Category Archives: General Interest

January 10, 2016 · 11:57 am

Don’t bet on justice in America

Late this past Thursday, the State Department released more Clinton emails and as has been widely reported, the State Department failed to keep to the court ordered schedule for releasing these emails.

Aside from the Blumenthal email mentioned in my previous post, another email, where Hillary Clinton advises an aide to remove the heading from a document and send it nonsecure, has raised eyebrows. CNN reports:

“On June 16, 2011, top Clinton aide Jake Sullivan wrote to Clinton to say she would get “tps” — presumably short for “talking points” that evening. The subject of the email is redacted so it’s not clear what topic these points covered.

The next morning, Clinton wrote back to say she hadn’t received them yet, and after a few minutes Sullivan responded that staff were having issues sending the document in a secure fax but that they were “working on it.”

“If they can’t,” Clinton replies, “turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.””

So Friday, the State Department issued a definitive statement that no such email was ever sent to Clinton:

The State Department can’t even get the Clinton emails released on the court-ordered schedule and dumped this latest batch, containing this red flag email, late Thursday and we’re supposed to believe that a thorough investigation of this email in question was done within hours on Friday??? With endless foot-dragging and excuses with coughing up these emails, the State Department sure is Johnny on the job with this internal investigation, where every statement they utter exonerates Clinton and her staff.

Watching this partisan poker game play out, from decades of watching the Clinton team, the odds remain strongly in their favor. Sadly, some people in America really are above the law. Americans allow some people to live by different rules, so don’t bet on justice when it comes to the Clintons.

1 Comment

Filed under General Interest, Politics, The Constitution

January 9, 2016 · 7:17 pm

The drip drips continue

Despite the Clinton political machine and their loyal shills in the media trying to bury Hillary’s email server scandal the drip drips continue. With her latest email dumps by the State Department the scandal deepens. For an excellent analysis please refer to John Schindler’s piece at the The New York Observer, “Hillary’s EmailGate Goes Nuclear” where he explains another explosive revelation, a Sid Blumenthal email with highly detailed information worthy of a top notch intelligence professional. Schindler writes:

“In fact, the June 8, 2011 Blumenthal report doesn’t read like CIA material at all, in other words human intelligence or HUMINT, but very much like signals intelligence or SIGINT (for the differences see here). I know what SIGINT reports look like, because I used to write them for the National Security Agency, America’s biggest source of intelligence. SIGINT reports, which I’ve read thousands of, have a very distinct style and flavor to them and Blumenthal’s write-up matches it, right down to the “Source Comments,” which smack very much of NSA reporting and its “house rules.”

But is this an NSA assessment? If so, it would have to be classified at least Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information, a handling caveat that applies to most SIGINT, and quite possibly Top Secret/SCI, the highest normal classification we have. In that case, it was about as far from Unclassified as it’s possible for an email to be.”

Schindler offers some of the finest analysis of Hillary’s email server scandal and you can read his archived articles at his XX Committee blog.

A point that needs to be made is so far the State Department releases of the emails, which Hillary’s lawyers turned over to the State Department, reveal over a 1,000 emails to date, which contained classified information. Keep in mind that the FBI has access to the approximately 30,000 “personal” emails, which Hillary’s lawyer stated were erased. We don’t know what those 30,000 “personal” emails contain. One can safely assume it’s likely more than yoga schedules and wedding plans.

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics

January 9, 2016 · 1:51 am

Blue cheese still stinks

As a child my mother taught us to eat whatever was served when we were guests and to never utter a word of complaint. I vividly recall eating dinner at a friend’s home, where there were 8 children in that family. Her father dished out the food from the head of the table and they passed the plates around to each child. Everyone got the same thing. On this particular night, her mother had made spaghetti and there was a large bowl of tossed salad, from which her father dished out salad and poured on blue cheese salad dressing, then he dished out spaghetti right next to the salad. I had never eaten blue cheese salad dressing and the first bite startled me and made me want to spit it out, but of course I couldn’t do that, so I swallowed it. Her mother asked me if everything was okay and I said, “Yes, everything is very good.” Then I focused my attention on eating every bite of that salad and the spaghetti, without giving any indication that all I wanted to do was barf.

