Category Archives: American Character

March 5, 2016 · 9:08 am

Trump “war crime” policy heard around the world

Andrew McCarthy at NRO penned an excellent, must-read piece:

“Culture Rot: Donald Trump Is the Effect, Not the Cause”

McCarthy writes:

Before our very eyes, the corruption of cultural standards begets the corruption of law and politics. The coarsest part of the debate was Trump’s boorish boast (for which I’m willing to take him at his word, lest the next debate sink to a new low). The most egregious part, though, was Trump’s vow that, as commander-in-chief, he would compel the finest, best-trained armed forces in the history of the planet to commit war crimes — because there are evil people doing unspeakable things, as if that never happened before.

For a number of years in the mid-aughts, we debated the merits vel non of waterboarding. I defended the legality of this interrogation method — in the restrained practice of the CIA, not as cruelly administered historically — mostly based on a strict interpretation of the federal torture statute. It was not an endorsement of the tactic in any particular case. The opposition’s point was well taken that the existence of a legal justification (which they did not concede) would not necessarily make the use of waterboarding good policy. We volleyed ticking-bomb scenarios and slippery slopes back and forth.

As a lawyer, I instinctively believed we should be able to write rules clarifying the extremely rare circumstances in which aggressive tactics could be used. Critics forcefully countered that the very writing of rules was an authorization that would be stretched to cover non-dire circumstances. Jonah Goldberg reminded us about the “hidden law,” which as applied here, counsels forbidding across the board that which should be forbidden in almost all situations, in the belief that if a dire emergency did arise, good people would act outside the law, do what had to be done, and hope that others would understand and forgive.

Since I have already vented in the comments on Mr. McCarthy’s piece, let me just paste it here and be done for today:

susanholly Lamprey Wrangler • 27 minutes ago

Please, if the choices are Hillary or Trump – America is doomed, PERIOD! Trump is not some lifesaver of the Republic, he’s an insurgent intent on burning the system down! You reap what you sow when you enable sociopaths and those two are extreme sociopaths, who don’t believe rules apply to them.

I am keeping a list, for future reference, of every Republican mouthpiece, who uses the phrase, “that’s just Donald Trump being Donald Trump,” to excuse his excesses. Duncan Hunter, yesterday morning, a vet, no less was interviewed on FOX news in the morning about Trump’s Thursday night doubling done on his killing ISIS family members policy. Hunter said he hadn’t seen the debate, deflected, then tried to excuse Trump by asserting Trump was “just a little bit inarticulate”. I am disgusted that a former Marine Corps officer could excuse Trump’s assertion that he would ORDER U.S. troops to commit war crimes. There’s another Trump mouthpiece, a former Navy seal, who was on FOX doing the same thing. They are a disgrace to the US Armed Service and have dishonored themselves and are unfit spokespeople for we, the heirs of General George Washington’s Continental Army!

All this to promote an obvious sociopath, out of venal political motives. Rudy Guiliani, a man I respected, did the same “that’s Donald Trump being Donald Trump” excuse last weekend on FOX News and I lost all respect for him. He has been an “unofficial” Trump adviser for months and was well aware of Trump’s war crimes spiel, because Trump has repeated it several times. NRO should do a heading at the top of their page, to click on, and chronicle, names, dates and statements of all these Trump enablers – they deserve to be remembered for this.

As a vet myself, and the spouse of a Grenada and Desert Storm vet, I am disgusted that these people are excusing Trump and the murmurs of he’s trying to be tough – well, here’s the rub – the strategic challenges to defeat Islamic terror, which Mr. McCarthy has written very informatively about in his books, are complicated and very challenging, as it is, but for some fool like Trump uttering those words, he just added to the problem exponentially and he is UNFIT to ever command the US Armed Forces. It’s not just that Trump’s “strategy” is a war crime, it’s also that anyone with a brain knows that a military strategy based on killing innocent civilians in hopes it hurts the morale of enemy combatants is IDIOTIC and unhinged. YUGE blowback, in kind, would be the result of Trump’s policy.

His words were heard by every world leader and our enemies.

Trump walking that back should not be forgotten – remember it and remind all Trump enablers, because his foolish and idiotic utterance put US Armed Forces, operating in an already dangerous area of the world, in more danger! Anyone aspiring to be commander in chief, who would say he will order our military to commit war crimes, is a threat to The Constitution and to the troops he aspires to command!!! Wake up, this is no longer just the Trump reality TV show -Mr. Draft Deferment, just put US troops in danger with his careless and idiotic blustering – all to “sound” tough.

Let me add that, yes, I am aware that the Trump campaign issued a statement late yesterday, avowing that Trump would obey the law as President, but NEVER forget what his first policy was and that he only backtracked for political expediency, not because he conceded his war crimes policy was immoral and illegal. He is Hillary’s twin brother when it comes to saying or doing whatever it takes to get what he wants – they are both corrupt to the core and they will corrupt all who follow them!!!

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Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Pet Peeves, Politics, Terrorism, The Constitution

March 4, 2016 · 1:50 am

Another editorial

Trump is unfit to command the military: Column

Rachel E. VanLandingham and Geoffrey S. Corn 3:53 p.m. EST March 3, 2016

The GOP front-runner’s intent to order war crimes would pit the president against his troops.

It’s not unusual for presidential candidates to say things on the stump that they really don’t mean. But Americans should reject any candidate who proudly espouses his commitment to lead the American military into the underworld of war crimes. This nation simply cannot condone a presidential candidate who makes war crimes a central plank in his national security platform. Instead of making “America great again,” such policies would destabilize the foundations of our professional military while pitting military leaders against their commander in chief. The military cannot ignore these risks, and American voters must not either.

Rachel E. VanLandingham, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and judge advocate, is an associate law professor at Southwestern Law School and vice president of theNational Institute of Military Justice. Geoffrey S. Corn, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and formerly the Army’s top law of war adviser, is a law professor at South Texas College of Law.

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February 12, 2016 · 10:35 am

It’s about FREEDOM!

Here’s another important American Minute by Bill Federer, which I have linked under American Inspirations on my home page:

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the exact same day, FEBRUARY 12, 1809, but their lives had opposite effects.

Lincoln is best known for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and freeing millions of slaves, claiming all men are created equal, as he stated in his Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863:

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Darwin’s theory of evolution claims men were not created, instead they evolved, and men are not equal, as some are more evolved than others.

In 1859, Darwin published “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.”

Origin of Species was read and reread by Karl Marx, who used ‘survival of the fittest’ to formulate the ‘dialectical conflict’, where labor and community organizers would create social chaos enabling communist dictators to usurp power.

Karl Marx wrote to Lassalle, January 16, 1861:

“Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural selection for the class struggle in history.”

Karl Marx dedicated his book, Das Kapital, to Darwin, inscribing that he was a “sincere admirer” in Darwin’s personal copy.

Darwin also influenced Engels, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and others whose totalitarian regimes killed and enslaved millions.

Lincoln’s last act in office was to put on all National Coin the motto, “In God We Trust.”

Darwin’s theory has been used to deny a Creator God.

A year and a half into the Civil War, Lincoln told his Cabinet, September 22, 1862, as reported Treasury Secretary Salmon Portland Chase:

“The time for the annunciation of the emancipation policy can no longer be delayed. Public sentiment will sustain it, many of my warmest friends and supporters demand it, and I have promised God that I will do it.”

When asked by Secretary Chase to explain, Lincoln replied:

“I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee were driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves.”

Lincoln, the first Republican President, addressed the Indiana Regiment, March 17, 1865:

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

Abraham Lincoln stated August 14, 1862:

“It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.”

Lincoln wrote to H.L. Pierce, April 6, 1859:

“This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God, cannot long retain it.”

Lincoln stated in his Second Inaugural, March 4, 1865, just 41 days before his assassination:

“If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God…He now wills to remove, and that He gives…this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came,

shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?…’the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'”

Lincoln stated in his Second Annual Message, December 1, 1862:

“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free… We shall nobly save – or meanly lose – the last, best hope of earth… The way is plain…which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.”

In contrast, Darwin published his Origin of Species, 1859, and Descent of Man, 1871, in which he wrote:

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated…

We civilized men, on the other hand…build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick…

Thus the weak members propagate their kind. No one who had attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man…

Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed…”

Darwin continued:

“Civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world…

The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

Social Darwinism was used to justify racism, such as the Supreme Court opinion in Dred Scott v Sanford, 1856, written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who was appointed by Democrat President Jackson:

“Slaves had…been regarded as beings of an inferior order…so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”

Darwin’s theory influenced Margaret Sanger, who promoted “eugenics” and “forced sterilization” to eliminate inferior races. Sanger founded a 501(c)3 called Planned Parenthood.

