Category Archives: Information War

October 1, 2023 · 8:39 pm

America desperately needs some calm, principled leadership

Well, it’s October 1st and last night Congress passed a stopgap funding bill to keep the government funded for 45 days. I didn’t invest any emotional energy into this political drama, just like I haven’t invested any emotional energy into the crazy conspiracy theories that have spread on right-wing social media online about a FEMA nationwide cell phone alert test planned for Oct. 4th. I’m also ignoring the constant litany of “The Collapse” is imminent” hysteria.

This is going to be a venting politics blog post.

It’s gotten to the point where if I click on a prepper/homesteading YouTube channel and the content creator is worked up about financial catastrophes and/or antigovernment hysteria, their news source is more often than not – Zero Hedge (or some other YouTube content creator who relies on Zero Hedge), which I’ve mentioned many times. I can’t speak to the motivation for the Zero Hedge fearmongering and why their themes consistently fuel distrust of the US government and spawn wild conspiracy theories, and hysteria.

My views about Zero Hedge predate the Trump years.

Back in 2016, Drudge Report was still a big news aggregator among right-wing America. The Drudge Report became a thing among the American right back during the Clinton impeachment drama. In 2016 I noticed some big changes in the news Drudge highlighted – like mainstreaming Alex Jones, a total nutcase. In late 2016, Drudge dropped the link for RedState a conservative political blog, and added Zero Hedge. I noted this change in a blog post back in 2016 and on Twitter, that’s why I remember it.

If your trusted source always sends you into panic mode and down endless conspiratorial rabbit holes, perhaps that’s something to seriously ponder.

Things have gotten very crazy among the American right-wing echo chamber since the Obama years. This current Oct 4th hysteria reminded me of the 2015 Jade Helm hysteria .

Beyond Zero Hedge, there are several liberal reporters, who for many years I felt, that if they weren’t on the Kremlin payroll, they should be considering how consistently they aided Russia’s anti-American propaganda efforts, especially trashing the US military, and now these reporters are darlings of right-wing media. One, Glenn Greenwald, was constantly selling the traitor, Eric Snowden, as a hero and this guy is now a right-wing media darling… Truly, a whole lot of conservative and right-wing America has gone off the rails.

I also can’t fathom the right-wing embrace of Elon Musk as some sort of savior of free speech in America. Musk is all in on the green energy transformation – heck, he manufactures EVs, for crying out loud. He also personally visits Russian leaders and Chinese leaders, to advance his own business. And as far as his commitment to right-wing causes, well, that’s dubious. He didn’t become the richest man in the world by being stupid and X is a platform he intends to transform into an online site where people can do everything – digital banking, socialize, entertainment, shop. Here’s a July article, For Elon Musk, X equals everything.

Left-wing America went off the rails long, long ago, which leaves me wondering what on earth is going on. When right-wingers are selling Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. a far-left environmentalist loon as a sound choice for conservatives, something is totally nuts. I had a close family member, a sensible person, send me a RFK Jr. article a while back and this brought to mind how a whole lot of the right has become just as reactionary and hysterical as the left. Many jumped on the Trump bandwagon in 2015-2016, willfully ignoring his liberal views, his liberal morals in his personal life (sleazy), his close associations with prominent Dems and liberals and even two of his his kids couldn’t vote for him in 2016 GOP primary, because they were still registered Democrats – but, millions of angry right-wingers willfully turned a blind-eye to all those facts. Just like they ignore that all the bad people in Trump’s administration, whom he blames for any and all problems, were chosen by him. This same willful blindness extended to the GOP filling up with assorted weirdos and frauds, all Trump-endorsed.

Yes, of course our nation’s finances are a train wreck and of course, we should always be wary of government overreach, but none of this constant online fearmongering and endless right-wing conspiratorial hamster wheel actually helps anyone become better prepared for emergencies or hard times and frankly, it can propel people to make reckless and ill-advised decisions. It fuels more divides constantly.

The hard truth for most Americans is they are just as bad at handling their own personal finances as the government is at handling our nation’s financial house (over $1 trillion credit card reported in US – Aug 2023). I faced that personal reality check when I was accumulating more credit card debt than I felt comfortable with and then I decided to make big changes in my money habits. It was hard and sticking with it is still a challenge at times, when I want to overspend. If people, who have been financially irresponsible all of a sudden decide to run around “preparing for the end of the world” and even attempt to buy a fraction of the “prepper” stuff hyped online as “vital,” well, they would be way more likely to be wiped out by a personal financial tsunami than an actual one.

First step toward being better prepared is to get out of debt and put some money aside for an emergency fund, then start working on building up basic preparedness supplies, as you can afford them. I’m not going to advise where to put that emergency fund or in what type of assets you choose, but I’m still using a bank, although I prefer to have some cash on hand too. I’m not into the precious metal stuff, but if that floats your boat – have at it. If you can’t learn the self-discipline to commit to long-term responsible choices and saying no to having everything you want now, well, chances are you’ll have a very hard time in a serious emergency.

The reality check is you have developed a huge sense of entitlement, when you are living way beyond your means. How well, do you think people who have never practiced any self-discipline and self-restraint would do at carefully managing their food, water or other supplies in a serious crisis?

Packing up your family and moving into the wilderness is not advisable if you have no experience or know-how about how to navigate that lifestyle. The same goes for moving from an urban lifestyle to rural. People are certainly adaptable and can learn to thrive in all sorts of situations, climates, and locations. but people who overreact and get worked up easily usually encounter more difficulties – and make bad decisions. Plus, if you rush around in a panic or keep changing course with your own preparedness plans based on online hysteria, well, you’re reacting – not being proactive or planning ahead. Small, steady steps at building up basic emergency food and supplies can add up quickly in improving your readiness and developing a preparedness mindset.

I do believe in emergency preparedness and working to learn new skills, but beyond all that we should all learn to develop some resilience and a positive mindset. If all you do is worry about the end of the world or some other catastrophe people online are yammering about, you can end up in a self-limiting box. Even with all the societal and political chaos, we still live in very good times in America. We are a land rich in resources and potential. Despite the inflation and supply issues, we also still have access to so many goods and opportunities, that our ancestors who toiled and struggled could not have imagined.

Again, I wrote off the left in America, as overtaken by far-left extremists and especially the Democratic Party as irredeemably corrupt decades ago, but I’m feeling that a large portion of the right and the GOP is now also a total basket case of extremism, corruption and truly batshit craziness too.

The degree of right-wing crazy in recent years disturbs me a great deal, because I’m wondering if there are calm, principled leaders anywhere to be found in America… and if the worked up mobs on either side would even listen to them.

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Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Information War, Politics

September 18, 2023 · 1:27 pm

What have we learned since the pandemic?

I’m still working my way through President Reagan’s favorite dystopian novel, The Journal of David Q. Little, with a little over a hundred pages left to go. The protagonist, David Q. Little, in this story doesn’t have much in the way of character that I admire or respect and frankly, I find him to be a weak, self-absorbed truly “little” person. He too easily sacrifices his conscience by consistently choosing the path of least resistance, even as he realizes true tyranny is advancing and that America is falling apart before his eyes. He consistently talks himself around to conforming to the madness and the new Communist-enforced rules.

There’s still a hundred or so pages left for David Q. Little to redeem himself, but I’m less than optimistic, considering the choices he’s made thus far. One of the things that rings true in this novel to what I’ve read about various tyrannical regimes is the people who stand up loudly in the beginning become the primary targets and are usually eliminated quickly. Perhaps, standing on the rooftop screaming and bragging about how you will never surrender isn’t the best strategy for a long-term resistance effort and more discretion and caution would be needed to survive and work against tyrants in a situation than direct confrontation against overwhelming numbers, who have all the power.

It’s easy to talk big when life is going along normally or to believe you would be brave and heroic in a crisis. Once things are falling apart and you’ve got loved ones to try to keep safe and you’re trying to keep some semblance of normality and keep things together, I’d imagine it would become harder and harder to do anything that attracts more attention and that could endanger your loved ones. So, I do have a tiny bit of sympathy for David Q. Little.

The above video offers an explanation for why most people are so obedient. For myself, I’m an odd mix, because by nature I’m a contrarian and often hold views that go against the popular opinion of the day. I’m used to being the one person, who doesn’t agree in a crowd and mostly, I am used to being the odd person out and I don’t care really. At the same time, if there’s some “rule” – government or even a private business posts a sign with their rules of conduct, I generally strive to be polite and a good citizen. The pandemic forced me to reevaluate where I stand on being such a “following the rules” kind of person “to be polite.” And I’m still mulling that over.

We were manipulated by the use of emotional blackmail, with experts warning us that we would be jeopardizing the lives of our “at risk” loved ones (grandma and grandpa) if we didn’t comply. Who on earth wants to be labeled a selfish “killer” of the elderly? That deliberate use of emotional blackmail by our public health officials and political class has left a bitter taste in my mouth, especially considering these same people made rules blocking loved ones from seeing their elderly loved ones in nursing homes and being at the side of loved ones who died in hospitals and nursing homes. Then to top that off all sorts of crazy funeral rules were enacted around the country to interfere in families being allowed to grieve as they wanted. My late husband passed away in March 2021 – and the funeral home had a 50 person limit still in place and the veterans cemetery did not allow a graveside service at all. We could visit his grave late in the afternoon after the burial. I still think about how pointless so many of these pandemic rules were.

The new CDC director, Mandy Cohen, who was the giggling mean girl health director, in a video above, where she explained how they made decisions during lockdowns, now wants to turn the page:

The CDC wants your trust back: It’ll ‘take time to rebuild.’

I will never trust her or the CDC again.

With all their rules, it’s going to be all kinds of smaller people down the ladder, who will keep making rules, based off of bad information they believe that came from on high or that trickles down through their workplace. We’re going to be dealing with the damage from the pandemic social mitigation craziness for a long time. It’s easy for people to get fired up and rant that they’re not ever wearing masks again and I understand that feeling, but I ran into a situation back in July, when visiting an elderly friend, who had been placed in a nursing home. The nursing home required visitors to wear masks. I wore a mask, because I wanted to visit my elderly friend. She died shortly after that and I’m glad I went to visit her. If doctors I need to see start requiring a mask again, I’m going to wear a mask, because I don’t want to just stop my medical care. And that’s the dilemma a lot of people face when it comes to conforming and not conforming – sometimes we’re stuck in these daily life dilemmas. It’s very much a “pick your battles carefully” situation for most people, I think.