That’s the kind of focus it takes to swallow the blue cheese dressing on the tossed salad of PC lies about Islamic terrorist attacks in America. The reporting of the attack on a Philadelphia police officer by a 30 year-old black man had the mayor of Philadelphia declaring there was no Islam to see with this attack, yet the Philadelphia police commissioner stated that the shooter said he had declared allegiance to ISIS and shot the police officer to defend Islam. Clearly the shooter expressed a religious belief in his actions.

As the afternoon wore on, some politicians and some in the PC media insisted the shooter was nuts, after all the shooter’s mother had told them that her son had been hearing voices and had mental health issues. The mother also reported that her son had become a very devout Muslim.

Are being mentally-ill and being a radical Islamic terrorist mutually exclusive conditions?

The shooter reportedly used a stolen gun. From whom did he get that gun?

The shooter was reportedly a known felon who turned to Islam in prison. Might we inquire if the shooter belonged to a black Muslim prison gang or who his spiritual advisers were in prison? Or is that too inflammatory to ask? Did he attend a mosque?

Late in the evening several TV news reports said the FBI is checking into whether the shooter had traveled to Saudi Arabia. If that turns out to be true, might we inquire where he came up with the money for such a trip?

President Obama always quick to jump into racial dramas where he can cast the police as acting stupidly remained silent on the white Philadelphia police officer shot in cold blood by a young black, self-proclaimed Muslim man, who stated he had pledged allegiance to ISIS. Did I miss the President taking to the air to condemn this terrorist attack on American soil?

Here’s a rundown on the story:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/man-accused-shooting-philly-cop-confessed-committing-act/story?id=36169588

Look, here’s a clue – the black community has it’s own radical Islam problem. Much of it percolates from within the US prison system, where foreign money and Islamic prison gangs convert many young black men to Islam. Outside of the prisons many black gangs and groups recruit, agitate and incite crimes and promote radical Islamic ideology. Clue, they were there in Ferguson and Baltimore, but some hide under benign names like National President of Black Lawyers for Justice . And some of that blue cheese comes straight from the White House. The Islamic/black gang/ black grievance industry nexus needs to be thoroughly investigated. I’ve written about this before: here, here, here.

Blue cheese still stinks, but I think I could choke that down better than these pathetic politicians trying to cover-up the truth.

Added thought: After a look into the Islamic/black gang/ black grievance industry nexus, perhaps it’s time to look into decades of Arab money directed toward American black colleges and black college students too. Perhaps, President Obama can offer some insights into this topic…

2 Comments

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

January 7, 2016 · 9:28 am

A Strategy to Defeat Theo-fascism

Source: Surely, whatever passed for American foreign or military policy in the past three decades is not working. Just as clearly, in case anyone keeps score these days, the dark side of Islam is ascendant at home and abroad. What follows here is a catalogue…

G. Murphy Donovan offers the clearest strategic blueprint to win the war against Imperial Islam, a war that others prefer to euphemize rather than face. This is a must read piece!

4 Comments

Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Islam, Military, Politics, Terrorism

January 6, 2016 · 12:40 pm

No crows in sight

With the 2016 presidential race well under way, foreign policy “strategies” get tossed about, but so far no candidate has offered a clear policy or worse demonstrated a clear understanding of the threats facing America. While the GOP candidates jostle to outdo each other on sounding tough, Hillary offers more of the Obama failed policies and Sanders doesn’t even have a foreign policy.

My frustration with the foreign policy “experts” centers squarely on the cherry-picking of events, intelligence and “expertise” to bolster domestic partisan political views rather than dealing with what General Mike Flynn referred to as it’s time to “get real”. In order to “get real” it’s way past time to look at American foreign policy actions and then assess how those actions actually fared in achieving the strategic objectives. Another big problem rests with the experts themselves, whose careers and reputations become intricately linked to the policies, leading to myopic clinging to bad policies or policies that worked in the short term, but also instigated large scale, long-term blowback.

