Category Archives: General Interest

May 31, 2019 · 12:16 pm

About vetting

In light of the latest media Trump outrage spin cycle about a WH staffer’s email on preparations for Trump’s visit to troops in Japan, I want to write a post on why I am not part of the John McCain hero worship club, even though I do respect his military service to our country.  It only feels right to warn you, this post also is about spin, sorry, it is, .

My negative opinion of John McCain deals with McCain the Washington politician, who wore his war hero mantle to deflect any criticism.  I don’t believe in any public servant being placed on a pedestal, beyond reproach.  Every public servant must be accountable and subject to criticism.  I don’t want to be in the Trump Defense Camp or the McCain Deification Camp

At present, my understanding is the WSJ wrote about a leaked email, which they have shared a copy publicly – minus the pertinent information, like who sent it, who received it, and who leaked it to them.  The email detailed a WH staffer requesting the Pentagon remove the USS McCain, stationed in Japan from Trump’s line of vision, when he visited the troops in Japan.  Trump claims he had no knowledge of the email, but he made an excuse for the staffer, along the lines that the staffer meant well.  The Pentagon’s responses indicated the request was not agreed to or carried out, but they opened an investigation.

Frankly, I am sick to death of these holier-than-thou McCain spin cycles – even his funeral was deliberately turned into a media Trump outrage spin cycle

JK, a frequent commenter on my blog since 2013, and I have been chatting back and forth in recent days in the comment section on my April blog post, A rambling blog post.  We’ve tossed a lot of links and ideas back and forth on the endless Trump-Russia Collusion mess and while I don’t want to repeat all our comments, in another post I’ll paste some pieces of those comments, but first I want to explain how JK found my blog in 2013 and how McCain news was part of how this came about.

I started this blog in December 2012, writing mostly about American politics and foreign policy matters, especially the Obama administration policies and spin narratives I disagreed with or actions I found corrupt.  In September 2013, the hot topic was whether the US should jump into the Syrian civil war and aid the Syrian rebel forces fighting to topple the Assad regime.

Often things in the news catch my attention, because the spin rams not only new, made-up phrases (often meaning the exact opposite of what the words mean) into the American lexicon, but also new faces.  In 2013, Elizabeth O’Bagy a young woman, whom I had never heard of, even though I follow American politics closely, became a household name.  She was on cable news, she was being quoted by top US officials, she was being pushed forward by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) as their trusted Syrian expert and she was part of a group, which escorted John McCain on a surprise “fact-finding” trip to Syria in the Spring of 2013.

Taking a step back to McCain’s surprise trip to Syria in the Spring of 2013,  from news reports, McCain relied on a Syrian resistance group, Syrian Emergency Task Force, to arrange and guide him on that trip.   A young woman, Elizabeth O’Bagy, was on that trip and also Evan McMullin.  After that trip, photos emerged, I think British press was where I first saw them, of McCain in Syria posing with people these reports claimed were ISIS fighters.  McCain vehemently denied that claim.  He was there with this Syrian Emergency Task Force though and that’s what bothers me.  Who were these people  he went on this trip with, who vetted them???

By the fall of 2013, and the relentless “arm the Syrian moderate” media spin drumbeat, I was disturbed by how American foreign policy was driven by orchestrated spin campaigns and I was disturbed that so many powerful Washington politicians cluelessly are led by the spin and “experts” touted by some think tanks.

As I saw John McCain and John Kerry citing O’Bagy as the Syrian expert and the WSJ ran an op-ed she wrote, while O’Bagy was making the cable TV rounds, I wondered, who on earth is this young woman and how did she become the de facto Syria expert, whom McCain and Kerry are trusting?  What about our own intelligence agencies  and military intelligence VETTED intel?  Why are they relying on this young woman, instead of our government intel products???  This all sounds so ironic in light of the cries about Trump not listening to our intel agencies, lol, but there you have it – at the highest levels of the Obama administration and in the Senate Armed Services Committee, they were relying on Elizabeth O’Bagy.

McCain and Kerry were trusting some woman pushed by the ISW and the ISW obviously hadn’t even done basic vetting on her… but there she was being touted as the trusted Syrian expert at the highest levels of our government.  Don’t take this as excusing Trump’s decision-making process where he doesn’t listen to vetted US intelligence, because Trump says he relies on his gut.  From what I can tell though, he is easily manipulated and listens to whatever FOX pundits are selling…

What in the hell is wrong with all of these people in Washington???

I did a few minutes of googling and realized that Dr. O’Bagy worked for the ISW as their Syria expert, but… she was also the political director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force.  I did not believe it was wise for the US State Department to be relying on a person who was the political director of a Syrian resistance advocacy group.  My blog is a backwoods spot on the internet, so I decided to write my concerns and questions about O’Bagy on a popular blog’s comment section.  Other reporters started looking into Dr. O’Bagy too.  Well, she wasn’t a Dr. is the first fact that hit me.  NO ONE VETTED HER – not the ISW, who was promoting her as a Syrian expert, not John Kerry, not John McCain, NO ONE.

JK and some other people came to my blog after I posted my comment about O’Bagy on another popular blog.

Some right-wing news sites online ran a lot of other information about O’Bagy and to this day, I still haven’t reconciled who on earth her connections inside Syria or the region were.  One report mentioned she used an alias and was the captain of a women’s soccer team in Egypt, another report claimed she signed an affidavit vouching for an accused American terrorist and so it went.

What I do know is that the ISW fired O’Bagy for lying on her resumé and less than a month later, John McCain hired her to work on his staff as a legislative assistant.  I wondered if she would get a security clearance and how on earth she would pass a background check after lying about her doctorate degree.   Even more than that, I wondered about John McCain’s judgment and integrity, where he would leap in to hire someone who had just been fired for lying on her resumé.

A lot of sensitive information passes through the office of the Senate Armed Services Chairman.  I also wondered about those photos of McCain that circulated from his fact-finding Syria trip and wondered if he had been set up by this SETF group in those photos, even though he declared they were faked.  It was all very bizarre.

This strikes me a lot like House Dems having the Awan brothers hired handling their IT stuff in Congress and Hillary having Huma Abedin, with her Muslim Brotherhood connected family as her closest aide and according to FBI Notes, the one Clinton aide said Abedin managed the SCIF in the Clintons home… She was Hillary’s close aide in the State Dept.  She was working for the State Dept and a Clinton-Foundation connected company at the same time during part of Hillary’s State Dept tenure and then she had tens of thousands of State Dept and Hillary emails saved on her laptop…  She even coordinated the Clinton server upgrade when Hillary became Sec. of State, but she told the FBI she learned about the server  in 2015, when the news broke about the server…

Back to McCain, sorry for venting about Hillary corruption again.  I never bought into the “Syrian Moderate” spin, because the Syrian rebels were Sunni resistance groups, many filled with jihadists and even more concerning, was even the more “moderate” resistance groups displayed a willingness to align with jihadist groups, as needed.  The effort that emerged to arm the “Syrian Moderate” forces was a debacle.  Media ran fawning stories selling the “Syrian Moderate” myth and the Obama administration and plenty of Republicans, especially John McCain, were all in on this arming “Syrian Moderates” idea, which the media spin pushed constantly, with stories like this Time story,The Frontman vs. al Qaeda: Meet Jamal Maarouf, the West’s best fighting chance against Syria’s Islamist armies.

