Month: September 2019

Afghanistan–What The Hell?

Our longest ever war has had a couple of bad days in the last week…….it seems that we have nset about killing a bunch of civilians on two occasions in less than 5 days….

First on 19 Sept……..

US forces carried out their latest disastrous air strike in Afghanistan. A US drone attacked and killed at least 30 civilians, and wounded 40 others in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province.

The victims of the attack were farm workers who were participating in the harvest of pine nuts in a village’s forest, and a number of children who were also there to take part in the harvest.

What adds insult to injury, however, was that the village elders had foreseen this as an issue, and specifically sent letters around to officials two weeks ago. The letters, dated September 7, were meant to assure that the gathering on the outskirts of the forest was nothing to do with militants, and was merely hired laborers for the harvest. They were assured this was not a problem.

So about 200 workers gathered around a camp on the edge of the forest, lit bonfires, and talked about the security situation at their respective villages of origin. Then the US drone arrived and started attacking the camp, sending survivors fleeing into the forest.

US officials downplayed the fact that there was a letter informing everyone what this camp was. The official statement was that the existence of the letter would be considered in the investigation.

(antiwar.com)

Second attack was on 23 Sept the second attack……

For the second time in a week, a US military operation in Afghanistan has ended with a large number of civilians dead, and US officials offering very dubious arguments as to why it wasn’t their fault.

The Sunday night attack saw US and Afghan commandos raid a house in Helmand Province, and ultimately launch airstrikes. The attack killed at least 40 civilians, including a number of children.

Instead of the Taliban building they thought they were raiding, it turns out the airstrike pounded an ongoing wedding reception. The Afghan government has already admitted to what happened, saying they are “saddened” by the deaths and want to take extra caution in the future.

Because the US is on one of those kicks where they don’t take responsibility for anything, the US statement confirmed the airstrike but denied killing civilians. They claimed the attack targeted al-Qaeda, and suggested any civilians “died from al-Qaeda weapons,” and not from the US dropping bombs on them.

(antiwar.com)

I realize that collateral damage involving civilians is a common occurrence in war but this is pushing the limits of acceptability.

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Another Step To Equality

Closing Thought–24Sep19

Women have been fighting for true equality for a very long time…..they we close in the 70s with the ERA and have been trying to achieve their dream ever since.

Some states have got a little closer tom the goal……

Two women sued the city of Fort Collins, Colo., for the right to go topless. Now, six states in total will reap the benefits of their ban-busting efforts after a federal appeals court overturned the city’s prohibition on women sans shirts and the city opted not to appeal. KUTV reports that not only Colorado’s women are now able to bare their breasts, but also those in Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Kansas, and Oklahoma, after the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the ban in Fort Collins. Because Fort Collins has no plans to challenge the appellate court ruling, which would bring the case to the Supreme Court, the nixing of the ban applies to all six states the appeals court has jurisdiction over. NBC News notes the court ruling was handed down in February, while Fort Collins just decided this month to back off the case.

The suit was originally brought by plaintiffs Brit Hoagland and Samantha Six, who say their complaint was in the name of gender equality. The women had even started a #FreeTheNipple social media campaign to bolster their stance. Not everyone—not even all women—is 100% behind the court’s decision. “I do think we deserve equal rights in everything,” one female Boulder resident says. “But I think if women do choose to do that, they might be asking for a little bit of trouble.” Hoagland and Six disagree. “Everybody should be able to be comfortable on a hot day, and if that means taking their shirt [off], so be it,” Hoagland tells KGUN 9. “No matter how you look [at it], you should have the same freedom [as] the person next to you.”

As a man I will refrain from giving my thoughts….but I would love to hear from others on this new turn…..

I say just get to work and finally ratify the ERA…..period!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Terror Adverted?

An American soldier has been arrested for the possible terror attacks he was planning and assisting others to carry out.

Federal authorities said Monday that they charged a US Army soldier with sharing bomb-making instructions online, and that he discussed bombing an unidentified media organization and killing left-leaning activists. Jarrett William Smith, 24, a private first class from South Carolina stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, was arrested Saturday, the AP reports. A criminal complaint says Smith discussed killing “antifa” activists and how to build a bomb that could be triggered by calling a cellphone. He listed Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke as a possible target, officials say. They accuse him of posting on Facebook that he was interested in fighting with a paramilitary group in Ukraine known as Azov Batallion. In an online chat group, Smith said he was looking for more “radicals” like himself, the complaint alleges, adding that he talked about destroying cell towers or a local news station.

