Category Archives: Culture Wars

July 9, 2016 · 2:25 pm

Another afternoon in the doctor’s waiting room

“Civilization is built on the practice of keeping promises. It may not sound a high attainment, but if trust in its observance be shaken the whole structure cracks and sinks. Any constructive effort and all human relations – personal, political, and commercial – depend on being able to depend on promises.”

– B.H. Liddell Hart, “Why We Don’t Learn From History”

The massacre of police officers in Dallas late Thursday night, that left 11 police officers shot, 5 fatally, continues to fuel politicians, pundits, political activists and assorted “experts” filling the airwaves and internet with analysis, insights, context, and plenty of SPIN (LIES).  All these public mouthpieces yammer on about how to fix “this problem”.  Politicians make a living  talking about “the problems”, but hardly ever fix any of them.  “This problem”, is not just black and white.

There are politicians fueling BLM, starting with President Obama and his minions at the White House.  There are black grievance industry activists, many whom have become rich off the backs of  “civil rights” activism in America.  There are politicians on the right drawing a red line on the 2nd Amendment.  There are two presidential campaigns trying to capitalize on looking “presidential” in this crisis.  There are police officers across America outraged, saddened and worrying about how to protect their fellow citizens, while feeling under attack and more and more like walking targets wearing their uniforms.   There are many angry black people being encouraged to take to the streets and demand “justice”.  There are many angry white people too…… some racists, some who feel their right to own guns is under attack, some who are outraged about the police being attacked, etc., etc., etc.  Again, “this problem” isn’t just black and white.

There is the Black Lives Matter movement, which at this point should be investigated by federal law enforcement, as to who is funding the movement, who is leading this movement, and determining if this group should be designated a terrorist group.  BLM sure looks like an anarchist organization, working to fuel racial discord, encourage attacks on civil law enforcement and to fuel a breakdown of American society.

Fueling racial tensions in America has been a staple tactic of communist, far-left factions, and it is part of the political playbook of people very close to the Obama administration.  Sorry, that’s the truth.  Van Jones was part of an anarchist movement, an avowed Marxist and an advocate of inciting race wars to advance political change in America.  President Obama follows the Cloward-Piven political strategy.

The mainstream press mentions President Obama’s background as a “community organizer” in Chicago often, but they never really explain the history of  “community organizing”.  Saul Alinksy, an American radical, dedicated to fueling racial tensions for political purposes, founded community organizing and whether you are a leftist who believes, you should never let a crisis go to waste, as Rahm Emmanuel once stated, or a right-winger,  like Rush Limbaugh, who has filled talk radio with warnings about Alinsky, Cloward-Piven and political race hustlers, the fact is community organizing is all about sensationalizing racially charged issues for political purposes.  That’s it in a nutshell.

Now, here’s a small snapshot of race interactions I saw last week.

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in my primary care doctor’s waiting room.  I had a bad week with my blood sugar and despite several medication changes in the past year to get my Type 2 diabetes back under control, it’s still not.  Being put on insulin may be in my near future.  Bad week is waking up Monday morning feeling nauseated, with a really bad headache, and feeling like my head was in a fog.  Checked my blood sugar, 350.  It’s down now, but not down where it needs to be.  So, if some of my blog posts this past week were really bad, I’ll use the excuse that my head was in a fog from my diabetes, lol.

So, I was sitting there waiting to see my wonderful, Syrian-born doctor, whom I really think the world of, because beyond being a very good doctor, he always takes the time to talk to me like a person, not just a number.  Some doctors treat you like you’re just a list of symptoms on a page to examine, diagnose and prescribe a remedy.  My doctor looks me in the eye and listens to me.

While in his waiting room, CNN was playing on the TV, with more news on the Dallas massacre.

There were several other patients waiting, some white, some black.  The receptionists were two black ladies.  The receptionists know me as an established patient and they’re always smiling, helpful and wonderful.  The other patients all behaved courteously and as I waited this elderly white lady showed up, walking with a cane.

I don’t know this lady’s name and the next time I see her, I need to get her name, but we know each other from my doctor’s waiting room and my work in a local store, where she shops often.  She sat down next to me and we picked up talking about what’s been going on in our lives since the last time we chatted, without even a moment’s hesitation.

I wrote about this elderly white lady in  a 2013 blog post, “An afternoon in the doctor’s waiting room”, and I’m going to repost the first and last paragraph of that post:

“We’re approaching that American holiday that’s come to symbolize two diverse cultures,  American settlers and American Indians, oops Native Americans or whatever is the PC-approved term, sitting together to share a meal and offer thanks to God for a successful harvest.  Agrarian societies through the ages have held similar celebrations at the end of the harvest season.  The unique component of our Thanksgiving rests heavily on our national self-image of a melting pot of cultures living in harmony, where Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a place where we will “sit down at a table of brotherhood” evokes a national yearning for the America we hope we can someday be.”

And it ended:

“It’s not about making race the central theme at the dinner table, but to learn to make a seat at the table and feed as many people as possible that will lead us to the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream.  Only by taking the time to get to know people, can you ever find out who they are.  People will surprise you, if you let them.  She told me that she won a motorcycle in a raffle recently, but she traded it in for a new Harley-Davidson trike.  She ended our conversation by telling me, her husband doesn’t have to ask her twice if she wants to ride, because she has always loved to ride motorcycles.”

This lady’s son is a pastor working to build up a congregation for a non-denominational Protestant church and back in 2013 she invited me to her son’s church and yesterday she invited me again.  She wasn’t pushy, but sincere, just as a black lady, who came to my door this week, inviting me to her Jehovah’s Witness church was sincere and seemed to be a very nice lady.  Unlike many people, who get angry at Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to the door, I try always to be polite, because when I was young and newly married, a pair of them showed up at my door and I talked to them.  I wasn’t so much curious about their religion, but why they go door-to-door, despite getting doors slammed in their face often.  So, I asked them.

These two ladies pointed me to a Bible verse, Mark 6:7:

 “And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits”

They explained that they go by twos to spread the Gospel.  Now, I am not going to dissect their entire church doctrine, because I am not qualified, but just having a general understanding about why they do go door-to-door helped me to be more tolerant and respectful when they come to my door.

Last week, my friend, Gladius, a Southern Baptist, emailed me an audio link of a sermon, “The Faith of Our Founding Fathers”, which he gave at his local church last Sunday.  He discussed the Christian faith of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence.  He laid out how much they put on the line by signing that declaration:

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Gladius gave the statistics on how much many of the signers sacrificed, with many giving their very lives, during the Revolutionary War, to secure the freedoms most Americans take for granted today.  A goodly number of them died fighting in the Revolutionary War, and while Gladius didn’t go into the grim details, here are a couple examples of what the men and women of the American Revolution sacrificed, from an article by Dr. Harold Pease, “The price paid for your liberty”:

“Unable to capture Abraham Clark, another signatory, the British took their wrath out on his two sons, who were imprisoned on the notorious prison ship Jersey. “Word was sent to Clark that his boys would be freed if he would disown the revolutionary cause and praise the British Crown. At his refusal, his sons were singled out for cruel treatment. One was placed in a tiny cell and given no food. Fellow prisoners kept him alive by laboriously pushing tiny bits of food through a keyhole. Both sons somehow survived their ordeal.””