Obama refused to commit US troops, but what emerged was an Obama policy to arm “vetted” Syrian moderate rebel groups.  The US military “vetted”,  trained and armed Maarouf and his group with TOW anti-tank missiles and immediately upon returning to the battle in Syria, Maarouf made a deal with ISIS and declared a truce...

In a McCain ring-led public sideshow Senate hearing, McCain thundered on,  berating the US military over failing to arm “vetted” Syrian Moderate rebels at a fast enough rate.  McCain staged this sideshow hearing to berate the US military???   He worked to  create a media spin cycle making the US military look inept.  The truth was these Syrian rebel groups weren’t trustworthy and even the so-called “moderate” ones were willing to work with jihadists, when it suited their purposes.  At least the US military was trying to do due diligence to their mission of “vetting” supposed Syrian moderate rebel groups.  I have less confidence in the CIA’s vetting of Syrian rebel groups.  I also have zero patience with people who cite an annointed “expert” knows this person as “vetting”.  However, a McCain sideshow hearing berating a US general and a full-throated media spin cycle trashing the American military’s ineptitude followed, with plenty of Washington pols jumping in to attack the US military.

All of this was driven by a media-fueled SPIN effort.

Let’s move to the Trump/McCain feud and bizarre SPIN outrage cycles.  Trump has made many outrageous comments about McCain.  McCain in life, and even in death, seems to manage to become the center of media Trump outrage spin cycles.

In 2016, there was McCain on a trip being approached and fed info on the Steele dossier.  McCain’s friend flew to England, to meet personally with Steele and get a copy of the dossier.  The friend hand-carried that dossier to McCain and McCain personally delivered it to James Comey, in a private meeting.  No one to this day has verified that Steele dossier and I am not even sure what efforts the FBI, our intel agencies or the Mueller team went to to verify and corroborate the Steele dossier.  It looks to me like top Obama officials, (just like with the O’Bagy situation)  relied on the Steele dossier based on Christopher Steele and John McCain being recruited as a dossier courier by some Brit:

“The Republican senator was attending an annual security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia shortly after the presidential election in November 2016 when retired a British diplomat approached him.

According to McCain, he didn’t recall ever having a previous conversation with Sir Andrew Wood, but may have met him before in passing. Chris Brose, a staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and David Kramer, a former assistant secretary of state with Russian expertise, joined McCain and Wood in a room off the main conference hall.

After discussing Russian election interference for a few minutes, Wood explained why he’d approached McCain in the first place.

“He told me he knew a former MI6 officer by the name of Christopher Steele, who had been commissioned to investigate connections between the Trump campaign and Russian agents as well as potentially compromising information about the President-elect that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin allegedly possessed,” McCain wrote.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-john-mccain-received-steele-dossier-trump-russia-2018-5

My gut instinct was that McCain was either compromised and a willing conduit, for what strikes me, as malignant foreign actors creating mischief or he was easily duped from years of being part of the inside Washington, ” it’s all a matter of who knows who” mentality, where being connected to somebody important is the ticket to entry.  Something stinks with McCain’s trip to Syria, then those photos splashed across international media alleging he was posed with ISIS fighters and then McCain being roped into the Steele dossier debacle.  McCain bought into O’Bagy’s reliability, so did John Kerry, same with Christopher Steele, without any careful vetting.  Even basic vetting would have shown she did not possess a doctorate from Georgetown.

This latest McCain controversy centers on an email someone leaked to the media.  I wonder who leaked it most of all and why???  Any White House discussion with the Pentagon about POTUS travel plans abroad would strike me as a sensitive, probably classified communication.

Sitting back and watching McCain being at the center of  so many media Trump Outrage spin storms, I am disturbed that perhaps there might be some malignant hostile foreign fingers in this effort.  Then again, I’ve wondered for years how deeply our media, across the political spectrum, is infiltrated with hostile foreign  influence operators looking to fuel controversy, make America look like a banana republic and fuel partisan divides.  With so many Americans, who are  connected to Washington, willing to leap to be lobbyists for foreign entities, even hostile foreign ones, there are assuredly plenty of American politicos willing to put big bucks over American interests. We’re not likely to ever get the answer to this hostile foreign influence question,because so much foreign money pours in to American politicians, lobbyists, think tanks, etc.

Even in death McCain still manages to become the center of very divisive media spin cycles, that are directed at fueling divides between Trump and the US military.  Finding out who leaked that email and why seems like it should be at the center of the Pentagon investigation. These McCain vs Trump media spin attacks might be driven by more than just domestic partisans.

Yes, Trump’s conduct often deserves heaps of condemnation, but the bigger picture is these spin efforts might be meant to destroy Trump’s credibility as CINC and undercut the US military image abroad.  There are massive media spin efforts to fuel these McCain vs. Trump’s outrage spin cycles and they not only attack Trump, they now include efforts to make the US military look bad .  I suspect there’s a hostile effort (whether American leftists who hate the US military or hostile foreign actors, don’t know), but troop images that can be used to fuel more Trump Outrage spin too  got played up in the media  Trump Outrage spin too.  The media effort this trip was a photo of described as sailors wearing MAGA-inpired patches. On Trump’s Christmas trip to visit troops in Iraq, the media hyped Trump signing MAGA soldiers’ hats.

This McCain vs. Trump outrage spin cycle falls right on the heels of Trump being manipulated by FOX News coverage hyping war criminals cases and urging Trump to pardon war criminals.  How on earth that morphed into urging Trump to pardon war criminals on Memorial Day, boggles my mind and should be investigated by our national security people – it’s bizarre as hell and all driven by media and media Trump outrage spin cycles.

Even American cable news media networks are at war discrediting each other, with Fox attacking  mainstream media coverage of Trump and mainstream media attacking FOX coverage of Trump – this constant pitting them against each other – leaves Americans totally divided and living in completely separate news bubbles.  Trump lives in the FOX News bubble, but he watches and  appears to long to be cheered by CNN and MSNBC, where his old friends reside.  He frequently seethes about their betrayal of him…

How on earth ordinary citizens are supposed to sift through this  24/7 barrage of media-driven scorched earth spin disinformation and pile-on incitement effort,  I don’t know.  It’s getting harder and harder to keep track of details and facts in news stories with so much spin crap being flung in every direction.

All I know is I don’t want the US military being used as a political football by Trump, by Democrats, by the media and most especially by hostile foreign entities.