For instance, President Reagan armed the mujahadin in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union and thwart Soviet expansion. Certainly, the Soviets were thwarted, but those radical mujahadin evolved into Al Qaeda. Too many Republicans try to ignore or gloss over that nexus of arming radical Salafist nuts, to later find those weapons and training used against the US. The Clinton administration spent the 1990s trying to minimize and trivialize the threat Al Qaeda posed, preferring to turn a blind eye to increasing radicalization and targeting of Western and US interests around the world.

In Bosnia the Clinton administration embarked on choosing a side in a bloody civil war and chose to arm Bosnian Muslim radicals, while the Western press propagandized the combatants, turning some into saints and some into evil incarnate. No clear US national security interest ever surfaced for US intervention, just a lot of feel good humanitarian claptrap. Atrocities were committed by not only the Serbs, but by the Bosnian Muslims too. In the intervening years, arming and aiding the Bosnian Muslims has allowed radical Islamists and Iran to use Bosnia as a European training ground and smuggling corridor into Europe. John Smith, wrote a piece on this yesterday, “Clinton’s Bosnia Adventure Goes South”. John Schindler, at the XX Committee blog, had a piece on this a few weeks ago. Schindler has researched the Bosnia misadventure extensively, penned a book on the subject, but he also offers many free links to information at his blog: “Operation CUT: Bosnia versus the Islamic State”.

After 9/11, the US embarked on a “war on terror”, which took several strategic paths, but none of them achieved a decisive defeat of “terror” or defeat of the Islamist terrorists waging that war. Throughout the GWB years, adminsitration officials endlessly announced the death of Al Qaeda #2 or #3 or “high-ranking”, all to no avail, because this decapitation strategy doesn’t work to degrade or defeat Islamist terrorist organizations. John McCreary’s Nightwatch printed a very insightful comment on this approach 11/7/13.

“It also highlights a degenerative leadership pattern resulting from the US program of leadership decapitation. First, there is always someone waiting for the chance to be leader. Second, the new leaders are less experienced and wise than the men they replace. Third, the new generation of leaders is more extreme and theologically rigid than its predecessors. Finally, the new leaders tend to be unknown to intelligence relative to their predecessors. Decapitation is not a permanent solution to an insurgency or an uprising.”

The Obama administration continues this decapitation strategy, without any positive strategic outcome.

President Obama decided to try a novel and extremely foolhardy approach to extract the US from the stuck military occupations of the Bush administration. Yes, partisan politics aside, the ouster of Saddam Hussein was a strategic mistake. It destabilized the region even more and emboldened Iran. Enter President Obama and he compounds the errors with catastrophic blunders – announcing a withdrawal date before he even got troops on the ground in Afghanistan for his ballyhooed surge, that never materialized. The Taliban hunkered down to wait us out and they sit poised now to seize control of Afghanistan after we leave. In Iraq, Obama decided to pull out too and created a power vacuum, which the Islamic State capitalized on setting up a pseudo-state.

From the minute the glorious Arab Spring hit the news, an endless cycle of feel-good, fairy tale “democratic” beliefs replaced sound, hard-nosed strategic analysis. In Egypt, the US supported the ouster of a staunch US ally, all to champion the Muslim Brotherhood, which US officials, from the President to his intelligence gurus James Clapper and John Brennan, to his clueless Secretary of State, with her MB affiliated top aide by her side, proclaimed as a mostly “secular” organization. Of course, that was a lie, mayhem in Egypt ensued and the Egyptian military restored some semblance of order, albeit within an autocratic military regime state structure. In the process of tossing aside Mubarak, US credibility plummeted, because now all leaders in that region know the US can not be trusted. In that strategic blunder, President Obama cavalierly created an existential threat to Israel, the US’s closest ally in the region. Israel had to rethink it’s entire national security strategy when the Sinai security framework disappeared.

Moving on, the Obama administration and many GOP leaders, like John McCain and Lindsey Graham jumped onto the Arab Spring bandwagon too. Libya became another strategic disaster – the US displaced a strongman dictator, who had been cooperating with US anti-terrorism efforts, all to support some imaginary moderate rebel “freedom-fighters”. That these rebels turned out to be Al-Qaeda-affiliated and Islamist radicals should surprise no one, because here again the intelligence contained these facts, but politicians chose to believe the myths. In the case of Libya, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received updates of unvetted information from her long-time friend, Sidney Blumenthal, who was promoting his own business interests and her own privately-funded intelligence operative, Tyler Drumheller.