Here’s another patriot’s sacrifice:

” The British had a particular zeal for destroying the homes and property of the signers. Those suffering this fate included Benjamin Harrison, George Clymer, Dr. John Witherspoon, Philip Livingston, William Hooper and William Floyd. The sacrifices of John Hart and Francis Lewis are particularly noteworthy. “While his wife lay gravely ill, Redcoats destroyed Hart’s growing crops and ripped his many grist mills to pieces. Bent on taking him, they chased him for several days. They almost nabbed him in a wooded area, but he hid in a cave. When he returned home with his health broken, he found his wife dead and their 13 children scattered.””

Dr. Pease states:

“Probably John Quincy Adams, a son of one of the 55 patriots making the above pledge and later a president of the United States, said it best. “Posterity — You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.” Let us never forget that liberty is not free. It was purchased and maintained by the blood of those before us.”

Gladius brought this same question to the forefront, “How much would you sacrifice for liberty?”  It is something all Americans need to think about.

America does need people willing to fight with all their might to preserve our liberty, but truthfully, as one who abhors violence and loves America, perhaps the best way to fight for The Constitution is to quit with the warring  political factions, quit with the endless partisan hot-headed rhetoric, quit with all the pointing fingers, but most of all:

“QUIT TREATING FELLOW AMERICANS AS YOUR ENEMY!”“

– Libertybelle, July 9, 2016

It’s time we all work as hard as we can to be Good Citizens.

It’s time for us to fight as hard as we can to unite as one nation dedicated to a common purpose – “Protecting and defending The Constitution”.

Perhaps, if we pledge “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” to preserving our great nation, America can truly fulfill the dream expressed so eloquently by Martin Luther King, Jr. and at long last, “sit down at a  table of brotherhood”

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Filed under American Character, American History, Culture Wars, General Interest, Gladius Maximus, Politics, The Constitution

July 7, 2016 · 5:10 pm

“Fundamental Transformation” defined

Words matter.

From Merriam-Webster:

Full Definition of fundamental

    1. 1a :  serving as an original or generating source :  primary <a discovery fundamental to modern computers>b :  serving as a basis supporting existence or determining essential structure or function : basic

    2. 2a :  of or relating to essential structure, function, or facts :  radical <fundamental change>;also :  of or dealing with general principles rather than practical application <fundamentalscience>b :  adhering to fundamentalism

    3. 3:  of, relating to, or produced by the lowest component of a complex vibration

    4. 4:  of central importance :  principal <fundamental purpose>

    5. 5:  belonging to one’s innate or ingrained characteristics :  deep-rooted <her fundamentalgood humor>

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fundamental

And:

Full Definition of transformation
1
: an act, process, or instance of transforming or being transformed
2
: false hair worn especially by a woman to replace or supplement natural hair
3
a (1) : the operation of changing (as by rotation or mapping) one configuration or expression into another in accordance with a mathematical rule; especially : a change of variables or coordinates in which a function of new variables or coordinates is substituted for each original variable or coordinate (2) : the formula that effects a transformation
b : function 5a
c : an operation that converts (as by insertion, deletion, or permutation) one grammatical string (as a sentence) into another; also : a formal statement of such an operation
4
: genetic modification of a bacterium by incorporation of free DNA from another bacterial cell; also : genetic modification of a cell by the uptake and incorporation of exogenous DNA

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transformation

And:

Full Definition of transform

  1. transitive verb

  2. 1a:  to change in composition or structureb:  to change the outward form or appearance ofc:  to change in character or condition :convert

  3. 2:  to subject to mathematical transformation

  4. 3:  to cause (a cell) to undergo genetic transformation

  5. intransitive verb

  6. :  to become transformed:change

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transform

Americans need to wake-up to what President Obama’s “fundamental transformation” really means, very soon.  The Obama administration “fundamental transformation” continues at warp speed. He has hacked away at The Constitution,  while his administration openly and brazenly engages in corruption, then feeds the American public “narratives” (made up stories).

This FBI charade, giving Hillary Clinton a free pass, set a new legal standard – “extremely careless” (ABOVE THE LAW). Today’s Congressional testimony by FBI Director Comey pained me to watch – he admitted that Hillary’s interview to the FBI wasn’t even under oath. She allowed her IT people and her lawyers access to classified information, despite them not having the security clearance required to handle that information or having a need to know that information. Director Comey sacrificed his integrity in such an obvious manner, that his parsing rivaled former President Bill Clinton’s amazing linguistic feints. One off-hand comment of Comey’s says it all. He said he can argue both sides of any case…… indeed. He did a spectacular job defending Hillary Clinton today. Her entire home-brew email server was set up to hide her State Department emails from scrutiny (that’s her INTENT). She walked away from the State Department with all of the official State Department records she generated housed in her home. Her lawyers destroyed around 30,000 of those emails without any outside review and Comey insists there was no intention to obstruct justice or harm the United States… Director Comey sullied not only his reputation today, but he tarnished the FBI’s reputation today too.

The hearing today was the same old partisan kabuki theater – the Democrats will declare it a right-wing witch hunt, the liberal media will bury the story and focus on destroying Donald Trump. Some of the Republicans do act out of partisan motives too. So, once again we have the partisans engaged in this same old game, but the Clinton/Obama corruption has reached epic levels The entire system is not only rigged, this is wholesale public corruption.

Then there’s Donald J. Trump, pretending to be the “GOP Insurgent” working at redefining the Republican Party, all while keeping the GOP 2016 presidential campaign ensnared in endless controversies. He spouts a mishmash of mind-blowingly idiotic comments and rah-rah tough talk, with no core principles. He’s a total fraud.

President Obama’s “fundamental transformation” includes our military and includes a rapid and ruthless social engineering restructuring, downsizing, all while military readiness remains dangerously insufficient.

Every American should be very worried with our federal ship of state…

It’s heading toward an iceberg…

Impacting soon…

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Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, General Interest, Military, Politics, Public Corruption, The Constitution

July 7, 2016 · 1:48 am

The War about Words (Part 2)

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“Well,” said Maude, “there is nothing anyone can do to change human nature.  That is the one immutable, in spite of the idealists, and Rousseau.  For better or for worse, we are what we are.”

Charles thought for a while and when he spoke Maude did not consider his remark to be irrelevant: “In the old Roman religion — or was it Greek?–Justice was the last goddess to leave the world and left it to its own destruction.  She never returned.”

– Ceremony of the Innocent, written by Taylor Caldwell (p. 346)

Words matter.

A few posts back I wrote Part I of the “War about Words”, which those aligned with the political left will dismiss without any consideration, because it’s critical of President Obama and Hillary Clinton.  The same instant dismissal or obfuscations occur among the political right too, when the left attacks one of their political figures and then we have the Trump contingent too, who reject all criticisms of Trump, out of a belief that he is the last best hope for America.

Often my views draw fire from all sides, because I’m one of those annoying people who says what I think, regardless whether it agrees with a particular partisan or political agenda or whether it goes against all the “expert” opinion.  I prefer to think not only for myself, but of myself as an American, first, last, always.  I am free to think whatever the heck I want.  That’s the wonder of America!

