Security has three funding mechanisms, and one of those funding sources ensures that the program is incapable of going bankrupt. Social Security’s lesser funding sources are the interest earned on its asset reserves ($88.4 billion in 2016) and the taxation of Social Security benefits ($32.8 billion in 2016).

(The Motley Fool)

Rep. John Larson has put forth a plan to strengthen Social Security…..it is called Social Security 2100 Act…..
Bill Text  | Full Press Release | Fact Sheet

For millions of workers, Social Security is all they have to keep them from destitution in old age. Even with Social Security’s guaranteed benefits, they struggle to make ends meet. Fortunately, Congress can easily strengthen retirement security by expanding Social Security. Congressman John Larson (D-CT) has a bill to do just that: The Social Security 2100 Act, which is supported by 90 percent of Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Nearly four in five Americans live paycheck to paycheck. In 2018, the Federal Reserve Board found that four in ten Americans could not afford $400 for an emergency expense. Low wages combined with the high cost of health care, housing and education prevent people from putting aside funds for retirement. The Government Accountability Office reported earlier this year that almost half of households headed by Americans aged 55 and older have no retirement savings.

Equally concerning, most companies no longer offer pensions to their workers—a guaranteed monthly income. Instead, if they are lucky, workers get small financial contributions toward their retirement that do not amount to a whole lot. 401k plans and other so-called “defined contribution” plans do little good if workers are forced to spend their income on basic needs and have no money to save.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/13/social-security-2100-path-protecting-americas-elderly-communities

A good plan but as long as Moscow Mitch has a strangle hold on the Senate this will probably go no where.

Read the act over and if you like what you see then let your representative and senators know…..

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“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Those Private Armies

I have written many times of my dislike for private armies…oh my bad……security consultants….a rose by any other name is still a mercenary.

What got my creative juices flowing was the news that an ex-Blackwater operative has been sentenced to life in prison…..

A former Blackwater security contractor was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for his role in the 2007 shooting of unarmed civilians in Iraq that left 14 people dead, the AP reports. Federal judge Royce Lamberth issued the sentence after a succession of friends and relatives requested leniency for Nicholas Slatten, who was found guilty of first-degree murder by a jury in December. Prosecutors charged that Slatten, 35, was the first to fire shots in the September 2007 massacre of Iraqi civilians at a crowded traffic circle in Baghdad. In all, 10 men, two women and two boys, ages 9 and 11, were killed. The defense had argued that Slatten and other Blackwater contractors opened fire only after they saw what they mistakenly thought was a potential suicide car bomber moving quickly toward their convoy.

Defense attorney Dane Butswinkas described Slatten as “a person of high integrity” whose family members had served in the US military for four generations. Several of Slatten’s supporters openly accused prosecutors of scapegoating an innocent man in order to placate Iraqi public opinion. The shootings strained US-Iraqi relations and focused intense international scrutiny on the extensive use of private military contractors in Iraq. Slatten himself told the judge that he was a victim of an “unjust prosecution” and that government lawyers cared more about producing a conviction than uncovering the truth of what happened in Baghdad 12 years ago. But Judge Lambert, in issuing the life sentence, dismissed much of the family’s claims that Slatten was a scapegoat for international political considerations. “The jury got it exactly right,” he said. “This was murder.”

AS I said I do not think these people should be fighting our conflicts…..that is the job of our military…..but there is an assassment of the industry…..

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan required the support of the private military industry. However, the United States government’s increased reliance and dependency on private military firms has not been without controversy. In fact, the lack of accountability that has allowed certain sectors of the private military industry to act with impunity have arguably complicated the U.S. military’s already difficult missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/08/05/an_assessment_of_the_private_military_industry_and_its_role_in_the_iraq_and_afghanistan_wars_114638.html

This is the armies of the future…mostly civilians with guns…..time for the military to depend on themselves to fight these wars if they truly need fighting.

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Closing Thought–28Aug19

We hear from our beloved monarch that our manufacturing sector is doing well and that we will be opening 6 or 7 news steel mills soon.

He spent all day Tweeting his ass off about the Fed and manufacturing……..according to His Majesty our manufacturing is doing really well.

But just how well is our manufacturing really doing?

Trump has long claimed that he and his policies would be a boon to workers, especially blue-collar ones. But since he became president, over 716,000 American workers have received pink slips from their employers as jobs are eliminated and plants close.

“716,341 workers have been notified of plant closings and layoffs,” American Bridge 21st Century said in a statement on Wednesday, citing their analysis of the publicly available information.

The numbers may actually be worse, since several states — Arkansas, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Wyoming — haven’t provided data.

https://shareblue.com/over-716000-plant-workers-lost-jobs-us-trump/

Just lots of lies or as we say the Trump spin…..which means nothing out of his mouth is truthful.