Margaret Sanger wrote in her autobiography of addressing a Klu Klux Klan rally in Silver Lake, New Jersey in 1938. She wrote in her book Pivot of Civilization, 1922, calling for the:

“Elimination of ‘human weeds’…overrunning the human garden; for the cessation of ‘charity’ because it prolonged the lives of the unfit; for the segregation of ‘morons, misfits, and the maladjusted’; and for the sterilization of genetically inferior races.”

Margaret Sangers’ magazine The Birth Control Review published in April 1933. an article by Nazi Party member Ernst Rüdin, one of the ‘fathers of racial hygiene.’

Ernst Rüdin, advocated eliminating those with hereditary defects – ‘untermensch’- from the human gene pool, which led to millions dying in the holocaust.

Darwin influenced Joseph Stalin, as recounted in the book Landmarks in the Life of Stalin:

“At a very early age, while still a pupil in the ecclesiastical school, Comrade Stalin developed a critical mind and revolutionary sentiments. He began to read Darwin and became an atheist.”

Joseph Stalin stated of the Soviet state-controlled ‘common core’ type indoctrination:

“There are three things that we do to disabuse the minds of our seminary students. We had to teach them the age of the earth, the geologic origin, and Darwin’s teachings.”

Stalin used intentional famines, forced labor and executions to eliminate over 7 million Ukrainians.

Stalin’s notorious 1937 order No. 00447 called for the mass execution and exile of “socially harmful elements” as “enemies of the people.”

Estimates of deaths during the Stalinist period range from 8 to 61 million.

Darwin influenced Mao Zedong who stated:

“Chinese socialism is founded upon Darwin and the theory of evolution.”

Mao Zedong’s atheistic Communist Party policies resulted in an estimated 80 million deaths.

Pol Pot’s communist Khmer Rouge killed 2 million Cambodians in his ‘killing fields’ between 1975 and 1979.

With Darwinist-utilitarian logic, Pol Pot stated:

‘Keeping you is no gain. Losing you is no loss.’

In the article “Nationalism in the Slave States of Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and now, China” (Dec. 23, 2010), Lev Navrozov, an immigrant from the U.S.S.R. who worked with the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies, stated:

“Once upon a time it was assumed that a slave should fulfill the slave-owners’ order as efficiently as a machine. But after Stalin, Hitler, and Mao…slaves must relive the order, and hence scream in their delight to kill and be killed.”

These genocides resulted from ascribing an unequal value to human life.

The statement in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “a new nation…dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” was echoed by other Presidents.

Franklin D. Roosevelt stated in his United Flag Day broadcast, June 14, 1942:

“The belief in man, created free, in the image of God – is the crucial difference between ourselves and the enemies we face.”

Harry S Truman stated in his Inaugural Address, January 20, 1949:

“We believe that all men are created equal because they are created in the image of God. From this faith we will not be moved.”

Ronald Reagan stated to the citizens of Hambach, Germany, May 6, 1985:

“Each of us…is made…in the image of God, the image of God the Creator.”

Woodrow Wilson stated in Denver, Colorado, on the 300th anniversary of King James Bible, May 7, 1911:

“The finger of God that moves upon the face of the nations is against every man that plots the nation’s downfall or the people’s deceit…

These men are…groping and staggering in their ignorance to a fearful day of judgment; and…the glad day…will come in which men will sing by the host of the coming of the Lord in His glory,

and all of those will be forgotten – those little, scheming, contemptible creatures that forgot the image of God and tried to frame men according to the image of the evil one.”

(Brought to you by AmericanMinute.com)

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February 10, 2016 · 9:28 am

Virtue is necessary in a Republic

Sometimes things seem so perfectly timed that it reaffirms my faith in God. At the top of my home page I have The American Minute linked under the heading American Inspirations. Here is today’s:

Society…must repose on principles that do not change.” – wrote Montesquieu in Book 24 of The Spirit of the Laws.

Montesquieu was a French political philosopher whose books were read by Catherine the Great of Russia, banned by Louis XV of France and praised in England.

He greatly influenced America’s founders.

In 1984, the American Political Review published “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late 18th-Century American Political Thought,” written by Donald S. Lutz of the University of Houston, and Charles S. Hyneman.

After reviewing nearly 15,000 items written between 1760 and 1805, Lutz and Hyneman discovered that the writers of the Constitution quoted Montesquieu more than any other source except the Bible.

Montesquieu divided governments into three categories, describing what principle each rely upon:

Republics, most prevalent in northern European Protestant countries, rely on Virtue;

Monarchs, most prevalent in southern and western European countries, rely on Honor; and

Despots, most prevalent in Islamic countries, rely on Fear.

“Republic” is a “popular government” where people rule themselves, being conscious that each citizen will be held accountable to a God who wants them to be fair.

“Monarch” is a king with a conscience, being limited by laws, traditions, religion and the noblemen class.

“Despot” is defined as someone who rules according to his whims and caprices, exercising absolute and arbitrary power: absolute, meaning the moment they say something it is the law; and arbitrary, meaning no one can predict what he will say next.

Montesquieu understood that man’s nature was inherently selfish and, opportunity provided, any person could be tempted to accumulate power and ultimately become a despot.

Montesquieu explained that once virtue is gone, a republic will transition from “popular” to a despot, who usurps power and rules through fear:

“It is the nature of a Republican government that…the collective body of the People…should be…the Supreme Power…

In a Popular state, one spring more is necessary, namely, Virtue…

The politic Greeks, who lived under a Popular government, knew no other support than Virtue…

When Virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community…

When, in a Popular government, there is a suspension of the laws, as this can proceed only from the corruption of the republic, the state is certainly undone.”

Montesquieu continued:

“As Virtue is necessary in a Republic…

so Fear is necessary in a Despotic government: with regard to Virtue, there is no occasion for it…

Fear must therefore depress their spirits, and extinguish even the least sense of ambition…

Of a Despotic government, that a single person…rule according to his own will and caprice…

He who commands the execution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is less need of Virtue than in a popular government…”

Montesquieu added:

“Such are the principles…of government…

in a particular Republic they actually are…Virtuous…

in a particular Despotic government by Fear.”

In contrasting a moderate Monarch or Republic with a Despot, Montesquieu wrote in The Spirit of the Laws, 1748:

“A moderate Government is most agreeable to the Christian Religion, and a despotic Government to the Mahometan…

The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power.

The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage with which a prince punishes his subjects, and exercises himself in cruelty.

As this religion forbids the plurality of wives, its princes are less confined, less concealed from their subjects, and consequently have more humanity: they are more disposed to be directed by laws, and more capable of perceiving that they cannot do whatever they please.

While the Mahometan princes incessantly give or receive death, the religion of the Christians renders their princes…less cruel. The prince confides in his subjects, and the subjects in the prince.

How admirable the religion which, while it only seems to have in view the felicity of the other life, continues the happiness of this!…

It is the Christian religion that…has hindered despotic power.”

Montesquieu continued:

“From the characters of the Christian and Mahometan religions, we ought, without any further examination, to embrace the one and reject the other:

for it is much easier to prove that religion ought to humanize the manners of men than that any particular religion is true.

It is a misfortune to human nature when religion is given by a conqueror.

The Mahometan religion, which speaks only by the sword, acts still upon men with that destructive spirit with which it was founded.”

Of the Christian religion, Montesquieu examined:

“When the Christian religion, two centuries ago, became unhappily divided into Catholic and Protestant, the people of the north embraced the Protestant, and those of the south adhered still to the Catholic.

The reason is plain: the people of the north have, and will forever have, a spirit of liberty and independence, which the people of the south have not; and therefore a religion which has no visible head is more agreeable to the independence of the climate than that which has one…

When a religion is introduced and fixed in a state, it is commonly such as is most suitable to the plan of government there established.”

Montesquieu compared Lutheran and Calvinist countries:

“In the countries themselves where the Protestant religion became established, the revolutions were made pursuant to the several plans of political government.

Luther having great princes on his side…an ecclesiastical authority…while Calvin, having to do with people who lived under republican governments…

Each of these two religions was believed to be perfect; the Calvinist judging his most conformable to what Christ had said, and the Lutheran to what the Apostles had practiced.”

Warning of the abuse of power when concentrated, Montesquieu introduced the revolutionary concept of separating the powers of ruling into three branches: legislative, executive and judicial.

These three branches would selfishly pull against each other to prevent one from overpowering the others – thus using power to check power.

The brilliance of this is equivalent to a Sunday school teacher giving an assignment – ‘design a system of government where sinners keep other sinners from sinning.’

Montesquieu wrote:

“Nor is there liberty if the power of Judging is not separated from Legislative power and from Executive power.

If it were joined to Legislative power, the power over life and liberty of the citizens would be arbitrary, for the Judge would be the Legislator.

If it were joined to Executive power, the Judge could have the force of an oppressor.