As a child, my mother sent us off to vacation Bible school at our village church (yes, PA still has villages) and in fact, one of my direct ancestors donated the land for that church during the early settlement of that area of northeast PA in the late 1700s.  That church was a Lutheran church, but a Calvary Baptist church from another town ran a vacation Bible school in the summer too and they had a bus that picked up kids.  My mother let us go to that church’s vacation Bible school several summers.   They had all sorts of really interesting crafts and activities, but one summer, two women from that church took me aside and told me that girls are supposed to wear dresses and not cut their hair, which made me feel a deep sense of rebellion, as I sat there in shorts and with short hair.  These ladies also told me that I needed to say I wanted “to be saved” or I was going to hell.

Ordinarily, I am a crybaby, coward, but the more these two women lectured me, the more resentful and rebellious I became, because quite frankly, my church never used the words “being saved”, so I did not even understand the phrase.  I politely told these two ladies that I didn’t want “to be saved” .  They kept pushing and finally I rebelled and told them that no matter what they said, I wasn’t going to say that.  They told me I was going to hell.  When I got home, I sat at the kitchen table and bawled, because confrontations always upset me.  When I poured out my story, my mother told me I wasn’t going back there.

From where I stand, it sure looks like the partisan political factions’ endless fighting has America on the precipice that President George Washington warned about in his Farewell Address.  Yesterday, FBI Director, James Comey, laid out the entire list of crimes Hillary Clinton committed by grossly negligent handling of classified information, through the setting up of a home-brew email server in her home.  Director Comey decided not to recommend an indictment, citing that a “reasonable” prosecutor would not bring charges in this case.  Of course, once again this announcement threw the pundits into an exploding heads frenzy, because Director Comey  said Hillary Clinton’s actions were “extremely careless” rather than “grossly negligent”, but is there really a difference between the two?

Then Director Comey  added the excuse that he found no malicious intent or intent to harm America in her actions.  Of course, proving intent isn’t even required to indict under the statute, but here again, the words he carefully chose were meant to bury the email server scandal and smacked of being obviously for partisan political purposes.  Those church women meant well, but the words they wanted me to say, were words I didn’t understand or believe.  I believe Director James Comey decided to use words he fully understands, but didn’t really believe – I believe he caved to partisan political pressure from the White House.  I believe he wanted to avoid a “constitutional crisis”, because the corruption goes all the way to the White House.

Today, many liberal news outlets were already burying Hillary’s email server scandal and focusing on Trump’s antics.  To be fair, Trump hands them endless fodder with his imprudent, bizarre comments, like his latest praise of the late, brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein’s “no questions asked” internal policing policies against terrorists.   Saddam killed a lot of terrorists inside Iraq, heck, he murdered ethnic minorities too.  Trump likes strong-man leadership, but Saddam also gave safe haven to many terrorists leaders and funded terrorism abroad.

As, I’ve repeated, ad nauseum, since last Fall, Trump’s “GOP Insurgency”, waged with BILLIONS of dollars of free media, is a gift that continues giving to the Democrats, leaving the GOP in shambles, heading into a presidential election in November.  The Democrats though are uniting around Hillary, despite the Bernie Sanders insurgency campaign, paid for by private campaign donations and with far-less media attention.  The obvious, unfair and overt, media collusion by big media elites to facilitate the “GOP Insurgency”, found the media on the defensive with excuses for the obvious disparate media coverage… phrases like “earned media”, other candidates turn down interviews, etc., but make no mistake about the SPIN cycle form of INFORMATION WARFARE being waged by the political Left in America.

This SPIN is a totalitarian effort to control the ostensibly free mass media, through an orchestrated mass media saturation strategy,  using relentless repetition of messages (the mindless talking points messaging), media collusion to disseminate those messages and a constant reinforcement of the “will of people” expressed through manufactured opinion cascades, that keep stating what the majority of Americans believe…….based on a relentless repetition of polling data (an unscientific sampling of a few  people’s opinions extrapolated as reflecting the opinions of all Americans).  The combination of messaging control and manufactured opinion cascades speaks to overt mass brainwashing by political and mass media elites and an overt long-term effort to quell free speech, but this form of INFORMATION WARFARE also grossly tips the balance to one political party’s agenda.  This INFORMATION WARFARE strategy assures the Left’s political agenda dominates and becomes the “mainstream opinion”.  Just watch how the relentless repetition turned a terrorist attack into an attack on Christians who oppose gay marriage and more gun control.  The Left also mobilizes celebrity and big name “experts” to aid  their SPIN operations.

Oh, but look how they covered Trump?  Doesn’t that prove the media does give Republicans” ample coverage, well, that depends on how you define “Republican”…..  and the media told us Trump is the “GOP Insurgent intent on burning down the GOP establishment”.  Alas, here again, we come up against definitions.  What is the GOP establishment, if not the GOP?

With Hillary Clinton’s email server scandal, the liberal media will do damage control for Hillary, just like they aided leftist partisans to rewrite that Orlando “narrative” within two weeks.   In that Orlando case, a short-lived brouhaha ensued when the Justice Department tried to censor  the shooter’s 911 call and remove the shooter’s references to Islamic terrorism (the shooter pledged allegiance to ISIS and declared he was committing jihad).   Under a public backlash, Lynch released the 911 tape, but the shooter’s words even then were altered.

Words matter a great deal to those who use them to control public perception and manipulate the truth.  The Orlando shooting was usurped and turned into blaming Christian anti-gay people for the hate and promoting more gun control legislation.  Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, came out and declared we need more “love” to combat “hate”, thus advancing the left’s narrative to make it about right-wing haters and gun control rather than about radical Islamic terrorism.

In this email server scandal there’s a discernible series of actions by key players in the past week, that made it obvious that the Obama administration wanted this scandal to go away very quickly.

President Obama arranged last week to hit the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton yesterday.  Loretta Lynch had a clandestine 3o minute meeting with former president, Bill Clinton, at the airport in Phoenix last week.  Lynch described that meeting as just a chat about grandchildren, golf and BREXIT.  She played that meeting off with a news conference, proclaiming she would accept the recommendation of the FBI on the email server case.  Just like that the news broke that the FBI would interview Hillary Clinton on Saturday (a holiday weekend no less).  And on Tuesday, July 5, 2016 Director Comey came out and announced no reasonable prosecutor would indict.  Today, Loretta Lynch came out and said she accepted Director Comey’s recommendation.  Case closed.  Hillary Clinton’s minions are out in full force, saying  “it’s time to move on”.

Like rats stuck on a wheel, the Republicans in Congress, came out and announced they are going to have Director Comey testify before Congress tomorrow, to answer their questions about his decision not to recommend an indictment of Hillary Clinton.  The hearings that go nowhere again……. it’s like being trapped in a strategy that is doomed to fail and you’d think the Republicans would learn that they never win.  The Dems, with their liberal friends, control almost all the big media in America and their talking points messaging always controls who wins.

This is like constantly repeating a script that always ends the same way or that Einstein quote about people who do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome.  The media and the Clinton team will opine, using their perennially tired, but always successful talking point….  “this is another right-wing witch hunt”.  The Republicans will pontificate, the media will declare Hillary won, and she will continue her march to the White House, because here’s the truth – she really is ABOVE THE LAW.

Today, I clicked on some news sites that are liberal-leaning and Hillary’s email server wasn’t a top news story, but Donald Trump’s Saddam Hussein comment was.  The liberal media was “moving on”.  Within a few more days, the email server scandal will be old news and besides FOX News talking to Trump supporters and right-wing online sites, the Clinton propaganda squad can add another media messaging coup feather to their cap.

