Category Archives: General Interest

August 16, 2017 · 12:08 pm

Trump planned that press conference

How leaders operate is crucial to building a strong team.

Last week, President Trump went out and issued threats against North Korea and Venezuela, while his staff was left, once again, doing damage control.

One of the constant leaks from this White House staff is that President Trump went off message or “went rogue”.  Yesterday was another one of those days, with his press conference.

Immediately following that press conference, many reporters were reporting on their WH sources telling them that the President’s comments were not in the prepared speech.

However, President Trump did not go out there and just lose it.  He planned to do exactly what he did.  That is obvious.

Watching how Trump operates from the beginning of his campaign, yesterday was exactly how he plans his attacks on his enemies.  So let’s analyze the Trump modus operandi, in my typical LB timeline fashion:

Saturday, August 12, 2017:  President Trump issued a statement on the deadly violence in Charlottesville. His choice of words drew heavy condemnation.

Sunday, August 13, 2017:  The media backlash and demands that President Trump come out and condemn alt-right, neo-nazis and white supremacists grew.

Monday, August 14, 2017: President Trump issued a stronger statement on Charlottesville, sticking to prepared statements and reading from a teleprompter.  There was still a lot of criticism that the remarks weren’t strong enough and in the afternoon, the president tweeted:

More

Made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realize once again that the News Media will never be satisfied…truly bad people!

3:29 PM – 14 Aug 2017

Tuesday, August 15, 2017:  President Trump, at a press conference that was supposed to be on infrastructure, engaged in a back and forth verbal battle with the media.

Yesterday morning, before his press conference, President Trump retweeted 2 tweets.  One was from an alt-right figure, Jack Posobiec about “Meanwhile: 39 shootings in Chicago this weekend, 9 deaths. No national media outrage. Why is that?”, linking to a news story.  The other tweet was a cartoon of a Trump train running over CNN.  That cartoon tweet was quickly removed.

Watching General Kelly, the new chief of staff, during yesterday’s press conference, it was obvious he was not expecting the president to “go rogue”.

I suspect others around the president were fully aware that the president was going to come out fighting – he sent the signal to his alt-right followers on Twitter in the morning with that cartoon and Posobiec retweet.

Last night FOX News was in full Trumpathon mode.  They are part of the Trump propaganda circle.

I expect some in Trump’s circle of sleazes were in on the planning, but his own chief of staff was left out of the loop.  The WH staffers, who were caught unaware, were not in the loop.  He undercut most of his staff, who were urging him to act presidential and befitting the office.

Ann Coulter was gleeful last night on Twitter about Trump being back “fighting”.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017:  The media reported Trump will be in Arizona next week for another rally – to keep the agitation propaganda going.  The media reported the White House ordered the Republicans to get behind the President.

During the “GOP Insurgency”, Trump did not bother with details or policy,  but he came with his pockets loaded down with dirt to throw and vicious, petty name-calling.  He walked into that presser prepared to say exactly what he said and the FOX News agitation propaganda blitz, to back him up, was planned in advance too.  President Trump’s media collusion with FOX News is just as corrupt as the Left’s.

This is how he operates – classic Trump.

PS:  The American people should want to know who the president really listens to!

 

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Politics, The Media

August 15, 2017 · 11:16 am

We can all be duped by demagogues

Soul-searching is something we all should do sometimes.

Long ago, I used to be an inveterate channel-flipper watching cable news and when there was some breaking news event, I would flip between the cable news networks and also ABC, NBC, and CBS.  It was a habit I developed in October of 1983.  I was almost 7 months pregnant with my second child and my husband had deployed to Grenada.  Then there was the news void during the first couple days.  I was anxiously hoping for some news.

From that channel-flipping news habit, I started watching all the TV pundits on TV, even the ones I disagreed with on almost every issue.  Back then I would listen to those with views diametrically opposed to my own and I was open to finding small points with which I agreed.

Over the years and with the advent of the internet, my news consumption changed, as I began to get more and more news online and much less from TV.  I think I did what most Americans do – when it comes to political commentary and opinion, I began to go to mostly websites where the views fit my own political viewpoints.  When I did read opinions from liberal writers, I read it looking for ways to counter their arguments, rather than seriously consider them.

President George W. Bush became akin to Hitler in the liberal punditry echo chamber. The election of President Bush followed not only a contentious election, but also the Clinton impeachment, which left American partisans deeply angry and divided.  Just as the mainstream media worked to feed the Bush Derangement Syndrome, FOX News played an outsized role in the constant stream of anti-Obama reporting.  That is the truth.

I disagreed with President Obama on most political issues and he turned me off early with his condescending comment about rural Pennsylvanians “clinging to their guns and religion” comment.  My childhood roots are in rural PA soil.  I also started watching mostly FOX News, when I turned on TV news, because the CNN and MSNBC Obama lovefest had turned me off quickly.