ALL WOULD BE LOST if the same…body of principal men…exercised these three powers.”

James Madison echoed this in The Federalist No. 51:

“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place… If angels were to govern men, neither external or internal controls on government would be necessary.”

In The Spirit of the Laws, 1748, Montesquieu wrote:

“I have always respected religion; the morality of the Gospel is the noblest gift ever bestowed by God on man.

We shall see that we owe to Christianity, in government, a certain political law, and in war a certain law of nations – benefits which human nature can never sufficiently acknowledge.

The principles of Christianity, deeply engraved on the heart, would be infinitely more powerful than the false Honor of Monarchies, than the humane Virtues of Republics, or the servile Fear of Despotic states.”

In his Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans, 1734, Montesquieu wrote:

“It is not chance that rules the world. Ask the Romans… There are general causes, moral and physical… elevating it, maintaining it, or hurling it to the ground…

If the chance of one battle-that is, a particular cause-has brought a state to ruin, some general cause made it necessary for that state to perish from a single battle. In a word, the main trend draws with it all particular accidents.”

In the beginning of The Spirit of the Laws, 1748, Montesquieu wrote:

“God is related to the universe as Creator and Preserver; the laws by which He created all things are those by which He preserves them…

But the intelligent world is far from being so well governed as the physical…

Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.

As an intelligent being, he incessantly transgresses the laws established by God, and changes those of his own instituting.

He is left to his private direction, though a limited being, and subject, like all finite intelligences, to ignorance and error…hurried away by a thousand impetuous passions.

Such a being might every instant forget his Creator; God has therefore reminded him of his duty by the laws of religion.”

Baron Montesquieu died on FEBRUARY 10, 1755.

Montesquieu wrote in The Spirit of the Laws, 1748:

“The Christian religion, which orders men to love one another, no doubt wants the best political laws and the best civil laws for each people, because those laws are, after (religion), the greatest good that men can give and receive.”

(Brought to you by AmericanMinute.com)

And speaking of lost virtue in a republic, I am going to quote from Machiavelli’s “Discourses on Livy“:

“A republic may, likewise be brought back to its original form, without recourse to ordinances for enforcing justice, by the mere virtues of a single citizen, by reason that these virtues are of such influence and authority that good men love to imitate them, and bad men are ashamed to depart from them.”

-from Book III, Chapter 1 — For a Sect or Commonwealth to last long it must often be brought back to its Beginnings

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February 9, 2016 · 4:31 pm

We still have The Constitution as our rule of law!

I thought it best to keep posting updates – I am still safe and FREE to speak my mind.

The following is what I am beginning to believe. Some of these views I feel confident are the truth, others I am strongly leaning toward. Of course, facts may emerge to prove me wrong , but here’s what America looks like from where I stand, as a law-abiding citizen attacked in my own home in 1998 by a retired general sent to silence me, over online message board postings. Take it or leave it, it’s still a free country, but I have tried since 1998 to seek justice and expose what happened to me, because the events are the truth.

Americans, deluded and led like sheep into this endless cycle of hyper-charged political partisan fighting, lost sight of the big picture enemies around the globe, who remain determined to destroy America.

A couple days ago, I wrote;

“I believe our government, all the way to the top, all of our mass media (cable networks, to include FOX), the partisan agitators (both left and right) and every institution has been carefully and systematically infiltrated,with people they put in place to foment agitprop, to fuel the partisan divide and to buy or put in place candidates, they control.”

So, let me start with a refresher of how I, a nobody homemaker, got caught up in this mess in the first place. In 1998, when the Clinton impeachment saga began, I was fairly new to the internet, as we had purchased our first home PC in 1997, I believe. Looking first for pen pals around the world, which had been a hobby of mine in my teens, I also came across “message boards”. Many of those message boards were precursors to the sexting and online cyber-sex businesses today, serving as venues for people to hook-up. While trying to figure out message boards, I came across the Excite message boards, which had some very interesting political debates, on all sorts of hot button topics. I distinctly recall some very extreme views on both sides and I even remember a poster, nickname of Argus, whom I felt might be part of a right-wing militia. I urged everyone, that no matter what, we must defend The Constitution and follow the rule of law. I still believe that today. My goal, as my situation goes public, which I feel certain it will, is to pull as many law-abiding Americans to the middle and away from extreme partisanship and urge all of you to please don’t be the mindless idiots our enemies believe we are. I urge all of you to think for yourselves!

Extreme partisanship served as a fertile field for America’s enemies to sow internal discord and divide America into hostile camps. Let’s examine how they, being Soviet and Chinese communists in the driver’s seat of this effort, beginning with the Soviets first and later, tag-teaming us with Chinese efforts, then later others, like Iran/Sunni/Wahabbi players too, operate. Keep in mind that the big game was always Soviet and even after the collapse of the USSR, their efforts continued and actually escalated, while America let down its guard.

Their main agents were in place before the collapse of the Soviet Union. While the players on the left are obvious and sit ensconced in academia and Hollywood, the ones on the right have been trickier to identify. We, being the team of old Cold Warriors, who are helping me, are all well-trained and familiar with how America’s enemies operated all along. I feel certain that the deeply embedded Soviet infiltrators and their children and even grandchildren, still living here, will be identified in the very near future, Prepare to be surprised, because all of them are trusted “defenders of liberty”, and some have held very high public offices, some still do. Anyone, who made a career out of feeding this endless rabid partisanship between Democrats and Republicans, for decades, is likely part of a foreign infiltration effort. In the black community fueling violence or virulent racism – like those claiming “white privilege” or the Ferguson/Baltimore agitprop – are likely dupes of foreign agitation propaganda, all part of their larger plan, in place for decades, to divide America. Muslim infiltration since the 70s, by both Arab, MB and others made great in-roads at funding and fueling this agitprop, while criminal elements helped fund the wasteland of drugs and criminality taking down black inner-city communities. All along the foreign infiltration enmeshed its efforts with organized crime, thus we now face this mass political corruption, that I intend to expose, with the help of many brave Americans, dedicated to, first and foremost, selfless service to defend The Constitution! We are not an armed militia or terrorist group. We are people who swore the oath to defend The Constitution.

In 1998, I identified the mass media manipulation technique being used by the Carville/Begala spinmeister team – it uses foreign mass media brainwashing techniques, with the repetition of buzz words and hollow phrases. The next part of the equation was to condition the American people to trust polls over merits of any issue – they sell the majority polls and very quickly alter public opinion by reinforcing what the majority of Americans believe, casting outlier views as fringe kook views or people who are out to harm the world (global warming deniers or people against gay marriage being haters, being quick examples of how it works). They sold, that because Americans don’t care about Bill Clinton’s sex life and the majority of people like him, – impeachment was just a partisan witch hunt. Here’s the truth:

The chief law enforcement officer in America lied under oath.

Hillary’s vast, right-wing conspiracy out to get them, which she believes in whole-heartedly, is the TRUTH, although not in the way she perceives it.

That hyper-partisan right movement, decades long in creation, was carefully planned, packaged foreign agitation propaganda and it is now coming to fruition. I identified the Carville/Begala part of the equation and the polling dupe in 1998, but it is only recently that I came to see the big picture – the Trump campaign exposed the right-wing agitation dupe that was played on us all along.

In the Fall of 1998, I was attacked in my home by a retired general, who had vast resources and help to silence me. My family was played and duped, to believe I was going crazy and my husband and sister went and got a court order to have me committed to a mental health facility in early 1999- all these records we have, to prove all of these events! I was involuntarily committed and the events in my Messages of mhere story are true. When the legal limits on how long I could be held involuntarily in GA were approaching – an effort was undertaken to convince my husband, that I needed to be permanently committed to a state mental hospital (sounds like something out of a communist country, right?) My oldest son, then only 15 years old, whispered to me, that the shrink treating me, had called my husband late the night before and urged my husband to sign the papers to have me committed to a state mental hospital. (all documentation – to include phone records of this call are in our possession).

I then threw a hissy fit demanding a lawyer and I wrote a letter and handed it to a petite blond patient, who reminded me of my favorite country star, countrystar1017. A lawyer was hastily arranged for me and I did get released at that hearing, because my rights had been violated. We have copies of all these records and have had them for years. Assuredly records will disappear and history will be rewritten rapidly, efforts are underway to destroy my credibility and the credibility of the team helping me, but we do not intend to shut up or be intimidated. We are compiling documentation of their efforts to contact our families, friends, co-workers, etc. to get them to distrust us and listen to them – they are using big name people, like Petraeus and the general who attacked me in 1998, to do this. We are watching and monitoring them, using legal law enforcement assets, who have helped me. No laws have been broken, because I insisted from the beginning that anyone on my team must obey the law, no matter what. All will be exposed in time.