Who was the US arming in Libya? And where did the US send those weapons it was gathering up at Benghazi? Well, the likely answers are radical Islamists (you know, the types who are ideological bedfellows of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State). The action then moved to Syria, where the Obama administration and many Republicans decided it was in US national interest to oust a dictator and create another power vacuum. The balanced weighing of vetted intelligence again fell to the “experts” outside of the US intelligence apparatus. In Syria, the Obama administration, many top Republicans, neocon pundits and the media all relied on one young woman as the fount of knowledge on the Syrian rebels – one Elizabeth O’Bagy. How this one young woman became the go-to definitive source that both Secretary of State, John Kerry and GOP leader, John McCain relied on defies reason. How did this one young woman become THE source the US government was relying on???

In Syria, more of the same, the Obama administration had the CIA arming “moderate” Syrian rebels, although all of these rebels are Islamists and none of them indicates a willingness to respect ethnic and religious minorities, but these are the “moderates” the Obama administration chose to back.

GOP candidates like Rubio, still tout the neocon talking points and the one that irks me the most is the charge that if only Obama had intervened sooner in Syria civil war, then things would be different. Why in the hell and by what reasoning is it in US national interests to jump into the middle of a civil war in a country that is not of vital national security interest to the US? This same humanitarian argument is the same one President Clinton used in Bosnia.

And here’s where we are at – none of the candidates on either side wants to actually sit down and objectively assess the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to US foreign policy. Every strategy comes with unforeseen, unpredictable blowback and consequences. Ignoring these unpleasant realities, to prop up partisan, not quite strategic talking points, leaves us falling further and further afield of comprehending the reality on the ground and of being able to choose a better path forward. We are lost in the land of false narratives, faux experts and fallacious reasoning. Surveying the 2016 field, as far as the eye can see, it’s very unlikely any of the 2016 candidates will be able to cut through the crap and as JK advised, “learn to be a crow and seek the golden nuggets” from the pile. The 2016 field appears to be all magpies and mockingbirds – no crows in sight.

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Filed under Culture Wars, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Politics, Terrorism, Uncategorized

January 3, 2016 · 1:39 am

Self-help projects: an American tradition

“I award him my ultimate insult: He is no gentleman.” – Kinnison

If you’re new to my blog, you might think the above quote comes from another century, but rest assured it’s from a true gentleman, who comments here occasionally. Few men today in America even think or put forth the effort to develop the character of a “gentleman” and society suffers for their scarcity. Vulgar behavior, gratuitous violence, disrespect and violence toward women and children fill that void. Now the counterpart to gentlemen used to be “ladies”, but the desire to redesign gender, social order, the workplace and even the bedroom make even uttering the word “lady” an insult to the modern-day feminist woman. So, here we are with the rules of civil behavior tossed to the garbage heap.

With the new year comes the usual resolutions, almost invariably focused on healthy-living and getting your life organized. Along with the resolutions we’re inundated with self-help advice from experts on how to turn those resolutions into reality. Well, as for me, I am going to keep working on forgiveness and I added forbearance to my list. And I sure need to also work on the healthy-living and getting organized too.

Although ladies and gentlemen are a rarity, a few still exist in America and they’re almost exclusively found within the ranks of the US Armed Forces (both active and retired). With the social engineering there, they’ll be extinct shortly, but let’s take a little trip back in time and look at two of America’s founding fathers and how they made character development an integral part of their daily lives and in typical American fashion, they did it as a self-help project, without any formal instruction.