21 Comments

Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Information War

May 29, 2019 · 10:28 am

The real crimes in the Trump-Russia Collusion mess

Last night news broke that Christopher Steele, the author of the series of reports that make up the Steele dossier, at the center of the Trump-Russian Collusion investigation, won’t cooperate with the DOJ investigation into the origins of the investigation.

I posted a comment pertaining to that and here’s part of it:

“The respective partisan spin choruses jump into action and relegate everyone to one camp or the other, but I lean towards believing that while there was definitely anti-Trump bias among most of the key players in the Trump-Russia mess, there was also these massive Dem/mainstream media spin attacks launched to try to propel specific political or government actions, at key points in this mess.
I believe these Dem-orchestrated spin attacks impaired judgment and decision-making at the highest levels of the FBI and our intel agencies. I don’t think there was some massive conspiracy within the FBI – I think they were deliberately being fed false information by Dem operative lawyers and taking the mainstream media news seriously.

In war, they always talk about the “fog of war”, well, I believe that this hysteria created by the this scorched earth SPIN info war played a significant role in clouding judgment – I’ll call it the fog of SPIN war factor, for lack of a better way to say this. I suspect a good deal of what happened wasn’t malevolent actions in the FBI, but a combination of factors, where the media hysteria, the bogus Steele dossier being sold as reliable intel (by some foreign intel peeps too) added to Trump’s often bizarre statements fawning over strong men thugs in the world, led to real concerns that Trump was conspiring with Russia. Add in that Trump really was trying to make a deal for a Trump-Moscow project, the concerns were justifiable.

Where things broke down was in acting before calmly, and carefully vetting intel, but here again, this relentless Dem SPIN effort in the media, the Clinton lawyer operatives seeding false information, presented as real intel into the State Dept., the FBI and intel agencies. I believe the real “crimes” weren’t Comey and the FBI – BUT with the Clinton operatives who deliberately and maliciously fed this false information into official government channels – to deceive them. That Shearer dossier needs to be investigated and these Dem lawyers who were feeding this garbage into official channels.

What happened to me was deliberately false information was fed to a retired general, who hates my guts – but I have no way to ever prove it happened. I was writing about their malicious, orchestrated SPIN on those Excite message boards in ’98 too.

Anyway, I honestly think Rosenstein was manipulated by Clinton-aligned lawyers too to appoint a special counsel- being bombarded with this false information and pressured to act. They deliberately created this crisis spin environment using the media.

McCabe was an expert on working Russia mafia cases and terrorism. I went back a reread the Horowitz summary and McCabe’s wife receiving a lot of campaign money was investigated. McCabe had actually gone through proper FBI channels reporting that to the ethics people. Horowitz’ team recommended policy changes, but McCabe followed the rules. I still think Comey knew about the media leaks to try to stem the flow of unauthorized leaks coming out of the New York field office. Comey told Horowitz he didn’t know anything about that. Anyway, I want to read some of McCabe’s book, especially the part where that quote was pulled about Mueller’s “left behind” cell phone. I like to know what other information came before and after that cherry-picked quote. We all “cherry-pick” quotes, and sometimes those cherries are ripe with important facts, but too often they’re sour, taken out of context or misleading pieces of information.”

I boldfaced the key point.  The Dem lawyers, who were feeding the Steele dossier and later the Shearer dossier into the Obama State Department, the intel agencies and the FBI.  They were deliberately trying to perpetrate fraud.  This is how the Clinton operatives operate – from ’98 to today.  They intertwine U.S. government assets with their private operatives, to advance for their partisan and personal goals (and vendettas).  The email scandal boiled down to Hillary merged her State Department email onto the personal foundation server in their home, that Bill Clinton had set up.  This melding of official intelligence with Hillary’s operatives is par for the course.   She did the same thing as Secretary of State.   Clinton operatives pushed the Steele dossier, their op dirt,  into official government channels and simultaneously seeded that dossier throughout the mainstream media, for another media spin effort to create a “crisis” environment, in order to propel the FBI and intel officials to jump into “Russian scare mode”.

I’ve written about our domestic SPIN information war so often, that I am sick of it and I know anyone reading my blog must be sick of it too.  However, I feel strongly that this SPIN war that is mass media generated repetitive messaging campaigns to manipulate the American people with false information is destroying our political institutions.

This idea of instigating mass media messaging campaigns to fuel mass panic or set the stage to ram through political action is not only corrupt, it’s creating a national security problem.  In this Trump-Russia Collusion Clinton/Dem/Media spin effort, Trump wasn’t the only one damaged by fueling wild Trump-Russia spin efforts in the media, by deliberately seeding false stories, America was hurt too.  That false “spin narrative”  left an America embroiled in ginned up hysteria about “what if we have a Russian agent in the White House”.

I don’t think most of the people in the FBI  at the top, even Comey, were involved in some mass conspiracy.  I think they were trying to do their jobs, some may have had bias against Trump (which I understand completely, since I find Trump’s conduct appalling and disturbing often too).

Just heard that Mueller is going to speak now – so, I’ll cut this post short.  The real crimes were committed by Team Clinton and Dem operatives who concocted this whole FRAUD.

 

1 Comment

Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War

May 20, 2019 · 8:50 am

Trying audiobooks for the first time

Finished the In-the-Pink Zinnias tissue box cover

When our kids were growing up we spent a lot of time utilizing the Army post library wherever we lived.  When we lived stateside, we often frequented the local public library too.

After the kids left home and I was busy with a full-time job, I drifted away from going to the library.  Of course I still bought books and I have hundreds of books on my kindle, many of them free e-books, that I haven’t read yet.   I have piles of books, paperbacks and hardcovers, many that I haven’t read too.  For quite a while making time to read more has been another one of my goals, so I had been thinking about trying audiobooks, as a way to get through more books.

I suppose like many people, I have become wary of devices and subscribing to digital services, that I doubt I’ll use enough to warrant the cost.  I have an Amazon Prime membership that I truly don’t utilize nearly as much as I could, but I’ve looked at Audible many times… and hesitated.  

Somehow, my sister, telling my son about an app called Hoopla, that offers free e-books and audiobooks, available through many public libraries, motivated me to go to my public library recently.

I can’t remember the last time I had been to my local library. So, I got a new library card, since my old library card has been replaced with a newer card system.  My local library has a nice selection of audiobooks, so I signed out my first audiobook.  In a comment, I mentioned my first audiobook to try was a Brad Thor novel, Code of Conduct.  I enjoy thriller/spy novels (along with many other genres… not just historical romance novels).

 

Finished this Christmas Santa for another ornament

As I was stitching away and listening to this Thor novel, very quickly the dead bodies were piling up, as the main character, Scot Harvath, dealt with some unfriendly rebels in the Congo.  When I mentioned the dead bodies and vivid descriptions of  “head shots” and weaponry mumbo-jumbo to one of my sons (the one who is a gun-enthusiast), he asked me, “Did they deserve killing?”  And I said, “Well they were violent rebels trying to kill him.”  My son smiled and said, “Then it’s all good.”  Men are weird.