I believe FOX News has been a huge Russian/Chinese/Murdoch agitprop front from its inception. It really is FAUX news. A lot of effort has gone into buying into this rabid partisanship and FOX has been central to that effort. CNN was a communist infiltrated effort almost from its inception, due to Ted Turner’s far left political ideology. FOX feeds the rabid right-wing political ideology. The O’Reilly/Beck enterprise, I believe is a YUGE con to dupe good conservative Americans, all while playing that they are looking out for “the folks”. Just look at Beck and his cast of grifters, who played good people to join the Tea Party (another foreign agitprop effort), plus the rallies making huge profits, and the endless books they churn out effortlessly – likely some team of Soviet infiltrators who set up shop decades ago there, that’s for sure. Look at the grifters in the Beck ads on his show. I did subscribe to his online show – trying to figure out what his schtick was all about – those endless board connections and intonations about evil progressives, but mostly I kept looking at his commercials filled with obvious grifters. He even hijacked George Washington to fund this subversion of America. Here’s a priceless Beck con man – “The Citadel enterprise”, which I wrote about in 2013:

Sweet land of liberty….. (or land of the gullible)?

O’Reilly took longer for me to figure out, but this takedown of George Will, then fabricated political kabuki theater with Rich Lowry at National Review and William Kristol shed light on the big picture – they are characters in the agitprop script too. They likely have many writers on their staffs who are loyal Americans, so if you are one of those, beware of your job security – you will be eliminated once my story goes public, if you speak up or challenge them.

They intend to shut down free speech in America, all to silence me, just a nobody homemaker, because I intend to expose the big picture foreign infiltration and the wholesale political corruption. It is on both sides of the aisle and every candidate in this 2016, I feel, is either knowingly or duped by the corrupt organized criminals and/or foreign infiltrators. In the GOP field, I intend to expose the many foreign infiltration forces within the GOP, both groups and individuals. These come in the form of foreign agents who stayed in America, because they didn’t all go home when the USSR collapsed, but it also includes some Christian churches and movements that were also heavily infiltrated decades ago (hint it’s not just Rev. Jeremiah Wright – many are nice-looking white churches too), take a close look at the televangelists, Mormons and prosperity gospel, for starters. Hard as this will come for many, I highly suspect that the NRA is part of a foreign agitprop movement since the 1930s, a decade which gave CPUSA more recruits than any other period in US history. It was only recently, watching a Beck crossover grifter, move from Beck’s talk radio enterprise, to TV ads for beet juice, to now NRA ads, that I connected these dots, but unlike Beck, I intend to make my connections with hard facts and documentation. Think tanks on both sides were infiltrated from their inception.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has been a huge foreign military front with their bogus maps and Elizabeth O’Bagy, check here, here, here, here, here, here.

The Petraues mistress scandal smells like a set-up – he was set up by foreign intelligence agents. I suspect that both Broadwell and that Jill Kelley woman, who exposed the scandal, were part of a hostile foreign effort.

The general who attacked me in 1998, was forced to retire, because he it sure looks like he was set-up by a hostile foreign effort, a foreign reporter – he was a top military leader from Desert Storm. I believe, he had been set up years before through a long-running foreign infiltration effort, embedded in our government’s civilian personnel services

The Soviets have targeted taking down our top military leaders, in both the NCO and officer ranks, for decades. I observed this in 1980, when I believed my husband was a target. My husband had a best friend married to a German woman from Berlin. She had then joined the US Army too. She was in a personnel job in a Pershing missile brigade, when I met her. She was involved in an affair with my husband, before I ever dated him and unbeknownst to me when I first married my husband. She ruthlessly tried to break up my marriage and even followed my husband from Germany to Fort Bragg. She convinced her husband, an unimpressive infantry NCO to go to jump school. He passed, she failed, but she kept showing up trying to destroy my marriage. Later, when my husband returned to Germany, after a stint as a drill sergeant, she made another attempt, perhaps successful. My husband stalled for almost 6 months to get an apartment off-post, because he said the list for housing was very long. Finally, when I said, I didn’t believe that and pressured him, he quickly found an apartment. Within two weeks of my arrival he had to travel to southern Germany for an important field training exercise. While he was gone, first this woman called me to tell me that my husband had come to visit them, where they were stationed in Germany. She gloatingly told me that my husband had left his wedding band at their house, by saying, “I have his wedding ring!”. Also during that same field training exercise, I received an envelope addressed to me, in our post mailbox at the military post office, where we received our mail. I do not know who sent this to this day, but it had a photo of a man, who may or may not have been my husband, because the face was covered. The photo was a nude man with a nude woman straddled on his lap, facing him. I did not know anyone there yet. Many other events happened during that tour in Germany, enough to make me want to divorce my husband when we left Germany. That German woman from 1980 and her husband are now retired from the Army, living near Fort Huachuca, where she has a civilian government service job on post:

The major units are the United States Army Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM) and the United States Army Intelligence Center. Libby Army Airfield is on post and shares its runway with Sierra Vista Municipal Airport. It was an alternate landing location for the space shuttle.

I observed a tactic, of what I believed was Soviet infiltration into the US Armed Forces, through the civilian government service jobs in the secretarial field – setting up agents to serve as civilian secretaries at various command levels, where they latched on to selected officers and NCOs tabbed as top leaders or in critical fields, like S-2 shops. I saw this happen several times and thought, hummm, here’s another one. My battalion commander in that Pershing missile battalion, long ago, had a German, local hire, secretary, who was very chic and attractive and she seemed to have her claws in my battalion commander, another very good leader. She watched me like a hawk, because my battalion commander, liked me and called me Fraulein Wünderbar, along with treating me like his daughter. He displayed courtly manners toward me, generating a great deal of anger among many of his officers and other women in the battalion, some even calling me the “battalion princess” or one captain, one day, angrily blurting out, “are you too good for the rest of the Army?,” after I had been shown preferential treatment by my battalion commander. When that battalion commander left with his wife and headed stateside, that German secretary latched onto the dorky S-2 officer and at the time, I thought, wow that’s an odd couple. And so it went, I observed.

The truth will out in the end and I intend to speak the TRUTH and although it’s almost an insurmountable task to prove that I am not a terrorist or threat to America. This still is America and I don’t have to prove that; they must prove that I am a threat or a terrorist. We still have The Constitution as our rule of law!

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January 27, 2016 · 9:34 am

The Woman’s Way of War

Trump decided to skip the Thursday debate and the buzz centers on the Megyn Kelly flap, but truly what is the real motive – to harm FOX news and specifically target one woman. Trump, using his high-profile as a presidential candidate, now leads a mob action to try and ruin one American citizen’s career, over one question she asked in August that angered him. Is this the type of leader America needs?

Sure, he’s trying to suck the oxygen out of the other candidates and keep the attention on him, but he is trying to hurt FOX and Kelly – make FOX lose money and he wants Kelly fired. Is this what America needs in a President?

I still believe he hired the “best” political operatives and those are not on the Republican side. There’s a high stakes mass media propaganda game playing out and there’s a high stakes political game between the Clintons and President Obama playing out. At the moment, with leaks from the FBI about the gravity of Hillary’s email situation weighed against the mutual adoration comments from Obama and Hillary, it appears the Clintons are winning in that tug of war. I also believe Trump is a dupe in this saga – the circus clown act, while the Clintons sit back with their popcorn and drinks and enjoy the show.

The triangulation strategy is in play, Bernie the kook on the left, Trump on the right, with the path clear right up the middle for Hillary and it is working. It’s all about “winning”, for not only Donald Trump, but for the Clintons too. Hillary can sit back and relax while Trump’s sideshow keeps the attention on him and the GOP and conservative punditry snarl and snipe at each other (classic divide and conquer strategy), confident that Obama will not indict her.

Welcome to the new Amerika.

For regular readers, please go read news somewhere else, watch FOX news or CNN or MSNBC, read National Review or the Daily Kos, because this is going to be a long regurgitation of old LB rambles and you’ve heard all of this before. Yes, I am going to get on my soapbox.

Many things bother me, about not only Donald Trump, but also about his campaign and even beyond that, this entire presidential race. Yes, populist anger swirls in the far edges of both political sides. This populist discontent allowed for Bernie Sanders to gain traction on the left and now we have Trump on the right. For months I’ve been going on and on about mass media manipulation and propaganda and my suspicions that Trump hired dem political operatives: read here, here, here. From a Dec. LB post:

The only team The Donald is on, is his own. He does not care about the GOP party or causes per se, they’re just the vehicle he is driving to become President, where he believes his dynamic business acumen will single-handedly “make America great again”. He’s right on many issues – even in his latest kerfuffle about Muslim immigration, on the main points he’s right – it doesn’t make sense to be bringing in Muslim immigrants from several countries that are hot beds of Islamist terror and where the collapse of government in many of these regions makes adequate vetting impossible. And he nailed the alarming truth that the Obama administration doesn’t know what the hell is going on with their own immigration policies. A pause makes perfect sense.

