We didn’t evacuate and my area is expected to have tropical storm conditions later today. Truly, the information deluge might be worse than the hurricane. Dealing with the disinformation/misinformation barrage, plus the “helpful government” constant stream of weather alerts, warnings and updates leaves one feeling exhausted.
Then we come to the odd things yesterday, like Shepard Smith (of histrionic bridge fame in Hurricane Katrina) went off-the-chain yesterday with his “You can’t survive it!” soliloquy on FOX news. Then, Drudge Report started tweeting that the government and media aren’t reporting facts on the hurricane. Later, the National Hurricane Weather Center website went down, at the crucial time when Hurricane Matthew started pounding Florida. The Drudge Report and FOX News again working to undermine the American people’s trust in the government, during a natural disaster… Very disturbing. I wonder if the National Hurricane Center’s crash was from weather, traffic overload or hacking (hostile foreign type).
We also have the wholesale public corruption of the Obama administration, the Clintons and the Democratic Party being exposed with email leaks and even the Trump and Hillary campaigns waging their own staged stunts to discredit each other like the Alicia Machado story or perhaps even this loon with a sign at a Kaine campaign event yesterday, ranting that Bill Clinton is a rapist. The media reported him as a Trump-supporter, but no name, no details. Was he a Trump-supporter or a Dem-staged political stunt?
Trump plays along hyping all these election fraud stories and Roger Stone is gleefully touting Wikileaks Clinton email leaks.
We’ve got a dangerous dynamic brewing, with the mainstream media overtly manipulating news coverage to help Hillary, participating in a massive pile-on of negative stories about Trump, while downplaying, even burying negative stories about Hillary often. The media bias feeds Trump’s demagoguery and creates a dynamic, where many Americans don’t believe anything the media reports on Trump. And all of this seems to have a large hostile foreign intel presence, stirring the pot.
On top of all that, with the internet, millions of people “share” information in a wide array of social media formats, not just on news sites. A couple hours ago, my daughter in TX texted me a photo of an ominous looking cloud shot from the highway near Jacksonville, FL. My daughter believed the photo was a current photo. I told her that I saw that same photo on facebook yesterday afternoon, so I have no idea when that photo was taken. I walked outside and took a photo and sent it to her – to show her it’s barely raining here, at the moment.
It’s very hard to verify photographic images, especially ones of unknown origin. Even ones where the origin is known, small details matter – like in a news article on that dead little Syrian refugee boy that made news around the world – that photo was STAGED. In a British news report, far into the story, the Turkish authorities had moved the body from where he was found. That was a STAGED propaganda ploy.
Well, eventually the truth is likely to shake out. I’m going to go bake lasagna for dinner now, so it’s prepared in case we do lose power later this afternoon. That’s how I’m preparing… We will have a home-cooked meal, even if the power goes out:-) Later.
There seems to be general consensus that Pence won the VP debate last night and I covered the GOP side in my previous post. Here are the issues with Tim Kaine’s debate performance. First, he was annoying and obnoxious with his constant interruptions, but that was planned. The moderator lost control early on and her attempts at control seemed geared to bringing Pence to heel, while Kaine interrupted non-stop and kept barking. No matter the issue under debate, especially when that issue was Hillary, Kaine’s default response was, “Hey, look a Squirrel (Trump)!”
Trump couldn’t stand not being the center of attention, so he announced he was live tweeting the debate, which he did, throwing out his usual idiotic and pointless commentary. The mainstream media has a presence on Twitter too, so their mouthpieces were a flutter, tweeting “fact-checking” and ostensibly, insightful commentary.
The problem is the pundits and political writers are so overtly partisan and biased, that their commentary lacks any objectivity. The mainstream media’s tweeting fixated on dumping on Trump, did nothing to damage Trump, and it made the media look corrupt and totally in the tank for Hillary, which they are.