First up, my favorite founding father, George Washington, America’s first President, commander of the Continental Army, that secured our liberty, farmer, and self-taught gentleman. Sure, he was a slave-owner and he wasn’t some perfect person, but he achieved a great deal in his life worth emulating. Since everyone likes visuals more than reading, here’s a National Geographic documentary and as with everything in America these days, the comment section runs on and on with partisan diatribes about the video – on the right, it’s called a liberal witch hunt to denigrate the founding fathers, and on the left, you can find charges about his owning slaves disqualifying him as worthy of any place in history. Here’s the video:

What I really wanted to focus on is how George Washington made it a point to copy and study a common guide for manners and decorum, Rules of Civility, that Jesuit tutors had used from the late 1500s onward, to train young boys of the wealthy. Young George got a hold of a copy and carefully copied all 110 rules and he studied them. Americans come by their self-help penchant honestly, because it’s been a part of America from the very beginning. This is the land of “you can become anything you want to be” and George Washington became the father of our country. His immense popularity could have made him king, but he insisted on being a President, who served the Republic and then retired.

The “Rules of Civility” is available free online at many sites. Here are a couple links:

http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/the-rules-of-civility/

http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents_gw/civility/civility_transcript.html

If you’d like to read more about the Rules of Civility, I recommend Richard Brookhiser’s slim book, which offers an excellent introduction and interesting commentary about the various rules.

Next up Benjamin Franklin, statesman, inventor, scientist, publisher, revolutionary, and self-help guru too.

Benjamin Franklin described his self-help regimen as the 13 Virtues. He came up with his plan when he was 20 years old and he devoted a week to each of the 13 virtues, in an ongoing cycle. He described keeping a chart of his progress

For more reading on Benjamin Franklin here’s a link to his autobiography:

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/biographies/benjamin-franklin/

3 Comments

Filed under American Character, American History, Food for Thought, General Interest

December 31, 2015 · 6:48 pm

Rebuilding the American Team

Dear Readers,

Upon entering the blogging world in 2012, I almost talked myself out of continuing after the first few posts. Whether for good or ill, here it is almost 2016 and I’m the one shocked that I’m still enjoying writing this blog. Now, with that said in the new year, it’s time for some changes.

Instead of endless political and foreign policy commentary (402 posts in 2015), I’m going to attempt to move my blog in another direction. Anyone can be an armchair critic about all that is wrong in American politics and culture, but let’s face the truth, it’s not the politicians’ fault for the state of our culture, our communities or the problems in our own lives. Despite the hype about the 2016 election, neither political party can fix America. Only committed citizens can do that.

Assuredly, failed social programs do deserve criticism, but let’s enter the new year facing the truth. Rebuilding the American team starts at the individual level, in fact, it starts with each of us. So, with this wide open internet why can’t we start working to share ideas, resources, and most of all inspirations geared toward that mission: rebuilding the American team.

Sure, there will still be politics and some of my trademark snarky commentary, but I’m inviting all of you to email me ideas, links, posts, with important lessons in American history, stories of heroes, stories of grassroots programs that work, educational information, life stories, whatever you feel like sharing and I will happily post it! You can just post it as a comment too and I’ll convert it to a blog post. Use your real name or a pseudonym, whatever you feel comfortable with, but I would like to turn my blog into more of a chat around my kitchen table type atmosphere rather than me droning on and on and on.

My email address is libertybellediaries@yahoo.com

Wishing y’all a very Happy New Year!

Sincerely,

Libertybelle

1 Comment

Filed under American Character, Blog Notes, Culture Wars, General Interest

December 29, 2015 · 1:56 pm

This and that

The following is a short list of interesting links to read:

Britain designates the Muslim Brotherhood as an ideological organizing force for terrorists – http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/28/muslim-brotherhood-report-by-britain-contradicts-u/

John Schindler details the Bosnian terrorism connection – http://20committee.com/2015/12/22/operation-cut-bosnia-versus-the-islamic-state/

Retired General Mike Flynn discusses President Obama’s ideological fallacies – hint, it’s not about guns or Islamophobia – http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/26/obamas-former-intelligence-director-presidents-strategy-not-working/

JK posted this opinion piece from the NY Times in a comment, but it’s a must read: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/opinion/saudi-arabia-an-isis-that-has-made-it.html?_r=1

Now a short personal story on how computer inept yours truly really is. For Christmas, I gave my four granddaughters Kindle Fire tablets. As a loyal amazon customer, how could I pass up Kindle Fires for $49.99? So, because I am an avid book collector (hoarder), there are hundreds of books on my kindle already, but in all fairness, many are free books from their classics listing or old history, that very few people want to read.