Time will tell if the Carville/Begala campaign modus operandi, that I strongly suspect is playing out in the Trump campaign, is true or just a nutty conspiracy theory. For me, it doesn’t take much imagination to envision Bill Clinton calling Trump when he caught wind that Trump was considering running. Trump and Bill Clinton golf together and have known each other for years. Trump was a yuge Clinton supporter. So, the phone call could have been as simple as this:

Bill Clinton calls Trump : Hi Donald, I hear you’re thinking of throwing your hat into the 2016 race?

Trump: Yes, I am.

Bill Clinton: Well, you know I believe Hillary is the best candidate for 2016, but I wish you good luck and you know, Donald, the one bit of advice I’ll give you is you’ll need great political advisers. A national race is really complicated.

Trump: Well thanks for that advice. I am still putting a campaign staff together.

Bill Clinton: No problem Donald, you know I am already taken (laugh, laugh), but the best political advisers are Carville and Begala. Those GOP political advisers don’t have the guts to run a tough race.

Trump: Thanks, you know me, I want the best political advisers. You know I’m going to fund my own campaign, if I jump in. Do you think Carville and Begala would work for a GOP candidate.

Bill Clinton: I can’t speak for them, but you know, business is business, so you’d have to talk to them yourself.

Set-up done. It could have been that easy for Bill Clinton to manipulate the downfall of the GOP primary. Carville and Begala easily could have advised Trump to keep the business relationship secret, because Republicans go into derangement mode about them. It’s obvious Bill Clinton threw his weight around and called in all sorts of favors within the Democratic party to bury this email server scandal and the Benghazi committee investigation to get her campaign on track.

https://libertybellediaries.com/2015/12/14/my-review-of-the-gop-field

So, how does the Carville/Begala mass media saturation propaganda technique work – well it’s a military “swarming” strategy played out on a mass media battlefield. It is dangerous, it is insidious and it is used in countries where free speech is silenced and mass brainwashing goes into keeping people in line. It is antithetical to our American way of life and it IS a threat to The Constitution of the United States.

Over the months I’ve watched the relentless use of particular phrases by Donald Trump – the “winning”, “make America great again”, but most of all that constant repetition of his polls numbers. The last time I saw this technique used so effectively was during the Clinton impeachment saga. Back in October, I became suspicious:

At first, I thought this would be impossible, but as I’ve watched Trump continue to agitate and throw out these verbal hand grenades at any in the GOP field, who looks like he/she might move up in the polls, then add in all these outrageous lines he keeps throwing out to alienate wide swaths of the electorate, it all seems orchestrated and contrived. A couple days ago he was blaming GWB for 9/11 and not keeping America safe, yet it was President Clinton who let bin Laden go and who did nothing to deal with Al Qaeda’s attacks on American interests – USS Cole, Khobar Towers, Mogadishu ring any bells. No, Trump attacked GWB…

I began to think Trump’s operating like a Clinton sewer rat and he sure fixates on the polls – just like the Clintons. Every other word he speaks is about his poll numbers and the press feeds on that too. This training the American public that polls determine what’s right and wrong, not the merits of the issue, worked like a charm during the Clinton impeachment. “Who cares if a President lies under oath – the American public doesn’t; just look at the President’s poll numbers”, went the argument. The media sold that line of reasoning and the American people bought it.

https://libertybellediaries.com/2015/10/21/a-triangulation-theory/

I have repeated many times that I was attacked in my home during impeachment. I could not get anyone in my family to believe me and I still can not prove any of it – the entire saga is tabbed at the top of my blog – Messages of mhere. I was just a homemaker commenting on the Excite message boards in 1998. A few days ago, on a National Review comment section, I mentioned my situation:

susanholly
Her paranoid obsession with seeing vast, right-wing conspiracies around every corner is what led to her landing in this private email server mess in the first place. She wanted to thwart those dastardly “right-wingers” from having access to her official State Department communications. Now that she has been caught breaking the law and all of her emails have been exposed, to not only those mean Republicans, but likely to hostile foreign intelligence services too, her defense sounds as tired and pathetic as when her husband, then the chief law enforcement official in the land, lied under oath.

I’m a nobody homemaker and I’ve spent 16 years trying to find a way to expose what happened to me. I started a blog and then decided to try contacting several journalists a few years ago and tried telling them my story. I wrote about what happened to me during impeachment, while writing commentary countering the Clinton spin. I’ve posted the link to my story in various places in comments sections. I used pseudonyms in my story on my blog, but every person is real and I offered several journalist the real names of every “character”. My purpose was not to become “famous”, but because my husband was an active duty solider and I believe Army assets and a retired general were used to attack me in my home. I believe she was behind it. Lacking a way to prove any of this has kept me from going public. That retired general has been a reliable Dem shill since his precipitous retirement prior to impeachment and my husband served under that general, earlier in their careers during Desert Storm. Oddly enough, private letters I wrote during Desert Storm to my husband’s company commander, relating my adventures with this general’s wife, butting heads over her wearing her husband’s rank, as the queen of family support activities in the brigade, made it all the way to the Dept of Army after Desert Storm, I believe. The Army back then had some “command team” idea akin to the “co-president” and as a NCOs wife and being a former solider myself, I will never bow down to some stupid woman using borrowed power to boss me around. My husband is a veteran of Grenada and Desert Storm. My story sounds so impossible and I have no political connections or power, but in light of this incredible reckless effort of setting up a private email server in her home to thwart her imaginary right-wing foes, perhaps someone might someday investigate my story.

http://libertybellediaries.com…

Steve
Susan, OK, I read thru your blogs, and you will need to provide more explanation of why you think Hillary is behind your problems if you expect others to believe you. Why would Hillary think you a threat? Do you have direct knowledge of Bubba’s activities or Hillary’s activities? Dispensing with the cutesy nicknames would help.

Susan
Why? Well, the only place I was commenting about politics was on those Excite message boards. Unfortunately, I did not save those boards or I would have taken action years ago and trying to prove a conspiracy is very difficult. As impeachment rolled along, in the Fall of ’98 is when this occurred. I started noticing that specific arguments and things I pointed out in my posts began to be picked up by actual Republican pundits on TV and online news sites. Then I pointed out in detail that the Clinton spinmeisters were using mass media propaganda to block any other voices from gaining traction in mass media venues. I pointed out that they were setting up a manufactured opinion cascade -with relentlessly citing President Clinton’s popularity poll numbers. I think of it as much like the military strategy of swarming juxtaposed to a media battlefield, so to speak. In my spare time I have read extensively on military strategy for over 30 years – it’s an interest of mine, along with propaganda. Watching the Trump campaign, you can see another manufactured opinion cascade playing out, where through media saturation he now sits poised to present himself as the “inevitable” campaign. Americans have been conditioned to accept polls as the deciding metric in all matters, with complicity of media reinforcement.

As a matter of deduction, I know who attacked me – that man despises me – he gave me a look of total loathing at a Brigade picnic after Desert Storm. His wife, a bimbo akin to Madame Secretary, wanted to be the Army’s queen of family support. My husband deployed from Germany to Desert Storm – a lot of family support issues arose. My personal letters to my husband’s company commander during Desert Storm, to keep him abreast of some of the crap that was happening, would have been very embarrassing to that brigade commander. Let’s just say I have a snarky bent to my writing. I believe those letters ended up being submitted with the after action reports commanders write.

A few years after we left Germany, I was made aware of “some letters some wife wrote during Desert Storm” making it to the Dept of the Army, causing a big stink after Desert Storm. The woman who informed me of this was a paid family support person at the stateside post we were at. She informed me that she was close friends with that Brigade commander’s wife. She also trashed my battalion commander’s wife, who had just left this post and who also stood up to that brigade commander’s wife. All of this sounds like petty wives stuff and it is. After my meeting with this paid family support person, I became persona non grata at wives meetings and got the cold shoulder. Then by the time impeachment rolled around, my husband was ready to retire after serving over 24 years in the Army and he btw likes this brigade commander and he never listened to me about the “wive stuff” during Desert Storm. After I was attacked and knowing who attacked me and knowing that I had no political contacts, no other online contacts where I mentioned politics, and am a homebody type person, I wondered why this man would attack me and how any of this could happen. Many times afterwards. I would walk behind my back yard fence and look at that brand new tree stand, positioned to look into my back yard, and wonder how this could happen. And during that ’98 Operation Desert Fox, there was that retired general – on TV supporting it and considering his precipitous retirement that in and of itself seemed quite amazing. To this day he is a reliable shill for the Dems.