It didn’t take much for me to believe the worst of President Obama, because the Obama administration started talking about their “narratives”, which were concocted stories of events, often “evolving narratives” they hadn’t completely fabricated yet,  and it reminded me of the Clinton “spin”, which was talking points (lies), they colluded with their friends in the media to spread.  Often, the Obama narratives were quickly exposed as being untruthful, just like the Clinton spin.  These untruths fed the right-wing news and punditry information bubble and provided the base for a constant stream of whataboutism and paranoid distrust of President Obama.  The liberal media and punditry do the same thing and in their bubble of whataboutism and paranoia, conservatives are all haters and might be closet Timothy McVeigh wannabes.

I remember when FOX News brought on Glenn Beck and he was busily pointing out all the dangerous Obama administration connections to other dastardly doings and devious leftist demons, with his ever-widening conspiracy circles on his chalkboard.   Beck was entertaining with his presentation, but as I would try to actually connect the dots from many of his shows, I began to suspect he was a con man and something, besides his extremely bizarre emotional outbursts,  seemed very off to me.  Those circles never really connected.

Beck became too controversial and left FOX news and began his online show.  I subscribed and kept watching, trying to figure out what his real game was.  It was like watching a magician who does really amazing card tricks and trying to find out how.  He had on many guests whom I liked and he spouted enough right-wing views to keep me watching.  I still wasn’t 100% convinced he was a total con man and I still listened to him.

One day, I watched his show, where it finally clicked in my mind that his act is all fake. Long before I came to that conclusion I kept wondering about the commercials he ran on his show – the seed bank/build the bunker stuff, the guns, guns, guns, and the people in these ads seemed like total grifters.

The day it all clicked in my mind that he really is a con artist he had some man promoting a haven of American patriot bliss in Idaho on as his guest.  It was a ponzi scheme and Glenn Beck gave this man a platform to dupe people.  That Beck guest, an obvious con man, was selling an imaginary gated community, The Citadel, using American patriotism as a lure, just like Beck.  His gated community existed only as some online scam, where people could send monthly payments for the “collective” to buy land for the community.   He sold this as a place for American patriots to find like-minded people, united by their belief in patriotism, liberty, pride in American exceptionalism and preparedness.

Beck gave this con artist a platform, an audience and credibility to scam people.

I unsubscribed from his online show, but I still ask myself, why I listened to him for so long, despite the uneasiness I had with so much about him.  The answer, I think, is because he was feeding my fears and distrust of President Obama, but he was also carefully couching everything in Tea Party patriotic rhetoric.  I have always loved reading about the American Revolution, the founding fathers, and long before Beck came along with his Being George Washington, in fact since my early teens, I have been captivated by George Washington.

Many people on the right, myself included, lamented how so many on the Left fell for President Obama’s soaring oratory and we mocked Chris Matthews’ rapturous fawning that he felt a tingle up his leg, when Obama spoke.  We asked ourselves, “Why don’t these people see through his demagoguery?”  Then along came Donald Trump with his rousing rallies, flag-waving, get tough on law enforcement – “Make America Great Again”.

During the 2016 campaign, Glenn Beck was against President Trump and supporting Ted Cruz, but his bizarre, on his knees praying antics, actually hurt Ted Cruz.

I don’t have the answers to the scope of the media efforts to deceive Americans, but American news, across the board, has become a partisan wasteland, where tweeting poorly vetted news stories leads to viral stories spreading, long before anyone has even fact-checked the information.

The aftermath of both political parties choosing completely corrupt candidates, who lie constantly and engage in ruthless, scorched earth information war has left America an easy target for hostile disinformation efforts.  The 2016 campaign wasn’t just about the dangers of Russian influence.  It sure seems to me that the American cable news media and most of the other news media turned into total disinformation operations too.

We have a president who is really jazzed about waging information war against the mainstream media, FOX News spreading Trump disinformation 24/7 and most of America’s other journalists and political pundits hanging out on Twitter retweeting each other’s “hot takes”.  Most of them are liberal, most of them supported Hillary, most of them loathe Trump and most of them are click happy about retweeting any negative Trump story, without thorough fact-checking.   In February, even the Washington Post  fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, retweeted the fake racist Fred Trump campaign ad video, without fact-checking it.

Trying to ascertain facts is harder now than during the news void during Grenada.  In 1983 I trusted the U.S. Army to let me know my husband was okay.  When the news networks started getting news during Grenada – they reported the same things about the events.  Now, there are completely different realities being reported, depending what cable news channel you watch.

With so much disinformation swirling, I know I can’t trust the mainstream media, FOX News, the partisans on both sides and most especially I can’t trust President Trump to tell the truth.