The media might play along talking Trump 24/7 and rehashing every vile thing Trump has ever said in the past 50 years, but there’s so much Hillary dirt still impacting and it’s doubtful even the mainstream media, in full throes of corrupt media collusion promoting Hillary by trashing Trump, can ignore or cover-up the rising tide of Obama/Hillary/Democratic Party corruption, in which Bill and Hillary’s fingerprints are everywhere.
The DOJ/FBI corruption, with investigating Hillary’s home-brew server, keeps stirring, with more disturbing revelations almost daily. The mainstream media, despite wanting to talk about the Trump Foundation and Trump’s crazy comments, haven’t been able to avoid these stories completely, for example:
Trump mightily strives to keep the attention on himself, but Hillary’s scandals keep rising like the Zombie Apocalypse, no matter how deeply buried, never dead.
Whether the American people can even see the massive corruption in both of these candidates seems doubtful, and the corrupt media collusion, intended to bury Trump, seems to have reached such levels of absurdity and saturation, that it’s likely, most Americans hate and distrust the corrupt media more than either Trump or Hillary. Americans hate blatant unfairness and the over-the-top, relentless Trump-trashing onslaught by the media, might backfire and turn some undecided voters toward Trump.
Kaine lost last night, but the media lost too.
Note: Yes, I know my conclusion about Trump losing to Pence and Trump winning against the media sound contradictory and they are to a certain degree, so as usual, I am probably wrong, at predicting anything in this race. And there are so many other variables that might implode before November…
Last night, I watched the VP debate, which many political pundits had predicted would be a snoozer. It wasn’t. Mike Pence seemed calm, knowledgeable, in command of his positions on issues. Tim Kaine seemed loaded down with one-liners, he felt compelled to deliver, no matter what.
In actual debating, Pence won, hands down.
The only problem with winning remains, that comparison between Pence, a solid conservative, and Trump, a total con man, liar, kept smacking you in the face, every time Tim Kaine threw in another crazy Trump statement to defend. Pence didn’t take the bait, but he also couldn’t defend against most of those charges. The disgusting and vile Trump statements were TRUE – Trump had said them, in fact, he had said most of them many times. You can claim you misspoke when you say something once, but when you repeat it for weeks on end, to garner cheap applause at rallies or to stir controversy, to control the 24/7 news cycle, well, you own those statements.
Pence won, but Trump lost big time last night. Trump looked much weaker and pathetic, compared to Mike Pence. The glaring difference will likely be more striking when Trump enters the second debate. Kaine lost to Pence, but he didn’t upstage Hillary’s polished debate performance one iota, so the top of that ticket looks stronger. Pence made Trump look weak and if there’s one thing bullies can’t stand, it’s being shown up or exposed as losers.
It was reported that Trump had ordered his campaign staff and surrogates to stop saying he lost the first presidential debate, sending them out there, LYING, and insisting that he won. So, while some might believe that Trump will be happy Pence won one for the team, bullies aren’t team players.
Not sure how this will play out, but last night was anything, but a win for Trump and his massive ego.
Much of this post is a rehash of old stuff, but I wanted to add a bit to this emerging propaganda picture, not to prove anything, but to encourage others to start looking big picture/little picture to find the Russian active measures to interfere in our electoral process. It’s not just the Democrat bigwig email leaks or Wikileaks that concerns me. It’s the escalating hostile military actions being employed against US Armed Forces by Russia, Iran and Chinacombined with this Russian intelligence overt influence in our election, that makes figuring out the full scope of the Russian big picture imperative. And, thepieces emerging in this Russian strategic big picture make me very uneasy. Putting them together correctly is crucial to America’s national security.
The Syrian “Moderate” Rebel Mirage
A fantasy pervaded the entire argument for earlier intervention in the Syrian civil war. It’s the lie propagated by the Obama administration, Syrian rebel lobbyists, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), John McCain and pundits like Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol.