Having personally experienced what happens if you get in the way of the Clinton propaganda efforts, during the impeachment scandal, I feel compelled to keep speaking out and to keep trying to find a way to expose their criminal abuse of power.  The details of my experience are under the Messages of mhere tab on my home page, but what I want to talk about here is what made me so determined to fight them then and what makes me determined to fight to expose their corruption now.  America can’t survive if political machines can control the media and blatantly subvert the law.  A common thread, that the pollsters and pundits keep telling us drove the Trump and Sanders “insurgent” campaigns, is American discontent with powerful elites playing by a different set of rules and that the system is rigged.

America is a unique experiment in the history of world government.  Americans believe in individual liberty:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

In the post right before this one, I linked to a piece at the Legal Insurrection blog, where  William A Jacobson relates a Twitter exchange with Karol Marcowicz that precisely captures the perilous point America is at.  Jacobson writes:

The best truly big picture view I saw was from Karol Markowicz, a columnist for the NY Post and an ex-Soviet who moved the the United States as a child.

In response to the Comey verdict, Markowicz tweeted out a statement as to how others who came from the USSR expected no other result:

.“Guys, the ex-president’s wife was never going to get indicted.”-all my USSR-born friends”

Jacobson goes on to say:

“She linked in the tweet to a post of hers on her personal website from 2013, which has this sentence in it referring to Americans who complained about their government:

“They weren’t born in a country where hundreds of years of backward government had led to this kind of cynicism that gets passed on from parents to children.”

I understood what she meant. While I wasn’t born in and didn’t grow up in the USSR, I studied there and vicariously came to know the cynicism of the system, particularly through refusenikfriends.

It wasn’t just that the powerful were above the law or there was no rule of law. It was in another dimension.

I tweeted back:

“Those who lived under communism understand exactly what just happened.”

http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/07/those-who-lived-under-communism-understand-exactly-what-just-happened/

I have been thinking a great deal about what I consider cultural DNA, with how peoples the world over develop patterns of behavior ( culture) that endure, despite the changes in government.  In fact, the people’s behavior determines how long and how much control they will tolerate from their government, to maintain the status quo and social order.

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Above: My copy of “Letters from Russia.  To the right is a folk-art wooden container my son brought back from Russia, painted in a Russian folk art style called Khohkloma.

Thinking about what to write in this Part 2 post, I ordered a book, which I had read about a long while back, that explains the Russian cultural DNA, a few years after Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to America.  That cultural DNA still persists in Russia today.  The book is “Letters from Russia” and like de Tocqueville’s, “Democracy in America”, the book on Russia was written by another French nobleman, Astolphe de Custine.  Although his trip to Russia in 1839 was only three months long,  he captured life in Russia under the despot, Czar Nicholas I, in such prescient, stark detail, that historians still study his letters.  His book was banned by both, Czar Nicholas I and the Bolsheviks, who didn’t much like Custine’s letters.  I can relate, heck, my posts on the Excite message boards in 1998 evoked quite a response too and there I was fighting hordes of new posters who showed up to take over the boards with the Clinton talking points……… hummm, I likened them to being like Genghis Khan.

In their own words these two French noblemen present their opinions on the cultural DNA differences between a people who accept rulers and a people who don’t.  In 1996, renowned journalist, Steven Erlanger, wrote a NY Times piece on Custine’s book, that gives you Custine in his own words.  Here’s a short excerpt:

“In Russia, everything you notice, and everything that happens around you, has a terrifying uniformity; and the first thought that comes into the traveler’s mind, as he contemplates this symmetry, is that such entire consistency and regularity, so contrary to the natural inclination of mankind, cannot have been achieved and could not survive without violence. . . . Officially, such brutal tyranny is called respect for unity and love of order; and this bitter fruit of despotism appears so precious to the methodical mind that you are told it cannot be purchased at too high a price.

Faced with the pervasiveness of the secret police and the immensity of the bureaucracy, Custine at first is shocked. He sees the dead weight that these hordes of state employees place on Russia, and their own dehumanization.

Among Russian officials, attention to detail is quite compatible with disorganization. They go to a great deal of trouble to achieve some petty end, never satisfed that they have done enough to demonstrate their zeal. Consequently, in this rivalry between employees, one formality does not guarantee the foreigner against another. It is like a pillaging army: because the traveler has passed through the hands of one regiment, this does not prevent him from meeting another, or a third, and each of these bands spaced out along his route vies with the last in harassing him.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/16/weekinreview/word-for-word-marquis-de-custine-long-ago-look-russia-so-what-else-new.html?pagewanted=all

Interestingly, in the introduction to “Letters from Russia”, editor, Anka Muhlstein,  presents the bulls-eye de Tocqueville quote on the difference between America and Russia:

“There are on earth today two great peoples who, having started from different points, seem to be advancing towards the same end: they are the Russians and the Anglo-Americans.  They both grew up in darkness and whilst Europeans were busy elsewhere, they suddenly placed themselves in the forefront of nations, and the world learned at almost the same time of their births and their greatness

All other nations seem, more or less, to have reached the limits nature has assigned to them and within which they now need only to remain, but those two are still growing…. America is struggling against obstacles of nature,; Russia against men…. The principal means of action for the one is liberty, for the other servitude.”

Letters from Russia, by Astolphe de Custine, edited and with an introduction by Anka Muhlstein, page ix of the introduction.

America is the only place on earth that broke that mold completely and set up a government meant for the people to have control over the government and for the individual’s rights to be paramount.

We are a nation built by free-thinking and free-acting citizens.

Central to our culture is the belief that all men are equal before the law and that the rule of law applies to EVERYONE.  This week’s disgraceful display of open corruption and obvious undue political influence from the White House, all for partisan purposes, made me wonder if we are now a banana republic.

For a long while, years in fact, I have been studying the Clinton SPIN and then the Obama NARRATIVE and now we have Trump borrowing the Clinton SPIN too and here’s truth – SPIN is the American people allowing their elected leaders to bold-faced LIE to them.

Every politician who engages in the talking points messaging is using a totalitarian messaging tactic to CONTROL the NEWS the American people receive. That relentless repetition is a form of mass media brainwashing of the people.

Allowing this attack on American FREE speech principles to advance without even a recognition of how pernicious and corrupting it is, will lead to not only a surrender of our free speech, but will allow those with power to dictate the “facts” and which words we MUST use.  They will have the power to impose what “truths” we must believe and which “truths” we can speak.

I refuse to ever submit to tyranny and instead of accepting that it’s the “old news, let’s move on”, Americans need to think long and hard if they want to be passive sheep fed what to believe or if they want to be FREE.  Being FREE isn’t just about “rights”, it requires people willing to do their duty as good citizens too.