Back in the spring I mentioned trying to grow my own moringa tree. Moringa has all sorts of health benefits and I wanted to see if I could grow one. I had ordered moringa seeds and it should be able to survive in my zone 8b area. Well, it took planting seeds two times to get one moringa tree started. My little moringa tree isn’t much, but so far it’s growing. I’ve grown several herbs, and I’m working to learn more about herbal remedies, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to just stop my prescription medications. I also discuss herbal remedies I take with my primary care physician. Getting some elderberry bushes is on my list too.

While it’s important to move on past the pandemic craziness, I also think it’s important not to forget what happened in America and how easily we just surrendered our rights under the guise of a “national emergency.” We were deliberately lied to and manipulated by our public health experts and political leaders. Here’s a video on where we’re at – no apologies and no real contrition or admission that their rules trampled on people’s fundamental rights:

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Filed under COVID-19, General Interest, Information War, Politics

September 6, 2023 · 11:00 pm

The forgotten Dem two-tier justice system fail

I quote-tweeted Mollie Hemingway and I want to be clear that while I disagree with her about Ukraine and some Trump-related issues, I’ve read her articles and watched her political commentary on TV for years and respect her work. She’s always so composed and well-spoken on TV and I admire good public speakers (probably because I would rather undergo surgery without anesthesia over attempting public speaking). I also agree with her on many other issues.

I’ve written about what happened to me in 1998 on my blog many times before – short story is I posted messages on the Excite politics message boards and things happened that I can’t prove, but I do believe were efforts to scare me and silence me. That’s why I continue to fight to challenge the spin information war.

As the years have gone by, I’ve devoted a lot of time to trying to understand the Dem/liberal media spin information war and then, during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Trump campaign embraced the corrupt Dem spin information war model too. Millions of people on the right love that Trump “owns the libs” and punches back with as vicious and corrupt attacks as the Dems/liberal media wage. Funny thing about how so many people on the right, who proudly talk about their Christian faith, is they have embraced a vicious “eye for an eye” morality, but there you have it. They even dismiss Trump’s lying and vicious commentary as just trivial “mean tweets.”

Back during the 2018 Kavanaugh confirmation hearings I was very active on Twitter – “trolling” I guess is what people call it, but I’m going to explain why I “troll” on Twitter. I often feel like a lone voice in the wilderness, trying to speak out against this corrupt spin information war that is being waged to tear America apart. It’s worth being labelled a “troll” to speak out on Twitter/X, which was a main spin war battlefield, if I can get even one person, who does have real influence, to see my message or if I disrupt any of the spin info war attacks. Granted on Twitter and now X, anyone can mute or block someone they find annoying, so of course, I realize the odds aren’t in my favor of ever having anyone pay attention to what I’m saying. Plus, when you post too many messages, it can drown your own message, I’ve found out – so I try to rein in my gung-ho attitude and limit my posts on X. I also am the queen of redundancy and am terrible at trying to come up with clever, short quips, which makes for popular tweets or posts. I end up with threads, unfortunately, and realized long ago that my effort doesn’t stand much chance of succeeding, but I felt it was worth trying.

The Dem effort to derail the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings centered on the balance of liberal vs. conservative justices on the United States Supreme Court. There were mobs of protestors on Capitol Hill and headlines like, More than 300 protesters arrested as Kavanaugh demonstrations pack Capitol Hill and Protesters pound the doors of the Supreme Court following Kavanaugh confirmation. Amongst all that drama of insane Dem/liberal media orchestrated smear attacks against Kavanaugh to derail his confirmation, there was also the hysterical #MeToo movement working to incite women & urging them to publicly air all their accusations about personal incidents of sexual harassment and sexual assault. It was easy to miss that what Democrats and the activists behind the #MeToo movement were trying to do, besides stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation, was an effort to mainstream the belief that in sexual assault cases the accused should be held to a different legal standard, by insisting victims must be believed and the accused should be presumed guilty. I bet hardly anyone even noticed this Dem effort. This would have flipped one of our foundational principles of innocent until proven guilty on its head. Here’s a short explanation of the presumption of innocence from LawInfo:

“Technically speaking, it’s not. The Constitution does not mention this right by name. Instead, the general principle comes from English common law. It has since been backed up firmly in numerous court rulings, such as Coffin v. United States in 1895.”

“While the phrase “presumption of innocence” is not in the Constitution, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments both touch on “due process.” Due process generally means that the government cannot deprive you of your freedom or property unless they go through the right processes. It is understood that your right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty is a fundamental element of due process. In that sense, it is a constitutional right, even if it is not directly addressed.”

It wasn’t just crazy liberal activists pushing this idea, it was people like Democrat Senators Schumer, Hirono and even Klobuchar (I quote tweeted them challenging that idea – they would say “trolled,” I’m sure).

Of all places to find someone challenging this idea, besides my Twitter spin disruption effort, here’s an article from October 5, 2018 on the World Socialist Web Site, The #MeToo campaign versus the presumption of innocence. Here’s the opening to that article:

“In the US, the Democratic Party and its celebrity and media allies, through the vehicle of its #MeToo campaign, are waging a battle against the presumption of innocence. By seeking to whip up hysterical moods surrounding allegations of sexual misconduct, they are trying to popularize the idea that those accused of sexual assault should be presumed guilty. This campaign is, in its essence, reactionary and should be opposed.”

We live in a crazy world these days, where it’s a world socialist website that’s supporting one of our foundational principles and prominent Democrats trying to abandon it, but there you have it. The important point I wanted to make is that amidst all the drama and loud distractions it’s easy to focus on the loud noises and miss the signals that do matter. Eroding that foundational principle of presumption of innocence would have eroded our justice system in America and created a true two-tiered system.

I’m now going to rehash a bit about how I approach the information overload we all face these days and also explain how I think the Dem/liberal media spin information war works.

I’ve gotten caught up in a lot of the partisan spin noise at times too and I’m working hard to try to focus on things that I think really matter, like American national security, freedom, law and order, and civics rather than getting drawn into the identity politics of the left (all the grievance groups & environmental extremists) or on the right (Trump drama).

There’s a homesteading guy I watch on YouTube, a very nice guy, and he talks about how he gets so much information from another YouTube channel where the guy fills his videos with “data points” and connects them all, which invariably leads to this guy often buying into the craziest right-wing conspiracy theories that fly by. The thing about using that methodology of just putting down every bit of data and then trying to construct some grand theory connecting all the dots, is that probably most of those “data points” aren’t relevant, aren’t verified information, and really aren’t connected in any meaningful way.

It’s time-consuming to verify information and it’s time-consuming to sift through a lot of information, but working to narrow your searches and trying to filter out all that noise (data points everywhere) and then trying to focus on finding real signals helps me analyze information. I’ve never been trained to analyze information, so I could be wrong, but I realized years ago with that Glenn Beck chalkboard schtick, he was just working to incite right-wing rage against the Obama administration and often all those “data points” he put up were just people on the Left he knew would get his audience foaming at the mouth. Beck pushed all my conservative buttons about far-left Obama’s policies and I wanted to believe some of his connect-the-dots schtick, even though rationally I knew what he was doing was a schtick. Just like all his “reverence for the founding fathers” stuff and finding your inner George Washington. I’ve had my “inner George Washington,” since probably the American Bicentennial in 1976 and have read a lot of books about George Washington.

The liberal media does this with their Trump coverage too – years now of creating non-stop “data points” and concocting one conspiracy theory after another. Obama, Biden and Trump likely have been engaged in corrupt activities, just like the Clintons, but this methodology of tracking every Trump “data point” (real and imagined wrong-doing, because sometimes the liberal media attacks on Trump have been bonkers) just seems to be a gimmick to me and not a constructive methodology to analyze information.

During the Kavanaugh hearings, many top Democrats were spinning aggressively trying to con the American people to embrace a change to one of our foundational principles, through a media spin war effort and fomenting mass hysteria about #MeToo. In the blink of an eye America could have surrendered a foundational principle via a media-driven mob effort.

If they had succeeded, I feel certain, their next effort would have been running aggressive “polling spin,” hyping polls that show most Americans agree with that position, because sexual assault is so terrible and women aren’t taken seriously when they report it. For some examples of this polling spin effort, look at how much gay marriage was spun up and then as polling indicated a shift to where they had some polls where over half supported it, the media hyped those polls, and also used these “the majority in polls” to corral anyone who publicly stated they were against it.

Media talking heads often conflate polls as being some important expression of the “will of the people,” when truly they’re really the opinions of a very small number of Americans. It’s a media and political spin tool to con the American people. Polls are used to hype “majority” viewpoints (manufactured through aggressive, media-driven information cascade efforts), but they’re also used by media and politicians to marginalize people, by framing opposing views as “your view is out of the mainstream.” (based on some stupid poll presented as a reliable gauge).

The trans movement spin effort has worked the same way and along with the polling is endless messaging campaigns to condition us to use new words and phrases – like “gender-affirming care.” On the right there’s an “aggressive polling spin” effort being waged currently by the the Trump campaign to convince Republicans that the primary is over and Trump won – despite not a single vote in the GOP primary having been cast yet.

I actually laid out this Dem/liberal media spin information war operational model back in 1998 on the Excite message boards, but don’t have those posts. Here’s what I wrote in 2016 on my blog: The Pieces of the Media Messaging Puzzle:

“It is a form of mass media brainwashing and antithetical to American free speech principles!  To succeed this strategy requires MEDIA COLLUSION.

It can NOT work without that media collusion.

Here are the components:

  • Talking points and buzz word messaging, which are relentlessly repeated by both political operatives and the media.
  • Mass media domination of the messaging, to control the 24/7 NEWS cycle, which requires mass media collusion.
  • Relentless repetition of polling data by both the political operatives and media, to facilitate the manufacture of opinion cascades (winning in all the polls)”

The repetitive polling spin manufactures opinion cascades. It’s not really reflective of anything other than that people are very susceptible to conformity bias – most people will adjust their beliefs to fit in with the crowd. When Democrats, the liberal media, Hollywood are all spouting the same thing (trying to dominate and control political messaging in America), it’s very easy to drive their culture war to transform America.