My soul-searching has led me to wonder why I listened to FOX News and many of these “conservative” pundits for so long.  I cringe when I hear these Trump supporters on FOX News selling their “Deep State” conspiracies and character assassinations of honorable men, like Robert Mueller and General McMaster, men who have spent their lives dedicated to serving America.

Demagogues feed our fears and prejudices.  President Obama played to the fears of people who distrust conservatives and believe they are all closet racists.  Beck played to conservatives’ religious and patriotic beliefs, while drawing nefarious Obama conspiracy circles on a chalkboard.  I distrusted President Obama after his “clinging to their guns and religion” remark, so it was easy to feed my fears.  There were also lots of signs of corruption in the Obama administration, lots of mishandled classified information (way beyond just Hillary), lots of information requested by Congressional Oversight Committees that never was turned over.  I suspect there’s a lot of criminal leaking of classified information from former Obama officials going on now.

CNN and MSNBC have been spinning for the Left for decades and their anti-Trump slant is obvious.  I recognized the liberal spin long ago, but I did not recognize the extent of right-wing spin.  What frightens me is how many people watching FOX News completely believe the Trump spin.  They were conditioned since 2015 to alter their belief system and accept that “Trump being Trump” is good, because he’s fighting to “make America great again”.  They were sold that “Trump doesn’t play by the rules” is great too, because  Trump’s fighting to “make America great again”.   Whenever FOX News and Trump supporters have to acknowledge something negative about Trump, it’s always wrapped up in more whataboutism than even Russian propaganda.

Trump mocks the media as “Fake News”, while many in the mainstream media, along with pointing out all the Trump lies, keep churning out highly dubious or grossly misleading information, that Clinton and Obama operatives have leaked to them.

It’s becoming very hard to get to facts, as the pile on continues, because of the speed and amount of disinformation being dumped.  It’s exhausting even trying to keep up with the Trump and media information battles. My fear isn’t just about hostile foreign disinformation efforts, my fear is that this information war between Trump and the media has created a vast, domestic disinformation wasteland.  Discerning facts is harder as the mountain of disinformation (spin) grows and it’s harder to even find the facts buried in the pile of lies.

In Charlottesville, VA on Saturday, a young neo-nazi ran his car into a crowd of people. One young woman died and many others were injured.  Immediately, President Trump tried a whataboutism approach, with his “many sides” comment.  Alt-right and neo-nazis brag that President Trump supports them.  During his campaign,President Trump refused to denounce David Duke, by pretending he didn’t know who David Duke is and what Duke stands for.  His “many sides” comment was a repeat of his David Duke performance.

Whataboutism thrives on binary thinking, where people start believing in the lesser of two evils .  It’s like dealing with children and one child is caught doing something wrong, but he starts pointing out what all the other kids did wrong.  If you start buying into those excuses, you start losing focus about right and wrong.  Whataboutism destroys moral clarity by muddying the water with misdirection and misleading facts.

The 24/7 FOX News and Trump pundits have ramped up Trump damage control, another whataboutism disinformation campaign (the “many sides” evil alt-left and Leftist hate groups), will throw enough misdirection to prop up Trump.  And as a last resort, there will be Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich to remind the right, “at least Trump isn’t Hillary” or “but Gorsuch!”.

The truth is President Trump is a lying demagogue just like Hillary; he even borrowed Hillary’s spin – “it’s all a witch hunt” and the Trump version of the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”  is the omnipresent “Deep State”.

Update in light of President Trump’s press conference this afternoon, where he was using morally relativistic dodges to avoid condemning neo-nazis.   Hillary Clinton used the same lying and demagoguery techniques,  BUT he is the President of the United States and must be held accountable for what he says and does.  He is totally unfit to lead our great nation and a national disgrace.

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Filed under American Character, Corrupt Media Collusion, Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics, Public Corruption, The Media

August 12, 2017 · 9:00 am

No Good Options

“An army of asses led by a lion is vastly superior to an army of lions led by an ass“

– Fake quote attributed to George Washington

Somehow in this era where President Trump and the media each point fingers at each other, screaming, “Fake News!”, this misattributed quote, according to http://www.mountvernon.org,  speaks the truth.

The Mount Vernon website states:

The rough quote “an army of sheep led by a lion is vastly superior to an army of lions led by a wolf” is apocryphally attributed to Alexander the Great.  The Washington quote seems to have developed at some point among the faculty or Corps of Cadets at the United States Military Academy at some point.

http://www.mountvernon.org/digital-encyclopedia/article/spurious-quotations/

President Trump is an extremely toxic leader.  He will never be a great president and he will never be an effective leader.  That is what I believe.

He will continue to foment endless chaos.

However, he was duly elected and, unless and until, there is evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, to convince Congress to impeach him, he remains our president.  This should go without saying, but in the wake of more Trump-being-Trump threats against North Korea and now Venezuela too, some on the Left are back to their pre-inauguration hysteria, wanting the generals to stop Trump.