By the second CD of this Thor novel, I decided to check out the Hoopla thing, I signed up on my home PC, but there’s a Hoopla app for other devices too.  All I needed to sign up was my library card.  It was very simple to sign up and use. 

I quickly found a story more suited to working on needlework, A Fall of Marigolds, by Susan Meissner.  I also downloaded the Hoopla app to my tablet, so I can read e-books or listen to audiobooks on that too.

My library also offers RB digital, another free digital service of e-books and audiobooks . If technologically-challenged me could manage the sign-up, downloading the app and using these free digital media services, anyone can.

I’m on the 4th CD (out of 10 CDs total) in the Thor audiobook, which I’ve relegated to listening to as I scroll through Twitter and somehow the blood and guts action in this story goes much better with reading Twitter politics than it does with needlework, lol.

I’ve also started a second audiobook on Hoopla, Becoming Mrs. Lewis: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis, a novel by Patti Callahan and the title adequately describes the plot.

The world of books has certainly changed dramatically from my childhood of being thrilled with hand-me-down books to present day life awash in so many options to access books through my public library and that’s not even touching the many free e-books available online via just a bit of online searching. The ease of using these free digital services at home with my library card amazed me.  By all means, check out your local public library and you might be amazed too.

1 Comment

Filed under Books, General Interest

May 12, 2019 · 10:08 am

A blog post from 2016

Well, it’s Mother’s Day, so I’ll skip the politics today.  I’m going to rerun a blog post from a few years ago, but  if some writing inspiration strikes after a couple more cups of coffee, perhaps write something new too.  Here’s Hand-me-downs:

Hand-me-downs

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A hand-me-down book from my childhood

Fair warning, this is going to be another backwoods PA story from my childhood.  Escape while you can:-)

I was born in 1960 and grew-up in a small village in the Pocono Mountains.  Our end of the county was and still is called the West End (which is synonymous with hicks).  Most of our neighbors were of PA German ancestry, although even in the 1960s, the urban exodus to the Poconos had begun.   The Poconos had been a vacation spot for city dwellers since the Civil War era, but during my childhood many of these urban visitors began building homes in the Poconos and staying year-round.  Many of the locals hold the urban dwellers moving into their peaceful country neighborhood as loud, boorish, pushy, stupid and very rude.

Back in the 90s, a phone conversation with my mother railing about some “stupid New Yorker” about sums up the sentiment and the disconnect.  My mother was complaining about some woman from New York who wanted the township to pay for street lights in her little residential area in the Poconos.  The woman also apparently had thought sidewalks would be a good idea.  My mother, like most locals, ended her complaints with a statement that went pretty much like, “I wish these damned city people would go back to the city and leave us alone!”

However, that unknown woman from New York got a very different reaction than my mother dealing with our pastor’s wife, who was not only New York City born and bred, but also Jewish.  The parsonage was right across the road from our home, so our pastor’s wife was also our neighbor.  My mother adored our pastor’s wife, my mother adored her elderly mother too, who would come and visit for several weeks at a time when I was a child.

It’s often interesting how many people will prejudge an entire group of people, but when they are in a situation where they are dealing with an individual from that group and getting to know him or her, all of sudden common ground can be found and friendships blossom.

Spending my adult life around Army communities, I’ve always been very grateful for the experience of being able to meet so many people from so many different countries, backgrounds, and experiences.  The thing that binds Army communities is soldiers with a common mission.  Their wives, no matter if they are foreign-born or American invariably become friends, share recipes, share in the worries when their spouses deploy, and share in a sense of community.

Finding that common ground in America is an existential crisis, not media hysteria about “fake news” or “Russian influence”.

The partisan political divides, listening to political pundits, reading news from various political stripes and observing comments on Twitter, facebook, etc., make me feel like these groups live on different planets, not in the same country.

So, back to my childhood, in a family with six kids, with widely different opinions.  For instance, conservative me, has a far-left brother, who was really into zero population growth as a cause.  When he lectured me when I was pregnant with my third child, asking if my husband and I thought our genes were so good that we had to spread them around with so many children, well, I didn’t get angry.  I smiled at him and replied, “Well, now that you mention it, yes, we do.”  I also told him I wanted 5 or 7 kids, because I like odd numbers (although we stopped “spreading our genes around”, overpopulating the world, at 4 kids).

No matter how angry we were at each other or how vehemently we disagreed, when it was dinner time, we all had to sit at the table and behave civilly.  My parents didn’t want to hear how mad we were or how much we disagreed or whether we had been fighting all day about something – we had to sit at the table and eat our dinner.  There was no taking your plate to another room or screaming at each other at the table allowed.

Especially with the advent of the internet, the splintering of America has escalated, where there’s really very little discussion in online political discussion forums, only hyper-charged partisan attacks.  Each side generates talking points, which the political combatants hurl back and forth non-stop.  Poll numbers get tossed in to validate positions, although really polls are meaningless – they’re the opinions of a few people extrapolated to represent the opinions of very large groups of people.

I’ve met many wonderful people from New York City and other urban areas.  I’ve also met some total assholes right where I grew up, who were locals.  And it shouldn’t even have to be said in America, but we’ve got to start talking to each other and move beyond our own little cocoon of people who think just like we do or hold the same political views.

We need to start embracing getting to know people as individuals.

The same goes for considering political viewpoints and here again, my mother taught me that you can’t make anyone believe anything.  My oldest sister is 8 years older than me and she had friends in high school, who like her, read a lot.  Along with wearing hand-me-down clothes, I became a proud collector of hand-me-down books.  Anything my sister or her friends were ready to discard, I was ready to add it to my “collection” of books.  I read the entire Warren Commission Report in paperback, I got a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird.  I still have the Watchwords of Liberty, filled with great American quotes.  I also ended up with paperback histories like:

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Then somehow I ended up with:

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So, while you might expect my conservative, staunch Republican mother to want this book out of her house, you’d be wrong.  She told me she didn’t believe in Marxism, but to decide for myself.  She gave me a copy of a little booklet (which I gave to someone), called, Good Citizen and she told me this booklet had a lot of interesting information on America.  So, I read Marx’s Concept of Man and then I read her Good Citizen booklet and many other books too.

In 1976, the American Bicentennial fueled a bunch of books on the American Revolution and my American love affair with The Constitution and our republic bloomed like cherry blossoms in Washington springtime.  I was hooked on American ideals.  I had started adding to my hand-me-down book “collection” with books I bought with babysitting money – books like:

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I also got enthralled by The Kent Family Chronicles, that John Jakes series commemorating the 200 year anniversary of America.  By that point, I was sold on The Constitution, sold on American ideals and Marx sounded like depressing whining about “unfairness”, where there’s never any hope for individuals to aspire to anything… just endless reliance on imposition of command economy enforcers to decide on what’s fair and relentless fueling class warfare. The American Bicentennial fueled a life-long love of reading American history.  My short time in the Army expanded that to loving to read military history too.