The argument centered on this belief in arming the mythical “moderate” Syrian rebels. It’s also a lie, that I hope ends up fully exposed, because the US military ended up maligned and badly used in this shady Obama “narrative”. The Obama administration began arming so-called Syrian “moderates” in this civil war, early in the conflict. The stories permeate about Libyan weapons being shipped from Libya via Turkey, into Syria.
The “arm Syrian moderates” crowd never talks about who would take charge of Syria, if this plan had been implemented – hint, there are no real “moderates” amongst the rebels, they radicalized early as US vetted intelligence knew early on in the Syrian conflict. Here’s a McClatchyDC link from 2015 on that issue:
“Extensive interviews with Syria policymakers from the Obama administration, some of whom spoke on the record and others who requested anonymity so as to freely describe the administration’s behind-the-scenes debates, reveal that the Obama administration was warned early on that al Qaida-linked fighters were gaining prominence within the anti-Assad struggle.
Senior officials chose to look the other way, however, and flog a misleading narrative of a viable moderate force. Today, the same extremists have seized wide swaths of Syria and Iraq, uprooting millions of people, threatening the stability of U.S. regional allies, and sucking the United States into another open-ended conflict in the Middle East.
The Syrian rebellion began in March 2011 as part of a wave of mostly peaceful Arab protests against autocratic regimes that had quickly toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Within months, however, it was clear that State Department pleas for Syrian opposition activists to remain nonviolent weren’t working in the face of the regime’s increasingly brutal crackdown on demonstrators.
It didn’t take long for militant Islamists to join the fight, justifying their participation with literalist interpretations of religious scripture about fighting oppressors. That noble-sounding rally for jihad had a magnet-like draw for disaffected young men and women from across the Muslim world.
By that November, just eight months into the rebellion and only two months after President Barack Obama had called for Assad to step aside, a memo from senior policymakers to then-National Security Adviser Tom Donilon warned “that this thing was becoming jihadized,” as one former top official summarized it. The response?
“There was never any indication that the memo was read,” the former official said.
Two aides to Donilon, who is now with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said he was unavailable for comment.
The rebel power shift was even sharper the next year. Extremist forces were increasingly active, and the outline of what would become the Islamic State was taking shape.”(my highlight)
I suspect the biggest purveyor of this Syrian “moderate” myth is the ISW and FOX News rolls out General Keane to keep selling that.
Going back
Here’s a timeline with some links that explain the Obama administration’s arming and training of Syrian rebels (interfering in fueling a civil war in Syria – arming NOT “freedom-fighters, but Islamists of varying degrees of radicalization):
The heavy arms include mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and the controversial anti-aircraft heat-seeking SA-7 missiles, which are integral to countering Bashar Al-Assad’s bombing campaign.
Many have suspected that the US was already involved in sending heavy arms.
The administration has said that the previously hidden CIA operation in Benghazi involved finding, repurchasing and destroying heavy weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, but in October we reported evidence indicating that U.S. agents — particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens — were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.
There have been several possible SA-7 spottings in Syria dating as far back as early summer 2012, and there are indications that at least some of Gaddafi’s 20,000 portable heat-seeking missiles were shipped before now.” (my highlight)
“WASHINGTON — A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.
The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said.
The C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official said. The Obama administration has said it is not providing arms to the rebels, but it has also acknowledged that Syria’s neighbors would do so.
The clandestine intelligence-gathering effort is the most detailed known instance of the limited American support for the military campaign against the Syrian government. It is also part of Washington’s attempt to increase the pressure on President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who has recently escalated his government’s deadly crackdown on civilians and the militias battling his rule. With Russia blocking more aggressive steps against the Assad government, the United States and its allies have instead turned to diplomacy and aiding allied efforts to arm the rebels to force Mr. Assad from power.” (my highlight)
September 2012: Elizabeth OBagy published a report at the Institute for the Study of War – Jihad in Syria
May, 2013: John McCain went on his secret fact-finding trip to Syria with the SETF and Elizabeth O’Bagy as his guides.:
“Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) met with rebel leaders in Syria on Monday, The Daily Beast reported, making the senator the highest ranking U.S. official to visit the country since conflict broke out over two years ago.