Once again, Trump killed his own good PR.  Last weekend was a big diplomatic win at the UN for President Trump and he has completely buried it with his incendiary threats.

There are serious foreign policy people out there still selling President Trump and urging Americans to get behind the president on North Korea, but President Trump’s North Korea policy is like all his other policies.  Whatever sound policies his administration comes up with are subject to be thrown out the window or completely undermined by President Trump and his reckless tweeting or boasting.  He makes any policy effort harder for his administration to pursue.

He is the problem, not his enemies, not fake news, not those who speak out against him.

John Bolton and others keep harping on the bad options President Trump is left with, because of the failures of the Bushes, Clinton and Obama.  Bolton keeps repeating that they all kicked the can down the road rather than dealing with North Korea.  Okay, but when you want to be a leader, LEAD!   Quit blaming other people and dig in.

President Trump is lazy about doing the job of president.  He loves the attention, but he does not concern himself with the substance or the dirty-work of studying policy.   Frankly, President Trump’s complete laziness and refusal to study policy or stay on message destroyed any hope of a unified approach to pressure North Korea.  He made it harder to deal with North Korea and he, once again, alienated people from supporting him, because of HIM.  He sounds crazier than Kim Jong Un – that is the truth.

This PR disaster  is just another repeat of Trump’s war crimes as serious policy , where his ISIS plan was to order the U.S. military to murder ISIS family members, to scare ISIS terrorists into submission.  He doubled down on that in a primary debate.  Just like with his building the wall, or deporting 11 million illegal immigrants, his ISIS plan existed only in sound bites.  There never was a comprehensive policy.

There have been a string of these Trump self-immolation PR disasters, where he sets his own policy on fire by his careless comments.  We can expect, that for as long as his presidency lasts, there will be endless chaos.

Big Trump supporters keep ranting about the dastardly Left and their efforts to undermine President Trump.  Some of their efforts are dastardly too.  However, here’s the truth – President Trump really is a loose cannon, who likes to shoot off his mouth and he is a one-man show, who makes any undertaking harder.  He undercuts his own staff and would be a terrible leader in any military endeavor (see his transgender policy change for an example – military leaders were not apprised before his statement and there was no policy in writing  from the White House- just Trump shooting off his mouth).

President Trump does not pay attention to or study policy details.  Military success requires paying close attention to details.

By his own actions this week, President Trump made, even our allies, uneasy and the truth is there are no one-off military actions in dealing with North Korea.  Even, the option of taking out their missile sites could provoke military responses and those would likely directly impact the security of the other players in the region.  They have a larger stake in the outcome, with North Korea being in their neighborhood.   We need ramped up diplomatic efforts, so there are no misunderstandings or confusion about our position and any actions we undertake.

Clarity of purpose is crucial.

In regards to North Korea, there were never any good options.  Taking out the regime or even taking out their missile sites are both acts of war.  There are other big powers right next-door to North Korea and they have complicated, competing motives and interests.  The North Korean path of isolation, leading to their current state, has been centuries in the making.

Watching President Trump snatch defeat from the jaws of diplomatic victory at the UN last weekend convinced me that no matter what action he takes in regards to North Korea, he will be the biggest threat to its success.

He is unfit to be commander-in-chief, but he is what we have.

Talk about no good options…

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Politics, Uncategorized

August 10, 2017 · 2:56 pm

Tough talk is not strategy

President Trump used more of his “tough talk” on Tuesday and this time instead of the target being TV pundits or fellow Republicans, North Korea was his target.  Rather than argue the merits of Trump’s rhetoric, here’s what I’ve been thinking about in regards to U.S. strategy to deal with North Korea.

One of the most extreme options gleefully tossed about by saber-rattlers, many of whom are blathering bimbos and know nothing about military strategy, history or much else, besides cheering on “Trump being Trump”, is advocating a preemptive strike on North Korea’s missile sites.

Let’s be clear, despite semantical tap dancing, a preemptive strike is an act of war.

Unemotionally evaluating options is how I approach strategic-thinking, so in coming up with options, we need to understand the terms and what they mean in terms of military force.  While some pundit experts advocate using the preemptive strike option to curtail North Korea’s nuclear capability and couch it in terms of being almost a risk-free effort that will prevent war in general, nuclear holocaust in specific, and be a version of “deterrence”, let me repeat:

A preemptive strike is an act of war.

It’s an option, but so often with U.S. military strategy dealing with cultures that are very different than American and western culture, our strategists end up completely taken by surprise when their well-intentioned, competently executed strategies end up mired in many unforeseen and complicated consequences. For a primer in this outcome just sit back and take apart the evolving U.S. “war on terror”, or however you want to describe our military actions since 9/11.

