“The U.S. is about to start accepting a surge of Syrian refugees — all vetted in less time than originally anticipated by the federal government.
Because of a spike in Middle Eastern refugees needing placement, the Obama administration has decided to rush their vetting process to three months, from the original 18-24 months.
“While the resettlement process usually takes 18 to 24 months, the surge operation will reduce the time to three months,” the Associated Press reported Thursday.”
Great stuff from the Obama administration and the administration goal of relocating 10,000 Syrian refugees in the US is a floor and not a ceiling, according to this report, so the number could increase. You know they can’t possibly properly vet these refugees with the civil chaos in Syria and no way to check that even the passports are legit. If there is any way to undermine US national security, the Obama administration will rush to do it.
Instead of slowing down the process of bringing in Syrian refugees due to serious problems with vetting them, which includes the rampant fraud with fake Syrian passports, the Obama administration has decided to speed up the process and process 600 Syrian refugees a day according to this Washington Examiner report. The goal is to process 10,000 Syrian refugees for entry into the United States by September 30th. Now, the FBI director stated months ago that there’s no way to vet these people due to no data bases to check their passports, names, etc. against, but leave it to the Obama administration to just write another fake narrative.
Guessing, I am like many Americans in regards to this campaign 2016 season and with the world situation too, where the burned out feeling has started to set in. The media hyping every Bernie/Hillary snipe and the GOP consumed by the Trump circus train, well, after the 5,000th time of Trump doing the same lame shtick and his endless repetition of his “winning” or whines about being treated “unfairly”, no wonder the media buzz trying to create “a big story” has me yawning.
The interesting part of the Trump campaign all along has been how his campaign really is organized (or disorganized) internally and who are the real Trump advisers. That his campaign internally is imploding is obvious. The reports of disorganization and in-fighting are now seeping out and that Trump never bothered to invest in the state infrastructure to actually carry a national campaign to fruition strikes me as typical Trump – no details, just all bluster. There’s no “there” there with Trump – he’ s a lot of braggadocio and little substance. Now, the fascinating public statements by Trump’s loyal friend, former campaign manager, Roger Stone, keep piquing my interest. Why has Stone been more visible and vocal as a Trump spokesman than Lewandowski? Why hasn’t Trump disavowed Stone’s comments threatening the GOP party leaders with riots or yesterday, there was a report of Stone threatening to release the hotel room numbers of delegates who switch from Trump supporters to someone else in a contested convention? Why do Trump’s comments about “there would be riots” sound so much like Stone’s and how often do Stone and Trump talk about the campaign?
That Trump doesn’t pay attention to details, from eschewing studying policy or preparing for debates to organizing a viable presidential campaign for the long haul delegate battle, seems to be the key takeaway of his entire campaign, – Trump isn’t about the details, he’s about selling the dream. So, whereas the Clintons mastered the grueling ground game details decades ago and even Cruz has put together a formidable state delegate operation, the Trump campaign focused on reality TV hype, creating media sensations, and the power of Twitter rants… Hence, the late, last ditch effort to organize state delegate operations at this late date – the hiring of Paul Manafort, who worked with Roger Stone and Charles R. Black, Jr. (aligned with the Kasich campaign) long ago. One can only wonder how long a man like Manafort, known for his organizational prowess, can contend with dealing with Trump, the master twit of sub-par tweeting and his band of definitely not “great” campaign team of misfits, like Lewandowski and Pierson, and oh, dare I say, the word, “losers”.
Here’s a PJTV interview with Ann Coulter. At minute 2:40 she utters what I suspect will turn out to be the biggest lie of the campaign, when she states Trump doesn’t have any political opposition research team. Coulter insists Trump’s campaign staff is just a couple people running things for months and now a few more. Now, watching Trump show up all through last summer and fall to interviews and debates without policy details, but with his pockets loaded down with sleaze and scurrilous dirt, well someone provided Trump with this meticulous opposition research. Add to this that Trump endlessly warns people to watch out or else, hinting he has more dirt to dump (and often he dumps it, so he’s not bluffing). So, while Coulter may buy into “Trump the political genius”, I call bullshit, loud and clear. Trump came loaded down with huge piles of professionally-gathered opposition research. Who he hired to gather all this dirt remains unknown, but before this election is over, more details will likely emerge.