CNN and Politico confirmed the visit with McCain’s office.
While in the country, McCain met with the Free Syrian Army’s Supreme Military Council leader Gen. Salem Idris.”
O’Bagy was also moonlighting as the political director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Syrian Free Army lobbying group. She and that SETF escorted McCain on a “secret” fact-finding trip, where later photos of McCain emerged, which were claimed to be McCain with Syrian “moderates”, but whom other experts have identified as Islamist terrorists. The president of that SETF was reported to be connected to Palestinian terrorists.
September 2013: The drumbeat for more US intervention in Syria escalates, but then O’Bagy is exposed as a liar, more questions emerge about exactly who we are arming in Syria and Obama waffles. John McCain hires O’Bagy, right after the ISW fired her for lying about her doctorate.
September 11, 2013: The ISW canned O’Bagy for lying on her resumé, but that was after everyone from Secretary of State, John, Kerry, Senator McCain, everyone in the freakin’ media, to include the Wall Street Journal, accepted Elizabeth O’Bagy without any vetting of her credentials:
“The Syria researcher whose Wall Street Journal op-ed piece was cited by Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. John McCain during congressional hearings about the use of force has been fired from the Institute for the Study of War for lying about having a Ph.D., the group announced on Wednesday.
“The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O’Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University,” the institute said in a statement. “ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O’Bagy’s employment, effective immediately.”
Story Continued Below
O’Bagy told POLITICO in an interview Monday that she had submitted and defended her dissertation and was waiting for Georgetown University to confer her degree. O’Bagy said she was in a dual master’s and doctorate program at Georgetown.
Kimberly Kagan, who founded the ISW in 2007, said in an interview that while she was “deeply saddened” by the situation, she stands by O’Bagy’s work on Syria.
( POLITICO reports – Obama’s Syria address: special coverage)
”Everything I’ve looked at is rock solid,” Kagan told POLITICO. “Every thread that we have pulled upon has been verified through multiple sources.”
Paul Gigot, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, told POLITICO in a statement that “we were not aware of Elizabeth O’Bagy’s academic claims or credentials when we published her Aug. 31 op-ed, and the op-ed made no reference to them.”
“We also were not aware of her affiliation with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, and we published a clarification when we learned of it,” Gigot said. “We are investigating the contents of her op-ed to the best of our ability, but to date we have seen no evidence to suggest any information in the piece was false.” (my highlight)
September 19, 2013: President Obama signed a bill to “arm and train Syrian” rebels, but said little publicly
“President Obama on Friday signed legislation that gives the U.S. approval to arm and train Syrian rebels in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (also known as ISIS, or ISIL).
The approval was part of a larger bill that funds the government through Dec. 11. It was approved with bipartisan support in the Senate on Thursday and in the House on Tuesday.
While Mr. Obama did not comment on the legislation when he signed it Friday afternoon, he did mention the fight against ISIS earlier in the day, at the Democratic National Committee’s annual Women’s Leadership Forum.”
September 27, 2013: McCain immediately hired Elizabeth O’Bagy and she still is on his staff. I’ve wondered if she ever underwent a security background check or if strings were pulled and that was waived for her:
“Sen. John McCain has hired Elizabeth O’Bagy, the Syria analyst in Washington who was fired for padding her credentials, The Cable has learned. She begins work Monday as a legislative assistant in McCain’s office.
O’Bagy was a young but well-respected advisor at the Institute for the Study of War and had emerged quickly as an important voice among those arguing in favor of intervention in Syria. McCain and others had cited her work publicly before her nascent reputation collapsed when it was discovered that her claims to having a combined master’s/Ph.D. were false and that in fact she had not yet defended her thesis.”