Our leaders still regale us with the #1, #2, even #3 top Islamist leaders killed, but as John McCreary and other strategic experts have pointed out – decapitation strategy does not defeat Islamist terrorist groups.  They quickly find a new leader, often rebrand under a new name and the trend is the new version is more violent and difficult to deal with than the previous.  You would think that all military strategists worth their salt would have put this in their “lessons learned” file, but nope, many still tout this as a selling point for their “kill them all” strategic offerings.

Just as with Islamist terrorists groups, with North Korea, the United States doesn’t have good strategic options.  The countries that can impact North Korean behavior, China and Russia, are adversarial to the United States and would prefer that our strategies fall flat.  Beyond the big picture geopolitics, there are plenty of other factors that impact how China and Russia view the North Korean situation.  Even something like China looking at a potential North Korean refugee crisis on their doorstep, if the North Korean regime collapses, influences how China deals with North Korea.

After listening to punditry experts from the Trump tough talkers to the Clinton apologists, to the Obama leading-from-behind crowd, since Tuesday, I was thinking of Waco of all things.  How the Clinton administration handled Waco still bothers me and not because I have any sympathy for David Koresh or dislike of the ATF, but because there were children caught in the middle of an armed confrontation.

The airwaves were filled with experts selling everything, from blow up the compound to using tanks, to playing loud music as psychological warfare, and nothing got Koresh to surrender.

I don’t remember the academic’s name, but I saw him on a TV news show talking about apocalyptic cults and movements in history and he described the psychology of apocalyptic leaders.  I told my mother in a phone conversation that all they’re doing is feeding his apocalyptic delusions and he will die rather than surrender.

So, after almost two decades of dealing with a larger apocalyptic movement, with leaders who revere those who die for the cause, why are many of our strategic thinkers perplexed by the regeneration of these groups, no matter how many times we kill their top leaders?

For Christians and Jews, this concept that persecution feeds the faith should be easy to recognize.  The early Christian church fortified its faithful with heroic tales of those individuals, who stood strong against overwhelming force.  With apocalyptic movements, dying for the cause feeds the cause and in the case of  Islamists, they have the Islamic religious teachings that ground their actions.  They have a much larger pool of potential followers than a lone kook like David Koresh.

I’m not a psychologist and I sure am not an expert on North Korea, but after listening to so much tough talk in the past couple days, I think that we need a careful study of the possible outcomes from any U.S. policy courses we could follow, from appeasement up to taking out the regime.  We need to study the various U.S. and other countries actions in regards to North Korea, in recent decades, and carefully study what the North Korean reactions were.  We need to consult experts on paranoid delusion, because North Korea is not only a totalitarian, Stalinist regime, it has so oppressed its people, that there are millions of North Koreans steeped in a life controlled by ruthless propaganda, fear and intimidation.  They are thoroughly indoctrinated.  These people aren’t going to rise up and embrace liberators.  Just like when the U.S defeated the Taliban or when Saddam was removed, the initial euphoria quickly evaporated and what we faced were people who distrusted us and who were used to being controlled.  Many found more affinity with Islamist resistance groups than with U.S. troops occupying their countries.

And the other thing I was thinking is that we need to talk with the people who will be most impacted by any actions we take in regards to North Korea – South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia.  This is not a time for reckless rhetoric; it’s a time for careful, serious strategic planning.  It’s also a time for robust diplomacy.

A miscalculation on how we think North Korea will react could be way more catastrophic than the Clinton administration miscalculation on how David Koresh would react.  We have tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the line of fire and Seoul is less than 200 miles from North Korea.  Things could escalate quickly and President Trump doesn’t concern himself with “details”.  Any missteps or hiccups in decision-making could cost a lot of lives, very quickly.

The thing that President Clinton did that infuriated me the most was before he made decisions, he put his finger to the wind, to test how it would reflect on his popularity in the polls.  This morning on Twitter I saw Todd Starnes had a poll:  “Should the United States launch a first strike against North Korea?”  It infuriated me, because the question of a first strike isn’t about looking “tough” – it’s WAR.  Assuredly, it is NOT a decision to be made based on opinion polls!

I was 19 years old, assigned to a Pershing missile unit in Germany in 1980.  I knew nothing about the Army, U.S nuclear strategy or war.  A very good 1st sergeant taught me the single most important lesson on all three.

He told me, “Kid, war is serious business!”

I realized that I knew nothing about war, so I started signing books out at the post library and reading.  I’ve spent a lot of time reading about military strategy since then. I realized long ago, there’s always more to learn and new perspectives to think about.

Perhaps, at the very least our president could take time out from golfing and watching “the shows” on TV to do some serious studying U.S. strategy, because he is the commander-in-chief.   President Trump is responsible for making these decisions, not the generals surrounding him.