Since 2018, we’ve gone through efforts to silence conservatives and others via social media banning various types of speech labelled “disinformation” or “misinformation” and also all sorts of limiting the reach of online posts on social media. On YouTube, I’ve seen numerous content-creators talk about how some of their videos were demonetized or even pulled for using the wrong words. And some have been banned for speaking out on forbidden topics – like COVID.

In April of this year, the Biden administration set up a Disinformation Governance Board working with the Department of Homeland Security to try to control free speech in America. That board was paused after three weeks. Here’s Wikipedia’s entry:

“The Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) was an advisory board of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced on April 27, 2022. The board’s stated function is to protect national security by disseminating guidance to DHS agencies on combating misinformation, malinformation, and disinformation that threatens the security of the homeland. Specific problem areas mentioned by the DHS include false information propagated by human smugglers encouraging migrants to surge to the Mexico–United States border, as well as Russian-state disinformation on election interference and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[1][2][3]”

“On May 18, the board and its working groups were “paused” pending review, and board head Nina Jankowicz resigned, as a result of public backlash.[3][4][5][6] On August 24, 2022, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas disbanded the board.[7]”

I believe this spin information war is a serious threat to America, which is why I bother with X/Twitter, despite finding most of the blue check mark crowd smug and wrapped up in their own self-importance. I have walked away at times, because I kept wondering if it’s even worth the effort to try to defeat the spin information war. Sadly, I often wonder if most people in America have core principles or any concern about protecting our constitutional republic and our fundamental freedoms.

The social media generation talk about “influencing” in terms of how many followers they have, making money and the political ones seem invested in currying favor with the media and political elites. I don’t want to be friends with any of the media elites or political class. I have no interest in monetizing my blog or trying to attract followers on X and monetizing. I cared when I saw no one challenging this corrupt spin information war in 1998 and I still care today.

Each side likes to blame the other side for the chaos in our politics and for the widening divides, but truly almost all of us who pay attention to politics in some way have played a part, because even if we aren’t actively a part of the media or the political class, if we buy into all the divisiveness or fall into rabid partisanship, we’re part of the problem, not the solution.

This aggressive media-driven spin information war has been a driving force in turning America into rabid, ungovernable factions, since the 1990s And that is a path to America’s collapse, as dangerous as the looming financial catastrophe or some of the other big threats.

Taking time to really think about where you stand on issues, being skeptical about partisan talking heads and narratives is a good first step toward centering your own mind. Another thing that helped me form my views was reading the Constitution and trying to understand the foundational principles and I am rusty on some things, but reading The Federalists Papers and referring back to that, has helped me understand foundational principles better. I’m not an expert though. Often as I read more, I realize that some of my views or understanding of issues was wrong or that I had a shallow understanding. Being open to admitting you were wrong is hard for most people, I think, but it’s important. It’s hard for me, because I have very strong opinions.

If you made it through this long post, I want to say, thank-you. I should have broken this down into several posts and probably edited out at least half of it, I know. And here’s a heads up, there will be post-publishing editing, because the WordPress autosaving went on and I’ll have to copy and paste this into a new window and try to get it published.

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Filed under General Interest, Information War, Politics

September 3, 2023 · 6:37 pm

Is America being hit by the “salami” technique?

Finally, getting to my sort of book report post on The Journal of David Q. Little, by R. Daniel McMichael, which was published in 1967. I’m sure I’ll reference this novel in future posts and to be honest, I’m only halfway through (it’s 557 pages), because I keep jotting notes on post-it flags and sticking them in the book and also writing down notes on paper. I can see how this novel influenced President Ronald Reagan, because it’s a story set in the late 20th century, after a US president signs onto a World Order of Nations (W.O.N.) agreement with the Soviet Union and other nations of the world to avert nuclear war (nuclear blackmail by the Soviet Union).

This W.O.N. agreement sets up a new international organization with vastly more power than the United Nations and it supersedes the US Constitution, even though the people of the United States are led to believe that this is all about world peace and trying to get along with other countries. There’s also a Treaty of Friendship the US signed onto. In reality with the stroke of a pen, an American president signed away American sovereignty to the Soviet Union and the remaking of America and dismantling of American beliefs in freedom and individualism blaze across the nation, as this novel begins.

The nuclear blackmail incident centered on the Soviet Union secretly building a massive nuclear arsenal – “she had a nuclear superiority of about 20,000 megatons capable of rapid delivery, compared with the U.S.A.’s rapid delivery nuclear capability then of only 2000 megatons – down from a previous high some years earlier of about 53,000 megatons.” This suggested to me some previous unilateral downsizing of the US nuclear arsenal, which over the years I’ve heard many liberals advocate.

The story is written as a journal of some average guy, David Q. Little, that is found in the year 2223. Historians keep gathering bits of old Americana from the time the world devolved into tyranny under this W.O.N. one-world system, akin to how historians in our day search for clues to unravel the fall of Rome.

The author wrote this fictional novel with footnotes to fill in background of Little’s journal, which is a very interesting way of plotting a fictional novel. I love reading footnotes and appendices in non-fiction books, so this is my cup of tea. The explanation of the nuclear blackmail comes with Little’s mention of DD-Day in his journal, with this footnote, “Newspapers used this expression in referring to the December 20 “destruction deadline” set by the USSR; the day on which she, presumably, would have exploded nuclear devices over 24 United States cities.”

Obviously, you can see how Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative was likely influenced some by this novel.

A couple days ago I mentioned Stella Morabito’s piece from 2016 about this novel and then I followed with an X-thread of mine, so I want to be clear what I meant. Stephen Miller had commented on the above X-post about President Biden making that bizarre speech on September 1, 2022. Here’s a FOX News headline, Biden shocks viewers with ‘hellish red background’ for polarizing speech. He has continually fumed about Americans, who hold right-wing political beliefs, as being “MAGA Extremists,” and that term “MAGA extremist” could be applied to anyone who doesn’t agree with the left’s progressive views and agenda.

In this dystopian novel, David Q. Little comes to realize that anyone who dares question anything about the new rules being implemented can quickly be labelled an “extremist” and end up being tried in televised, staged public hearings, where the crowd has been coached on rallying a mob atmosphere to denounce the extremists, who are smeared as “Mr. X.” The hearings begin with a prayer about “the fulfillment of mankind’s oldest aspiration – peace” and then a new Pledge of Allegiance. The witnesses testifying in these public hearings are co-workers, friends and even family members. Then, if warranted the guilty are turned over to a world court system for trial.

Many of the communist indoctrination methods described in this novel remind me of how the progressive Left in America plays these same type of forcing new words and phrases on the American public and then tries to engage in public-shaming exercises to force people to comply. The intimidation of threatening people’s jobs for failing to comply seems eerily similar too. If Dems could get hate speech laws severely limiting speech passed in America, I feel certain they would avidly criminalize speech they want silenced. In Little’s journal anyone holding to the old ways, like American patriotism, rambling about the Constitution, questioning the new rules, possessing a firearm (guns were confiscated), and the list goes on and on, becomes a target of being labelled an “extremist.” Everything is rationed, travel is restricted, passes are needed for everything and worst of all the people are being forced to spy on each other and report their neighbors, friends, and even family for being extremists or breaking any of these new rules. So much of this sounds like the Great Reset green dreams and COVID social mitigation excesses.

Amazingly, most people in this novel adopt a go along to get along attitude and keep deluding themselves that they aren’t living under communism and rationalizing that making some adjustments to work for world peace is worth it, considering the alternative of nuclear annihilation. The main character, David Q. Little, a rather conformist type guy, begins to wake up to what’s really going on and begins his private journal as the only place he can express his thoughts and feelings openly. His wife is all-in on the “peace” plans. He is a man consumed by guilt, as he got sucked into testifying against other people and pressured to lead a march.

The footnote on the legislation prohibiting possession of firearms explains that law was enacted some years before the Treaty of Friendship “in order to assure greater public safety.” It also states the treaty sought to re-enforce this law.

President Biden and Dems repeating this “MAGA Extremists” public tarring has struck me as so egregious for any American president to try to engage in creating a mob mentality against a segment of society, especially “extremists,” who are so vaguely defined, that the smear can be adjusted at will – just disagree with the left’s agenda and you might be a MAGA extremist, just like anything imaginable now gets labelled as “racist.” I felt disturbed by this MAGA extremist smearing before I even heard of this novel.

I have several books on Ronald Reagan and in another book, I had read he often mentioned a book he read when he was 11, The Printer of Udell’s, as helping shape his moral sense, but I had never heard of this dystopian novel about the US surrendering to USSR nuclear blackmail, under the guise of signing onto a new international order dedicated to peaceful coexistence.

It’s become very trendy among the American right to rant about Marxists and communism these days, but I suspect most of the people doing that labelling have no understanding of the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution and the decades long Cold War era.

I’ve written about the left-wing Marxist-tinged movements, like BLM, the trans movement and the collectivist one-world governance effort being pushed by an assortment of unelected elites at the WEF, UN, international banking, and ultra-wealthy business leaders, in cooperation with many world leaders under the auspices of the UN’s 2030 Agenda and various green energy transformation initiatives and DEI programs.

America’s most determined adversaries assuredly target both political sides in America with efforts to sow divisions, fuel distrust and latch onto any means possible to manipulate Americans via the media. Minority factions have always been key targets by Marxists to exploit divides and ignite anti-American sentiments. Since Dems and the liberal media invested so much effort with the Clinton Trump-Russian collusion dirty trick effort and labelling just about anything “Russian disinformation,” at this point that term is pretty much meaningless, but that doesn’t mean the Russians, Chinese and other foreign actors aren’t busily fueling divides in America via information war and other penetration efforts. For instance see the Confucius Institutes. The Wahhabi movement has been a global movement too and put effort into spreading Wahhabism to American black universities and prisons. There are other international groups dedicated to spreading Marxist ideology too. And there are also melded ideologies of Islamic extremism and Marxism, like The Nation of Islam. The founders of BLM stated they were inspired by Marxist ideology.

