Monday, November 30, 2015

SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS

I am perplexed as to why there seems to be so much anger, directed at abortion clinics, by gun enthusiasts, even though they seem to have no compunction at all in killing living things. The only thing that I have been able to come up with is that somehow they feel that abortions are depriving them of their second amendment rights by taking targets away from them, prematurely.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

CARSON MAKES TWO DAY VISIT TO MIDDLE EAST

Ordinarily, a two day visit overseas would qualify any Republican as a pre-eminent expert in the area.  Dr. Carson might have been in that category, but, possibly because of jet lag, his initial commentary from Amman, Jordan, was reasonable and rational, limited to what he actually learned on site.  There may be some serious repercussions in his approval rating as the result of this campaign gaffe.

UNION LEADER ENDORSES CHRIS CHRISTIE

Of course, it's the newspaper, "Union Leader" that has endorsed Christie, unmindful of the fact that he probably be unable to win the State that he is presently governing.

Saturday, November 28, 2015

POLITICIZING THE PLANNED PARENTHOOD SHOOTINGS

It is reprehensible that Obama, instead of honoring the fallen, at the Colorado Springs shootings, as staunch defenders of Second Amendment rights, chose to use the situation to further gun control. This lack of good taste has been evident throughout his entire Presidency.  

Friday, November 27, 2015

GUEST POSTING FROM GREG STOUT

  I'm a dove, but I understand the reasoning behind the following five prerequisites.  I read this article and thought some of you may be interested as well ... if it's going to happen (depending upon who is elected president), these premises should come under consideration.  I’m not saying I agree with these 100%, but I do understand the reasoning behind them.  The blue print is from the article.
Five Prerequisites For War Against ISIS
We appear to be moving ever closer toward a world war against the Islamic State.
No sane person welcomes war. Yet if we do go to war against ISIS we must keep a watchful eye on 5 things:
1. The burden of fighting the war must be widely shared among Americans.
America’s current “all-volunteer” army is comprised largely of lower-income men and women for whom army pay is the best option.
“We’re staring at the painful story of young people with fewer options bearing the greatest burden,“ Greg Speeter, executive director of the National Priorities Project, told the Washington Post. NPP’s study found low- and middle-income families supply far more Army recruits than families with incomes greater than $60,000 a year.
That’s not fair. Moreover, when the vast majority of Americans depend on a small number of people to fight wars for us, the public stops feeling the toll such wars take.
From World War II until the final days of the Vietnam War, in January 1973, nearly every young man in America faced the prospect of being drafted into the Army.
Sure, many children of the rich found means to stay out of harm’s way. But the draft at least spread responsibility and heightened the public’s sensitivity to the human costs of war.
If we go into a ground war against ISIS, we should seriously consider reinstating the draft.
I’m against war, but I understand that the largest number of losses are being incurred by our poorer citizens.  Our wealthier citizens are aware of this also ... thus, their lack of concern and caring since they aren’t directly affected.
“It was here I learnt that corporate principles and military principles are basically the same. Insulation. Illusion. Hype. Activity.” ~ Tarun J. Tejpal, The Alchemy of Desire
2. We must not sacrifice our civil liberties.
U.S. spy agencies no longer have authority they had in the post-9/11 USA Patriot Act to collect Americans’ phone and other records. The NSA must now gain court approval for such access.
But in light of the Paris attacks, the FBI director and other leading U.S. law enforcement officials now say they need access to encrypted information on smartphones, personal and business records of suspected terrorists, and “roving wiretaps” of suspects using multiple disposable cell phones.
War can also lead to internment of suspects and suspensions of constitutional rights, as we’ve painfully witnessed.
Donald Trump says he’d require American Muslims to register in a federal data base, and he refuses to rule out requiring all Muslims to carry special religious identification.
"We’re going to have to do things that we never did before….we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago,” he adds.
We must be vigilant that we maintain the freedoms we are fighting for.
Loss of liberties seems to be a common thread whenever fear is implanted within the minds of our citizenry.
"Arguing that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." ~ Greg Stout
3. We must minimize the deaths of innocent civilians abroad.
The bombing raids have already claimed a terrible civilian toll, contributing to a mass exodus of refugees.
Last month the independent monitoring group Airwars said at least 459 civilians have died from coalition airstrikes in Syria over the past year. Other monitoring groups, including the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also claim significant civilian deaths.
Some civilian casualties are unavoidable. But we must ensure they are minimized – and not just out of humanitarian concern. Every civilian death creates more enemies.
And we must do our part to take in a fair portion of Syrian refugees.
Losses of innocents tends to create more terrorists, rather than eliminating them.  How would we react if 459 innocent Americans were targeted and killed here in our homeland?
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?" ~ Mahatma Gandhi
4. We must not tolerate anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States.
Already, leading Republican candidates are fanning the flames.
Ben Carson says no Muslim should be president.
Trump says “thousands” of Arab-Americans cheered when the Twin Towers went down on 9/11 – a boldface lie.
Ted Cruz wants to accept Christians refugees from Syria but not Muslims.
Jeb Bush says American assistance for refugees should focus on Christians.
Marco Rubio wants to close down “any place where radicals are being inspired,” including American mosques.
It’s outrageous that leading Republican candidates for president of the United States are fueling such hate.
Such bigotry is not only morally odious. It also plays into the hands of ISIS.
Bigotry and persecution of others is also a major factor in creating terrorists and hatred.
"The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
5. The war must be paid for with higher taxes on the rich.
A week before the terrorist attacks in Paris, the Senate passed a $607 billion defense spending bill, with 91 senators in favor and 3 opposed (including Bernie Sanders). The House has already passed it, 370 to 58. Obama has said he’ll sign it.
That defense appropriation is larded with pork for military contractors – including Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive weapons system in history.
Now Republicans are pushing for even more military spending.
We cannot let them use the war as a pretext to cut Social Security and Medicare, or programs for the poor.
The war should be paid for the way we used to pay for wars – with higher taxes, especially on the wealthy.
As we move toward war against ISIS, we must be vigilant – to fairly allocate the burdens of who’s called on to fight the war, to protect civil liberties, to protect innocent civilians abroad, to avoid hate and bigotry, and to fairly distribute the cost of paying for war.
These aren’t just worthy aims. They are also the foundations of our nation’s strength.
The only way to deter the wealthy from waging wars that cost the lives of our poorer citizens is to hit them in the wallet; they are insulated in all other ways.
“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
Since so many hawks are pushing for war and persecution of those from other groups, while restricting our own liberties and freedoms, I thought you might at least consider what the author had to say. Peace