The decisions he makes could cost thousands of American lives and the lives of hundreds of thousands children.

Time to quit with the petty posturing, buckle down, study policy, read some history and LEAD, Mr. President.

 

 

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August 7, 2017 · 12:46 pm

From trash to treasure, or something like that

First, I’m doing a crafting update, but there will be some politics below that.

Another junk journal made with junk from my sewing room and a cereal box.  The denim is from old jeans, which I have cut up into pieces over the years, intending to make “something” with those pieces.  The picture is the front of a blank note card, and the trim and buttons were odds and ends sewing stuff.

I had put a thin pink velvet ribbon on this journal, as you can see in the spine view.  I didn’t like it, but I had glued it onto the spine. I added the pink seam binding ribbon,  but I decided to cut off  the velvet ribbon this morning, as you can see in the front view photos.  That thin ribbon was annoying to deal with, but these junk journals become thick as you add stuff to them and a ribbon closure is useful.  This was made using part of a Special K value size cereal box for the cover, so the spine is 2 and 1/4 inches thick and I sewed three signatures into this journal, with 10 sheets of paper per signature (each sheet is a two-page spread, 4 pages, front and back).

I don’t think junk journals are practical for me to “journal” in, but they are fun to decorate and sort of addicting to make.   I like simple lined paper to write on.  I have no idea what I’m going to use this one for, but I had cut pages for the first junk journal from 12 inch X 12 inch scrapbook paper and I had the other half of all that paper sitting here.  I decided to make another junk journal to use that paper.  This scrapbook paper has been sitting in my sewing room for over a decade, from when I thought I really wanted to take up scrapbooking as a hobby… circa early 2000s.  I have some finished scrapbook pages, but exactly ZERO completed scrapbooks.  On the bright side, I do have a nice collection of scrapbook paper, tools and a lot of rubber stamps.

I also repaired my little prayer book.  It’s not a professional job, but I stitched the pages together using quilting thread, which is strong thread and a tapestry needle.  I used cardstock paper to glue the covers and signature together, then I used pink duct tape to cover the outside spine area.  I probably should have used cardstock on the outside, to make a spine, before taping, so that’s a lesson learned, if I ever have to repair another children’s book.

My wrist is acting up with carpal tunnel pain, so other stitching is on hold for now.

Now, to politics:

President Trump scored a big win at the UN today, with a U.S. drafted resolution, imposing tougher sanctions on North Korea.   The resolution was passed unanimously by the UN Security Council over the weekend.

Without fail, President Trump drowned out that message with his petty tweets.  He’s been going strong this morning with ad hominem attacks onTwitter.

For those who hoped General Kelly would be able to rein in Trump’s erratic tweeting, well, forget about it.

The rest of this post, is my last time repeating that President Trump is using the same information warfare strategy and tactics, which the Clintons introduced into American presidential politics, with their “war room”, in 1992, which culminated in their “scorched earth” campaign in 1998.  Trump’s “GOP Insurgency” is the same information warfare strategy and tactics.   After this post, I hope to write about topics other than Trump and his trashy Reality Show presidency.

My political predictions have been totally wrong about Donald J. Trump.  I did not think he could defeat the Clinton spin machine, with their lock on most of the mainstream media.  Trump is like a repeat of the Clinton years, with their endless scandals and outrageous spin cycles. Then there was the impeachment debacle in 1998.  I expected President Clinton to do the honorable thing and resign, to preserve the dignity of the Office of the President.  Instead, he, with his wife leading the scorched earth effort, waged a vicious smear campaign on, not only Ken Starr, the independent prosecutor, but also on the truth.

President Trump, like his former golfing buddy, Bill Clinton, will do or say anything to “win”.  As I’ve repeated often, he even borrowed the Clinton’s information warfare strategy and he lies more than the Clintons, which is quite a feat.  My prediction is that just like with Bill Clinton, this scandal is heading toward impeachment,  but I expect Trump will go one step further than Bill Clinton, by trying to incite his followers, to protest and “fight back”.   This has already started, with Trump reverting back to his rallies to stir up his followers and a couple days ago, loon, Mike Savage, was spewing that if Trump is taken down, that would be the start of a civil war.  Sean Hannity rails on nightly about the nefarious “Deep State”, fueling distrust of  US intelligence agencies and the FBI.  This is the same thuggish, violent propaganda, the Trump campaign and sycophants used to threaten violence at the GOP convention, if Trump was not the GOP candidate.  The Trump tough talkers love to use intimidation tactics even more than the Clinton sewer rats, like Carville and Begala.

Republicans were too weak-kneed to stand up to Trump and his loudmouth, big name supporters during the primary, so it’s questionable how many of them will stand up to him if this investigation leads to impeachment proceedings.