In life, we all have some really dumb ideas and beliefs.   That’s the truth!  No one gets through life being perfect and all-knowing.  For instance, I abhor violence and had this idea that all behavior is learned, so when I had kids, I didn’t want my kids to be violent.  I didn’t want my sons to have any toy guns, because I believed that would encourage violence.  I believed this despite the fact that I got into plenty of fistfights as a kid fighting bullies.

My mother and sisters laughed at me and told me I was stupid.  My husband just rolled his eyes.  My toddler sons, well, they turned everything into a weapon, to include their older sister’s Barbie dolls.  They were very destructive and liked to clobber each other, while there I was telling them in this prissy voice, “you’ve got to be nice!”  My daughter didn’t take to them wrecking her stuff and she smacked them when they touched her stuff.  So much for my toy guns make boys violent belief.

When I told my mother about my sons throwing everything and turning everything into a weapon, which my daughter had never done, my mother said, “welcome to the world of boys.”

Here’s another story on “boys” from a few years later.  We were living in Germany and I was throwing a birthday party for one of my sons.  My next-door neighbor had a lot of very colorful finches in a cage and she decided to let them fly loose that day.  They were getting ready to PCS back to the states.  My daughter came running in the house to tell me that all these little boys had sticks and were trying to kill these little finches that were sitting in the bushes around the house.  So, I walked outside and there was this group of little boys, bloodlust in their eyes, gleefully trying to kill these tiny birds with big sticks.   They were barbarians!  In that moment I realized that there is something about males and violence that is probably hard-wired.  And I realized that my “be nice” idea had been idiotic all along.

What people believe can’t be forced, so it’s best to try to find that common ground, I keep blabbing on about.  Here again, I think my mother had the right idea there too – get people to sit at the same table and share a meal, insisting that everyone be polite.

Simple as it may be, perhaps just getting people to share a meal and talk might work miracles, where all the social programs have failed.  Here’s an old LB blog post from 2014:

“I’m always amazed at how when people sit down to share a meal, the petty squabbles subside, conversations almost invariably turn to family and home.  A friendly dinner table is the world’s most under-tapped peacemaking tool.  The simple act of breaking bread together at a table of brotherhood doesn’t seem all that hard and once people can come together and peacefully share a meal and conversation, then all the other politicized barriers fall to the wayside.  Community potlucks could rebuild communities and not cost taxpayers a dime.  Believe it, because it’s true and with so much animosity and hatred in America, at the very least neighbors might make new friends, so there’s no downside to the endeavor.”

https://libertybellediaries.com/2014/11/29/another-home-truth/

I also quoted my mother’s least favorite poet, Maya Angelou in that post.  I’m not a fan of Angelou’s poetry either, but she sure nailed a home truth with this quote:

“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.” –
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/26244-hate-it-has-caused-a-lot-of-problems-in-the

Again, finding ways to heal the divides in America is an existential necessity.

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Filed under Food for Thought, General Interest

May 6, 2019 · 12:31 pm

Timelines matter

For me, the most serious issue in the entire 2016 scorched earth SPIN information war remains the corruption of top official U.S. intelligence and FBI decision-making based on politicized, spun information being fed to them by partisan sources.   From following the 8 years of the Obama administration’s use and abuse of government information, from the IRS scandal weaponizing processes to target right-wing political groups to Clinton-connected lawyers feeding op dirt information into the DOJ, State Department, and FBI, there were many disturbing actions reeking of weaponizing government information for partisan purposes.

At the same time, negative Clinton campaign dirt on Trump was being fed into official Obama administration channels, the FBI, reportedly, had two open criminal investigation into the Clintons – one was Hillary’s email investigation and the other was multiple field office investigations into the Clinton Foundation on pay-to-play corruption.

At top levels of the Obama administration, it seems to me, they wanted to grasp at any wisps of dirt on Trump and build it into treasonous “Russian collusion” and at the same time, bury and dismiss real evidence of grossly negligent handling of highly classified information and Clinton Foundation corruption.  The seeming two separate standards of justice disturbs me.

James Comey, former FBI director, to this day remains sketchy on explaining what he knew about the Steele dossier’s provenance.  Likewise, his explanation of his decision making in recommending no charges in the Clinton email investigation, back in July 2016, makes no sense.  Later still, with the DOJ IG report’s findings regarding the email investigation, Comey’s answers about the FBI leaking, for which the IG found Andrew McCabe, lacked candor and found Comey’s version more credible, don’t sit right with me.

Those McCabe leaks to the media were unauthorized and designed to counter leaks about the FBI investigation of Clinton Foundation pay-to-play corruption.  McCabe leaking was initiated to silence leaks coming out of the FBI’s NY field office  Those field office leaks dealt with the tens of thousands of Hillary State Dept. emails the FBI found on the Weiner family laptop, while investigating the Anthony Weiner texting scandal.

Comey’s actions juxtaposed to his explanations smell of deceit.  He went along with the Clinton spin effort in July of 2016 to bury the email investigation and his clumsy effort of reopening that investigation and doing a quickie investigation of the Weiner laptop, was just an effort to quell the leaks coming out about the Clinton Foundation corruption and Weiner laptop.  That quickie Weiner laptop investigation was just cover dressing for him to bury both FBI criminal investigations of the Clintons, and hopefully secure his position and standing with whom he believed would be his next boss – Hillary Clinton.

When he was fired, Comey led the media SPIN charge, by leaking FBI memos of notes (some reportedly containing classified information) that he typed up on FBI equipment, after his private meetings with President Trump.  He sent these memos to a friend, who leaked them to the media.  Later, after negative press about these memos, Comey declared that the friend, Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, was his attorney.  This move seemed to be an attempt to tie a pretty bow on a stinking heap of corrupt Comey leaking, which was designed to create a media SPIN furor over Comey’s firing and create political pressure for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate President Trump and his campaign on “Russian collusion”.

However, it seems to me, that in understanding our domestic spin war timeline, we need to go back to its beginnings in the 90s,  and keep referring to notes from then to now.  Of course there’s Team Clinton vs Team GOP ( vast, right-wing conspiracy in Hillary’s view), but in the 2008 election Team Obama emerged too and while Team Obama and Team Clinton unite on most efforts to thwart Team GOP, on some others Team Obama tries to distance itself from Team Clinton.

In early 2016, it seems to me some of Team Obama at the top were all-in for Team Clinton, while others were less enthused and at various points with these two ongoing FBI criminal investigations of the Clintons, at the very top, President Obama and his inner-circle were debating whether to throw the Clintons to the FBI hands of justice and have Vice President, Joe Biden, enter the race or help the Clinton machine bury the FBI investigations.