Despite Director Comey’s attempt to kick the can down the road, a constitutional crisis is already upon us, because it’s now out in the open that Hillary Clinton did egregiously and knowingly break the law. Both the Director of the FBI and the Attorney General of the United States did nothing to hold her accountable.  This isn’t just about Hillary’s corruption though, it’s the Clinton political machine, a vast, network at work.  I  got burned by that machine during impeachment, where a retired general was fed false information about me and sent to silence me.  That general became a FOB and continues to be a hack to sell the Clinton and Democrat agenda.  Lacking any way to prove  what happened to me has kept me from naming names.  I already tried contacting several journalists a long time ago and offered them the real names of everyone in my Messages of mhere story.  None of them even responded and despite the escalating exposure of the Clinton corruption, her own private email server to conduct all of her official State Department business, her off-the-books private team of intelligence operatives, Sidney Blumenthal and Tyler Drumheller, does it sound so far-fetched that she would hunt down an annoying poster on a popular message boards, whose comments were being borrowed and used by GOP pundits to break through their SPIN?  I believe in their investigation into who I am, they came across this retired general who hates my guts and who jumped at the chance to get even with me.   I believe the Clinton machine set the attack on me in motion as a part of their vast network of operations,  to make sure Bill Clinton survived impeachment.  I believe they sank to corrupting the military chain of command in the attack on me.  Would anyone even care, even if I could prove it?

Do Americans still have the true grit necessary to save our republic?  I have my doubts.   Everyone is looking for either corrupt Hillary and con man Trump to save our republic, but really this is going to take all of us to put in our oars and help row.

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

July 6, 2016 · 8:46 pm

“Those who lived under communism understand exactly what just happened”

Comey-Hillary verdict reflects our own “culture of cynicism and hopelessness”

Source: “Those who lived under communism understand exactly what just happened”

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July 1, 2016 · 3:34 pm

The “War about Words” (Part 1)

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“What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change? Would it make ISIS less committed to trying to kill Americans? Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this? The answer is none of the above. Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. This is a political distraction.”

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/14/482041137/president-obama-slams-yapping-over-radical-islam-and-terrorism

Words matter.

Words give meaning to what we believe, think, hope, dream, in essence to who we are. Words matter a great deal in our interactions with others, but they matter infinitely more to political leaders, especially the one joined at the hip to his teleprompter.

I’m going to divide this post into two parts.  This first part is just a short , okay on rereading this, I admit it’a lonnng, rambling commentary on Leftists in America defining events, creating phrases to alter perception of events,  and editing out key information to alter official documentation of events, all to create a version of events that fits their political agenda.  The second part, well, I want to discuss some things I’ve been thinking about in regards to leaders trying to control what people think.

Years ago, I read a book, “The Words We Live By: The Creeds, Mottoes, And Pledges That Have Shaped America”, by Brian Burrell, that I had signed out at my local library.  A few years ago, I was thinking about that book and ordered it. Brian Burrell related how he began his journey into collecting and studying the history of “the words Americans live by” watching and then later helping his father collect the words and messages on public monuments, tombstones, on buildings, etc.   His father’s interest in these words spurred an interest and hobby in Burrell as a young boy, which he pursued into adulthood and ended up writing a book about these words.

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Above: A book my mother sent me when I was a young soldier in Germany in 1980.  She added a four-leaf clover that my father found, because he was an expert at finding four-leaf clovers.  As a child, when my brothers and sisters and I were crawling around on the ground in a clover patch searching for a four-leaf clover, my father stood there and within a few seconds he would lean down and find one.  He said, “You need to stand back and look at the entire patch.”  That is big picture/little picture;-)

I’ve been not only fascinated by words from my earliest memories, but intimidated by words.  I admire great orators and people with perfect elocution.  Being a life-long recovering stutterer, with bouts of sudden relapses, I stick to safe, easily pronounced words and avoid public-speaking at all costs, knowing the chances of turning into a blubbering mass of incoherent muck is very high.  As a child I spent time almost every day studying the dictionary.  I loved Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady” and could relate to her joy at mastering, “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.”   One of my sons returned from a trip to PA recently where he had visited my family and he came bearing gifts, among them was a cookbook compiled by my childhood church and another old dictionary, which one of my sisters felt sure I’d like.

Growing up, our elderly pastor’s wife, a lovely Jewish lady educated at Columbia’s Teachers College, devoted a great deal of time trying to instill in me an appreciation of opera, classical music, the arts and learning in general.   That a Jewish young lady  from New York City could fall in love and marry a backwoods Protestant pastor and settle happily into a PA Dutch rural community is one of those quintessential American stories.

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The parsonage was right across the road from my childhood home, making our pastor’s wife our next-door neighbor too. I felt like I had been blessed with another grandmother to have her as our neighbor growing up, with her treating my brothers and sisters as part of her family and her devotion to taking me under her wing, to teach and guide me.  She kept reminding me that I needed to always pursue a classical liberal education.  She let me borrow her copy of Bartlett’s Quotations many times and she often would hand me slips of paper where she had jotted down memorable quotes that she thought I would find interesting and like Burrell’s father and his notebook of American words, my pastor’s wife urged me to keep a notebook of quotes.  I still have that notebook and I still jot down quotes often.  I also listen carefully to the words political leaders use, but what you need to beware of always is the words they refuse to use and try to banish others from using.

Written words often stick in my mind for years and listening to President Obama and his entire administration explain their concerted purge of any mention of Islam and Jihad from the military and federal government terrorism training and the insertion of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated “Islamic experts” into government positions to guide (control) the “narrative”, well, it’s obvious some words matter a great deal to President  Obama too.

This book on words that shaped America came to mind when I listened to President Obama and Hillary try to trivialize the importance of the words we use to describe the radical Islamic terrorists, who have declared jihad  on America.   Of course, President Obama, CAIR and many others, who refuse to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism”,  also rush to insist those engaged in committing murderous acts of terrorism against Americans, while proclaiming they are waging jihad, aren’t really Islamic.  They  say this, while, many revered Islamic scholars in the Muslim world praise these acts as totally in keeping with Islamic law.

Throughout the past seven years of the Obama administration, reports occur with alarming regularity about incidents of military training documents being purged of any references to Islamic terror, Christian evangelicals and former American soldiers being listed as likely potential “right-wing terrorists”,  an actual act of Islamic terrorism at a US military installation being dubbed “workplace violence”, official documents and videos being edited, more than 50 intelligence analysts in Iraq claiming higher ups are altering their reports to feed the Obama “narrative“, WH administration staffers engaged in rewriting their version of events into a “narrative” to fit their political agenda, and even the administration sending the national security adviser to the Sunday morning talk shows to cast an American soldier, who deserted his unit in Afghanistan, as an “American hero”.

President Obama’s angry scold, about which words we use to describe the latest act of radical Islamic terrorism on June 12, 2016, at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando,FL.,  matters a great deal, because a full-court effort has ensued, with many leftist publications, pundits and the White House determined to cast doubt on this being a “radical Islamic terrorist” attack.  When the DOJ tries to edit the 911 tapes, then rewrites the transcript, omitting  the terrorists’s pledge of allegiance to ISIS and a full-court effort plays out where a new “narrative” is advanced, to deceive the American public, it’s obvious some words matter a great deal to President Obama.

In two weeks time the media, in collusion with the Obama administration muddied the information about the Orlando shooting to the point that reading many left-wing pundits and publications, it seems like they hold Christian haters responsible for the Orlando shooting and not the radical Islamic terrorist.  The Obama administration could take a disgraced and dishonorable soldier, SGT Bergdahl, and with the full power of the commander-in-chief’s office, attempt to convince the American people this soldier served with “honor and distinction”.  The bold-faced lying and rewriting the “narrative” (the official record)  by the highest level of our government should alarm every American.