There’s a lot of media hyperventilation going on about Robert Mueller’s investigation taking a very serious turn, with grand juries in place to hear evidence.  Andrew McCarthy has a good explanation of where this might be headed:

Is Mueller’s Grand Jury Impeachment Step One?

The Trump loyalists, who used to be staunch, moralistic conservatives, confuse me a great deal when it comes to Mueller’s investigation.   I don’t understand why so many of them are willing to sacrifice all their integrity to prop up President Trump, who is a shameless liar.  Just like with the Clintons, I supported investigating them, because there were so many smoke signals, spelling out corruption.  Trump’s smoke signals are flashing neon lights.  After his son stated that he walked into that meeting with the Russian lawyer in 2016, expecting to receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government, it should be obvious that Trump & team were willing to do anything to win.  His son’s admission, on national TV, clearly shows they were open to Russian collusion and expected to receive damaging intel from the Russian government.

Every American should want to know if their president has been in bed with Russian organized crime or has had financial dealings with them.   If he’s compromised due to shady business dealings; we should know that.   If he’s a crook; we should know that.  It’s blatantly obvious he is a shameless, chronic liar.  His whining about a “witch hunt” is as pathetic as Hillary’s years of playing the victim of a “vast, right-wing conspiracy”.

Justice would be having the public corruption of the Obama administration, the Clintons and President Trump completely exposed, so that America could purge itself of them, once and for all.  It might be cathartic for America to have American leaders get back to protecting and defending The Constitution and our civic values again.

It’s going to be a long messy process, whether Trump’s presidency survives this investigation or not.  It’s a safe bet, America’s never ending scorched earth information war will blaze on.  We probably all need to take up other hobbies to get breaks from the political high drama.

I’ll be making more “junk journals”, which are a good deal classier than listening to Trump’s trash talk.

 

 

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Filed under General Interest, Politics, Public Corruption, Uncategorized

July 31, 2017 · 10:36 am

More on the Awan scandal

Roger Kimball, penned a bit of tongue-in-cheek advice for the New York Times, while laying out more details about the Awan clan and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in his piece:

The Pakistani Hackers Working for the DNC

Kimball includes a bit of information about the Awan scandal that I had not read elsewhere:

“What took her so long? Well might you ask. McCarthy cuts to the chase: “This is not about bank fraud. The Awan family swindles are plentiful, but they are just window-dressing. This appears to be a real conspiracy, aimed at undermining American national security.”

Wait a minute while I get my plot thickener. In 2016, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee wrote to the House appropriations subcommittee asking that their staffers obtain “Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information” clearances, spook-speak for the whole shebang. Guess who was working for many of the letter writers? Yep, Awan and his crew. Guess who the ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee was? Donald Duck? Close. Actually, it was Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Coincidence or “political high jinks”? Take your time.”

The hyperlinked bit, “wrote to the House appropriations subcommittee”,  about the Dems on the House Intel Committee, shows the actual letter they wrote.  Note that Congressman Eric Swalwell, who is an almost more annoying TV gadfly than Adam Schiff, droning on about “Trump/Russia collusion”, signed this letter.

So, if this is true, did Imran Awan have SCI clearance???  Perhaps, the mainstream media could pause for a moment ranting about “Trump/Russian collusion” and investigate this story.

Yeah, yeah, I know, when pigs fly

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Politics, The Media

July 30, 2017 · 12:15 pm

Flashback to January 2017

Since the election of President Donald Trump the Democrats have been howling about “Russian collusion” and the unprecedented Russian efforts to interfere in our 2016 presidential election.  The mainstream media fixated on the Trump/Russia collusion storyline too, while news stories about Democrat corruption get buried regularly.

So along with the Awan brothers story being ignored by most of the major mainstream (liberal) news organizations, here’s another January 2016 story that received very little coverage in the mainstream media:

Comey: DNC denied FBI’s requests for access to hacked servers

One thing former FBI director, James Comey, is meticulous about is trying to present himself as non-partisan.  So whenever he dumped dirt on Trump or Hillary, he made sure to dump some dirt on the other side.  When Comey, Clapper, and Brennan were trying to hype the Russian collusion story in January, Comey also mentioned the DNC’s hacked computers, which the DNC refused to turn over to the FBI for analysis.  The DNC reported that they hired Crowd Strike to investigate the hack of the DNC servers.

It makes one wonder how Clapper, Comey and Brennan could be so sure who hacked the DNC computer system, in light of the recent revelations about the Awan brothers access to the DNC computer system, courtesy of Debbie Wasserman -Schultz, combined with the Comey revelation in January, that the FBI never had direct access to the DNC servers.