In an interview before his arrest, Smith told investigators that he knows how to make improvised explosives devices and that he routinely provides instruction on building them. He stated he did this to cause “chaos.” In an exchange Friday on the encrypted messaging service Telegram, an undercover FBI agent asked Smith if there was anyone in Texas who would be a good fit for “fire, destruction and death.” Smith reportedly replied: “Outside of Beto? I don’t know enough people that would be relevant enough to cause a change if they died.” O’Rourke is a member of Congress from Texas. Smith was in court Monday, per NBC, and was ordered held until he appears in court Thursday in Topeka. If convicted, Smith could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000

Yet another “Lone Wolf” arrested and stopped before he could do any damage if the charges are found to be true.

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Warren On The Rise

Biden has been the Dem front runner for the 2020 nomination but in the last week or so Warren has been gaining on Uncle Joe…..and in a new poll in Iowa she has zipped past Biden….

There is a new top dog in Iowa polling, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren having put the nation’s former No. 2 politician Joe Biden firmly into the No. 2 spot: She now leads him 22% to 20%, marking the first time the former vice president has trailed in the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll, CNN reports. That’s up seven percentage points for Warren and down three for Biden. Bernie Sanders trails at 11%, but is the only other candidate in double digits; the Vermont senator, however, has dropped five percentage points since the last poll in June

So with the rise in the polls she will be lots of scrutiny that may have been missed while she was an also ran…..

So let me begin this scrutiny……

Warren has said she wants lobbyists out of the governing process…..or does she?

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren hired a Planned Parenthood lobbyist to a key role in her presidential campaign Tuesday, just one day after Warren announced a plan that would “end lobbying as we know it.”

Warren unveiled an anti-corruption plan Monday that would introduce a “cooling off” period for lobbyists before they can serve in government roles and would prohibit active lobbyists from donating to political campaigns, a practice Warren called “legalized bribery.”

“The fundamental promise of our democracy is that every voice matters,” Warren’s plan states. “But when lobbyists and big corporations can buy influence from politicians, that promise is broken. The first thing to do to fix it is to end lobbying as we know it.”

The next day, Kimberly Diaz Scott, who registered as a lobbyist for the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates as recently as January 2019, announced that she was leaving the organization to head up Warren’s campaign in Florida.

Read the original article.

A perfect example of how Democrats lying and deceive the voter….and yet still can find people that will vote for liars….why?

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

VOTE!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Why Not Compete With Iran?

By now every Tom, Dick and Harriet knows about the mash up between the US and Iran with the Saudis on the side line throwing gas on the fire…..but instead of trying to destroy the country why not try to compete with them on the world stage?

US has imposed more sanctions on Iran and its leadership…..which is a tool for diplomacy but not for the Trump presidency……they have little to no plans……

For the Trump administration, and much of America’s Republican Party elite, the Obama administration’s nuclear deal was a step too far. Elements of the inspection regime expired prematurely, they argued, and the deal undercut a key pillar of Washington’s longstanding effort to topple the Iranian government through economic warfare. However, neither the Trump administration nor those that support the current U.S. policy in the Middle East have put forward a workable policy to address Iranian behavior. Instead, as Nicholas Miller wrote on Twitter, the Trump administration’s policies are “dangerously escalatory” and, importantly, have ceded diplomatic and coercive leverage to Iran. The result has been to push the United States into a position where it has to contemplate air strikes, a choice neither Trump nor the Democratic opposition is enthusiastic about, or just do more of the same and apply more sanctions.

Washington has no plan to translate sanctions against Iran into diplomatic success. The result is a policy of escalation that, counterintuitively, creates conditions that favor Iran’s policy of conflict-by-client to manage escalation and damage American relationships with its Gulf Arab partners. For this reason, it is important that Washington change course, seize the diplomatic initiative, and work alongside its European allies to explore ways to augment the nuclear deal — which remains operative despite the U.S. withdrawal. The United States could further defuse regional tensions by pushing for an end to the war in Yemen and initiating a high-level conversation with Iran about regional security.

Compete with Iran Without Trying to Destroy it

Something needs to change for the status quo in the Middle East is unsustainable……

At this point, it should be clear that the regional status quo is simply not sustainable. Iran’s “strategic patience” over economic sanctions following the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, aimed at giving Europe the chance to provide Iran with the promised economic dividends of that pact, has not borne fruit. Europe has been unable to provide sufficient sanctions relief after more than a year of trying. Iran now sees its position deteriorating, with little diplomatic progress and a weakening economy – and it is not prepared to allow this to happen quietly.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/18/iran-saudi-attack-nuclear-deal-us

For 30 years the Middle East has been close to settling old hatreds and then someone somewhere has to re-light the fuse and conflict boils over again.

If Western ideals are superior to all others then why do we need to force them on others by military might?