Years ago, many of us were dismayed by Obama’s “hope and change” and “fundamental transformation” hollow phrases gathering wings and lofting his rapt followers into flights of fancy and head-in-the-clouds euphoria.  Over seven years later, hearing President Obama dismiss which words are used to describe “radical Islamic terrorist” attacks in America, it  seemed not only disingenuous, but downright deliberately deceitful.  His relentless “War about Words” during his tenure as President really has led to a “fundamental transformation” of  America.  We now have Americans firmly entrenched into tiptoeing through an ever-changing minefield of words that are dangerous to use in public and words you must use to avoid public ostracism.  Washington DC initiated a new speech code for the workplace to show sensitivity to transgenders, with made-up words, like ze and zir that they insist workers use.  Facebooks has over 50 gender choices to choose from and old relics, like me, still live in a world where gender is based on human biology.  The insistence on specific new pronouns all workers in Washington DC should use, with the guide being for  Washington DC  employers to be the trainers and implementers of this new speech code, replete with examples of “best practices” to avoid offending transgender people offers an example of the brave, new world American leftists are imposing on  Americans.  The Leftist War about words blows hot across America.

Alas, many Republicans and conservatives aren’t immune from being easily conned by demagogues either.  “How could so many supposedly smart, independent-minded Americans fall for Obama’s hollow rhetoric?”, many Republicans and conservatives lamented, then along came Donald J. Trump selling the American Dream encapsulated in the hollow phrase, “Make America Great Again!” In even greater dismay, many Republicans and conservatives began to see fellow Republicans and conservatives fall under the spell of Trump’s reality-TV style demagoguery, presented in fast-talking, brash NY street tough antics.

Trying to explain this dichotomy of Americans who boldly proclaim their principles and independent-thinking, then become devoted followers of obvious con men and demagogues, I remembered  this book by Brian Burrell.  He relates DeTocqueville’s observations on Americans from 1831 and perhaps this American characteristic still gets passed on in our cultural DNA. DeTocqueville identified the American reliance on “experts”, that still persists today:

“On his visit to the United States, Tocqueville noticed that the Americans he encountered tended to exhibit two opposing tendencies: they did not want to be told what to do or think, and yet their collective will could easily be rallied behind certain carefully chosen words, to which he gave a name.  “In the United States, Tocqueville concluded, “the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of the individuals who are thus relieved from having to form opinions of their own.””

pages 4-5, The Words We Live By: The Creeds, Mottoes, And Pledges That have Shaped America, by Brian Burrell

This word game charade goes much deeper than President Obama and it goes far deeper than just the debate over what to call the terrorists who scream, “Allah Akbar!

Today, the FBI questioned Hillary Clinton for 3.5 hours according to the news reports and here again is a politician who plays endless semantics games.  She’s married to the former President who turned parsing into a deluxe linguistics game of charades…… “that depends on what is, is”.  Hillary has been at pains to explain the FBI investigation as a benign “security review” today.  Here’s an ABC report on her campaign’s statement:

Hillary Clinton gave a “voluntary interview” to the FBI today regarding her email arrangements while she was secretary of state, her campaign says.

“Secretary Clinton gave a voluntary interview this morning about her email arrangements while she was Secretary,” spokesman Nick Merrill said. “She is pleased to have had the opportunity to assist the Department of Justice in bringing this review to a conclusion. Out of respect for the investigative process, she will not comment further on her interview.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-voluntary-interview-fbi-emails-campaign/story?id=40301595

The political Left in America has been waging a war about words for decades. President Obama and Hillary Clinton didn’t invent this game, in fact, the strategy of people in power, to control what people do, think, write and say is part of the history of the world’s tyrants and it’s one that Americans took a stand against from the beginning of our republic.  Americans refuse to  bow to rulers and we refuse to allow the government to control our speech.  Whenever  people in power exert a great deal of effort into controlling which words, not only the government uses, but which words the media uses, which words students and teachers can and cannot utter, and even policing the words they deem as “hate speech”, beware!

Americans have been conditioned to believe they are so unique and safe from despotism, that they have no idea how quickly FREEDOM can be lost.

Americans need to be constantly vigilant about those in power creating their own version of history, as part two of this “War about words” will be about some of history’s lessons learned in the long record of those with power trying to control what other people not only do, but what they can say and think.

Finally, one of my favorite quotes is from the 1902 American novel, The Virginian by Owen Wister,  that I’ve loved for decades, because it speaks to so many American themes that are near and dear to my heart, the battle between good and evil, the matter of seeking justice, the American scorn for elites and social snobbery, the American spirit of rugged individualism, the belief in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and our eternal optimism and can-do spirit.  Plus, there’s a charming love story running through the novel too.  And of course, The Virginian became the stereotype for the American cowboy and I just adore American cowboys, past and present;-)  The quote goes to this warning about being careful what you let other people convince you to think and believe:

“When a man ain’t got no ideas of his own, he’d ought to be kind o’ careful who he borrow ’em from.”

 

 

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

June 28, 2016 · 8:18 pm

Above the law

The Queen acts more arrogant and insolent every day.  She’s confident that now that the Benghazi committee’s report will end up gathering dust, her only obstacle left is the FBI investigation and truly who really believes that Loretta Lynch, the Obama sycophant extraordinaire, would dare move to indict Hillary, even if the FBI did recommend an indictment.

Hillary Clinton is above the law.

The Democrats deliberately moved yesterday to protect Hillary from political fall-out from today’s release of the House Select Committee on Benghazi report.  The Democrats pulled another thuggish move by preempting the actual report of the committee with their own propaganda designed to sell their talking points:

“This is just a right-wing witch hunt.”

“This investigation wasted millions of taxpayers money.”

The Democrats on the Benghazi committee showed an amazing lack of interest in uncovering facts, gathering information, questioning witnesses or doing any sort of real investigation.  This is par for the course and  to see how incompetent and disingenuous the Democrats are, they mention the ARB report as proof positive no one was culpable for the gross failures of the Obama administration to even attempt a rescue of the Americans under attack in Benghazi.

Just remember that the ARB committee kept no record of their witness interviews or meetings and operated strictly off of their own memories or personal notes, all to assure they left no paper trail.  That in and of itself is obscene and so blatantly indicative that their report was just a sham to provide cover for the Obama administration.  And on top of that, the ARB committee never once interviewed Hillary Clinton.

There’s no point in rehashing all the issues  or  ranting about my disgust with how the Obama administration handled not only the Benghazi attack, but the obscene manner in which they tried to cover-up their grotesque incompetence in the aftermath.

The Democrats mastered a totalitarian form of information warfare, as I’ve repeated many times and it was a foregone conclusion that this investigation would lead no where, because the Democrats have the mass media colluding with their spin constantly.  To watch elected officials participate in this vile talking points messaging (brainwashing), with not a hint of recognition that their behavior is an assault on The Constitution left me feeling not only sickened, but deeply saddened.

Four brave Americans died and no one in the American government did a single thing to try and save them.

That’s the TRUTH.

No one in the American government will do a thing to hold anyone accountable for this obscene failure.  We all now know that the politicians’ partisan agenda matters more than Americans in harm’s way actually risking their lives for America.  Hillary Clinton’s political future matters more than any other American citizen’s rights or justice

Here’s the link to the Select Committee on Benghazi’s report.