This January news report from The Hill refers to “servers”, which is plural and it harkens back to the Hillary home-brew server, which was really the Bill Clinton personal server for his Clinton Foundation emails.  With Hillary’s “server”, according to the FBI, there were two servers, the first one Bill Clinton’s aide set-up and the second one, Huma Abedin arranged for Clinton campaign IT guy, Bryan Pagliano, to set-up.  Later, Hillary (or her aides) worked out an arrangement with an outside IT company, Platte River Networks, to provide server services for Hillary’s private emails. And according to FBI notes, it was Cheryl Mills (working with Clinton lawyer, David Kendall), who directed Platte River employees to destroy Hillary’s emails on their server system.

The DNC handling of their hacked servers, begs the question – how many servers did they have and where were they housed?  With Hillary’s server, there were a variety of answers as to how many servers and what happened to them.  There was also the glossing over the facts, like Hillary also used a  private email account before switching to using Bill Clinton’s private server in their Chappaqua home.  Hillary, according to the FBI notes, used 13 mobile devices, NONE of which were ever turned over to the FBI and she used 5 ipads, of which 3 were turned over to the FBI.  In the case of Hillary’s “server”, there were at least 2 servers used in the Clinton home and then the Platte River Networks system(s)… in addition to the numerous other devices Hillary used and that’s not counting the numerous aides and Obama officials who emailed Hillary via unsecure private email accounts, including even President Obama.  The FBI Notes of Huma Abedin’s interview revealed that Abedin was shown an email using a pseudonym, from a gmail account, and informed that email was from President Obama.

With so many unsecured servers, private email accounts, personal devices in play, it would seem to me, that you would need to analyze all of them to be able to state with certainty if they were hacked, who hacked them and how many times they were hacked.  Hillary’s email server scandal included multiple servers and devices, so how many DNC servers were there, where were they located and who all had access to them?

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Hillary's Email Scandal, Politics

July 29, 2017 · 5:48 am

Awan story is stranger than fiction

Here’s a must read on the Awan brothers case, by Andrew McCarthy:

Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Pakistani IT Scammers

And just like Huma Abedin with her family’s Muslim Brotherhood connections and Elizabeth O’Bagy and her odd foreign connections, the Awans were able to get security clearances.  Very curious!

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Filed under General Interest, Politics

July 28, 2017 · 5:35 am

Governing from one Tweet to the next

The President Trump Reality Show debuted a new character this week.  Anthony Scaramucci, a loud, flashy, fast-talking, vulgar financier, who seems almost a mini-me caricature of President Trump, stole the show, replacing the hapless, whiney Sean Spicer as White House communications director. Scaramucci’s expletive-filled conversation with a reporter, Ryan Lizza, at The New Yorker has a rather long title:  Anthony Scaramucci Called Me to Unload About White House Leakers, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon.  

Scaramucci appears to be even more of a loose cannon than President Trump, if that is possible.

I doubt Scaramucci will remain in the White House very long, not because he’s even more clueless about our constitutional system of government than his boss, but because Scaramucci’s flamboyant personality so completely dominated the White House stage this week, that he cast President Trump into the background.  Donald J. Trump will never tolerate, for very long, being upstaged by an underling.

In other news, chaos reigned supreme with President Trump announcing a major policy change in the U.S. Armed Forces, to ban transgender people to serve in the U.S. military.  President Trump announced this policy change in a tweet, without any formal policy change in writing or any consultation with the Secretary of Defense or JCS about the roll-out of this policy change.  The generals were caught off-guard.

Whether you agree or disagree with the ban on transgendered people serving in the military, the larger issue is President Trump’s use of Twitter, as his unfiltered means to talk directly to the American people, created unnecessary chaos in the U.S. military.  Trump’s tweet left the Pentagon leadership totally defenseless, not only defending this policy change, but even in explaining it to the troops.   Trump’s rash tweet, with no consultation with his staff and no policy in writing yet, assures that this, just like all his other policy initiatives, will end up mired in controversy.  No one at the Pentagon could explain the new policy, because President Trump didn’t bother to have a policy in writing before announcing it.  He governs by whims issued via his personal Twitter account.   He makes no distinction using his personal Twitter account for official government business.

“Loose cannon” doesn’t even begin to describe the gravity of having a reckless, commander-in-chief, who uses his personal Twitter to announce military policy changes, without even talking to the military leadership.

There is no staff shake-up that will establish order in this White House.

Just more lurching toward banana republic status on the world stage as Trump governs from one tweet to the next.

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Filed under General Interest, Military, Twitter Tales

July 26, 2017 · 6:22 am

The Trump presidency epithet

“Shake the White House snow globe all you like. The scene doesn’t change much, and when things settle down, there Trump remains, being Trump. It won’t change, because he can’t change. Character is destiny, now and forever.”

– Jonah Goldberg

The opinion piece to the above quote is a short read at National Review titled, “There’s No Shakeup That Can Fix the Trump White House”. I recommend it, because it states the cold, hard truth about the Trump presidency.

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Filed under General Interest, Politics, Quotes To Ponder