I believe Bill Clinton directly pressured President Obama in 2015 to make the email scandal go away.  I believe that by the summer of 2016 and the email scandal still lingering, Bill Clinton was livid and I believe that is why he took matters into his own hands and orchestrated the tarmac meeting with Loretta Lynch directly, to set in motion the “for appearances sake only” 4th of July weekend FBI interview of Hillary and the orchestrated Clinton machine spin to be the end of the email investigation.

Comey decided to place his future in the hands of Team Clinton and he went along with Lynch’s corrupting the process, by refusing to recuse herself after the tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton, while abdicating her prosecutorial duties to Comey.  Nothing Comey said at that July press conference made sense – especially the part about how Hillary showed no intent to break the law.  He waxed on about “intent”.

Timelines matter to me, when trying to understand events.  Personal connections along those timelines help create a clearer picture, at least in my mind of the story.  James Comey plays clueless on what he knows about the provenance of the Steele dossier.  He also plays clueless on the provenance of the Clinton private server.

Bill Clinton had that server set up in their home in the summer of 2008, after Hillary suspended her 2008 campaign.

At the moment the Attorney General is putting together a team to look at the provenance of the Trump-Russia investigation.

I haven’t sorted out the Mueller report findings in my head yet and am still reading it and mulling over the information.

Andrew McCarthy can be relied on to give fact-based analysis of legal matters and he wrote another must-read piece, The FBI’s Trump-Russia Investigation Was Formally Opened on False Pretenses, at National Review today.

A line in McCarthy’s excellent piece stuck out at me, because it prodded something that’s been missing in the provenance of the Clinton email investigation too and it explains that “intent” issue James Comey says was absent.

I tweeted this tweet thread this morning:

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Interesting: “Downer has a history with the Clintons that includes arranging a $25 million donation to the Clinton Foundation in 2006, when he was Australia’s foreign minister and then-senator Hillary Clinton was the favorite to become U.S. president in 2008.”

FBI Used False Premise to Open Trump-Russia Investigation | National Review
9:25 AM – 6 May 2019

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Here’s an interesting Clinton Foundation fact too, from the FBI Notes released in September of 2016. Justin Cooper, Bill Clinton’s aide/IT guy, told the FBI Bill Clinton’s personal email server was set up around June 2008.

10:07 AM – 6 May 2019

(Sorry the link didn’t copy – https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-documents-in-hillary-clinton-e-mail-investigation)

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Bill Clinton was having a personal Clinton Foundation server installed in their home, as Hillary suspended her presidential campaign. She left the race over $22 million in debt.

10:18 AM – 6 May 2019

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She couldn’t do political fundraising as Sec of State. She merged her State Dept business with the Clinton Foundation business on the family personal email server. 🤨

10:23 AM – 6 May 2019

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Never fear, Hillary always finds a way to “power through it” 🧘‍♀️:

10:24 AM – 6 May 2019
Timelines matter, they really do.

 

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Filed under General Interest, Hillary's Email Scandal, Politics, Public Corruption, Twitter Tales

May 4, 2019 · 7:41 pm

My Twitter/Stitching Multitasking

Today, President Trump took to Twitter retweeting some far-right loon, who was banned from facebook, tweeting out a message for Kim Jong Un and praising Putin. The Kim Jong Un tweet rightfully evoked outrage and is disgraceful coming from a U.S. president:

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Anything in this very interesting world is possible, but I believe that Kim Jong Un fully realizes the great economic potential of North Korea, & will do nothing to interfere or end it. He also knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me. Deal will happen!

9:42 AM – 4 May 2019

Quite a Saturday morning for a president who should be studying serious US policy issues and actions.  Instead, he was on Twitter trying to be the center of the news cycle and generating negative reactions from the mainstream media and Left.  He never learns and he never actually bothers to focus on anything other than promoting himself on social media and TV.

With President Trump, it’s always about his “popularity” and promoting his reality TV show presidency.  Seriously, he brags about how many “followers” he has on Twitter and perhaps, in the future, looking back on this time in our history,  Trump’s ascent to the highest office in the land will serve as a cautionary tale on the dangers of social media and Reality TV fame.

For the record, my Twitter following was at 51 this morning, so I’m destined to be unpopular and a voice in the wilderness on social media… which suits me fine.  Likewise, this blog is my lost in woods place where I just sit and write my observations.  I thank everyone, who stops by. Comments, even critical ones, are welcome (no profanity and name-calling, please).

After tweeting too much myself last night and this morning about the Clinton corruption, I decided it’s time to actually sit down and read through more of the Mueller report and take notes, like I did when reading through all of the released FBI Notes in 2016 on the Clinton email investigation.

I have been reading about Soviet propaganda since 1980, when I first became interested in this topic.  I had developed an interest in all things Russian in high school, having the luck to have a high school German teacher, who was a retired Army translator. He convinced the school administration to add Russian to our school’s foreign language offerings.  I studied German for 4 years and Russian for two years, but  have no knack for foreign languages.  Spending my adult life around the Army and being a frequent Army post library patron, I often happened upon Soviet-themed books.  My education is piecemeal at best and I am not an expert on anything, but I do know how to bake some pretty good cookies, lol.

Volume I of the Mueller report is filled with fascinating bits of information, but every time I see a redacted box labeled “Investigative Technique”, I experience a sense of disappointment, like I am deprived of the most fascinating aspect of this investigation.  Although, truth be told, I am totally clueless on technology and most of the cyber lingo, so probably wouldn’t understand most of those details anyway.

Took a photo of this report sitting it on my kids’ old rocking chair, where I have other books stacked.  The book, Legionary, which shows in the photo above the 9/11 Commission Report is one of my favorites – a sort of tongue -in-cheek “unofficial” Roman Soldier’s manual, filled with an amazing array of trivia and historical tidbits.  Page 6 has the Roman phrase, “conscribe te militem in legionibus. pervagare orbem terrarum. inveni terras externas. cognosce miros peregrinos. eviscera eos.”  (hope I copied that correctly)  The translation is, “Join the legions, see the world, travel to foreign parts, meet interesting and exotic people, and disembowel them.  I laughed out loud when I read that and it brought home to me that there is nothing new in the world  As a young soldier in 1980, I saw a poster that had a similar sentiment that is typical soldiers’ dark humor.  When I read this line, well, I was hooked.

Another odd habit of mine started in my early teens when, in a stack of hand-me-down paperbacks from my oldest sister, I acquired a beat-up copy of the Warren Commission Report. At this point in my life, after decades of pouring through “government reports”, I face new reports with dread, not eagerness to learn some fascinating tidbits.  Reading through the Mueller report is going to take me some time, as I have only read a few pages at a time and am still in Volume I.