Trump dominates the news cycle and beyond his policy blunders, this latest controversy over his campaign manager and the former-Breitbart reporter, Michelle Fields, takes the cake for Trump being completely tone deaf and frankly a total idiot. Put aside all the arguments about the he said/she said, put aside the video and audio tapes. Just think about this as a public relations incident and pretend you’re a presidential candidate whose campaign has been alleged to encourage violence. Now, if you have some campaign messages about real issues you’d like to resonate with voters, something like this Fields incident should be something you want to get behind you as quickly as possible.
For the record, I don’t see Fields almost pulled to the floor in the video, but I also do see Lewandowski touch her arm, which puts a lie to Trump initially saying Lewandowski never touched her. So, even if Fields exaggerated, Trump and Lewandowski could have handled this in a gentlemanly fashion and the matter would be history by now. Imagine if the Trump campaign issued a public and private apology to Fields or even imagine the private apology coming with a bouquet of flowers. It would have been very hard for Fields to turn them into cads and this whole escalation could have been avoided. That’s called diplomacy and rising above the situation, but it takes character to do that and Trump lacks it.
Instead, Trump launched into a character assassination of Fields from the beginning. Coulter may applaud Trump’s approach, as she has made a career out of baiting people and creating scenes – from her books, to her TV appearances, to her college campus speeches. Her entire career can be summed up as agitation propaganda of the most vile sort. Her career centers on name-calling and vile demagoguery, then when she provokes a response, she plays the victim of the “vicious Left.” And of course, she has made flipping her long blond hair back part of her public speaking too, her nose goes up in the air with a haughty jaunt and then she flips her hair back, which comes across as a “So there!” To be fair, Coulter only touched her hair one time in this interview and did not do her trademark tossing it back, perhaps because this was a very friendly venue for her.
Last weekend reports of CIA-backed Syrian rebels fighting Pentagon Syrian-backed militias emerged in numerous news reports. Here’s a LA Times report:
“Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter five-year-old civil war.”
War On The Rocks has a report with a very helpful map, which explains that this isn’t really the case in, “ARE CIA-BACKED SYRIAN REBELS REALLY FIGHTING PENTAGON-BACKED SYRIAN REBELS?” by Sam Heller, March 28, 2016. Heller reports:
“This is complicated, but bear with me. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are not a monolithic force. Like nearly every other faction in Syria, they’re spread across an archipelago of enclaves nationwide. The SDF units clashing with Syrian rebels reportedly supported by the CIA are not supported by the Pentagon —they’re from a different enclave. The U.S. military is exclusively supporting the SDF in northeastern Syria on the other side of the Euphrates River. The Pentagon-backed SDF east of the Euphrates is fighting the self-proclaimed Islamic State, not rebels with or without U.S. backing.
Allow me to explain.
The confusion around this news story is a result of wartime Syria’s jigsaw-like map of control. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the SDF umbrella under which they operate are primarily active in northeastern Syria east of the Euphrates River, where they’ve linked what had been two isolated Kurdish enclaves to form a zone of control along much of Turkey’s southern border. But they also control a still-isolated enclave west of the Euphrates River in northwestern Aleppo province called Afrin, as well as a single neighborhood in Aleppo city. Afrin remains separated from YPG/SDF territory east of the Euphrates by a long stretch of Islamic State territory that the U.S. government calls the “Manbij Pocket.”
Before February, SDF units in Afrin had periodically clashed with Arab and Turkmen rebels in northern Aleppo province, including some that reportedly receive arms via a combined intelligence cell in Turkey that includes the CIA. Then, in February, the SDF in Afrin took advantage of the chaos caused by a Russian-backed regime offensive around Aleppo city to attack the rebels from the west and grab large sections of the northern Aleppo countryside. The Afrin SDF allegedly enjoyed Russian close air support against these rebels, although they have publicly denied these reports. Some clashes have persisted since then, but the new SDF-drawn lines have mostly held.”