Thursday, November 26, 2015

PUTIN'S RIGHTEOUS OUTRAGE

A Russian bomber attacking non-ISIS, Turkmen  rebelling against Assad, is shot down by Turkey,  Putin is outraged that Turkey is interfering in a civil war.  Who can blame him?

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

CRIMINAL ACTS ARE ALLOWED ONLY FOR GOVERNMENT AND LAW ENFORCEMENT





After committing acts tantamount to felonious obstruction of justice, Government officials, in Chicago, tell demonstrators, enraged by an attempted cover up of a shooting of an unarmed black man, that they are allowed to demonstrate but not to commit crimes.  That privilege is reserved for politicians and police officials.

Monday, November 23, 2015

GUEST POSTING


Posting from my oldest friend, Claude Thomas:

Follow The Money:Toward A Better Yale

by daedal2207
Last week Peter Salovey,president of Yale University,wrote an open letter to the Yale community.(https://messages.Yale.edu/messages/University/univmsgs/detail/129760)in which he addressed a need to unify the university by paying attention to the feelings of alienation,disaffection and even open hostility to a pervading Yale ethos of insider elitism.He outlined an impressive set of actions to be taken. These actions will cost money and Indicates that at this time the university and it's trustees are taking seriously the wave of student(and faculty)unrest sweeping the nation.Yale is dealing with the issue of Calhoun residential college,the opening of a coequal Singaporean campus and the opening of a West campus in New Haven.(See elsewhere in this blog.) I was present during the mid 1960s riots in New Haven which brought about strong feeling directed toward and against reforms.(particularly around health)This appears to be more than the epiphany of one or two persons.If so,once again,Well done old Eli.We'll wait and seek if money continues to follow the stated commitment.We are not naive enough to expect that the percentage of available dollars will be trouble free public knowledge.
daedal2207 | November 23, 2015 at 9:19 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/p4Gt4f-5F
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Saturday, November 21, 2015

IF

IF only George W. Bush had not disbanded the Ba'ath Party, the only multi-ethnic institution in Iraq, in 2003, we might not have ISIS today.

IF only, Bush had not built Camp Bucca, in 2002, an internment facility, where the present leadership of ISIS met and hatched their organization, centered on their hatred for the U.S., we might not have ISIS, today.

IF only Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, a trusty, of the U.S. at the Camp Bucca, had not been given full and complete discharge from Camp Bucca, in 2004, he might not have founded the ISIS we have today.