Learn Stuff!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Closing Thought–23Sep19

First day of Autumn……

Image result for Autumn

 

Be All You Can Be….and only one weekend a month…..all this is the promise of the US Army Reserve…..and leaked document tells that it is all kinda bullsh*t……

The recruiting commercials for the Army Reserve proclaim “one weekend each month,” but the real-life Army Reserve might as well say “hold my beer.”

That’s because the weekend “recruiting hook” — as it’s called in a leaked document compiled by Army personnel for the new chief of staff — reveal that it’s, well, kinda bullshit.

When they’re not activated or deployed, most reservists and guardsmen spend one weekend a month on duty and two weeks a year training, according to the Army recruiting website. But that claim doesn’t seem to square with reality.

“The Army Reserve is cashing in on uncompensated sacrifices of its Soldiers on a scale that must be in the tens of millions of dollars, and that is a violation of trust, stewardship, and the Army Values,” one Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, who also complained that his battalion commander “demanded” that he be available at all times, told members of an Army Transition Team earlier this year.

https://taskandpurpose.com/army-reserve-weekend-readiness

Does anyone find this at all surprising?

After serving in the Army I do not find it at all surprising….just doing business as usual.

If your child is considering join the Army Reserve please let them see this post before they decide to sign anything.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

What Will Dems Do?

The hot story over the weekend was that Trump may or may not have asked Ukraine for help with his verbal battles with Biden.

Well he has admitted that he asked them for help……the Ukrainians that is……

President Trump suggested Sunday that he raised former Vice President Joe Biden and Biden’s son in a summer phone call with Ukraine’s new leader, as Democrats pressed for investigations into whether Trump improperly used his office to try to dig up damaging information about a political rival, the AP reports. Trump told reporters that the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was “congratulatory” and focused on corruption in the East European nation. In his remarks to reporters, he then raised Biden as an example, although there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son Hunter, who worked for a Ukrainian gas company.

“It was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son, creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine,” Trump said as he left the White House for a trip to Texas. Biden, who is among the front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination, accused Trump of making a baseless political smear. The matter has sparked a fierce debate over whether Trump misused his office for political gain and whether his administration is withholding from Congress critical information about his actions. The incident is part of a whistleblower complaint, but the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has refused to share details with lawmakers, citing presidential privilege.

Trump said in the presser outside the White House that it was a “beautiful conversation”   really?  That sounds like something you would have with someone that gave him regular blowjobs….not something you would say about the talk with a foreign leader.

Just another chance for the Dems to step up, find their nuts and start proceedings against a corrupt leader that flaunts his power in the faces of the country.

I cannot wait for the lip service these impotent toads will provide the media with …..action will be just a promise that will last beyond 2020 and will most likely be all but forgotten by next session.

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Labor Is Unimpressed

Last election in 2016 the American worker went for Trump in a big way….his promises of jobs and plants opening swung them to his corner…and so far most of his promises were just farts in a hurricane.

https://lobotero.com/2019/08/28/closing-thought-28aug19/

The American worker is dissatisfied with Trump so that bodes well for the Dems in 2020, right?

You would think so….but so far workers are unimpressed….

When one heckler yelled, “You’re an asshole!” at Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at Philadelphia AFL-CIO’s first ever Workers’ Presidential Summit on Tuesday, the entire room roared back with chants of the senator’s name.

This was the most charged moment in a day of presidential candidates pitching union members including steel workers, drywall technicians, communications workers, school cafeteria employees, and airline food workers. Over the course of four hours, they heard from former Vice President Joe Biden, entrepreneur and tech executive Andrew Yang, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, Sanders, major Democratic donor and billionaire Tom Steyer, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

But despite the candidates’ best efforts, the mood among the 2,000 attendees was one of general lackluster toward Democrats in the presidential race, and the six contenders who had showed up to try to win their votes. Notably, front-runner Sen. Elizabeth Warren was missing from the forum the day after she won an endorsement from the Working Families Party.

https://theintercept.com/2019/09/18/philadelphia-union-workers-presidential-summit/

Bad news for the Dem candidates indeed.

Labor would not be having this problem if they had in the early part of the 20th century had gone for political power instead of economic then this would be a easier race to watch.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

VOTE!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Mr. Trump, Who’s Your Daddy?

All these years I have been laboring under a false concept that the US was the most powerful country in the world and others would do as we say……but in recent days under the Trump leadership the US is a slave to Saudi Arabia……especially in the aftermath of an attack on the KSA refinery.

I say this from a Tweet I got on Saturday morning…..

JUST IN: Pentagon to will deploy additional troops and military equipment to Saudi Arabia: “In response to the Kingdom’s request, the president has approved the deployment of U.S. forces, which will be defensive in nature and primarily focused on air and missile defense.”