I don’t believe Trump is a Russian agent but, I do believe he reveres strong men and authoritarian leaders, in addition to having no respect for following the rules. In fact, one of Trump’s big selling points in 2016 was about how Trump doesn’t follow the rules. He did encourage rally attendees to punch protestors that showed up in 2015-2016. A 78 year-old man got caught up in that “fight back” atmosphere that Trump escalated, when protestors disrupted the rally and the elderly man sucker-punched a protestor. That elderly man ended up getting arrested and charged – while Trump pretended none of that incitement effort was his fault (the same as what he did on J-6). Trump leaves other people facing their legal bills, and until just recently had offered no financial assistance to J-6 attendees facing charges for their legal costs.

Trump followers go to great pains to cherry-pick Trump’s public cover-his-butt line about urging protestors to go to the Capitol and remain peaceful, but I watched that rally and all of the speakers were using incendiary language to rile up that crowd and urging them to “Stop the Steal.” And while I do believe there was serious law enforcement failure that day and the FBI might have had informants in the crowd, Trump set up that rally to pressure Mike Pence to do something he had no constitutional authority to do.

So, we have this mob formation going on not just on the left with all their hate speech dramas and othering people, but on both sides of the partisan aisle in America now.

Back in the Cold War days there was a term, “useful idiot,” used to describe a person who unwittingly aided Soviet propaganda efforts. I don’t believe Trump is a Russian agent, but he’s one of the most useful idiots for Putin. Trump basked in Putin’s praise, Trump also trashed NATO constantly and talked about wanting to pull the US out of NATO. The US pulling out of NATO would be a huge victory for Putin and President Xi of China. That move would be surrendering America’s position as a world leader, without our adversaries having to exert any military or economic effort. Trump also refers to President Xi, another dictator, as a friend and he loved yucking it up with Kim Jong Un, the leader of one of the most repressive regimes in the world and for very little in return – North Korea didn’t stop any of their weapons procurement or alter their long-range objectives.

What America’s adversaries got was the sight of America’s military leaders having fits over the stupidity of frittering away the prestige of a presidential meeting with no real strategic gains. Trump’s followers believe he’s the greatest dealmaker in the world, but if you don’t even understand the foreign policy stakes for America- in detail – and believe a photo-op with you is winning, then how on earth can you negotiate a deal that’s to America’s advantage? Communist regimes are the most devious and deceptive regimes to work on deals with, because they play endless word games and have turned strategic ambiguity into an art form.

On the left we have a Democratic Party consumed by radical one-world collectivist dreams that reek of stale Marxist ideology. That ideology has literally captured academia in America and many American K-12 public schools and they’re working on turning our American military into a far-left institution too.

Our American political and public institutions really are being hit by both sides and I had hoped the communist threat was over in 1989.

In the author’s notes to this dystopian novel, McMichael, explains how the Soviets were trying to find a way to take down Czechoslovakia, the last remaining democracy, which fell in 1948. The Soviets were trying to sell their international image as working toward world peace and were trying to persuade the Americans to give up their nuclear weapons, so tanks rolling into Prague would have demolished that image. McMichael writes, “A way was found quite in keeping with the enigmas of the Marxist-Leninist world of dialectics. For the Czech problem: just turn everything upside down. Keep the military on the sidelines, stationed in other Bloc satellites but close enough to pose a frightening threat. Then, activate a concerted effort to break the will of the non-communist Czechs against a peaceful solution, this through the arts of propaganda, subversion and intimidation – components of which included: use of popular fronts, protest committees, disinformation, discrediting and decapitating non-communist leadership – all designed to generate loss of national confidence to resist the “inevitability of history and the will of the people.”

McMichael, went on, “The means employed was the continuing use of the strategy of “pressure from above, pressure from below” projects and the application of the “salami” technique to isolate leadership and institutions (such as bankers and banks) from lay public support. Targets involved leadership penetration of parliament, civil service, police, judiciary, as well as the electorate.”

This blitz started in 1946 McMichael states and Czechoslovakia fell in 1948.

I’ve been pondering the chaos going on in America for the past 20 years and in recent years it’s escalated dramatically, which has left me concerned that now both sides of America are dangerously polarized and unstable. This culture war, largely fueled by a relentless 24/7 spin information war, has played an outsized role in the culture war, I’ve believed since the late 1990s. I write about my thoughts about the spin information war on my blog and I’ve tweeted about it, but I stopped mentioning my ideas to my family members who are interested in foreign policy, because they just dismiss me as if I’m saying something ridiculous. Unless someone in the news says it – they don’t believe it. I have a high school education and when I first started trying to understand this spin information war, no one was talking about these repetitive messaging attacks that the liberal media and Dems launch (now in the right they produce clever videos, like that video of 3.4% fatality that kicked off COVID hysteria)- all the talk was about right-wingers complaining about “media bias.” I don’t care if anyone agrees with me, because I pay for my blog here and as long as I can get blog posts published, which is difficult with that autosaving problem, I mentioned, I’m going to keep writing. I usually end up having to do more background reading to even understand a lot of the issues and terminology I run into, as I wade through books and information online.

I’m going to continue to be a lone voice in the wilderness and I’ll keep reading through stacks of books and online searching trying to dig for information and hopefully find some answers. I highly recommend this dystopian novel, because while it’s very easy to invoke Orwell’s 1984, which I reread last year, I think this novel offers much more relevant food for thought about the culture war in America and the political chaos.

If you’re reading my blog, I sincerely thank you for your time.

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August 31, 2023 · 12:06 pm

Tucker flipped the narrative

For a long time, I have not been a Tucker Carlson fan, even though just about everyone I know, who is right-leaning loves him and believes he’s some sort of noble truth-teller. I have felt he’s mostly a fraud, especially with his embrace of Victor Orban and praising Putin, all by selling this false framing that Orban and Putin are really good Christian leaders fighting evil Western secularism. I started listening to the Tucker Carlson interview of Victor Orban and in the first minute he flipped the narrative.

My impressions of Carlson being disingenuous and a polished liar aren’t going to be popular with hardly any right-wing partisans, who believe he’s some sort of heroic figure trying to take on the lying liberal media. I think he’s as much a fraud as the liberal media liars.

Long ago, there was a big news story in the US, where a young mother claimed her two young sons were kidnapped by a black man, during a carjacking. My mother was talking to me about this case in a phone call and she was so upset about that case. We had both seen the first interview the mother gave to the media and I believed she was lying. I told my mother, I think she’s lying and my mother got very upset with me and asked how I could be that cruel about a mother whose children were kidnapped. Afterwards, when the facts emerged my mother told me that I have always been a good judge of character and I don’t think that’s particularly true. I just watch and listen closely to what people say. Tucker has all sorts of deceptive mannerisms, especially the feigned sincerity and how he carefully sets the stage to get certain responses and lead his guests toward the narrative he wants to sell.

At the 00.32 point in the very beginning of Carlson’s interview of Orban, Carlson lays the trap for gullible Americans and unfortunately too many conservatives in America have swallowed this lie whole. Carlson says, “If you take a step back, the point of NATO is to provoke war with Russia.” This is a total lie. The point of NATO was to prevent the Soviet Union from gobbling up more of Europe at the end of WWII, after the Soviet Union had seized control of the eastern European countries. So, Carlson set-up the rest of this interview with that false premise and too many Americans will buy into that and everything else he sells.

Carlson has flipped the narrative and while I can’t speak to his motives – I can say this is completely untrue and it’s intended to convince Americans to turn on NATO and their own government’s support of Ukraine, a country, which the US agreed to aid with security – to prevent against Russian aggression (just like Russia launching this full-scale invasion last year). This deliberate false-framing is also a tactic that was used for decades by the Soviet Union in their propaganda efforts in the West. Once someone sets up this type of false-framing – beware, because they’re trying to turn you against your own country. It’s very interesting how Carlson also uses this Orban and Putin are really good Christians leaders premise too, when the history of Putin is one of suppression and oppression of any sort of personal liberty in Russia, vast corruption, and a willingness to use extreme measures to destroy any political opponents.

Hungary does have a strong Catholic heritage, but only 12% of them attend church regularly. Spending 45 years under Soviet domination, where religious suppression and atheism was the state policy definitely left a strong mark on Russia and the former Eastern bloc countries. Religious education and activities were restricted in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries.

Victor Orban is very careful not to criticize Putin, because he’s spent the past decade forging close ties with Putin and Hungary relies on Russia:

“Landlocked Hungary gets 80-85% of its gas from Russia, and Szijjarto said that last year about 80% of crude imports also arrived from Russia.

While countries in western Europe have made serious efforts to wean themselves off Russian gas, Hungary has been receiving 4.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year from Russia under a 15-year deal signed in 2021.”

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungary-agrees-option-more-russian-gas-shipments-oil-transit-fees-2023-04-11/

In this interview, both Carlson and Orban keep doing this WWIII fearmongering constantly and that’s an old Soviet propaganda tactic too, to get Western countries to lose their resolve and to convince people that the communist goal is all about seeking “World Peace”. Unfortunately, most Americans have forgotten all of these Cold War lessons. The Soviet Union set up a front organization at the end of WWII called the World Peace Council, to spread anti-West propaganda:

“The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization with the stated goals of advocating for universal disarmament, sovereignty and independence and peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass destruction and all forms of discrimination. Founded from an initiative of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, WPC emerged from the bureau’s worldview that divided humanity into Soviet-led “peace-loving” progressive forces and US-led “warmongering” capitalist countries. Throughout the Cold War, WPC operated as a front organization as it was controlled and largely funded by the Soviet Union, and refrained from criticizing or even defended the Soviet Union’s involvement in numerous conflicts.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Peace_Council

In that quote on the World Peace Council, there’s the framing Carlson has been selling – Russia is peace-loving and it’s NATO and US warmongers, who are the threat to “world peace” – despite the fact Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign country, SIX months after our humiliating Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. In Afghanistan, China immediately moved in to fill the gap and forge close economic and security ties with the Taliban. Here’s a February 6, 2023 Fox news report: China moves in on Afghanistan as relationship with Taliban grows: ‘We welcome Chinese investment’.

Carlson has probably been the single most effective person in American media to cultivate this “oh it’s so dangerous to help Ukraine.” The truth is Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year and yet Carlson consistently portrays Putin as the victim of NATO aggression and the bad Ukrainian government. He often has a retired Army colonel on to spew anti-Ukraine/pro-Russian takes on the situation too.