Keep this in mind as you prepare to vote.

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“Lego Ergo Scribo”

2020 Dem Candidates On Foreign Policy

We have such a large field of Dem candidates for the 2020 election that it is hard to get to know the ones that the media wants to ignore or marginalize.

But thanx to the manipulation of the polls and the media the DCCC will allow only 10 of the candidates to participate in the next debate in Houston.

To my way of thinking is the foreign policy is the major issue that I use to judge the candidate…..so far in 2020 foreign policy does not seem to be that damn important even though we have our longest wars ever still raging and Americans are still dying.

More questions should be asked of ALL the candidates…….for there is more happening in foreign policy than troops in Afghanistan….

Of the Democratic presidential candidates, only Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Buttigieg have committed to withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan during their first year in office.

When the candidates were asked if there would be U.S. troops in Afghanistan at the end of their first term, Elizabeth Warren said, “No”; Bernie Sanders replied, “I suspect not”; Beto O’Rourke responded, “We have to begin to bring these wars to a close”; Kirsten Gillibrand said, “I believe that we need to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria”; Cory Booker noted, “We cannot have forever wars in this nation”; Julian Castro replied, “We need to withdraw in a way that is orderly, that respects our allies”; Amy Klobuchar responded, “We have been there longer than some of our young people have been on this earth”; Andrew Yang opined, “It’s impossible to know that for sure, given that reality on the ground might lead us to have more people there”; Marianne Williamson said, “I would make no move in Afghanistan until first I spoke to Afghan women”; and Kamala Harris answered, “We need to have a presence there in terms of supporting what the leaders of Afghanistan want to do.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/19/foreign-policy-litmus-test-democrats-2020

So to help my readers out I try to find ways of comparing the candidates in one place so that the research is on me and the readers have an easier time learning about the candidates.

I found one such article in the 538 website…..sadly not all candidates are included but enough to give my reader a good idea about their stands.

The next Democratic president may be significantly more anti-war than Obama; that is, wary of deploying or increasing the number of American troops anywhere. That’s at least the general consensus on foreign policy and national security that emerged from the 15 Democratic presidential candidates (both from the party’s left and left-center wings) who responded to FiveThirtyEight’s eight-question survey on their foreign policy stances.1

Before we get to the results, a few brief notes on our questions. Obviously, it’s hard to confine foreign policy to eight questions, so we tried to avoid subjects in which we thought the candidates would all have the same answer. For example, virtually all Democratic candidates would reengage the U.S. in the Paris climate accord. We also tried to avoid topics for which we couldn’t come up with a fairly concise question. It’s a safe bet that any of the Democratic candidates, if elected president, would be more critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin than President Trump has been, but it’s hard to design a question that would illustrate the differences between the candidates on that subject. So there are some major foreign policy issues (like how the U.S. should deal with Russia) that are not represented.2

Here are the results:

Democratic Candidates Answer Yes-Or-No Questions About Foreign Policy

I do not agree with the conclusion of 538….that the next Dem president will be more antiwar than Obama…..that will depend on the Dem…..the ones that the MSM promotes daily will probably keep the status quo meaning they will waffle on ending the endless wars we now fight.

So far I am sticking with Tulsi Gabbard….no one comes close to her in foreign policy.

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“Lego ergo Scribo”

What Of The New “Pacific Theater”?

We here lots of chest thumping these days about the capabilities of the US military…..and in the same vain we here about the expansion of the Chinese influence in the Pacific and the possibility of some sort of confrontation is in the cards without some changes…..

China is working hard to replace the influence of the US in the Pacific…..

China, especially under President Xi Jinping, seeks a return to what it regards as its rightful position, replacing the U.S. as the world’s dominant economic and military power. Previous U.S. administrations have slouched in the direction of understanding the strategic competition that grows from this ambition but did little. The current U.S. administration gets it, as evidenced by the National Defense Strategy’s identification of China as a major peer competitor.

https://www.hudson.org/research/14861-china-wants-to-replace-the-u-s-in-the-pacific

But if the confrontation comes to the forefront how does it look for the US in such a conflict?

The United States Studies Centre (USSC), a research center based at the University of Sydney in Australia, released a study titled, “Averting Crisis: American Strategy, Military Spending and Collective Defence in the Indo-Pacific.” The study makes the argument that the US would not be able to defeat China in a military confrontation in the Indo-Pacific.

The USSC is funded by the Australian government, over the past five years one percent of their budget came from the US government and eight percent came from “US-based foundations, companies or individuals.”

The three researchers whose names are on the study are part of the USSC’s Foreign Policy and Defence program. The program lists its partners as the Australian government, The US defense company Northrop Grumman, the French defense company Thales and the US State Department.

New Study: China Would Beat US Military in Pacific

Does Trump’s trade wars help this situation in any way?