Please go read the entire article at the War On The Rocks and look at the map, which makes the disposition of the two SDP forces much clearer and makes Heller’s explanation much easier to understand. News agencies should spend some time trying to acquire updated, accurate maps and talk to more analysts familiar with what’s going on before running with these stories. US policy assuredly has been a convoluted mess in the ME for a long time, but having some accurate facts from on the ground should always be sought and might help unravel some of the media’s added knots of misinformation.
Hard to remember what was life like before YouTube videos, but assuredly these videos can say it best. This one was from the Washington Free Beacon:
Dr. Ben Carson: Worst Campaign Surrogate Ever | SUPERcuts! #309
Check out Rudy Giuliani describing the vulgar, vile Donald Trump at 31:09 on this video – the lies are limitless from Trump apologists. Giuliani described Trump as “gentlemanly” — the man tweeting in public about Megyn Kelly bleeding out of her wherever is really a gentleman in private…. yeah right! So, this post is going to be a recap and some thoughts on the GOP Primary Insurgency.
Last Spring the 2016 race looked like an easy GOP victory when Hillary Clinton’s private email server scandal broke. Coupled with truly terrible campaign PR, from the initial video launch to the multiple efforts to relaunch her campaign, things looked dire in ClintonWorld. The GOP line-up, on the other hand, looked like a field of many talented Republicans and then there was Donald Trump. The media created this “Year of the Insurgent” meme and while Sanders gets mentioned as being part of that meme, despite being a “Washington insider” down to his bones, for the most part the term has been a badge of honor worn by Donald Trump and the media saturation has been on Trump, not on Sanders.
Hillary, with the help of Bill Clinton’s arm-twisting and shoving his political muscle around, is poised to glide to the Democrat nomination, head held high, serenely walking up the middle, cleared by Bill Clinton’s brilliant triangulation strategy, as I’ve repeated since last Fall. If the match-up is against Trump, she will easily win is my prediction.
The GOP is headed to a train wreck of a convention, aided by virulent protesters funded by George Soros, by a duplicitous John Kasich, funded by George Soros and then there are the two “front-runners” in this GOP campaign, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, both surrounded by enough strange antics that one can only wonder how the GOP allowed its party to be hijacked by hostile forces.
Trump’s mass media saturation for months on end last year, where the media gave him millions of dollars of free air time and where he relentlessly repeated his litany of buzz words and hollow phrases, came loaded down, not with policy, but with some of the most vicious sleaze was, in plain English, CHEATING – it was cheating and fraud on a massive scale. From many sources:
Now add in what amounted to a rock star doing a national tour with big stadium venues lined up and plenty of nationalistic jingoism and scapegoating various ethnic groups, Trump attracted quite a crowd of bottom-feeders, along with plenty of poor whites trampled on during the past 8 years of a depressed American economy and Obama vast federal government expansion and intrusion into American daily life. Trump promises to “Make America Great Again” and for millions of Americans, feeling powerless, he has become their savior.
In comments at various sites, I dubbed Trump’s most faithful, those who champion him no matter how vile, outrageous or deceitful he is proven to be, as his 5th Avenue Loyalists. They will remain loyal even if he does shoot someone on 5th Avenue and make up rationalizations to justify it. The Trump phenomenon ranks as a bizarre study in mass delusion that I hope America breaks free of soon.