In this interview Carlson works to get you to doubt NATO and believe it’s provoking war with Russia, despite, again let me repeat the fact that Russia planned and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine – six months after an American retreat in Afghanistan, that both Russia and China are capitalizing on. The other interesting narrative flip going on in anti-Ukraine media messaging lately is an effort to try to peel off American support of Ukraine and get Americans fuming about aid to Ukraine. There’s also an effort to sell this idea that Russia isn’t the threat, China is, and we should be focused on China, not Russia. Then there’s a framing I’ve heard in the past week about how we’re somehow pushing Russia and China closer together by aiding Ukraine. The truth is Russia and China have had close ties since post WWII and Soviet Russia was instrumental in Mao’s communist revolution in China. They were close allies during the Korean War, they were close allies during the Vietnam War too.

All over the world China and Russia are on the move trying to become the world powerbrokers economically and just last week there was this headline from ABC: BRICS announce major expansion with 6 countries joining in 2024. BRICS is an economic group of countries to counter the US-led economies. China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa were the founding countries in BRICS. If the US retreats from aiding Ukraine, that would embolden both Russia and China and weaken America’s position as a world leader. We would be handing Ukraine over to the Russians and abandoning our NATO allies.

Once you allow yourself to buy into Carlson’s false premise, you’re going to keep talking yourself into more and more anti-American, pro-Russia positions and for me, no matter how much I disagree and dislike the policies of the Biden administration – sorry, I’m not going down the road of making excuses for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and then wringing my hands in fear that what the WEST is doing is so dangerous, when it’s what Russia did (A FULL-SCALE INVASION OF A SOVEREIGN COUNTRY) that has brought us to where we are.

President Reagan would be turning over in his grave if he saw what today’s GOP has turned into.

Note: The Trump “peace idea” that Orban supports is America and NATO surrendering to Russian aggression and that isn’t a road to “world peace;” it’s a greenlight to all of America’s adversaries that we no longer have the will to defend our friends or allies. Trump also expressed disdain for NATO and suggested the US pulling out of NATO, which would be a big win for Russia and China.

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August 18, 2023 · 8:53 am

Can DeSantis find his footing?

Next up is a blog post on FL governor and 2024 GOP presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis, who I consider former President Trump’s main competitor out of the GOP field of candidates. This post will be a challenge for me to try to be a bit objective, because I really like DeSantis and hope he ends up being the GOP presidential nominee.

DeSantis is from a working class background.  He’s 44 years old, attended Yale University, graduated from Harvard Law School, then joined the US Navy as a JAG officer.  He served in Iraq.  He was elected as a FL Congressman and served 5 years in the US House of Representatives. Then he was elected as the governor of FL and also reelected as governor of FL.  Married and has three young children.  That’s the short bio.

While in Congress DeSantis was one of founding members of the Freedom Caucus, a group of very conservative Republicans, who formed their group to promote a very conservative agenda.  He’s considered one of the most conservative Republicans and he was a strong supporter of President Trump.

While I knew who DeSantis was when he was in Congress and as governor of FL, when he really started making national news was during 2020, during the pandemic.  He began to defy the edicts coming for President Trump’s Warp Speed guru, Dr. Fauci.  President Trump criticized DeSantis for defying Dr. Fauci and doing away with the lockdowns in FL. He also pushed for protecting people’s jobs if they decided against getting the COVID vaccine.  He quickly become public enemy #1 of the Democrats and liberal media for challenging the pandemic social mitigation rules.  He also has been in the midst of the battle against Critical Race Theory being taught in FL schools, pushing back against a lot of the trans movement  and woke craziness.

I was sort of ambivalent about him though, because sometimes it seemed to me he was too much like Trump with the “owning the libs” press events and pushing back against liberal news media.  Although, I agreed with most of his policy initiatives, the Republicans spending too much time in front of cameras, talking big and delivering little, has become all too common.

Trump’s sideshow politics, that Trump the reality star, “You’re fired!” image, is what many of his fans love the most and DeSantis seemed to be a Trump, Jr., with “owning the libs” with his clashes with the media as governor and I discount most of the political theater as just politicians suckering us.  It was during and in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in the fall of 2022, that I really changed my opinion of DeSantis.  I live in GA, so I usually watch hurricane and storm coverage news from the Southeast a good bit.  Day after day he held press briefings and was all over the state.  What struck me was he knew all the details of what was going on all over the state, what relief efforts were in the works, and he was surrounded by state and local officials, both Democrats and Republicans, with whom he seemed to have a very good working relationship.  It was his attention to detail and being a hands on leader that caught my attention and changed my mind.  He was a calm, competent, totally-engaged leader in a crisis. 

When he entered the 2024 presidential race, he decided to go with announcing his campaign online on X (Twitter), rather than a conventional speech. It was filled with technical glitches and since only a small percentage of the country is even on X, I thought that was a bad idea.  Then the Trump team smear attacks and the Dem smear attacks broke with a a fury and that’s a 24/7 thing on X and in the media.  Trump’s team has stuck to vicious personal attacks, even attacking Casey DeSantis’ looks.  There have been memes of her making her look like Eddie Munster or all sorts of stupid memes of DeSantis mocking his looks. Here’s July 2023 Newsweek story on the attacks on Casey DeSantis: Is the Viral Casey DeSantis’ Eyebrows Photo Real?  One day the Trump/Dem smear crowds were attacking DeSantis and his wife for campaigning in Iowa and being terrible parents and accusing them of abandoning their three young children.  They have their kids with them campaigning and when the kids are with them at events, they get attacked too. 

There hasn’t been a single substantive attack on DeSantis on policy from the Trump campaign that has merit or is truthful, it’s all about being disloyal to Trump, vicious memes, and lies.  I was outraged at so much of the liberal news media pile-on attacks, especially against Melania – she didn’t deserve any of that , so the attacks on Casey DeSantis really disgusted me and that they have been coming from the Trump campaign has been really disappointing – but not surprising.

There have been many attacks about DeSantis being on the spectrum, or autistic.  DeSantis does appear a bit socially awkward at times and nerdy, but he’s sure done a lot of things in his 44 years – Yale, Harvard, Navy officer, Congressman, governor  and he was a star athlete in college playing baseball, so despite being a bit nerdy, that sure hasn’t held him back. Rather than trying to  be like Trump or stage-managed so much, he’d be better off just being himself.

There was an orchestrated liberal media attack on Melania’s Rose Garden renovation that made me realize that the liberal news media is so corrupt that they will run any Dem smear effort, without a moment’s hesitation, no matter how dishonest.  I challenged the Rose Garden spin attacks against Melania on Twitter, because all the information on the Rose Garden renovation plans had been reported by Melania and the WH prior to her unveiling of the completed project. CNN and other news orgs, ran those stories, yet, they were trashing how the renovation turned out and spreading crazy lies about the project. 

A “renowned historian,” who sits on MSNBC and constantly blabs about Trump being “an authoritarian,” was blabbing that Melania’s Rose Garden design was “authoritarian,” even though she put together a team of experts, who researched the Rose Garden history and came up with the plans.  All of the flower choices were the subject of media pile-on attacks, here’s a Reuters fact check on one:  Fact check: Melania Trump’s Rose Garden redesign did not remove rose bushes from all first ladies since 1913.  I have been following this Dem spin info war for decades now and it really is a Dem/liberal media effort to control public opinion.  One of the craziest spin attacks during the Rose Garden media meltdown was a charge that Melania removed all the colorful flowers and only used white roses, so it was a racist design.  I actually used quotes from liberal news media – their own reporting on the Rose Garden renovation project from before this crazy spin attack to challenge these tweets.  The white roses were JFK tea roses…

While this political meme stuff sounds silly – it’s meant to destroy people’s reputations and marginalize them.  Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, provides the left’s playbook and he advocated ridicule as man’s most potent weapon and he also was all about “pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.  It’s easy to dismiss crazy spin attacks as just trivial online stuff, but besides how destructive they are to civil discourse, they fuel partisan, class, and often racial divides 24/7.  And they aren’t just online – the spin attacks get amplfied quickly online, then the other news media & other media venues take them and amplify them across all other media – so they permeate the culture.  You wonder why America is so divided, well, this spin information war has been blowing across all American media now since the 1990s -dedicated to amplifying these divides – especially racial divides since the Obama years. 

Even after Melania left the WH there was another effort to repeat all those Dem/liberal Rose Garden attacks again and that’s what’s important to remember – the Left will never stop repeating their spin lies – they will keep relaunching them, no matter how many times they have been debunked.  Here’s a report from April 2021 in The Guardian: Restorationists urge Jill Biden to erase Melania Trump’s Rose Garden makeover.  That’s why I keep warning about this spin information war – they will keep repeating their spin lies, over and over,  until their lies drown out the truth.

DeSantis has not had an impressive campaign in the roll-out and opening weeks.  He’s reshuffled his campaign, which was badly needed, and seems to be finding more effective ways to get his message across. His overly aggressive online team was overshadowing him and his message and they have toned it down a bit.  They were trying to be just as in-your-face as the sleazy Trump smear team and it wasn’t working. Hardcore Trump supporters don’t have any standard they hold Trump to, but they get outraged if Trump is attacked. 

Can DeSantis win the GOP nomination, sure it’s possible, because that Trump and Dem non-stop hyping polling drama is really just part of their effort to promote Trump in the primary.  Dems want Trump as the GOP nominee, because they believe he’s easier to beat than DeSantis.  They’ve used this strategy before – in the 2016 GOP primary liberal media gave billions of dollars worth of  free media to Trump, to disrupt the GOP primary and in the belief Trump was the GOP candidate who was easiest to beat.  Trump barely defeated Hillary.  In 2022, Dems were pouring money & effort into promoting the worst, far-right, kooky GOP candidates in primaries again.  Here’s a November 2022 USA Today report: Democrats spent millions boosting ultra right candidates in midterms. The strategy worked.   For any who doubt that some Dem operatives are working with the Trump campaign to attack DeSantis, there was a Politico report yesterday: The Hard-Tweeting Defense Lawyer GOP Candidates Have Learned to Fear.  Here’s a tidbit:

““I’m probably the top anti-DeSantis person on Twitter. So if [rivals] have something anti-DeSantis that they want to get into the mainstream, they’ll send it to me,” Filipkowski said, without disclosing the name of anyone on the Trump campaign he’s worked with. The Trump campaign declined to comment.