AVOIDING THE DATABASE

Muslims, who are in danger of having to register for placement in a database, may be able to look for salvation in the N.R.A.  The N.R.A. has consistently fought, and won, against any effort to register gun ownership, as we do with automobiles.  If all Muslims buy guns, perhaps the N.R.A., will extend their protection to them, as well.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

TURNING THE CLOCK BACK

Al Qaeda did not split with ISIS because they thought they were to too brutal, but because they wanted to fight as an overt entity. Flush with the success they had with guerrilla tactics against an occupying army, elements of the old Iraqi army, disbanded by Bush, wanted to fight as its own nation.  Al Qaeda thought they were crazy, and they are correct in their judgement, unless the Republican Party has its way and snatches victory from jaws of defeat, for ISIS.

Obama has steadily been moving back to a military, which the U.S. designed,  to provide shock troops for an occupying army of local forces.  He turned to Kurdish forces who were not bound to either Sunni Arabs or Iranian Shia to act in that role.  It is a long term strategy because it takes time to train and introduce new weapons to the Kurds. Even so, the combination has taken back a good quarter of the land that ISIS has taken and its leadership is suffering a steady attrition from U.S. air attacks.  ISIS is desperate to revert to the good old days, in Iraq, when it could fight a guerrilla war against an foreign occupation army.  A war of terror and witting or unwitting complicity of the Republican Party may very well allow them to once more know happier times. Another land war for the U.S. is the best thing that could happen to both ISIS and the Republican Party.  The Republicans get more trillions of tax payer dollars for their constituents and the old Iraqi Army generals get to use their IED's to maim and kill American G.I.s and pick up more American equipment, hopefully newer models, for themselves.   

TIME TO CHANGE THE ANTHEM?

Republican gerrymandering has changed our only democratic institution, the House of Representatives, and their politics of fear have made us cowards, isn't it time we changed our National Anthem?  After all we can no longer sing about our nation being the land of  the free or the home of the brave.  Considering its subversive message, we should be having a national dialog about replacing the "Star Spangled Banner" with something more fitting, something that will extol our "fear and fright" response rather than our no longer existent virtues.

BLUNTING THE SWORD

Under Republican and Democratic Presidents alike, the U.S. Military was built into, possibly, the finest force, in history, to basically, prevent a Blitzkrieg like invasion from an overrunning our allies, to allow time for them to mobilize.  

The invasion of Iraq, under George W. Bush,  changed the purpose of that force.  Shock and awe, designed to stop an invading force, was, instead used to actually invade and occupy a country, and, in effect, took a finely honed sword and used it as a meat cleaver.

We may never know the full extent of  the damage that had been done to our armed forces, but, nevertheless, damage has been done. Obama inherited a wounded military that was unlike the military that  George W. Bush had inherited from his father and Clinton.

Obama's reluctance to putting boots on the ground in Syria may stem more from his judgement as to the need for time to regroup than any thing else. 

Saturday, November 14, 2015

TWEAKING THEIR ADVICE

Displaying their simplistic tendencies, bordering on being simpletons, the Republican candidates for the Presidential nomination, say that if the French had open carry laws, they would have avoided a  terror attack.  All of the terrorists wore suicide vests which they would have detonated had they run into resistance.  But even if that were not the case, consider the situation where a fire fight breaks out between the gun carrying public and the terrorists, will the French equivalent of a SWAT team enter an area where they don't know who is shooting whom?   How do they decide who to shoot at?   I think it might be wiser for our intrepid Republican candidates to go back to the drawing board to tweak their advice.

Friday, November 13, 2015

TREACHERY AND TREASON

Anyone, who has read the very first post on this blog , knows that I am what is referred to as a "conspiracy theorist" when it comes to the 9/11 terrorist attack on the WTC Towers.

In the past I have always been skeptical about conspiracy theories and only came to be a believer, when it comes to 9/11, reluctantly and slowly.  I am now convinced that the scenario was a plot by persons at the very top of our Government to implement a neo- conservative plan, formulated as early as 1992, by a group that found itself in positions of power, with the election of George W. Bush to the Presidency.

That group, headed by Cheney and Wolfowitz, even wrote that a Pearl Harbor like attack, on America, was needed to enable their scheme to be set in motion.  That attack turned out too be the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.