January 9, 2014: The Obama administration was considering resumption of arming Syrian rebels, after ISIS had reportedly raided Free SyrianArmy warehouses that contained US -provided weapons:
“WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering the resumption of nonlethal military aid to Syria’s moderate opposition, senior administration officials said on Thursday, even if some of it ends up going to the Islamist groups that are allied with the moderates.
The United States suspended the shipments last month after warehouses of equipment were seized by the Islamic Front, a coalition of Islamist fighters that broke with the American-backed Free Syrian Army and has become an increasingly vital force in the nearly three-year-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
But as a result of the rapidly shifting alliances within Syria’s fractured opposition, some of the Islamists fought alongside the Free Syrian Army in a battle against a major rebel group affiliated with Al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
That has eased American qualms about resuming the aid, the officials said.”
The ISW and McCain, plus Obama’s friends from the Muslim Brotherhood/Palestinian terror network, kept pushing for the US to aid the Syrian “moderate” rebels.
“The U.S. is providing more arms and training to the moderate rebels in Syria, under a growing secret program run by the CIA in Jordan. Sources tell NPR that secret program could be supplemented by a more public effort in the coming months involving American military trainers.
The change in strategy comes as the White House sees Syrian leader Bashar Assad growing in strength, and continuing to strike rebel strongholds.
Another factor: Russian leaders appear unwilling to help end the three-year-old civil war and are continuing to provide weapons to Assad. Finally, al-Qaida fighters and their allies are expanding in Syria, a development that some believe could threaten the U.S. homeland.”
September 2014: President Obama expanded from CIA arming and training Syrian “moderates” to dragging the US military into this fiasco of arming Islamist nutjobs. Here’s how the vetting Syrian “moderates” went – from Patrick Poole at PJ Media:
“As President Obama laid out his “strategy” last night for dealing with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and as bipartisan leadership in Congress pushes to approve as much as $4 billion to arm Syrian “rebels,” it should be noted that the keystone to his anti-Assad policy — the “vetted moderate” Free Syrian Army (FSA) — is now admitting that they, too, are working with the Islamic State.
This confirms PJ Media’s reporting last week about the FSA’s alliances with Syrian terrorist groups.
On Monday, the Daily Star in Lebanon quoted a FSA brigade commander saying that his forces were working with the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate — both U.S.-designated terrorist organizations — near the Syrian/Lebanon border.
“We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front by attacking the Syrian Army’s gatherings in … Qalamoun,” said Bassel Idriss, the commander of an FSA-aligned rebel brigade.“We have reached a point where we have to collaborate with anyone against unfairness and injustice,” confirmed Abu Khaled, another FSA commander who lives in Arsal.
“Let’s face it: The Nusra Front is the biggest power present right now inQalamoun and we as FSA would collaborate on any mission they launch as long as it coincides with our values,” he added.”
Poole continues:
“But the Free Syrian Army is not the only U.S.-armed and trained “rebel” force in Syria that the Obama administration is having serious trouble keeping in the “vetted moderate” column.
Earlier this week I reported on Harakat al-Hazm, which was the first of the “vetted moderates” to receive U.S. anti-tank weaponry earlier this year. Harakat al-Hazm isreportedly a front for the Muslim Brotherhood as well as Turkey and Qatar, its Islamist state sponsors.
An L.A. Timesarticle was published this past Sunday from the battle lines in Syria. The reporter recounted a discussion with two Harakat al-Hazm fighters who admitted, “But Nusra doesn’t fight us, we actually fight alongside them. We like Nusra.””
The Obama Syrian debacle continued through 2015 and in the news, you could follow reports of various ME leaders going to Moscow to talk to Putin, as Putin planned his own Syrian intervention, while Obama kept floundering arming Islamist terrorists (yes, I believe he was arming Islamic radicals in Syria FROM the beginning).