Loomer said they speak occasionally. “He knows I’m a Trump loyalist, and I know he doesn’t like Trump, and despite our differences, we have found common ground on making sure Ron DeSantis is never elected president of the United States, ever.””

The Dems, liberal media and Trump team are all making DeSantis their #1 target, but his campaign has made a lot of unforced errors too.  Here’s a post from X about DeSantis being the Trump team’s main target:

Regarding this comment about Trump attacking DeSantis 3 days before the 2022 FL Gubernatorial election here’s a Nov. 2020 report from The Hill: Trump attacks DeSantis amid positive press: ‘An average Republican governor’.

Despite my dislike of Trump’s character, I can still see he’s been the target of the most relentless Dem/liberal media smear effort I’ve seen thus far and I thought the Kavanaugh smear campaign was as low as they could get. Clearly we haven’t reached the bottom yet. Unfortunately, Trump is willing to play by the Alinsky rules too and not only against the liberal media and Democrats – he’s out to destroy Ron DeSantis.

Despite all the media and Trump team hype that the 2024 GOP primary is over and Trump won, not a single vote has been cast yet. Trump definitely is the clear leader and most likely GOP candidate. Then again in the 2016 GOP primary, Jeb Bush was the most likely GOP candidate.

I still hope Ron DeSantis is the 2024 GOP candidate.

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Filed under 2024 Election, General Interest, Information War, Politics, Uncategorized

August 4, 2023 · 12:56 pm

Where has President Obama been?

Yesterday, there was some buzz on politics Twitter about an interview, The Obama Factor, of a historian, David Garrow, who wrote a biography, Rising Star, about former President Obama in 2017. I don’t recall a lot of talk about this biography in 2017, but then again our political media was in complete #Resist mode and 24/7 meltdowns about how President Trump was going to destroy the world.

I realize that most people don’t have time to read a lot and this interview is a long piece. It covers Obama’s life, his writings, and a lot of other topics beyond the part that caught my attention the most – the weaponization of the federal government. Here’s the paragraph that stuck out:

“But while the attention of Republicans in Washington turned to questioning the FBI, more careful observers could not fail to notice that the FBI had hardly acted alone. After all, Russiagate had not originated with the Bureau, but with the Clinton campaign, which having failed to get even sympathetic mainstream media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post to bite on its fantastical allegations, was reduced to handing off the story to campaign press apparatchiks like Slate’s Franklin Foer and Mother Jones’ David Corn. The fact that the story only got bigger after Clinton lost the election was due to Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, who in November and December of 2016 helped elevate Russiagate from a failed Clinton campaign ploy to a priority of the American national security apparatus, using a hand-picked team of CIA analysts under his direct control to validate his thesis. If Brennan was the instrument, the person who signed the executive order that turned Brennan’s thesis into a time bomb under Trump’s desk was Barack Obama.”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama

Brennan has become a permanent “Trump/Russian Collusion” mouthpiece on CNN and MSNBC since Trump took office in 2017 and yet this interview points out that Obama has pretty much disappeared from being in political news a lot, other than the stories of the Obamas fancy mansions and hobnobbing with the ultra-rich elites. Obama’s people are everywhere though – in the media and in the White House, but Obama wasn’t out there ranting about Trump or politics. This interview mentions that, unlike other former presidents, the Obamas live mostly in their home in Washington DC, yet the press never talks about what they’re doing in Washington or who visits them.

This other paragraph was illuminating too:

“That Obama might enjoy serving as a third-term president in all but name, running the government from his iPhone, was a thought expressed in public by Obama himself, both before and after he left office. “I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony,” he told Steven Colbert in 2015, “I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating.””

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama

Well, the Biden White House is filled with Obama’s people and it’s been obvious since that Locked In The Basement 2020 campaign that Joe Biden isn’t running things. Obama had initially tried to generate political momentum for his friend and ally, Deval Patrick, former Massachusetts governor in the 2020 Democratic primary, but that effort failed. Biden won the Democratic nomination and there seemed to be a bit of a power struggle within the Biden circle.

I didn’t know the Obamas still live in Washington DC, because the media only mentions their other mansions and their vacations. However, I’ve suspected Obama was running the Biden White House and this interview bolsters that opinion.

In recent months, Hunter Biden has moved into the White House and is by his father’s side constantly. I’ve wondered if the top Dems (Obama and his peeps) are working to orchestrate a “dignified exit” for Biden to drop out of the 2024 race and if Hunter’s there to squash a palace coup. Who is really running the Office of the President right now, Hunter or Obama? At this point it’s hard to tell. What is clear is Michelle Obama and Gavin Newsom keep getting liberal media buzz as alternatives, not Kamala Harris, if Joe Biden drops out of the race.

Before ending this blog post, I wanted to touch on my own waffling about the focus of my blog. I started this blog in 2012 blabbing about politics, foreign affairs, military matters and assorted culture war topics, but as the polarization and “politicization of everything” in America escalated, I’ve thought about skipping the politics and writing about less controversial topics and about other things I think are important – like emergency preparedness. However, I really do enjoy reading through articles and books and reports hunting down information and I’ve been writing about how America’s political and culture war are being fought out via a corrupt, media-driven spin information war, long before most politicos even talked about the weaponization of news. In an information war – digging for reliable or accurate information is vital, because the spin efforts create walls of lies and deliberate misdirections.

Words really are the weapons in spin war. Back in 2016, I wrote a blog post, The “War about Words” (Part 1), and here’s a bit from that:

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

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

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

There’s still a great deal of truth in DeTocqueville’s observation that Americans tend to rally behind the loudest “public opinion” and the architects of our American spin information war use many tools driving public opinion to con the American people. They eagerly use repetitive messaging bombardments in the media, where the liberal media jump on repeating the same inflammatory and/or deceptive words to incite mob type behavior and fuel the latest cancel culture trends. At this point the Trump circle effectively borrowed the same Dem/liberal media spin tactics too and they’re using the polling spin game against DeSantis – hyping “winning in all the polls” to con Republicans into believing that polls reflect the will of the GOP voters. In reality polls are only a momentary snapshot of the opinions of only a very few people. When the media hypes the majority in polls they’re trying to convince people that if you aren’t in the majority your views are “out of the mainstream” of the group being polled. Many people don’t want to be called fringe and they will move to be part of the mainstream. This media/political effort to drive public opinion by hyping polls creates opinion cascades to push public opinion in a certain direction. It’s fascinating to realize that DeTocqueville in 1831 recognized this culture trait in America.

The traditional terms “disinformation and misinformation” are pretty meaningless at this point, because Democrats and their vast liberal media sphere have called just about everything “Russian disinformation” to attack Trump or during the pandemic calling information that differed with their experts’ views as “COVID misinformation” and working to silence them, so I’m going with “deliberate misdirections” (LIES). I’m hoping providing links to information I come across might help others be aware of this information and be encouraged to do their own research.

I continue to work on my own preparedness, but I feel there are loads of better preparedness sites and videos online than what I can write or create. In my own life I get frustrated when people I care about don’t seem to take my preparedness advice seriously and ignore my warnings about how if they wait until there is a serious crisis to prepare for an emergency, it’s too late.

Along with natural disasters, the constant growing threat in America continues to be the polarization and politicization of everything,” fueled by our media and social media. Most of the spin war hits us daily through controversies that seem like trivial, stupid stuff – like the Jason Aldean song or arguing about pronouns. However, all of these culture war media/social media controversies are part of the larger political war, being waged constantly via the 24/7 spin information war. While it’s understandable to try to ignore these ridiculous controversies and the partisan dramas, as American citizens we all should at least be aware of the partisan divides and about how media and social media play a major role in the political and culture war swirling constantly.

In the words of the Aaron Tippin country song, “You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.”

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June 25, 2023 · 12:04 pm

Blah, blah, blah…

Do you ever hear some political or media person say something relating to history and then wonder if they really have any knowledge about the historical event or person they’re talking about? Well, recently I heard former President Trump make some garbled reference to a communist Chinese leader had to use a lot of force against his own people for the good of his country. He didn’t name the Chinese leader or give specifics though.

While I know any mention of Trump will have his supporters rushing to defend him and his detractors getting on their anti-MAGA soapbox, what I started thinking about was how little I really know about China’s history, especially post-WWII, which was what, I assume, Trump was referring to, based on previous comments Trump has made over the years, even, praising the Tiananmen Square massacre. Here’s a Trump response to a question in a 1990 Playboy interview:

“You mean firm hand as in China?
When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world—”

Trump has made comments similar to this, praising strongman leaders using excessive force, many times, long before he entered national politics. I mention Trump’s recent comment, because it prodded me to assess what I really know about China’s history.

Over the years I’ve read literally dozens of books on Russian history, Soviet history and Cold War history, but somehow beyond being fascinated by the ancient Chinese military strategy treatise, The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, my knowledge of Chinese history was sadly lacking.

So, I started on a three-book series on China’s post-WWII history by Frank Dikötter. I already had his book, Mao’s Great Famine 1958-1962 (hadn’t read it though), so I purchased, The Tragedy of Liberation (1945-1957), and The Cultural Revolution (1962-1976). I’m only about a third of the way into The Tragedy of Liberation, and I’m very surprised at how many new things I’ve learned. It’s a time investment to actually sit and read books, but rather than rushing to write blog posts or throw my two cents into the instantaneous social media fever swamp of hot takes, I’m slowing down about jumping to conclusions, which seems to be opposite from the way most popular social media influencers operate.

I’d rather offer something that’s accurate, researched and where I put in some time to verify information and think about situations. I did plenty of hot take reactionary blog posts over the years and too often I relied on right-wing media or cherry-picked legacy media articles that bolstered my conclusions. Unfortunately, I think my slowing down on leaping to conclusions doesn’t fit well with the way social media and our political news operate. By the time I’m done researching and thinking about a situation, that situation will be relegated to old news and likely be long forgotten, but at least I will have learned many new things rather than investing emotional energy into social media drama.