The cutesy names (code names perhaps) btw, would assuredly allow many people familiar with the Army goings on at that time to identify who exactly these people are, if I am ever able to prove this. Without having concrete proof in hand, I can’t name names in the wide open. A few years ago I had hoped I could find a real journalist to begin quietly investigating my story. I can’t prove it with crowdsourcing, that’s for sure. At this point, just consider this venting, but thank you for reading my story.

The link is http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/430235/hillary-fbi-investigation-i-cant-control-what-republicans-and-their-allies-do

“Great, great, great” or “sex, sex, sex”, matters not in the least, but the followers begin repeating the same phrases and with careful cultivation a mass media manufactured opinion cascade took hold. For how that works, check out Stella Morabito’s blog: http://stellamorabito.net/2016/01/13/what-if-there-was-an-opinion-cascade-about-pet-rocks/

Yesterday, I dumped a lot of comments at National Review on Andrew McCarthy’s article: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430286/donald-trump-andrew-mccarthy-foreign-policy-novice?target=author&tid=900151 and I posted some comments on another article, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430329/donald-trump-supporters-dangerous-argument . This effort of Trump to convince his followers not to watch Fox news or Megyn Kelly or the attacks on various conservative pundits, who did not come along for the ride on the Trump train, runs counter to our American values. We need to encourage more public debate of issues, but that requires not only the freedom to get on that soap box, it requires the willingness to sit down and listen to dissenting opinions – a discussion is a two-way street. An exchange with a poster, bragging about not reading the articles at National Review, but just showing up to bash the writers and bash anyone who was against Trump alarmed me:

SmashingYoungMan
I think you’d be shocked at the number of people who are doing exactly what I’m doing. I doubt 10% of commenters read all of Kevin’s screeds, if any of it.

susanholly
Saying you don’t read a column and showing up to comment on said article seems so Trumpish, like not preparing for a debate or dissing people who can talk coherently about policy. Boycotting writers like Kevin Williamson or Charles Cooke, who are some of the most talented political writers in America is your loss. C,mon, this is ridiculous. I doubt I ever agreed with more than a couple things Christopher Hitchens ever wrote, but he was brilliant, his writing was a joy to behold and I learned about many opposing views, along with being gifted with truly wonderful literary references. Same goes for Maureen Dowd, who is an outstanding writer. Bragging about this decision to close yourself off from opposing opinions does nothing to make America great again, it speaks to a closing of the American mind. That happened on the left with draconian speech codes and hate speech and PC, yet now the Trump supporters are trying to shut down writers who don’t support Trump.

The effect of a political climate where spirited, yet civil debate turns into this sort of mob effort, to shut up opposing views, bodes poorly for our republic, but if at the highest level of our political process, a mass media manipulation campaign was orchestrated and carried out to include sabotaging the opposing party’s primary process, can our republic survive? I can not prove what happened to me, but in our electronic age, assuredly the electronic connections exist that could prove connections between that Bill Clinton phone call to Donald Trump shortly before Trump announced his campaign and every contact, IF they exist between Clinton operatives and Donald Trump. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are of a piece – they, in clinical terms, are sociopaths – successful, smart, but at their core, both believe the rules don’t apply to them, so now we have the two most overblown egos in America fighting for the same job. From experience, I can tell you that Donald Trump, impulsive, vulgar, ruthless is a man barging ahead, but Hillary Clinton is a woman who believes it is her destiny to be the first female President. And women manipulate and scheme and connive, so in this match-up, despite all Trump’s bluster, Hillary Clinton will win.

I believe in the rule of law and The Constitution of the United States and I believe the FBI should be investigating this!

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Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, General Interest, Messages of mhere, Politics, Public Corruption, The Constitution

January 25, 2016 · 1:06 pm

The great dunes of Scotland

Without comment, a 2011 video:

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January 25, 2016 · 11:41 am

Great deals……

When I am wrong about something, I like to admit it fairly and squarely,then go eat some humble pie. So let me just admit I was wrong on one thing I found odd about Trump – I wondered if he even bothers to shake hands with his supporters at his rallies. I had read in one of his books that he does not like to shake hands and I hadn’t noticed him shaking hands with them on TV reports of his rallies. Some people, who say they went to a Trump rally, informed me he does spend time, one said he spent like 20 minutes after the rally, shaking hands. I was also informed all of his rallies are online for all to see it there. Alas, I don’t have the strength to sit through hours of video of Trump rallies, so I will just accept that I was wrong on that point, without seeing it for myself.

Being wrong on one point doesn’t make me wrong on the general failings of Trump’s character, which are well-documented and which don’t bode well for him as the standard-bearer to lead America in this perilous time. Many hail Trump’s massive successes, while ignoring his glaring personal character weaknesses, content to see his “winning” as everything, with no concern for how he got there. For a clearer explanation of the character issuses, Patricia McCarthy at The American Thinker, wrote, Through the looking glass darkly, astutely diagnosing the malady – situational ethics in action by a person with serious narcissistic personality disorder. She lists the Trump issues:

Bullying – Any systematic action of hurting a person from a position of relative physical, social, economic, or emotional strength

False Accusations – Patterns of unwarranted or exaggerated criticism directed towards someone else

Frivolous Litigation – The use of unmerited legal proceedings to hurt, harass, or gain an economic advantage over an individual or organization

Impulsiveness – The tendency to act or speak based on current feelings rather than logical reasoning

Self-Aggrandizement – A pattern of pompous behavior, boasting, narcissism, or competitiveness designed to create an appearance of superiority

Targeted Humor, Mocking and Sarcasm – Any sustained pattern of joking, sarcasm or mockery which is designed to reduce another individual’s reputation in their own eyes or in the eyes of others

Belittling, Condescending, and Patronizing – This kind of speech is a passive-aggressive approach to giving someone a verbal putdown while maintaining a facade of reasonableness or friendliness.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/through_the_looking_glass_darkly.html#ixzz3yGpWdkyd
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

Many of his supporters cheer and champion Trump’s willingness to stamp out political correctness, excusing the obvious excesses, where he’s exhibited the traits listed above and gone way beyond the boundaries of good manners and civil behavior. The video posted here yesterday, where he got carried away bragging and stated he could shoot someone and his supporters would still support him serves as a shining example. His supporters will dismiss this as a “joke”, but really is this the sort of “joke” you want the leader of the free world to spout off, just to stir up a crowd? He could be the richest person in the world and I will not follow him ever. Early on, the bullying and impulsive outbursts alarmed me, then the endless attacks on anyone whom he felt didn’t treat him “fairly”, on to the vulgarity , but most of all, the way in which he so deliberately slimes people, dumping the dirt he pulls out of his fancy suit pockets, throwing it into the public arena to publicly denigrate other people, then he pretends he’s only speaking “the truth” or often he plays innocent, as if he is merely repeating what other people are saying.

At the end of the day, we need a strong, competent leader, but the last thing America needs, to unite our great nation, is a toxic leader. I worked for a a man whom I considered the most toxic leader I had ever encountered. In my small, insulated life, here again, being probably a freak in America, as I do not watch reality TV, I’d never paid attention to Donald Trump. Now that he might be America’s next President, makes it imperative to analyze him and assess his strengths and weaknesses. His most touted strengths, in his own words, rest on he’s very rich and he knows how to make great deals.

It’s one thing to lob vicious, underhanded attack on political opponents, it’s quite another watching an attack on ordinary, powerless people, all in pursuit of closing those great deals. Politics assuredly remains a mud-wrestling by pigs endeavor. Fine, politics is a tough business, an arena where the meek need not enter, however for any who believe Donald Trump is a champion of the little people, here’s a view from across the pond, a 2009 Scottish view, where one of the little people got in the way of Trump, doing what he does best, making “great deals.

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January 22, 2016 · 1:20 pm

On America’s side

“The side I’m on is that of America. And for very, very positive reasons.” – Minta Marie Morze

A couple weeks ago my 10 year old granddaughter, a very bright student enrolled in the gifted program at her public school, mentioned something she learned at school, which I told her is not correct and what she learned really plays into the problems plaguing America and it also speaks to our future. My granddaughter said, “America is a democracy.” Reflexively, I corrected her and said, “No, America is a republic!” Thus began a stream of back and forth, because as of yesterday she told me that her teacher still says, “America is a democracy.” I told her again that her teacher is mistaken, because assuredly, America is a republic, set up as a constitutional federal republic. However, watching the demise of federalism and the reliance on pop culture and public opinion polls to silence dissenting opinion, I’m wondering if America has descended into that hellish, brutish state where on the whims of ginning up anger and use of slick mass media manipulation (propaganda) to sway the mob, the only thing that matters is the “majority rules”.