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June 21, 2016 · 11:41 pm

Hillary’s perfect triangulation strategy advances

Today, Hillary perfectly delivered a kick-ass speech on the economy.  Yep, even though all her cringe-worthy policy ideas, in truth, remain as old and tired as she is, whomever wrote this speech masterfully hit a home run and perfectly advanced the Clinton triangulation strategy.  She played the calm, doting America’s grandma, determined to keep America safe from that far-right, LOOSE CANNON, Donald J. Trump.  Who could have seen Hillary playing Bill Clinton’s triangulation strategy ….perfectly?

FOX News, formerly the host of the 24/7 Trumpathon, broke in and covered her speech live and in its entirety.  Ahh, yes, that glorious “free” media went to Hillary today.  Trump will now be playing defense and he will be in the same position he put 16 fellow Republicans using the Clinton’s scorched earth for his now defunct “GOP Insurgency Show”.    The only thing Trump will be doing is trying to defend himself against a barrage of media attacks. You can’t be “winning” if you are stuck playing defense.

The news that Trump fired Lewandowski yesterday, might give Trump’s big name GOP enablers hope that Trump can turn his disorganized, unprofessional, inept, clueless Potemkin campaign into a top-notch campaign, prepared to compete with the Clinton machine juggernaut, if anything was going right in Trump World.  Today’s news  heralds  more bad omens, of Trump’s  FEC campaign filing and the realization that his campaign is, ahem, prepare to be shocked…….. broke, a train wreck, filled with red flags to possible financial shenanigans.   The Atlantic reports:

“Another excuse for poor fundraising is that Trump is wealthy enough to self-fund, so that his shortcomings in collecting other people’s money matter less.  “If need be, there could be unlimited ‘cash on hand’ as I would put up my own money, as I have already done through the primaries, spending over $50 million dollars,” Trump said in his statement. In theory, that is true—though doubts persist about how much money he really has, and will continue until and unless he releases tax returns. Trump loaned his campaign more than $2 million to cover expenses, but that’s classified as a loan, rather than giving the money. In fact, one the most striking things about the report is how much money the campaign is paying to Trump-affiliated companies. The Mar-a-Lago Club, which he owns, received more than $432,000 for catering. Tag Air, which Trump also owns, got $350,000 for use of planes and helicopters. Even Eric Trump Wine Manufacturing pulled in $4,000. Trump Tower received rent for office space.

On occasions like this, it’s hard not to think of Trump’s comment in 2000: “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” Politico points out that Trump spent $208,000 on hats, while “by comparison, the campaign spent only $48,000 on data management and $115,000 on online advertising.” Those “Make America Great Again” hats are great merchandise, and useful for spreading the Trump brand. Data management? Not so much. But Trump has loaned himself more than $40 million now, and if he can’t ramp up his fundraising, he’ll never be able to pay himself back.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/trump-fundraising-bad/488003/

Yes, the great businessman, billionaire, only hired the best people, CON MAN Trump is exposing that the emperor has no clothes, yet one wonders how long his apologists will continue to be 5th Avenue Loyalists.   His political hack big name GOP enablers will head for the lifeboats soon if the Trumptanic takes on much more water, I suspect.

The sinking feeling in my stomach, as I listened to Hillary’ calm, perfectly modulated speech, left me angry at the GOP leadership, those gutless wonders who stood by and let this fraud takeover the party and burn it to the ground.  In fact, most of those GOP politicians in Washington were getting on board the Trump train, even as the large donors have been holding tight to their wallets.

My loyalty is to America and the Constitution before any political party, but with the Obama “fundamental transformation” moving at warp speed to destroy the US military and undermine the rule of law as much as possible in his last few months, it seemed like the only two institutions with any hope of protecting and defending America and the rule of law, were the US Armed Forces and the GOP, which still preached fidelity to the Constitution.  Of course, the GOP feckless and hollow promises are why Trump’s “GOP Insurgency” even gained support in the first place.

Perhaps, the GOP leadership will orchestrate a counter-insurgency and dump Trump at the convention or perhaps  Hillary’s campaign will be derailed by the email server fall-out.

“Perhaps”, we are doomed without a miracle.

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June 19, 2016 · 10:04 am

Obama’s final “transformation”

Obama’s final transformation (read DESTRUCTION) of the US military is now on the table:

The Pentagon’s controversial plan to hire military leaders off the street

Defense Secretary Ash Carter wants to open the door for more “lateral entry” into the military’s upper ranks, clearing the way for lifelong civilians with vital skills and strong résumés to enter the officer corps as high as the O-6 paygrade.

The idea is controversial, to say the very least. For many in the rank-and-file military, it seems absurd, a bewildering cultural change that threatens to upend many assumptions about military life and traditional career paths. But while it’s not universally embraced, there is interest in Congress and among some of the military’s uniformed leaders — even, they say, in exploring how the services could apply this concept to the enlisted force.

This is a key piece of Carter’s “Force of the Future” personnel reform. Unveiled June 9, it aims to help the military bring in more top talent, especially for high-tech career fields focused on cyber warfare and space. Advocates say it will help the military fill important manpower shortfalls with highly skilled professionals and, more broadly, create greater “permeability” between the active-duty military and the civilian sector.

At the same time, it suggests eroding the military’s tradition of growing its own leaders and cultivating a force with a distinct culture and tight social fabric, which many believe to be the heart of military effectiveness. Critics worry it will create a new subcaste of military service members who are fundamentally disconnected from the traditional career force.” (bold is my emphasis)

If this happens, the US Armed Forces is finished as the finest fighting force in the world.

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June 19, 2016 · 12:04 am

“Anything but Islam” again…

The “anything but Islam” obfuscation from the Left, in the wake of the Orlando terrorist attack continues to rapidly spread, carried by vicious alien brain-eating spiders, which have taken over liberal rags and mass media.

Let’s see this radicalized Muslim whackado murdered 49 people and injured scores of others, while proclaiming his allegiance to ISIS. Nope, his motive couldn’t be his radical religious beliefs, that would make perfect sense.

So, let’s review the lies. Right off the bat they insisted the terrorist’s motives weren’t clear, but they were sure he wasn’t motivated by his Islamic faith, afterall, just because this guy had become very devout in his religious practices, had expressed support for Al Qaeda and Islamic-inspired attacks against Americans is no reason to link his jihadist beliefs to actually committing jihad. That would be Islamophobic to make that connection. “Islam is a peaceful religion”, you must repeat….. or else.

Then it was the plethora of attacking evil guns and the alleged Christian hate against gays is so pervasive that somehow Christians are responsible for this Muslim who pledged allegiance to ISIS and waged jihad. When you believe the insanity from the Left couldn’t get much worse, well, a political writer, Amanda Marcotte, at Salon explains the real cause:

In the wake of the horrific shooting in Orlando that left 50 dead, a political struggle is forming on whether to define this act as an anti-gay crime or an act of radical Islamic terrorism.