And that brings me to the latest hot news, which wasn’t about China, but instead was back to Russia. I was following Twitter with the Wagner Group sort of coup attempt (not sure exactly what happened there) and the first thing was I saw all sorts of people, blue check accounts and anonymous ones, on Twitter posting videos ostensibly from Russia. I had no idea when or where those videos were taken, what I was actually seeing as far as military action and I had no way to verify any of it. This is exactly what happened in the Ukraine War very quickly, where both sides have been engaged in a very aggressive propaganda war.

I don’t know what’s really happening in Ukraine and I stopped reacting to the hot takes war reporting very quickly after Russia launched a full-scale invasion into Ukraine – that full-scale invasion by Russia is a fact, that for some reason a lot of the right-wing media ecosystem and very popular media personalities (like Tucker Carlson) have spent an enormous amount of time and energy obfuscating and muddying with all sorts of misdirection. Russia did launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and not losing sight of that fact is important. Putin was not the victim.

With this situation in Russia, numerous media and political people floated epic conspiracy theories linking all sorts of things together – some even asserting this Wagner Group action was a CIA operation. There’s absolutely no proof of that given – just neatly tying together a news story about a Pentagon accounting error from a few days ago with the events happening in Russia in the past couple days and stating the CIA-connection conspiracy theory as fact. Many Americans instantly latch onto these types of anti-American government/Deep State conspiracy theories and while certainly some conspiracies could be true and a few sometimes turn out to be true, without some real evidence I don’t want to race down those wild rabbit holes constantly. You can get lost in them or lose any sense of reality, if you start buying into so much craziness, devoid of solid factual foundation.

Instead of embracing all sorts of dubious conspiratorial links, I’m working on hardening my personal defenses against spin information war, because every time you surrender to emotion-driven spin, you surrender a lot of your mind to buying into other people’s deliberate lies and efforts to manipulate and control you. The people on the right selling these wild conspiracy theories are not operating in good faith any more than left-wing spinmeisters selling conspiracy theories are. That’s the truth. If your only defense is “so and so said this” and you either trust this online personality, without question, or you think because “so and so” is part of “your tribe” that means what he/she said has to be right, well, that’s not thinking – that’s groupthink behavior and I want no parts of it.

With the situation in Russia, I don’t know what exactly just happened, why it happened, or have any insight into what the larger takeaways are. And neither do 99.9% of the people I’ve seen reporting and commenting on it. I certainly have no evidence about big conspiracy theories.

I can say though that I’ve learned a lot about mass indoctrination, reading about Mao’s communist takeover of China and somehow, I think learning more about this topic might be more relevant than leading the pack on social media hot takes about events, which I have no verified information other than these hot takes are trending on Twitter and “everyone is saying,” blah, blah, blah.

There’s more than enough blah, blah, blah on social media.

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May 16, 2023 · 8:35 pm

More spin garbage to wade through

This blog post is politics and jumps around a bit. It’s a little of this and a little of that, but the spin information war ties it all together. Yesterday, John Durham’s final report on his Trump-Russia investigation was finally released. I haven’t even looked at it and I’m not going to waste my time pouring over it, as I used to do with government reports. All of the Clinton and Dem efforts to invent, ignite and then fan the flames of “Trump-Russia Collusion” was to create and operate a years-long mass media spin information war effort to destroy Donald Trump.

Andrew C. McCarthy wrote a book, Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency in 2019, which I listened to the audiobook version on Hoopla a few years ago and that covered much of the corruption I’ve seen reported with the Durham report. And since I’ve yammered on about the Dem’s corrupt spin information war for decades now, there’s really no point in going through the Durham report with a fine-tooth comb and fuming about the mountains of lies and how the Clinton machine, along with the Obama administration spread via their vast army of foot soldiers in news media and on social media platforms. They all worked tirelessly to amplify and keep these Trump-Russia narratives burning.

The Durham report won’t change a thing.

If House Republicans run headlong into ramping up investigations into the Durham report and rehashing 2016 corruption, with the 2024 presidential election right around the corner, they’ll basically be making a contribution in kind to the Biden campaign. The House Republicans can investigate and make criminal referrals to the DOJ, until the cows come home, and there is no way the Biden DOJ is ever going to prosecute top Democrats or former FBI and intelligence officials, who diligently carried water for them, especially not over Trump-Russia Collusion. You also aren’t going to find many Dems or liberal news media folks who will admit they were wrong about Trump-Russia Collusion. As evidence of this Jake Tapper, tried to admit to getting some facts wrong, in light of the Durham report, and he has been lambasted by Dem pundits relentlessly. He’ll likely be back to propping up the Dem spin narratives, even if they relaunch the Trump-Russia Collusion spin effort (which is likely). Add to that as we move toward a presidential election year, what most Americans will care about is more current issues, not rehashing the 2016 election. Many Trump supporters want to see top Democrat villains in this scandal perp walked and in jail, but that’s never going to happen with the Biden DOJ… or even a DOJ in a Republican administration.

The main thing I wish Republicans had learned from this Trump-Russia Collusion political dirty trick is that the Dem’s brand of spin information war is poison to America’s political system and poison to American culture. The entire Trump-Russia spin narrative was intended to be hyped over liberal news media, and other liberal-controlled media, to include social media. Instead of realizing that the spin war is a surefire way to divide and tear America apart, the lesson a lot of Trump-supporters learned was they just wanted a spin-warrior, who could beat the Democrats at their own spin game. They found their spin warrior in Donald Trump, a former Clinton friend, a man who hired a series of grifters and unqualified nincompoops, who invariably quit or were fired and then showed up on liberal news media to trash him 24/7. How Trump managed to pick so many disloyal and duplicitous people still amazes me, but beyond all that Trump entered politics to advance himself and he turned his WH into a daily Trump vs. the liberal media spin show, which his fans loved.

The truth is the spin war, whether it’s the Democrat version or the Trump version is poison and can only deepen divides in America. Here’s the reality check, politics can’t fix what’s broken, because the American people feed on this partisan political spin theater and we pick a dog in these spin battles.

So, with the Durham report being released yesterday, an IRS whistleblower reported to Congress that he and his entire team, who are investigating Hunter Biden corruption, have been removed from the case:

WASHINGTON – A whistleblower at the Internal Revenue Service, which is investigating Hunter Biden for potential tax violations, told lawmakers Monday his entire team was removed from the probe, according to a letter from his lawyers obtained by USA TODAY.

The letter said the IRS criminal supervisory special agent “was informed that he and his entire investigative team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress.” The Justice Department informed the whistleblower about the change.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/05/16/hunter-biden-investigation-irs-team-removed/70222248007/

That’s how concerned Democrats are about the Durham report. Hillary, top FBI officials, top Obama officials, like John Brennan and James Clapper, who became liberal media “Trump-Russia Collusion” experts, to give credence to all of the Steele dossier bs, aren’t ever going to be prosecuted and in fact, the liberal media will still give them airtime to keep propping up the Steele dossier lies and trash Durham’s report.

With another presidential election cycle about to kick into high-gear, it’s sure to become even crazier. I’ve found the Clinton machine corruption appalling since the 90s, but they, along with a lot of powerful political players in Washington, are above the law. That’s just the plain truth. The reality is conspiracies are very hard to prosecute and that’s why so many organized crime syndicates get away with it. The FBI and DOJ were implicated in this Trump-Russia Collusion scandal, so they aren’t going to hold themselves accountable. Andrew McCabe, the #2 FBI official under Comey, was already on CNN today spewing lies dismissing Durham’s report. CNN will continue to give McCabe airtime. A 2017 DOJ IG investigation found McCabe lacked candor (lied) repeatedly to investigators and he was fired. CNN still hired him and present him as a former top FBI official – someone with credibility…

The Durham report reaction reminded me of all the other swirling partisan spin dramas. The Biden/House Republican stand-off over the debt ceiling is more pressing, with the deadline and dire consequences for all of us, if the US government defaults. There’s also the Dem green agenda is still being rammed through – from killing fossil fuel to pushing insects onto American dinner plates. A couple weeks ago, NY state became the first state to ban gas stoves in new homes, beginning in 2026. In just the past few days, I’ve seen a few opinion pieces in liberal mainstream media advocating for eating insects. So, the “Great Reset” agenda is real and despite all the “don’t be ridiculous” or “that’s just a right-wing conspiracy theory,” the Great Reset is an effort to expedite the UN’s 2030 agenda, which was approved in 2015. As the radical changes escalate, don’t be surprised. When some Biden official first mentioned the ban on gas stoves, Sen. Chuck Schumer, from NY, tweeted numerous times that no one is banning gas stoves. Then lo’ and behold, NY became the first state a couple weeks ago to pass a gas stove ban. When the media starts pushing some new idea, like eating bugs to save the planet, it’s part of their spin war operations – mass media psychological operations with the goal of mainstreaming that idea. They want Americans to drop their aversion to eating bugs by wrapping it up in being a virtuous, environmentally-responsible citizen. The bad people will be the dreaded meat-eaters.

I wish there was some easy way to plan for how to weather these radical changes, especially the economic turmoil, but there’s not. I’ve been trying to simplify my lifestyle and learn more basic skills. I am continuing to stock up on food, water and supplies too. Working on personal preparedness has become a key focus for me. It should be a key focus of everyone, but unfortunately, I suspect, the vast majority of Americans will wait until the government tells them it’s time to prepare or that the government’s going to fix the problems, but by then it will be way too late. The government that has created all of these major problems, certainly isn’t who I’m trusting to fix anything. Here’s the truth – with the national debt, both parties spend like drunken sailors and politicians on both sides get rich and gain power by fueling divides.

It felt liberating to feel no reason to waste hours pouring over the Durham report and writing about all the disturbing findings. I decided to focus on things in my own life. A skill I never learned was how to properly sharpen knives. I used to have an electric knife sharpener that worked okay, but sharpening knives is a basic skill I never learned. One of my sons was visiting on Sunday and he was preparing a Mother’s Day lunch for us. He asked me if I have any sharp knives in my kitchen and I don’t. I did some googling about knife sharpening and I went ahead and ordered a whetstone set – so, instead of wasting time on Trump-Russia Collusion, I’m going to be practicing how to sharpen knives and working on other projects.

I keep paying attention to prices at the grocery store and nothing in the economy looks optimistic, I can tell you that working on my own preparedness is way more important than getting worked up about corruption in Washington, which I can’t change.