So now the Saudi royals dictate our foreign policy, right?

Defense Secretary Mark Esper says Trump has approved the deployment already, and that it will be focused primarily on air and missile defense systems, at the request of Saudi Arabia.

This has been a major concern for Saudi Arabia. Even though they have the third most expensive military in the world, behind only the US and China, their defensive systems have proven unable to fend off drones and many missiles fired from neighboring Yemen.

The expectation is that the US will be sending more air defense batteries to the area to try to fend off future attacks. Whether or not that’s actually going to work is a huge if, however, since the US has been selling the Saudis their top-of-the-line gear in the first place. It didn’t work for the Saudis, so the question is if adding more of it will make it any more successful.

The US has been investing substantially in trying to improve anti-drone capabilities in recent years, finding that their existing anti-aircraft arsenal is neither cost effective nor super capable against the much smaller, cheaper drones coming into fashion.

Saudi and US officials continue to try to blame the Saudi attack from last weekend on Iran, and are presenting the US deployments as being an attempt to counter Iranian capabilities.

(antiwar.com)

I realize that he Saudis have a strong hand in the US government and policies but when did they start actually making our policy for us?

September 14th, two oil refineries and other oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia were hit and set ablaze by 18 drones and 7 cruise missiles, dramatically slashing Saudi Arabia’s oil production by half, from about ten million to five million barrels per day. On September 18, the Trump administration, blaming Iran, announced it was imposing more sanctions on Iran and voices close to Donald Trump are calling for military action. But this attack should lead to just the opposite response: urgent calls for an immediate end to the war in Yemen and an end to US economic warfare against Iran.

The question of the origin of the attack is still under dispute. The Houthi government in Yemen immediately took responsibility. This is not the first time the Houthis have brought the conflict directly onto Saudi soil as they resist the constant Saudi bombardment of Yemen. Last year, Saudi officials said they had intercepted more than 100 missiles fired from Yemen.

Will Americans Let Trump Start a War for Saudi Arabia?

That is the overwhelming question…..will we Americans allow Trump to start another war?  Another war that we will not win regardless of the immature boast by the president.

Will Americans Let Trump Start World War III for Saudi Arabia and Israel?

Think about it…Pompeo had to rush to KSA to “confer” with MbS after the attack…..did he get his instructions from the new masters of US foreign policy?

Americans might want to pay attention for now……Dancing With The Stars will not get your loved ones killed……please remove heads from butts!

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

One Bourbon, One Scotch

It is a Sunday and I needed a subject for a post of the day….and I try to by an FYI blog on weekends…..and this Sunday I thought about booze.

I admit that I do enjoy a drink now and then…..and bourbon is that drink although I have enjoyed a single malt and a good Irish in the past.

These days with the flavors and the total wimpy shit they call whiskey…..but there is a difference in the whiskey of all sorts….

The basics, according to Encyclopedia Britannica:

Whiskey (or whisky) can be any of a variety of distilled liquors that are made from a fermented mash of cereal grains and aged in wooden containers, which are usually constructed of oak. Commonly used grains are corn, barley malt, rye, and wheat.

The difference between whiskey and whisky is where the stuff is made: in the United States and Ireland, it’s spelled “whiskey”; in Scotland, Canada, and Japan, it’s “whisky.”

Now, for the differences between Scotch, bourbon, and rye. Back to Encyclopedia Britannica:

Scotch is a whisky (no e) that gets its distinctive smoky flavor from the process in which it is made: the grain, primarily barley, is malted and then heated over a peat fire. A whisky cannot be called Scotch unless it is entirely produced and bottled in Scotland.

Bourbon, a whiskey that was first produced in Kentucky, U.S., uses at least 51 percent mash from corn in its production. It also uses a sour mash process — that is, the mash is fermented with yeast and includes a portion from a mash that has already been fermented. U.S. regulations specify that in order for a whiskey to be called bourbon, it must be made in the United States.

And rye whiskey? It’s a whiskey that uses a rye mash or a rye and malt mash. In the United States, regulations stipulate that the mash must be at least 51 percent rye in order for it to be called rye whiskey. In Canada, regulations do not specify a minimum percentage of rye.

Flavor-wise, Scotch is smoky, bourbon is sweet, and rye is more astringent than the two others, making it particularly suitable to cocktails.

To help out if you want more information on whiskey……

A Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide to Whiskey

Now that you have become an expert in whiskeys….we go to the day’s musical interlude…..clear booze may be next on the list……

To help out a little George Thorogood…..

Or maybe this ditty from Tom Waits……

Sunday is in the bag and so am I (not really just went with the subject of the post)…..

Then there are my two best friends…..

Be well, be safe

“Lego Ergo Scribo”