This much I have gleaned Trump and his son, Don Jr. are not merely innocent victims of the Clinton smear campaign (which was real).  They were active players, embracing the Clinton spin and smear techniques, while trying to build their own smear merchant network of connections and media friends.  Trump operated the same sort of sleazy gutter politics as the Clintons.  He was massively under resourced compared to the deep-pockets of big donors the Clintons have, but he benefited from the Clintons’ own sleazy primary strategy (here and here) to get their media friends to promote the most extreme GOP candidates, in hopes of being able to employ Bill Clinton’s famous triangulation strategy.  Trump received billions of dollars in free media during the GOP primary, which elevated his profile and created the myth that Trump was  a “winner”.

However, the Mueller report, even in Volume I, which the media and Dems, pushing fevered impeachment dreams, skipped over in their rush to push obstruction of justice, indicates that Don Jr. was openly encouraging contacts with Wikileaks.  He was not a victim.  Wikileaks direct messaged Don. Jr. (page 60) and Don Jr. avidly direct messaged Wikileaks back seeking dirt on Hillary.  I stick to my original assessment since 2015 – Trump and Hillary are the same corrupt, mendacious, ruthless animal.  They will say or do anything to acquire prestige and power.  Neither is morally fit to be president.

I regret tweeting so much last night and this morning, but at least my time on Twitter wasn’t a total waste.  I started another plastic canvas needlepoint tissue box cover and managed to get one side done (photo at the top) and started the 2nd side.  I stitched as I followed Twitter.   This pattern is called In-the-Pink Zinnias, from an old plastic canvas leaflet:

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Filed under General Interest, Politics, Twitter Tales

April 25, 2019 · 2:57 pm

Witch Hunts

A bizarre view of right and wrong dominates America’s political landscape.  Perhaps it was always there, but I watched it grow and intensify through my lifetime and now in the age of mass media spin, well, it smacks you in the face over every discussion that involves partisans.

The media also breaks down issues using this partisan lens, to determine right and wrong, saints and evildoers.  The President and Congressional leaders all fall in line with this bizarre, two-tiered system of determining right and wrong too.   That leaves our judicial system, as our only hope for a sane, one set of rules for all view.

Every American citizen should embrace one set of rules for all and be Americans first, partisans second.

Our partisans have one set of rules for their side and a completely different set for their opposition.  The Mueller report serves as an object lesson, if we choose to learn from it.

President Trump and his followers eagerly embraced the parts of the Mueller report that clear Trump and his campaign of conspiring with Russians and they embraced Attorney General Barr’s determination that no obstruction of justice occurred.

If President Trump did encourage other people to lie to investigators, as alleged, I believe that is obstruction of justice, so I disagree with Barr on this point.  I don’t believe obstruction of justice rests on whether the target of the investigation is innocent or guilty of a crime.  I think it rests on whether in a legal investigation, a target was trying to undermine the lawful investigative processes – for ANY reason.  Trump may have been reacting to spin, trying to score political points or just wanted to thwart the investigation, because he believed it was unfair and a “witch hunt”.

Trump’s actions are exactly like the Clintons view of investigations into them.  Hillary has whined for decades that they are the victims of unfair “witch hunts”.  The Clintons have worked tirelessly to undermine investigations of them.

President Trump and his campaign were trying to acquire Russian dirt on Hillary and just because they didn’t succeed in conspiring with Russians in this effort, the underlying truth is they were totally open to accepting dirt on Hillary – from any source.  Likewise, Hillary, her campaign and DNC lawyers actually did set out and, according to their claims, successfully acquired Russian dirt on Trump (the Steele dossier is Russian dirt on Trump).  There is no difference in Trump or Hillary’s intentions to acquire Russian dirt and willingness to accept dirt from any source.

Trump and the Clintons operate from a starting belief that the rules don’t apply to them and that whatever their goals are,  are so important and the “witch hunt” they are facing is so “unfair”, that any means they take to win are justifiable.  That’s the truth.  Their followers  and people with strong partisan views of either of them, start buying into this, “Well, just look at how awful the other side was acting, so no wonder they did X.Y,Z that skirted the rules.”  Another favorite delusion partisans fall into is buying into the belief that the “enemy” is just so awful and the situation so dire (Flight 93 thinking, anyone), that we must support them, because if the “enemy” wins, America is doomed.  It’s always “Anyone, but… that horrible “enemy”.

This existential crisis thinking is leading America to lawlessness.

The rules apply to everyone.

If Trump or Hillary believe an investigation is just a “witch hunt”, then through legal efforts, they should try to make that case, but their belief about the investigation does not entitle or justify their undermining the investigation.

We all must live under one set of rules in America, regardless whether a high-profile politician, under investigation, feels he or she is the target of a  “witch hunt”. Under no circumstances is it okay for them to lie or encourage others to lie to investigators or bleachbit servers or destroy tens of thousands of emails under subpoena.

We all need to take off the partisan blinders and stick to one set of rules for everyone.

 

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Filed under General Interest, Public Corruption

April 21, 2019 · 8:44 am

Happy Easter!

Image compliments of: https://thegraphicsfairy.com/free-vintage-clip-art-darling-birds-in-nest/

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Filed under General Interest, Uncategorized

April 20, 2019 · 1:27 pm

Gloomy spin forecast ahead…

Friendly warning: This post is another warning about our scorched earth spin information war. In light of the Mueller report, not saving America from the spin war, I just felt like repeating my warning.

The endless semantical musical chairs word game has frustrated me about American presidential politics since the advent of sophisticated spin operations began in the 90s.  This same word game still frustrates me today.  Perhaps my frustration stems from a childhood spent struggling not to stutter, struggling to spit out words, but most of  all, devoting hours  upon hours, reading the dictionary.  I practiced trying to learn how to pronounce words and I practiced trying to remember what words mean.  Of course, many words have multiple meanings, but with the spin word games, most of the effort is to redefine the truth, using slippery language to manipulate people into believing bold-faced lies.

Spin is mostly bold-faced lies, deliberately used to dupe the American people. 

That’s the truth.

Sure, we all know politicians aren’t noted for their candor and truthfulness, but spin operations are mass media driven efforts to drive and control public opinion in America.   Mass media serves as the battlefield for the cultural war in America.  It’s doubtful that most politicians and the media, who serve as the foot soldiers battling forth in the spin war, even really realize they are fighting in an information war to control public opinion in America.  The entire spin war runs counter to American free speech principles and assures corruption of all who engage in it.  When you begin to go along with using “spin” to win, you’ve bought into deliberately manipulating Americans, deliberately spreading carefully crafted political messaging and deliberately working to confuse the meaning of words (mass media propaganda brainwashing operations). You’ve bought into deliberately spreading lies.

If you embrace spin information warfare, you are embracing a march toward authoritarianism.

Winning the spin war is to control public opinion in America via sophisticated control of mass media messaging (winning the spin cycles).

The Left has owned the spin cycles in America since the 90s.

The Right relied on Fox News, talk radio, online forums and formats, but the Left controlled all of the mainstream media avenues in America.