On polar ends of the American electorate, this fraying of trust or even understanding of this basic fact crops up in ever disturbing ways. On the political left, they’ve got angry mobs taking to the streets to compel justice by force and college bullies silencing opposing views with rules imposed by fiat, “I disagree, so you can’t speak!”. In the Presidential run they’re wading in a shallow geriatric pool with a dyed-in-the-wool socialist resonating with disenfranchised Democrats and a pathological liar, riding on her gender and spewing paranoid vitriol about some imaginary dangerous right-wing conspiracy out to do her in, and by extension do in the American people too. She sees a vast right-wing conspiracy around every corner. Her answer to every problem in America is another federal program, to encroach evermore deeply into the lives of American citizens.

Freedom for local communities and states to manage their own affairs falls to the ever-expanding beast that crushed the very breath of liberty out of not only local and state governments, but out of individual American citizens. We’ve become a people conditioned to bow to the popular opinion poll on issues, as manipulated by mass media propaganda. When the left wants to sway Americans to a particular view – big bucks go to various activists and groups (many Soros funded) and the propaganda blitz ensues – Hollywood makes movies and TV shows promoting that view and mainstreaming it into the culture, “experts” hit the airwaves extolling it, and then the media reinforces the idea with polling data, much of it dubious, selling this view as popular and reporters will grill the outliers, who dare speak up against that view, lecturing that the majority of Americans believe the now carefully manufactured and manipulated view. It’s a type of insidious brainwashing and peals the death of liberty and The Constitution.

Now, on the political right, the use of mass media manipulation has rarely been understood, let alone used, that is until the Trump campaign, which is using the Carville/Begala playbook, as I’ve stated repeatedly. That’s what I see – Bill Clinton’s perfect triangulation lining up, if Hillary can avoid an indictment. This post is not going to be a regurgitation of my own conspiracy theory, but here’s the link to my thoughts on that. Assuredly, as I’ve stated many times, I will not ever vote for Donald Trump, because his campaign highlights the capitulation on the right to accepting manufactured hype about polls over principles. The heart of conservatism, weak though it beats, will not survive if it succumbs to the reality TV culture and slick mass media manipulation of Donald Trump, who rambles on about his poll numbers endlessly, but does not hold to conservative principles or even basic civility.

On the right then who, well, Ted Cruz promised to be a principled conservative who would take on Washington and he has stood up against the Washington insiders, but in the process his personal style engendered absolute loathing among his fellow senators, on both sides of the aisle (read Charles Krauthammer’s very astute assessment). Do I agree with Cruz on the issues? Absolutely, but here again we get to reports, many which Trump helped spread, that Cruz is so despised that many GOP establishment people would rather support Trump, whom they know is not conservative, to destroy Cruz, who is. In a less polarized era and where pop culture celebrity didn’t carry more credence than ideas and republican principles, most of the other GOP candidates, admittedly with both pluses and minuses in my view, would still be able to gain some traction. Every single GOP candidate running against Trump offers more coherent policy, offers complete sentences and thoughts, and from this Mom and grandmother, displays better manners. Trump may be mega-rich, but he behaves like a boorish jerk!

With Trump monopolizing the media cycle, with the aid of the mainstream media selling people on polls over principles, none of their messages even get noticed as the GOP’s Paris Hilton spews mostly incomprehensible gibberish. In fact, Paris Hilton actually marketed a clearer campaign message in her cute video (see above) with easily understandable policy positions, but disgruntled GOP base voters project their hopes and beliefs onto the blank canvas that is Trump’s “making America great again”, because assuredly if you write out Trump’s rambling speeches and comments, there’s a lot less there than you’d imagine and a whole lot of conflicting ideas, beliefs, proposals, all overshadowed by the relentless repetition that he is winning in the polls (popular). He’s created this aura of “inevitability”, which now is reaping a snowball effect, as more and more GOP kingmakers are weighing their options and opting to throw in with Trump, despite reservations that Trump is even loyal to the Republican party – they are willing to toss the reins of their party to a man who converted less than a year ago and has spouted conflicting gibberish, all based on he’s a winner and great at making deals. Trump is already working out deals with those despised GOP establishment folks his supporters want destroyed. Trump admitted he talked to Mitch McConnell last month – so yes, the backroom cronyism moves full-speed ahead.

That’s the gist of Trump’s campaign, because I dare anyone to actually make lists of Trump’s statements on various topics to include the incomplete sentences too, compare how they line up for consistency, try to discern core principles, then look at what he said with whom he was speaking (he’s a chameleon and can cozy up to Bill Clinton as easily as Rush Limbaugh on the golf course). Finally, when you’ve done that honest assessment, devoid of how you feel, analyze how many times he repeated his poll numbers and stated he is winning and look at how many times he said that to divert attention from an issue or question he did not answer. It’s a deliberate media manipulation tactic and it’s one perfected by the American political left, not GOP political operatives.

Here are a a few other oddities with the Trump campaign, from someone who has followed presidential campaigns since I was 8 years old in 1968. Trump wrote about not liking to shake hands in one of his books – he has a germ thing and doesn’t want dirty people touching him. Has he ever done the usual shaking hands that’s par for the course in politics? From what I have seen he flies in, does his rallies and flies back out, then does his “connecting” with voters via late night Twitter attacks and the cable news circuit, not up close and personal. His campaign started with Roger Stone as his campaign manager. Stone quit or was fired in August, when the Trump/Megyn Kelly dust-up happened. Oddly enough, Stone is still out there speaking for Trump and no other visible campaign advisers or spokespeople emerged until November, when this former Tea Party activist, Kat Pierson, started hitting the airwaves as the Trump spokesperson. Stone, according to Wikipedia, has a book due out January 26, 2016 – “Jeb! And the Bush Crime Family”. Note that since Stone quit or was fired he seems uneasy and nervous whenever he appears on TV defending Trump – something smells off to me, but hey I’m a woman and we roll with that female intuition thing.

Another thing I noticed is that the Trump camp sure compiled massive opposition research, which Trump and his campaign advisers (whomever they really are) dump these nasty stink bombs at the most strategically brilliant times. For a novice politician, who can’t even spit out coherent political policies, the political astuteness of both content and timing of these attacks seems quite incredible. Any GOP competitor rises in the polls – boom, the Trump campaign dumps a full payload. The Trump campaign even seems to be feeding opposition research to The Last Refuge blog, which has become Trump Polling Update Central, and when Mark Levin came out criticizing Trump for attacking Cruz, yesterday that blog ran this hit piece of opposition research asserting the son of Levin’s fianceé works on the Cruz campaign. For Trump, who isn’t much on the details, his campaign is more effective than the Dem operatives who launched that Bush DWI stink bomb years ago. The irony of The Last Refuge blog is they no longer welcome opposing opinions from actual conservatives. It’s Trump or the road, and they ran this hit piece on Levin, which appears to be opposition research (sleaze to damage Levin’s credibility) provided to them by the Trump campaign. If Trump ends up exposed as a fraud, there will be a lot of very angry populist mobs, with so many conservatives investing so much hope and belief in Trump, so hope I am wrong about Trump being a fraud, as this could get very ugly, very quickly.

National Review orchestrated a “Stop Trump” campaign, ostensibly to save conservatism. My friend, Minta, sent me an email last night stating:

“This new issue of National Review is a big problem, but not for the reasons someone might think. The general view around here is that instead of the authors writing a manifesto about what Conservatism is, and what it means, they look as though they are attacking one person. They could have achieved the better result by supporting someone like Cruz. I love the authors of the Nat’l Review this time, but they are risking looking like elitist snobs. Where were these manifestos when Lois Lerner wasn’t indicted, when the IRS was going after the Tea Parties, when the military was being dismantled, when the VA was shown to be anti-military?”

Minta got it exactly right, the Trump supporters get angry when other conservatives disagree and conservative stalwarts like George Will end up screamed at by populist pundits like Bill O’Reilly, another speaker for the little people, who also is a friend of Trump’s, so when Trump doesn’t articulate his positions clearly, O’Reilly helpfully fills in the blanks on what Trump meant and does character references for Trump too. In this environment, Trump’s supporters are emotionally invested in Trump, in the same way Obama supporters became cultish in their belief that one man could singlehandedly transform America. They want a Messiah or a strongman, not a President, with clear CONSTITUTIONAL checks on his/her power. I want less government control and less power in Washington’s hands, especially after President Obama’s imperial presidency. Herein is why I don’t think Cruz will ever gain much traction – his fellow GOP establishment peers in Washington want him annihilated and Cruz talks like an elitist Harvard lawyer. Cruz has nowhere to go to attract voters, if he moves to the middle he loses the conservative base voters who stuck with him, the GOP establishment is throwing in with Trump and moderates will never gravitate to Cruz, with his hardline conservative record and on top of that he comes across as an elitist Harvard lawyer who talks down to the little people. He is not someone your average Joe would want to have a beer with. Rubio, Christie, Kasich all have more personal appeal frankly. They come across as nice people. Jeb is doomed by his last name, Carson hasn’t been able to convey he’s a viable Presidential choice and Fiorina, smart, does her homework, but she always comes across too scripted and worse than that she usually seems angry and uppity. She does not convey much personal warmth.