The answer, it’s quickly starting to seem, is both of these, and more. A picture is quickly starting to form of who Omar Mateen, the shooter, was. His ex-wife describes a man who was controlling and abusive. A colleague says he was always using racial and sexual slurs and “talked about killing people all the time.” Both his ex-wife and his father describe him as homophobic, with his father saying he spun into a rage at the sight of two men kissing. He was clearly fond of guns, having not one, but two concealed carry licenses. He worked at a security firm, a career that can be attractive to men with dominance and control issues. He was investigated by the FBI in 2013 for making threats to a coworker.

There is a common theme here: Toxic masculinity.

Every time feminists talk about toxic masculinity, there is a chorus of whiny dudes who will immediately assume — or pretend to assume — that feminists are condemning all masculinity, even though the modifier “toxic” inherently suggests that there are forms of masculinity that are not toxic.

So, to be excruciatingly clear, toxic masculinity is a specific model of manhood, geared towards dominance and control. It’s a manhood that views women and LGBT people as inferior, sees sex as an act not of affection but domination, and which valorizes violence as the way to prove one’s self to the world.

For obvious political reasons, conservatives are hustling as fast as they can to make this about “radical Islam,” which is to say they are trying to imply that there’s something inherent to Islam and not Christianity that causes such violence. This, of course, is hoary nonsense, as there is a long and ignoble history of Christian-identified men, caught up in the cult of toxic masculinity, sowing discord and causing violence in our country: The gun-toting militiamen that caused a showdown in Oregon, the self-appointed border patrol called the Minutemen that recently made news again as their founder was convicted of child molestation, men who attack abortion clinics and providers.

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/13/overcompensation_nation_its_time_to_admit_that_toxic_masculinity_drives_gun_violence/

There you have it……… “toxic masculinity” made him do it.

Ahem, Ms Marcotte, as to your assertion: “they are trying to imply that there’s something inherent to Islam and not Christianity that causes such violence.”, let me answer that in one word for you – JIHAD. That is what is inherent in Islam that is NOT in Christianity.

My head is going to explode… where is my fainting couch?

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Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Islam, Politics, Terrorism

June 16, 2016 · 10:02 am

After Orlando: Clinton 2.0 scorched earth unleashed

I’ve hesitated commenting on Orlando, so first here’s the political situation. In the wake of the Orlando terrorist attack, while Donald Trump added another talking point for the Democratic party, the rest of their script remained predictable, totally dishonest, deliberately deceptive and a messaging marvel to behold. While Bernie still clings to a few threads to be relevant, for all intents and purposes, the Dems are unified and Orlando appears to be a watershed event to get them all marching in lockstep.

Donald Trump’s cheerleading section, as usual, applauded that he was saying things no one else will say, touching on common sense themes like a moratorium on taking in Muslim refugees, in light of fact that despite Jeh Johnson’s disingenuous assurances, there’s no way to thoroughly vet refugees from Iraq and Syria, due to the political instability, ditto that for Somalia and ISIS stated they will use the refugee crisis to get ISIS militants into the US.   Trump made a common sense point, except with the terrorist in Orlando, he wasn’t a refugee or an immigrant, but a born and raised, American citizen and Trump’s common sense policy would not have prevented this terrorist from being in the US.

Then Trump played identity politics, as he tried to use the tragedy to shamelessly  and clumsily pander to the LGBT community. If there were any doubts that his Sunday tweets and comments, instead of winning over gays, backfired and helped galvanize the fractious Dem minority and special interest groups, well just look at how fast the LGBT community smacked down Trump’s pathetic political pandering.

Trump could have demonstrated some calm, resolute leadership, but instead it was the same old loudmouth bragging, callous and bizarre tweets, insensitive remarks and the same old need to eclipse any story, no matter how grave, with himself.  He sent a tweet on Sunday thanking his followers for congratulating him for being right on terrorism , trying to capitalize on being seen as a tough and resolute leader in a crisis, but by yesterday he looked to be desperately searching for an angle to be heard over the Dem talking points… Without any warning he knifed the NRA in the back, completely overlooking the politicization of terrorist watch lists by the Obama administration, when he announced he supports restricting people on terror watch lists from buying guns.

Since Monday, Republican leaders, as usual, seem unsure of how to deal with Donald Trump, who spends more time sabotaging and undermining the GOP than he does fighting Hillary Clinton.  So, many GOP leaders are avoiding the press….. abandoning the media field and allowing the Dems to control the 24/7 news cycle, unchallenged.

Sure, President Obama came out and blasted Trump in a very petulant, hyper-partisan manner. Hillary came out and bashed Trump more than she addressed the terrorist attack too, but the difference is the media pivoted and moved in unison to get in line with the Dem talking points. A main Dem talking point IS “Trump is a loose cannon”, so they were completely on message.  The cable news networks, not even Trump central (FOX News), were giving Trump 24/7 control of the news cycle, to relentlessly repeat his talking points, ergo he’s sinking fast.  Trump has no plan other than his “GOP Insurgency”. He has no viable ground game and added to the GOP disunity, his campaign remains disorganized and internally an internecine battleground too.

All of this was completely predictable watching how he operated rather than grasping at his buzz words as if they were actual complete ideas and policies.  If you want to figure out how people will perform any job, first gauge their character and then watch how they operate and by operate I mean see how they handle different tasks and challenges, how they utilize resources, both staff and material resources.  Good leadership is mostly about the leader’s character and how he operates with his team.  Any person who engages in vicious character assassinations within his own party, plays people against each other constantly, delights in publicly humiliating people and most of all makes every issue almost entirely about his own vanity will be a terrible leader.   Even Trump’s delight in being rude speaks to a person who has no respect for others.  As I’ve said many times, Trump, in every discernible way he operates, screams “toxic leader”.

Lest, anyone doubt it, the Clintons 2.0 scorched earth/mass media saturation strategy moved into full assault mode and it is a take no prisoners ruthless offensive to destroy Donald Trump and the GOP. The unified messaging coming from President Obama, Hillary, Dem Congressional leaders, on down to the LGBT community activists, who smacked down Trump’s attempt to woo them, should alarm GOP leaders. The liberal media moved into general election high gear too, spinning Orlando as the result of Christian bigots fomenting “hate” against the LGBT community and gun violence. This messaging marvel, where the Dems circulated their talking points and got all their spokespeople and the media on message within hours, should clue the GOP leaders in that the undisciplined, raving primary Trump, who loves to launch character assassinations is the real Trump, who would still rather attack fellow Republicans. He’s going to be a disaster in November.

So, when the LGBT community threw his shallow pandering back in his face, Trump pivoted and tried to steal some of the Dems thunder by attempting to steal one of their main their talking points on gun control. He made this abrupt policy change without even so much as discussing his new epiphany beforehand with GOP leaders or the NRA.

Perhaps more GOP leaders will abandon the Trump train, but at this point either with Trump as the nominee or going through the fractious process of dumping him at the convention, Trump’s “GOP insurgency” leaves the GOP a smoldering rubble. That Trump, without so much as a phone call, could sign on to a key Dem gun control plank in their messaging blitz should finally clue in even the most deluded Republicans that Trump is a total fraud and loose cannon.

Absent the FBI playing some wild card, Hillary, corrupt, vile and politically tone deaf, sits well-positioned to win by a huge margin in November against Donald Trump.

The other stunning takeaway from Orlando is the Dems hate Republicans more than they care about Islamist terrorism – that’s a reality Republicans still don’t understand and that reality is a topic I want to broach in another post.

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