My suspicion that it was a conspiracy began with a report that Cheney had ordered the use of torture against captured Al Qaeda prisoners, who had knowledge of 9/11.  The protocol being used was one developed by the North Vietnamese not to gather intelligence, but to elicit false confessions.  Now having had the opportunity to work with government employees, I know that, contrary to public belief, they are, for the most part, very competent and capable people.  They are not just a bunch of bunglers.  There had to be a reason behind the use of an improper protocol.  For me it meant just one thing. Somebody wanted plausible deniability in case embarrassing information about 9/11 was blurted out.

My suspicions grew deeper when I learned that the bin Laden family had sent most of their children to safe havens in Pakistan and the U.S., even though the school year had already started, just before the attack.  Those women and children would never have come to the U.S.  if they did not have complete assurances from our Government that they would be safe.

There are other strange coincidences that have come to my attention, but the latest one will suffice.  George Tenet, the head of the C.I.A., has just come out, in a book, where he documents advice after advice to Bush/Cheney about an impending terror attack only to be ignored by both, with Bush offering a lame excuse as to why he was ignoring the warnings.  

I want my grandchildren to mark my words that within 50 years there will be official acknowledgement of the treachery and treason that preceded our invasion of Iraq. 

Sunday, November 8, 2015

DIFFICULTIES OF THEIR TASK

With every passing month, Obama's uncooperative policies are making it more and more difficult for an incoming Republican Administration to clean up the mess.  To turn things around, Republicans will have to increase the deficit; increase the unemployment rate; increase the number of people who do not have health insurance; increase gasoline prices, and only after this will they be able to get down to the heavy work of cutting "entitlements" so that the Government will not have to pay back the money it was holding in escrow for the middle class  

Republicans will want the public to appreciate the difficulties of their task.

Saturday, November 7, 2015

WHAT KIND OF RECEPTION WILL BIBI HAVE?

If only we had TV cameras behind the closed doors at the White House and the Capitol Building, to watch, next week, when Bibi comes to Washington.  Faced with mounting opposition at home, Russian intervention to aid Syria on the very borders of Israel, a growing infitada among the Arabs under Israeli occupation and, at the same time he has alienated the U.S. Administration when he most needs them.  Will mere words suffice to mend fences?  

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

A BAD OMEN

As of this writing, polling indicates that if the elections were held this day, Dr. Ben Carson would be the winner.  At the same time, any statement made by Dr. Carson has yet to be rated as "true" or "mostly true".  Not a single one.  This may presage the near term future of these United States.






Tuesday, November 3, 2015

FIXING THE PROBLEM

Donald Trump's big gripe with the Republican National Committee is that they will not hire some good script writers for their debates. He is the only candidate with experience in reality TV and knows the importance of having good writers on board and is frustrated by the RNC not heeding his words.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

THE FULL MEASURE OF THE REPUBLICAN SLATE

All of  rhe present Republican candidates for the Presidential nomination, assure us that world leaders will respect, and fear, them much more than Obama.  Thus despite the fact that Obama never cut and ran from unpleasant questions from the Press, and they now have the full measure of the Republican slate as a bunch of whiners who they might have to fear but will never respect. 

FIRST RUSSIAN CASUALTIES OF THE WAR?

A Russian operated Airbus appears to have broken up, at an altitude of 30,000 feet, over the Sinai.  ISIL claims responsibility. Are 224 Russian civilians the first casualties in Russia's war against ISIL?

NO COUNTRY FOR BLACK MEN

A few days ago, here in Palm Beach County, where I presently reside, no cracker county by any measure, a well known and respected black musician, coming home, late at night, from a gig, whose car stalled on the exit ramp of I-95, and who was awaiting assistance, was shot and killed by a plainclothes police officer in an unmarked car.  From a statement made by the police, I learned that the officer was under no obligation to identify himself.  A black man, sitting alone and afraid in a stalled car, is legally expected to submit to an unidentified white man who approaches the car.  

Let us do a "thought experiment" and suppose that a black undercover police officer approaches an armed white man, sitting in a car, and is killed by him, is the white man liable for homicide "in a stand your ground" state?  Does one honestly think that had the black officer killed the white motorist that he would just walk away from the incident?

I hear the anguished cries of black women who bear sons in this country.
  

APTLY APPROPRIATE

It is aptly appropriate that one of the most undemocratic processes, in the governance of the country, bears the name of a confessed felon and sex offender.  The Hastert Rule, whereby Republicans, when they control the House of Representatives, will not allow a bill to reach the floor, for a vote by all of the representatives of the People, unless it first has a majority of the Republicans, in favor. In that way a minority holds sway over a majority although no provision exists in the Constitution for same.