It’s still important to take note of the political corruption and be aware of some news, but I’ve changed my priorities. Before you know it, people you know might start buying into the eating bugs and embracing that, all due to the mass media psychological conditioning that’s being crammed down our throats. Everyday, I find more things I want to learn how to do to become more self-reliant and that’s a much better use of my time than getting worked up about the level of Dem corruption and media corruption. It still amazes me how dramatically the feminist movement took a turn to gay rights and then that veered into the trans movement. It’s been amazing to see drivers of the trans movement are literally destroying prominent liberal feminists, who dare challenge the trans agenda and that tells you who has the power in the feminist movement – it’s the biological men in the trans movement. Anyway, I refuse to participate in these leftist movements or buy into of any of this stuff, but then again, I have always identified myself as an independent, free-thinking American citizen, not as a feminist.

Oh, and before I end this post, everywhere we turn, I expect to be bombarded with more hysterical news about “white supremacy” and dangerous “MAGA Republicans.” Over the weekend President Biden gave an incendiary speech announcing his war against “white supremacy.” Then some weird group, Patriot Front, that is ostensibly a far-right wing hate group showed up to march on the US Capitol. The timing was perfect for liberal news media to spin up Biden’s war against “white supremacy.” I googled this group and on Wikipedia, it says this group is part of a group that split from another alt-right group after the Charlottesville protests. This Patriot Front group comes wearing “uniforms” of khaki pants and blue jackets, and masks. To me it looks like a Democrat false flag operation and that Charlottesville tie was a red flag to me. There were reports of busloads of paid protestors showing up in Charlottesville. Even back in 2016, all sorts of paid political actors and operators showed up at political events to create drama and wreak havoc. This went from plants in audiences to start a commotion, which happened at numerous Trump events or to ask embarrassing questions at both Dem and Republican events, but then there were the reports of busloads of paid protestors that showed up. And yes, the issue of paid protestors is a thing: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-crowds-extortion-20181021-story.html.

For years with all these viral video dramas that fuel a lot of the political spin drama. I’ve told my adult kids that it’s best to ask more questions rather than reacting. I want to know what happened before the events in the video, what happened afterwards, who made the media, where was it shot, when was it shot, and was it edited. We are so used to “reacting” and social media has conditioned us to reacting rather than thinking. They’ve got buttons to click to express your emotions and they encourage controversy.

Think more and react less, is my best advice. Oh, and if you’re smart, you’ll start preparing for hard times, with at least the basics – food, water, supplies. Here again, most people I know rely on the news media and await the government experts to tell them they should be prepared for all sorts of emergencies and hard times. If you’ve been watching the lingering shortage problems, inflation climbing, political instability around the world and all the political and economic turmoil here in America and you haven’t thought, “Geesh, I should probably be prepared, in case things get worse,” then nothing I say can make an impact.

As this push for mainstreaming the idea of eating bugs escalates, pay close attention to people you know – friends, family, acquaintances and see how quickly some people start buying into this. I betcha will be surprised at how quickly this mass media psychological conditioning takes hold – experts galore selling it, celebrities jumping on board selling it and mass media giving it loads of hot air for it to rise. I won’t be surprised if some celebrity food personalities go buggy too.

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February 15, 2023 · 8:25 am

The right-wing media has jumped the tracks

My last few blog posts have been about the Chinese spy balloon situation and the Biden WH’s dishonest spin effort with that, so now it’s time for a right-wing media dishonest spin effort about the train derailment in East Palestine, OH. So, let’s start at the beginning:

Feb. 4, 2023:

“A train derailment and resulting large fire prompted an evacuation order in an Ohio village near the Pennsylvania state line on Friday night, covering the area in billows of smoke lit orange by the flames below.

About 50 cars derailed in East Palestine as a train was carrying a variety of freight from Madison, Illinois, to Conway, Pennsylvania, rail operator Norfolk Southern said in a statement Saturday. There was no immediate information about what caused the derailment. No injuries were reported.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ohio-train-derailment-causes-big-fire-evacuations/

The right-wing media ecosystem is as nuts and dishonest as the liberal media ecosystem these days, but interestingly, it seems like no one reads the print articles from news media anymore, they just run with Twitter, video clips, TV, and social media hysteria.

I’ve had an interest in toxic waste sites since I was a kid. I grew up in northeast PA about 10 miles from the New Jersey Zinc Company in Palmerton, PA and I was already an adult in 1983 when it became an EPA Superfund site that has taken decades to clean up (still ongoing):

“The Palmerton Zinc Pile Superfund site is located in the Borough of Palmerton, Pennsylvania. Former primary zinc smelting operations from two plants in Palmerton (east and west plants) resulted in area-wide contamination. The several-thousand-acre site includes Blue Mountain, a large smelting residue pile called the Cinder Bank, and much of the surrounding valley north of Blue Mountain. For nearly 80 years, the New Jersey Zinc Company disposed of 33 million tons of smelting waste at the site. Former smelting operations released heavy metals into the valley, causing the wide-spread loss of trees on about 4,000 acres of Blue Mountain. This barren area allowed for surface water contamination from erosion of contaminated soils into Aquashicola Creek and the Lehigh River. Heavy metals contaminated dust, soil, shallow groundwater and surface water. The presence of lead in children’s blood samples triggered public health and environmental investigations. EPA placed the site on the Superfund program’s National Priorities List (NPL) in 1983.”

https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.redevelop&id=0300624

There’s been this right-wing media/social media hysteria about this train derailment in Ohio, trying to turn it into a Chernobyl situation, and also blaming President Biden and the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, of ignoring the crisis, since the past two weeks the country and media has been fixated on the Chinese spy balloon story. Certainly, there are legitimate questions about why train safety hasn’t been addressed with the massive infrastructure bill that Congress passed in 2021. There are certainly legitimate questions to be raised about the decision-making when temperature changes inside one of the cars raised concerns about a potential catastrophic tanker failure and Governor Dewine said the experts recommended the lesser of two bad options, an explosion that could spew the chemicals and shrapnel for up to a mile vs. doing a slow release burn of chemicals in that rail car. Governor Dewine said he talked to Governor Shapiro of PA and decided to go with the slow release burn option.

So, who all was in the loop from the beginning, well Governor Dewine said he talked to President Biden, who offered full support and he talked to Governor Shapiro, since East Palestine, OH sits on the state line of OH and PA. From the first day:

“First responders from nearly 70 emergency agencies from Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania quickly mobilized.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/live-updates/east-palestine-ohio-train-derailment-hazardous-materials-ntsb-evacuations/

The FOX News primetime coverage last night made it sound like no one was doing anything, when there have been teams from all sorts of agencies – state and federal – on the ground, plus train officials and experts. I have zero expertise to second guess how to handle a “catastrophic tanker failure” situation, but apparently every FOX News primetime host does. Here’s what I do know, there will likely be ongoing clean-up efforts needed and there is a very real potential for people to get sick too.

Governor Dewine held a press conference yesterday and I watched some of this. He had officials from various agencies on hand to explain what’s been going on. There have been teams on the ground testing air, testing soil, testing water, monitoring fish and wildlife impacts, monitoring other health concerns. They are urging the residents in East Palestine to drink bottled water as testing continues and they are urging residents who have private wells to call and schedule free testing of their wells. Bottled water is being provided free too. The wildlife lady at that briefing described over 3,000 dead fish estimated so far and there are efforts to contain the water contamination, but it’s a serious concern.

The entire situation is serious, but it’s not Chernobyl and this right-wing spin effort has left me as disgusted by this right-wing media ecosystem as I am by the left-wing media ecosystem. It’s a total disservice to the people impacted. We’ve got the left spin war and activism teaching Americans to hate America and the right-wing spin war is teaching them to believe the American government and every politician or person, whom the right-wing media decides is bad, is evil and is trying to destroy them or America. This coverage has been appallingly bad and the amazing thing is the FOX News take that no one in the media has been talking about the train derailment – well, they were all-in on the Chinese spy balloon story the past two weeks too, but now they need a new story to incite the right.

There’s another hot take that there’s been a media blackout of this story. There was a journalist arrested at a briefing in East Palestine and I don’t have all the details, but saw a video clip of the incident. That incident has been blown-up into assertions that there’s been a total media blackout, even though when I heard that the first time, I googled train derailment in OH and came up with pages upon pages of news stories on this train derailment from all sorts of news outlets – local and even liberal big media. It wasn’t much of a media blackout, since I only had to do one quick google search to find out information from the beginning of this crisis to the present.

Of course, naturally, the same people who believe the government is trying to destroy the food supply with the food processing plant fires are now ranting about the rash of train derailments and acting like it’s some conspiracy. I checked the train accident stats from the Federal Railroad Administration and there are a lot of railroad accidents (1573 for 2022), to include derailments, in America every year: https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/summary.aspx

I turn FOX News on occasionally, since I can’t deal with the far-left crazy on MSNBC and CNN went so far into Trump derangement that I couldn’t deal with Stormy and Avenatti, etc. I am about done with FOX News too. Last night really disgusted me – by the time Laura Ingraham came on and started her dishonest conflating topics – from selling the Biden blew up Nord Stream allegation to making this train derailment into Chernobyl, I didn’t even make it through her monologue. Here’s the thing Seymour Hersh has spread stories that were not true many times in the past – he has a very spotty track record and I take everything he reports with a few shakers of salt. I find it almost impossible to believe that President Biden, who dragged his feet responding to the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, has dragged his feet on aid to Ukraine, ( fast to promise, slow to deliver) was still trying to talk to Putin & was still importing Russian oil at the time of the Nord Stream pipeline explosions, who took a week to decide to shoot down an unmanned Chines spy balloon flying over America and our most sensitive military sites ordered the Nord Stream pipelines to be blown up. And for what purpose? The Germans and other Europeans were still trying to get Putin to reopen the pipeline.

There’s definitely room to question why so many train accidents and what’s going on with funding more train safety measures, since Congress passed that massive infrastructure bill in 2021. However, this deliberate right-wing media effort to create mass hysteria and use this crisis to score political points against the Biden administration and Pete Buttigieg, at the expense of trying to get calm, clear information to the residents of East Palestine and surrounding areas is just as bad as the vast, corrupt Dem/liberal media spin war.

A pox on both your houses.

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