Trump has severely damaged the entire GOP field with his scorched earth campaign style, so it’s hard for me to envision any of them being able to repair that damage by November, but this is the season where anything is possible. And on the bright side, for this conservative, at least the Democrats have an even worse mess on their hands. Whatever happens, the larger question of, “Are we a democracy, where angry mobs silence dissent and popularity polls rule over principles or are we a republic grounded in The Constitution?” may become the defining issue of the 2016 campaign. In the meantime I am looking for some good books or sources to explain Our Republic to my 10 year-old granddaughter, so if you have any recommendations, please let me know.

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Filed under American Character, American History, Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics, Uncategorized

January 16, 2016 · 2:40 pm

The plot thickens, runaway narrative or fatal system error?

Yesterday afternoon The Daily Caller ran an article on the US sailors captured/released by Iran, adding more pieces that do nothing to fill in this puzzle. Before delving into this chapter of the Obama Chronicles, let me toss out another odd bit of news released just this morning, from FOX news, stating Iran is releasing the US prisoners, it has been holding, in a swap. A “swap” where the full terms of what the US swapped seems unclear, but I’ll quote my husband, who responded to my question, asking if he heard anything about who the US is “swapping”, “No, they haven’t released that information yet, but whoever it is, we won’t like it once we find out!” Assuredly true!

Watching these Obama “narratives” unfold follows a familiar pattern – ever-evolving “facts”, shifting story lines, major plot twist, turns, even complete rewrites, where the administration feverishly tries to use mass media propaganda techniques to create mass delusion. By dragging their feet, throwing out numerous false leads, obfuscations to goad a reaction from the Republicans, who always take the bait, the administration successfully casts the Republican reaction as the problem and just more partisan politics or right-wing witch hunts. The original matter in question fades into the background, while the partisan rancor takes center stage as the “real problem”.

The Daily Caller article mentioned above states:

“Congress wants to know if the State Department held any influence on the U.S. Navy sailor who apologized to Iran after he and his nine other sailors were arrested and detained by the regime. The video, which aired on Iranian television, showed all ten sailors kneeling on the decks of their ships with their hands behind their heads.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/15/did-obama-admin-speak-to-sailors-before-video-apology-congress-wants-answers/#ixzz3xQXDQeHS

John Kerry pompously hurled snide attacks toward the Bush administration’s war-mongering, while bragging about his brilliant diplomacy in this matter. He rambled on about how a few years back a situation like this would have led to a war. Josh Earnest, the puppet-on-a-string, bobbed about, but recited his ludicrous talking points in a serious tone, asserting that the Iranian photos and video of our sailors kneeling before Iranian forces is nothing to be embarrassed about. Really??? Why and how these US sailors were captured remains unclear. The Kerry State Department diplomacy effort also remains unclear. The young US commander’s apology seems quite clear – he apologized to Iran. The Pentagon has remained mum about details, in fact, the Pentagon seems to have abdicated its command of US Forces to John Kerry and the State Department.

An anonymous leak from the Pentagon suggested that the US sailor’s apology came after contact with the US State Department, Was the sailor told to apologize by the Kerry State Department? Why isn’t the Defense Department speaking to an incident involving US sailors?

All the incident specific questions will lead to the usual partisan charges and counter-charges, along with the added fuel being tossed on by 2016 Presidential contenders and their campaign teams. None of this gets to the larger system failure of the US Armed Forces corrupted chain of command, which really is a grave national security risk. In the last three US administrations I believe this occurred, to varying degrees. The politicization and enforced regimen of political correctness within the US military also escalated, where we now have retired generals forming partisan cheerleading squads for the two major political parties in the US. Each political party even has its own set of retired top brass to parade out to sell their political agenda and fight it out in a propaganda war on TV news and in print media.

Just a few short examples to make the general point, during the Clinton administration, bad military decisions were followed by gauging public opinion polls before making a decision and those decisions were subject to change by a dip in the opinion polls – polls guided the Clinton foreign policy, not substance nor long-term US national strategic interests. The Bush administration stuck to a foreign policy in the Mid-East based on two tracks, the “war on terror, no safe havens for terrorists” and a belief that democratization was the magic pill to cure the Islamic malignancy known by many names, radical Jihad, radical Islam, Islamism, Islamic imperialism, Wahabbism, but never acknowledging the “holy war” and religious components to this malignancy. PC often overruled acknowledging and speaking to hard facts in the Bush White House and while they did use military force, they were reluctant to acknowledge serious strategic failings or facts on the ground that differed with their policy. The Obama administration tries to run two separate US foreign policies, of the shabby caliber of tin-pot dictators, where they’ll use one set of talking points for foreign leaders and a completely different set for domestic partisan political consumption. You could liken it to a Wizard of Oz operational system.

Within the Obama administration, all semblance of a clear-cut organizational control structure collapsed and herein lies the serious big picture system failure. In each Obama administration scandal a pattern of obfuscation emerges, which ends up being cast as a partisan witch hunt of Republicans out to get them. Democrat partisans in Congress and the media serve as willing purveyors of the Obama “narratives”. The Republican partisans rant and rave and conduct endless investigations, that lead nowhere. A recent example demonstrating this point is the collusion of Democrats in Congress, who aided in obstructing the 13 hours of Hillary Benghazi testimony. The Democrats on that committee stuck to an organized talking points campaign to obstruct the Republicans. There was obvious collusion between the Clinton camp and Congressional Democrats to orchestrate this. The Republicans threw everything, except the kitchen sink at Hillary Clinton in their questioning, but never honed in on specific wrongdoing.

The release of the Benghazi movie, 13 Hours, revived public interest in the so-called “stand down order”. The Obama administration tried to pin the attack on Benghazi on an obscure filmmaker, but it’s obvious the attack was a pre-planned terrorist attack. Hillary Clinton sent the terrorist explanation to her daughter in an email and to an Egyptian official, while publicly stating the filmmaker caused a spontaneous riot in Benghazi. Then you add in the “stand down order” question and here is my question: “Why on earth would the Secretary of State be considered as a source for a stand down order given to the US military?”

This, who is in charge in the Obama administration and who makes the decisions and calls the shots, remains nebulous. President Obama has not come out and made any statements on the US sailors being taken hostage by Iran. It appears John Kerry speaks for both the State Department and the Defense Department, with an assist from the Vice President, Joe Biden. Often, Valerie Jarrett’s name gets tossed around as the force within the White House or narratives by Ben Rhodes, a political flunkie with no military or foreign policy experience. So, where are the Joint Chiefs of Staff in military matters in this administration and what in the heck is the chain of command if a State Department official instructed an US commander on what to do when held hostage by an American adversary, whose government rants, “Death to America!”? This lack of a clear-cut chain of command puts US troops in grave danger!

With the laxity of operational behavior, our entire executive branch is a very compromised system from how information flows up and how it flows down, from how decisions and orders are made and carried out and from how US servicemembers in harm’s way are forced to operate under vague, conflicting, confused rules of engagement. This administration put a retired military officer flunkie as the State Department spokesman and removed trained military Public Affairs officers at the Pentagon, who were replaced by a civilian political flunkie. Domestic partisan battles subsume national security. This lax operational behavior permeates the Obama administration: John Brennan and Obama reviewing drone target lists in the White House, ISIS bombing targets subject to White House approval serve as two striking examples, but the day-to-day casual and reckless handling of information, decision-making process and relentless back and forth to thwart domestic partisan opponents creates a huge opportunity for foreign intelligence agencies to exploit this operational weakness.

The Republicans want to focus on Hillary Clinton, but with Benghazi and the stand-down order issue – if she gave it, did the President or someone in the White House tell her to, but why would she be giving an order to US commanders? That is what confuses me in this administration – who the hell is in charge??? And then we can talk about Madame Secretary and her private email server, where she ran the State Department on an unsecured server, but the true scope of the unsecured email problem in this administration looms large and as yet unexposed. We have the Lois Lerner and her numerous undisclosed personal email accounts, we have the US embassy in Japan email chaos, run by Caroline Kennedy, but assuredly among this administration, where no one seems to be attuned to sound information and operational security protocols, this information compromise likely goes much deeper and much higher. This lax operational system, compounded by grave polluting of national strategy by domestic partisan political battles, took decades to reach this crisis point. Our national security structure appears to be dangerously compromised. How convoluted the inner-workings of the White House really are, remains unknown, but the glimpses of serous internal hemorrhaging keep leaking out.

Restoring integrity in the system is the only way to prevent a total bleed-out. How we restore that integrity will be a looming question that goes far beyond the 2016 election, it goes to do we the American people want to restore our constitutional Republic?

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The plot thickens, runaway narrative or fatal system error?

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