 

ISIS–The Return

Now appearing in a geopolitical theater near you.

These days with the craziness around the issues for the 2020 election we do not hear so much about that almost defeated foe, ISIS.

But guess what?

They may not be slinking away into oblivion after all….

The Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) is not defeated despite the loss of the territory it claimed as its so-called ‘Caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria. It is stronger today than its predecessor Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was in 2011, when the U.S. withdrew from Iraq. AQI had around 700-1000 fighters then. ISIS had as many as 30,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria in August 2018 according to a Defense Intelligence Agency estimate. ISIS built from the small remnant left in 2011 an army large enough to recapture Fallujah, Mosul, and other cities in Iraq and dominate much of eastern Syria in only three years. It will recover much faster and to a much more dangerous level from the far larger force it still has today.

http://www.understandingwar.org/report/isiss-second-comeback-assessing-next-isis-insurgency

The Pentagon has issued a report that states that there is a major struggling dealing with a resurgent ISIS in the Middle East…..

Between April and June 2019, the Islamic State terror group “solidified its insurgent capabilities in Iraq and was resurging in Syria,” the Department of Defense Inspector General Quarterly Report says.

The report references significant changes in the region. In addition to the president’s sudden announcement of a drawdown of U.S. troops in Syria -– against the counsel of military advisers -– the report raises concerns that ISIS is gaining a renewed foothold in Iraq because U.S. personnel there were evacuated from diplomatic posts due to rising tensions with Iran. Experts told NBC News that as a result, that also has led to less surveillance of ISIS activity in Iraq.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/u-s-backed-forces-struggling-quell-isis-insurgency-syria-iraq-n1040186

While the media and the public chases the shiny objects that the government throws out there…ISIS is returning to prominence in the Middle East as well as around the world in regions like Afghanistan, South Asia, etc.

ISIS and al-Qaeda are rebuilding and should not be taken lightly….that happen before and we know how that ended don’t we?

The problem as I see it is that we are using tactics from 50 years ago….we need an upgrade……

I am in my second year of teaching a U.S. CT policy course to adult students ages 50-90. I have learned a few lessons from trying to explain our CT policies since the 1970s. The biggest lesson is that while administrations change the headline for our policy each time the other political party takes the helm; from “combating global terrorism” (Nixon and Republicans) to using a “law enforcement model” (Carter and Democrats), they really don’t change the underlying policy. Each administration since Richard Nixon has actually looked at the previous polices and kept the concepts they think are most important. The strategy only gets richer and more detailed. So, the U.S. counterterrorism policy hasn’t been re-written every 4 years anew; instead its been steadily evolving and trying to adapt to our enemies use of terror. That’s oversimplifying it for sure, but I want to get us to the current solutions.

https://news.clearancejobs.com/2019/08/08/the-future-of-countering-terrorism-ideas-not-bullets/

After 18+ years we are still reacting to the so-called jihad…..

While the media talks mindlessly about Greenland an old danger, no an old evil, is returning…..but why is it returning?

A report from the Pentagon inspector general found that President Donald Trump’s decision to rapidly pull troops out of Syria and divert attention from diplomacy in Iraq has inadvertently aided the Islamic State’s regrouping in Syria and Iraq.

The Department of Defense’s quarterly report to Congress on the effectiveness of the US Operation Inherent Resolve mission said that “ISIS continued its transition from a territory-holding force to an insurgency in Syria, and it intensified its insurgency in Iraq” — even though Trump said ISIS was defeated and the caliphate quashed, The Wall Street Journal reported.

https://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-blames-trump-for-return-of-isis-syria-and-iraq-2019-8

Now that is a pro-war excuse…..but at least it can explain the new rise…….

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“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Nuke The Bastard

Closing Thought–27Aug19

Most of my regulars know that I live in Hurricane Alley and every year at the start of the season I write a post to let my loyal know that if the worse happens I will be off line until we get service up and running.

So needlessly to say when there is an idea to help lessen the impact of hurricanes I am interested……well the clueless moron in the White House has an idea…..

The man in charge of the world’s most powerful nuclear arsenal has suggested using it to control the weather, according to an unconfirmed report. Sources tell Axios that President Trump has repeatedly told national security officials that they should look into bombing hurricanes to prevent them making landfall in the US. One source says that during a briefing, Trump said: “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” The source says that after Trump suggested dropping a nuclear bomb into the eye of the hurricane, he was told: “Sir, we’ll look into that.” Axios notes that the idea has been around since the Eisenhower administration and the NOAA has a page explaining that it might not affect the storm, and also “neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems.”