I feel like a broken record repeating this, but American liberty depends on Americans, especially our leaders, understanding the dangers posed to American liberty by this endless spin information war.  America is not only politically divided, but due to the effects of non-stop, scorched earth spin information warfare blazing across American media 24/7, it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep track of the spin, keep track of the corrections, keep track of which parts of reports were true, which parts were debunked and frankly, the amounts of spin starts destroying our ability to figure out the truth.

If you watch MSNBC and CNN, you live in one hermetically sealed spin bubble.  If you watch FOX, you live in a different hermetically sealed spin bubble.  Much of what is reported, as objective news, inside either spin bubble is obviously biased, but the real insidiousness of spin comes with the pundits in these bubbles, who tirelessly spew out carefully crafted spin messaging, to herd and corral their viewers into remaining loyal, rabid partisans.

Before Trump, the Left was winning the larger cultural war, and had owned the spin war for decades, afterall, they have dibs of being referred to as “the mainstream media”, while Fox news was dismissed as “Faux news” and talk radio was cast as the home of “dangerous, right-wing militia types, who should be regulated by the government”.

Trump broke through the Left’s control of the spin in America and he did it by learning how to emulate the Clinton spin messaging tactics.  He doesn’t have as sophisticated of a spin messaging strategy as Bill Clinton and his spin gurus, but Trump operates as a spin guerilla.  He mastered rapid spin attacks that disrupt the Left’s carefully crafted spin attacks and his guerilla spin attacks often win the spin cycle (OODA loops).

Trump followers are just like Clinton followers and Obama followers.  They buy into the spin of the leader.  They repeat the leader’s spin.  They become emotionally invested in the leader’s spin messaging.  Trump just like the Clintons and Obama relies on spin messaging to keep his following.  They are all dedicated to deliberately lying to the American people to advance, first themselves, and second their political agenda.

None of them has any respect and reverence for speaking the truth.

None of them will save America from the reckoning that will come at the end of our scorched earth spin war.

All three camps – Trump, the Clintons and Obama were engaged in corrupt activities to win the spin in 2016

That’s the truth.

All three camps, with their media spin operators, are still engaged in corrupt spin messaging operations to cover-up their corrupt activities to win the spin in 2016.

That’s the truth, too.

With American partisans entrenched in spin operations, it’s paramount for America’s leaders to recognize that SPIN info war is more of a threat to America than any one political leader or political party.  Spin information war leaves America wide open to hostile foreign information warfare attacks.  We have no means to protect ourselves from insidious foreign mass media efforts to fuel divides in America, when our American media is engaged running domestic partisan spin war operations.

At the end of a scorched earth spin information war, America will be a totally balkanized country, easily defeated by hostile foreign organized sophisticated information warfare operations, and we could fall sway to abandoning large chunks of our liberty, out of mass panics incited by spin operations (both domestic or hostile foreign ops).

Stopping this scorched earth spin information war, that is tearing the soul of America apart, remains vital to American liberty and to America’s future as a constitutional republic.

Quite a gloomy prediction, here, but never fear, everyone in America can fight against spin info war – just stop buying into the politicians and media spin messaging efforts, start thinking for yourself and look for the truth.  Sure, for some partisans, who have become mind-numbed spin robots repeating their side’s spin for many years, the spin detox might take a bit longer… almost like leaving a cult, but for most Americans, it shouldn’t be that hard to break free of the spin.

Start thinking for yourself, instead of relying on other people to think for you.

Be a rebel against spin…

Have a good day, lol.

 

 

43 Comments

Filed under General Interest, Information War, Politics, The Media

April 18, 2019 · 3:27 am

“Reading the report” seems like sound advice

Well, in 24 hours from now the Mueller report will have been released and rapidly dissected by partisans (especially those in the media charading as objective journalists), it will have been churned over on TV news for many hours, it will have been read and dissected in hastily prepared written pieces and of course, on Twitter it will have been spun continuously for almost an entire day.  In the Twitter universe, that’s enough time for several complete spin cycles to launch, peak, be upended by a competing spin narrative, so who knows what the smart takes will be by this time in the wee hours of Friday morning.

Where would American politics be without the Twitter political forum to spin the news for us…

How people view Trump/Russian collusion probably rests on, not just partisanship, but on what parts of the past two years worth of spin people believe. In fact, many anti-Trump people, especially those who follow the anti-Trump media and believe it, will walk away believing Trump got away with being a Russian agent, no matter what facts the Mueller report finds.

On the Left, many anti-Trumpers have bought into the mountains of anti-Trump spin, which were rapidly spun by the mainstream media, before going down in flames within 24-48 hours, as the stories fell apart.  Many people ran with the pants on fire initial reporting and never paid attention to the debunking of those stories.

On the Right, many of the MAGA Trump followers believe all of the Trump and Fox News spin, which casts Trump as the perennial victim of dastardly Leftists.  These people ignore facts, whenever they get in the way of Trump as the victim spin and they conveniently disregard all the disturbing Trump behavior, like the petty name-calling, the impulsive policy shifts that leave his own staff scrambling to figure out what he meant, his fawning over the world’s despots and his  relentless lying.

My prediction is that not much will change in this entrenched domestic spin information war.  Each side will pick and choose bits and pieces to bolster their spin narrative and each side will disregard any parts in the report that don’t bolster their beliefs about Trump/Russian collusion.

I won’t be watching TV news, or be on Twitter or blogging tomorrow… but I might start reading the report, well maybe.  I am busy working on my cross-stitch lately.

Finished the Russian dolls piece – cute.  Sorry for the crooked picture, but I really am terrible at taking photos and even worse at trying to edit them (psst, I put in a corrected photo, because I noticed in rotating the photo thing, I had flipped the sides of the photo – the little Cossack is on the left, not the right):

2019-04-18 09.12.52.jpg

Finished stitching another one of those small, tedious Spring kits:

I also have a bunch of Christmas clearance cross-stitch kits too, so I started a Christmas bunny kit the other day.  Still have some back-stitching to do to finish it.  I hate stitching on the 18 count Aida cloth that comes in these kits, because even with my magnifying lamp and my glasses, it’s a struggle for me to count the squares:

I also started stitching another small kit that I bought last summer when my husband was in the hospital.  I took a trip to a Joann’s store to get a break from the hospital… and bought two more cross-stitch kits.

I love bunnies, btw… So, I have two more of these bunny Christmas kits with different bunny pictures…

And I have this Liberty Bell project too, but that one’s a struggle trying to work on with all the interruptions here, when my husband needs help getting to the bathroom, needs his meals, etc.  These small projects are easy to pick up and stitch a bit, throughout the day.

Yes, it’s probably better to plan for small doses of news today and plan on “reading the actual report”.   Most of the media blathering on won’t read the report, but they will be touted as having the smart takes on it.

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Filed under General Interest, Politics