As to Ted Cruz, now here is another candidate that no matter how much I would like to unreservedly support him, based on his stated conservative principles, I can’t. Cruz, a brilliant lawyer, who so carefully calculated avoiding alienating Trump supporters and refused to condemn Trump’s antics early on, hoping that if Trump fell, he could pull Trump supporters to his side, still publicly campaigns with the bizarre freak show that is Glenn Beck. Beck has been all over the political landscape – Tea Party enthusiast, down to the border to hand out teddy bears to illegals, champion of George Washington’s values, and now prognosticator of religious prophecy. Yet, Cruz still campaigns with him, in fact, Cruz traipsed down to the border in 2014 with Beck to hand out soccer balls and teddy bears to illegal immigrants and Beck highlighted all the good works of these religious charities receiving millions of federal dollars to administer these refugee and immigration services for the government. It’s a YUGE racket of corruption! (here and here and here)
Trump corners the market on being able to say vulgar, inane, idiotic, crude, and over the top bombastic things with no political fall-out. He could repeat an idiotic plan to send US troops to murder ISIS family members, all to sound tough, and his supporters excuse that as he either didn’t mean it literally or he, at least, wants to “do something”. That plan was a war crime, ISIS terrorists routinely use their family members as human shields and don’t “scare” easily, but none of this matters to Trump supporters. The Trump policy disparaged US troops, equating them to just hired muscle, who will commit cold-blooded murder without question.
Trump’s supporters hear Trump tough talk and cheer – no matter what the content! However, Cruz is supposedly so smart, so why would he recently revert back to this language of “carpet bombing” bombast from earlier in his campaign, knowing this language carries with it so much negative political fall-out? It makes no sense, just as his campaigning with Glenn Beck makes no sense.
Now, we get to the present tabloid trash phase of this GOP Insurgency, where Kasich stands smugly on the sidelines, hoping Trump and Cruz implode, basking in Soros cash and the GOP primary moves to the gutter of the Kardashians and Paris Hilton looks like a class act compared to Trump and Cruz. Sure, there are those who will wail that Cruz is a victim and that Cruz’ wife was trashed with that Trump retweet of the unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz. Sure, there are those who blame Cruz for the Super PAC release of public photos of bare-bottomed Melania Trump being splashed in papers. And sure, Trump is close friends with Pecker, who now published the exposé of Cruz and a handful of women Cruz is alleged to have had affairs with in the National Enquirer.
All of the above can be attributed to Cruz or Trump, but something is rotten in this entire GOP primary – Cruz who can’t get along with anyone in the Senate and just created endless agitation propaganda stunts there and now we have Trump the reality TV insurgent tearing the GOP apart, but promising to bring in “Democrat converts” to rejuvenate the GOP… So, how does Trump who brags about hiring the best people hire a sleaze of the first order like Roger Stone, who published a book, “The Clintons’ War on Women” in Oct. 2015 and the “Jeb! And the Bush Crime Family” in Feb. 2016? How did Corey Lewandowski rate as part of the pool of best among campaign managers? And how on earth did this former twit, Tea Party activist, Cruz senatorial campaign volunteer, Katrina Pierson, end up on Trump’s list of “best” candidates for campaign spokesperson? And what are the odds that such a woman would be part of a National Enquirer spread meant to take down Ted Cruz?
Who doubts for a moment that despite all this “bad blood,” that if push comes to shove, Cruz would, in a heartbeat, jump at the opportunity to be Trump’s vice president, if offered the job? Look at the transformation of the “nice” Dr. Ben Carson, who was vilely trashed by Trump, now singing Trump’s praises??? Look at Chris Christie???
Here’s a link to Trump with some golfing buddies, Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani… Rush Limbaugh is also a Trump golfing buddy. Bill O’Reilly another Trump long-time friend. Geraldo, of tabloid trash TV, another long-time friend of Trump. Jeanine Pirro – another Trump long-time friend – check out her ex-husband, whose corruption derailed her career, btw. She divorced him and rebounded with this FOX news gig. Allegations abound about her own corruption as DA too, so who knows… Trump’s corruption is epic and well-known, but his supporters airily dismiss it.
There’s a lot of strange stuff going on in this GOP hostile takeover and we haven’t even scratched the surface on who the real power players behind the scenes are in trying to implode the GOP. Impacting soon, I’m sure!
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