“Needless to say, this is not a good idea,” the NOAA says. Another administration official defended Trump’s line of questioning, saying: “His objective is not bad.” “What people near the president do is they say ‘I love a president who asks questions like that, who’s willing to ask tough questions,'” the official says. “It takes strong people to respond to him in the right way when stuff like this comes up. For me, alarm bells weren’t going off when I heard about it, but I did think somebody is going to use this to feed into ‘the president is crazy’ narrative.” The White House declined to discuss the report, saying it doesn’t “comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have had with his national security team,” the Guardian reports.

Yes you read the right….Our Beloved Supreme Moron wants to consider nuking a hurricane…..

But as usual he had no original idea….

1959 and a Sandia Laboratory meteorologist named Jack Reed. National Geographic explains his idea for nuking a hurricane came out of research he did into “atmospheric effects” that resulted from our first hydrogen bomb detonation, “which had lifted a massive column of air more than 20 miles into the sky.” He suggested a submarine could be sent to the hurricane’s eye and launch the missiles there. The theory: The warm air there would be pushed into the stratosphere; the colder and denser air that took its place would slow the storm.

I expect the president of the US to have a little more brains than to even consider such bullshit…..but then he thinks General Tso’s Chicken is Chinese.

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Just How Stupid Are They?

Every day it seems that some ignorant mental midget grabs a gun and goes on a rampage…..and the pundits and wonks have the same coverage and conversation on a growing problem…..and the same result of all the debate and analysis….we wait for the next attack so we can have the “talk” all over again.

Basically it is……deaths….talks…..wait….rinse and repeat……

I had my little rant because of something completely different….it is the butt hurt Rep from California Devin Nunes who is suing Twitter for 250 million……

Newsweek reported that an attorney representing Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is arguing that two parody Twitter accounts making fun of the congressman are as dangerous as guns.

The lawsuit alleges that the parody accounts, called “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow,” constitute “an orchestrated defamation campaign of stunning breadth and scope, one that no human being should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life,” and for Twitter to keep them operating is equivalent to negligently giving someone a firearm without determining if they are qualified to use it.

Nunes filed the $250 million defamation suit against these two Twitter accounts, as well as Twitter itself and Never Trump GOP strategist Liz Mair, earlier this year. He has also alleged that Twitter was secretly “shadow banning” his account by preventing people from finding him in search results, which Twitter says never happened, and which doesn’t present any clear legal injury even if it was true.

(Raw Story)

If you are against gun laws then I suggest you read that again.  (Pause here for the slower readers)

Maybe someone should tell the idiot Nunes that he is doing some damage just because he got butt hurt over criticism.

This lawsuit could have wide ranging consequences…..I am not a lawyer but even I can see the chances here….maybe the NRA should hold a consultation with Nunes and suggest that he drop the lawsuit to avoid any long term damage he could possibly do.

“An action has an equal but opposition reaction”

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“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Biden/Media Love Affair

I have stated many many times that for the time being Biden is the candidate of choice for the media. The MSM being a corporate entity has chosen the corporatist candidate Joe Biden to force down the throats of the American electorate.

Recently Biden floated a hypothetical that I have not seen or heard reported by the MSM….

Joe Biden had an odd, and jarring, rhetorical question for voters at a New Hampshire town hall Friday. While discussing the assassinations of his “political heroes,” Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., during what NBC News calls a “meandering discussion” at the Dartmouth College event, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate went on to say: “My senior semester, they [Kennedy and King] were both shot and killed. Imagine what would have happened if, God forbid, if Barack Obama had been assassinated after becoming the de facto nominee. What would’ve happened in America?” Politico refers to it as a “strange” and “out-of-nowhere” comment “at the tail-end of an otherwise normal speech,” while the New York Post calls it simply “awkward.”

Biden had apparently brought up the Kennedy and King assassinations as a way of discussing what motivates young people to get involved politically: “Unless I’m mistaken, Donald Trump did for your generation what the loss of two of my heroes did for mine,” he said. “What they did was make you realize, my God, we’re in trouble.” As for the reference to a hypothetical Obama assassination, a Biden rep explains to CNN that the candidate was simply trying to explain to young voters just how monumental the assassinations of Kennedy and King were. “He was putting into perspective, for the young folks in the room, about how traumatic the assassinations of RFK and MLK were for the country. This tweet is chasing clicks,” reads one of the tweets from a Biden campaign staffer rounded up by Fox News. Just three days prior to the Dartmouth event, Biden, 76, referred to the Kennedy and King assassinations as having taken place in the 1970s; they actually took place in 1968.

This was a tacky thing to say……but illustrates to me that Biden is a hollow shell and needs the memory of Obama to keep him going and the media will glaze over this as to not tarnish his poll numbers.

In a recent poll of 250 people Biden is losing ground and the MSM is using fear to bring him back up by saying that Bernie and Warren are the Left and not popular.

No secret that I have no use for Biden and this just does nothing to change my opinion of the candidate.

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“Lego Ergo Scribo”