So, due to already having given my older two granddaughters plain kindle e-readers last year and linking those to my account, I had put a lot of books in my library for kids – to include many free classics that I deemed appropriate for their ages. After a discussion with my daughter, we decided to link these Kindle Fires to my account and my library, but amazon has this “Family Library” you can set up, which my daughter did for me, but then she told me I would have to sort out which books I wanted to put in their libraries and that’s when the problems started.

I kept trying to remove my books from their libraries to no avail and then I decided that perhaps instead of “remove”, I should be hitting the “delete” books from the Family Library. Of course, in my usual bumbling fashion, I deleted 616 of my books, believing that by removing them from the “Family Library” it was like removing books from my Kindle device – which archives them.

Nope, it deleted them permanently, so I called amazon’s customer service. The poor women talked me through deleting this “Family Library” but then we came to my books. I asked her how to get my books back and at first she said I’d have to repurchase them and I said I’ve spent a lot of money on books for years. Then she had to do some checking and she told me I had deleted 616 books and she asked me which ones I wanted back. I responded, “All of them.”

This lady stayed polite and courteous, even though, as my son told me, “You know she hates you and everyone there is talking about how stupid you are, right?” Justifiably so, but she did restore all of my books to my account and it took her quite a while, because she said there was no way to do them all at once and she’d have to do them one at a time. She asked me if it was okay if she called me back when she was done. And an hour later she called me back and told me all my books were restored and was very gracious and she sent a signed email message:

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the links below to tell us about your experience today.

I’ve restored your access to “616 books,” which you previously purchased from the Kindle Store. It is now available to download from your Archived Items or Cloud tab on your device. You can also download your content through the Manage Your Content and Devices page.

I am very grateful for that kind and warm approach you gave during the call. I’m glad I was able to help you out today.

I hope I was able to assist you today. Please use the links below to provide us your valuable feedback

I love Amazon.com and that lady deserves a raise!

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

December 28, 2015 · 8:06 am

Enter Jim Webb?

Former Virginia Senator, Jim Webb took to Twitter and facebook to attack Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy record on Saturday, according to a Bloomberg report, “Webb Attacks Clinton With Eye on Independent Run.”

Rumors about a third party run have been swirling since Webb dropped out of the Democratic race, so this appears to be a step to test the waters. This bizarre 2016 continues to elude easy predictions, so in light of the likely Dem and GOP candidates, Webb can only be a much better choice for many Americans. The press and punditry labeled him grumpy after the first Democratic debate, but I guess I was watching a different debate. Webb’s answers on foreign policy showed a wide breadth of knowledge on the issues, a no-nonsense and non-partisan analysis and he far outshone the other candidates. Plus he has the distinction of having served and bled for this country as a war hero in Vietnam.

Perhaps here is the candidate who can help rebuild our national character and out of the other contenders, in both parties, he’s the one I could support without a great deal of heartburn……..so far. Unlike some people who go “all in” for a particular candidate, I don’t trust politicians in general, so my vote has to be earned over the entire course of the campaign.

I’ll give you the example of Ted Cruz, who articulates many of the conservative views that appeal to me. During that last debate he launched into a heated immigration scuffle with Marco Rubio. The dreaded “A” word, which sends conservatives into apoplectic seizures, was bandied about. Well, Cruz lied about a previous position he took, which later video proved. Instead of saying he changed position, his minions insist he never did support amnesty and that his previous position wasn’t really his position, but a position he took to put a poison pill in a bill. All that speaks to conniving and underhanded political machinations and therein, I was back to my original hesitation over him – every move he makes is too contrived and calculated, which here again being a careful planner is a good thing, but being willing to twist facts to promote yourself (not a cause, but your own political aspirations) goes too far in my book. Hence, he lied and while it’s not the huge mountain of lies Hillary Clinton spews, while trying to claw her way to back into the White House, it’s still an outright lie. This speaks to character. I still admire many things about Ted Cruz, but my willingness to back him has softened a great deal.

I’m curious how y’all decide on who to support???

6 Comments

Filed under Culture Wars, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics

December 26, 2015 · 3:10 pm