September 2015: Congress dragged the US Army general, Lloyd Austin, commander of US Central Command, before Congress to berate Austin about the failure to vet and train more Syrian moderates. Austin reported only a handful of “moderates” were vetted and trained. Instead of getting a clue, that there aren’t any “moderates” left in this brutal civil war in Syria, where both sides have used chemical weapons, John McCain used the opportunity to grandstand and insult the general and the US military. McCain said”
“Highly critical of Austin and Wormuth’s presentation, Committee chairman Sen. John McCain(R-Arizona) said that in his thirty years onn the committee “I have never heard testimony like this. … Never.”
“I have never seen a hearing that is as divorced from the reality of every outside expert and what you are saying,” McCain told Austin.”
October 2015: When the Russians started bombing in Syria last year, I noted 3 ISW maps, 2 used on FOX broadcasts and one on CNN’s website, which identified the area with the largest Russian strike group north of Hama, identified in the map legend as Syrian rebel-controlled, ISIS-controlled, and Jubhat al Nusra-controlled. Three maps at the same time, one area in Syria, and the Obama narrative was the Russians aren’t attacking ISIL, they are targeting CIA-backed rebels:
“When Russia acted in Syria the ISW provided maps to FOX news and CNN – where the maps differed, the WH narrative and military analysis by the FOX military analysts Gen Jack Keane (also in the board of ISW) and LTC Shaffer did not match the details on the map:
Gen.Keane pushed for arming the illusive “Syrian moderates” and yet the “narrative” at the time the Russians moved in Syria, the neocon big voices were screaming about the Russians and claiming they were targeting US-backed “moderate” Syrian rebels. The heaviest shot group of attacks on these maps was north of Hama, which these ISW map legends indicate was controlled by Jubhat al Nusra, Syrian rebels or ISIS – 3 maps from the ISW – three different takes on the strikes the Obama narrative and the ISW were ranting were the Russians targeting “CIA trained US Syrian “moderate” rebels. The media and punditry “experts” all went with the “narrative”.”
When I thought about these maps, something is wrong that everyone from the White House on down relies on the Kagan crowd, the Institute for the Study of War and listens to John McCain bloviate about Syria. McCain had access to US vetted intelligence, but he relied on O’Bagy and the ISW, run by Kimberly Kagan, Dick Cheney and his daughter, and General Jack Keane. No one dares question their “expertise”. These maps, all from the ISW, indicate THREE separate ISW takes on who was controlling the area in Syria where the heaviest air strikes occurred in October 2015. The Obama White House and McCain railed about the Russians attacking CIA-backed rebels. So, according to these ISW maps, just who were the CIA-backed rebels??? Why does the media trust the ISW maps? Does the US government have maps that are reliable?
Even today, McCain, General Keane and mouthpieces all over the media keep talking about how the US should have intervened earlier arming Syrian “moderate” rebels, but that is a TOTAL lie – there never were “moderates”, they were Islamist-backed and armed rebels all along, with the Palestinian terror network playing a central role. The president of the Syrian Emergency Task Force had Palestinian terror connections, the Muslim Brotherhood has always been a funder of Palestinian terror, and the Obama administration, the ISW and John McCain have lied to the American people since 2011, when out of the Libyan debacle, the US started funneling arms from Libya to Syria.
This post has run longer than I intended, so in my next post, I’m going to go through the Trump-Russian connections, more McCain questions, and how it all ties in with this Syria mess too. It’s important,because Putin saw his chance to expand his sphere of influence in the Mid-East and he has masterfully set-up one propaganda embarrassment after another for the US, with the crucial aid of Iran. Putin, through Iran has led Obama and Kerry around like hapless dupes, every step of the way in this Iran deal.
President Obama and John Kerry began paying Iran to release hostages.
The most embarrassing incident, again, one where the US military took the blow, made to look like weak, ineffectual idiots occurred in January 2016: America on its knees (LB blog post January 13, 2016):
President Obama delivered a rambling, disjointed final State of the Union address last night. He warbled on about American values, bridging partisan divides, and more hopey changey blather, but he did not mention an international incident with Iran taking custody of 2 US Navy ships and detaining 10 US sailors.
Today, Secretary of State, John Kerry, bragged about kowtowing to Iranian officials and unbelievably he bragged about his smart diplomacy, where he lauds his handling this situation peacefully. He actually thanked Iran for releasing our sailors.
If there are any people left in the Pentagon who aren’t political hacks, they assuredly must be furious about this administration bowing to Iran. What really happened was not brilliant diplomacy, but a complete submission of the US to Iranian muscle-flexing. The Obama administration has failed to respond to escalating provocations, emboldening Iran to engage in this latest stunt, knowing full well that the Obama administration would not respond forcefully. Thanks to these clueless, wimpy, leftist nitwits in this administration, video of these American sailors, on their knees in submission, will now be broadcast all over the Mid-East. So, the message Secretary Kerry is not brilliant diplomacy, it’s America’s military on its knees.
In the real world, far away from the neutered Obama administration, weakness is a potent provocation. Safe to state – neither smart nor powerful!
Next post will be the Russian connection in our 2016 election
Trump decided to go full-throttle, scorched earth, to counter the Clinton/mainstream media scorched earth being waged against him. As I’ve stated many times, the problem Trump faces waging scorched earth remains, that Trump wades into the sewer himself and personally throws all the crap, regardless of the veracity of the smears. This makes him look like a LOOSE CANNON. He feeds the Clinton meme.
The Clintons have cadres of loyal spinners and mouthpieces, who dump all the dirt for them. That way, Hillary can prance out there like the Queen and act like she’s above the fray and the serious candidate. She gets to “act” presidential, even though she has launched the same, down-in-the-sewer campaign as Trump. This is how catty women operate naturally – manipulate other people, get other people to do their dirty work and play mind games. Hillary is just as unhinged as Trump (probably more so, imo). I keep telling my family that she just hides “her crazy” much better than Trump. The Clinton/Democratic Party machines are organized criminal enterprises – nothing noble there, that’s for sure.
So, when Republicans want to figure out who to blame for the Trump national embarrassment, it’s not only the Clinton machine, who orchestrated the “GOP Insurgency”, at fault, it’s the Republican leadership who refused to do anything to stop Trump, even though they were well aware he was a fraud, con man, liar, liberal Democrat. They did nothing to vet him, so these leaked tax returns go to the RNC failure to properly vet their presidential candidate. If you refuse to defend your party from a hostile takeover, you deserve what you get.
This 2016 Election Nightmare sank to a voracious media feeding frenzy in recent days – about old sex scandals, a Latin beauty queen/narco kingpin mistress, fat-shaming, billion dollar tax write-off from the “great” businessman’s losses, Trump mocking Hillary’s health crisis and gleeful anticipation of more Russian active measures to interfere in our election.
Trump’s conservative followers really need to think about why they have decided to become amoral moral relativists.
The problem with supporting Trump, as the only thing to stop corrupt Hillary, all along, has been you need to keep moving further and further making excuses for Trump’s corruption. You have to sell your soul.
Hillary is thoroughly corrupt. Trump is thoroughly corrupt. Supporting thoroughly corrupt people corrupts YOU – that’s the TRUTH. Corrupt people always try to drag their families, friends, and supporters into more corruption, that’s just how it works in life and that’s how it works in politics too.
It’s tough to stand on principle – many people will end up hating you, calling you an idealistic fool, or berating you, but just because everyone else goes along with something or SOMEONE who is corrupt, you should always think for yourself and do the right thing.
Being an American isn’t just about individual liberty, it’s about your duties as a citizen and that means fidelity to The Constitution. People telling you there are no other choices, to push you, or to absolve themselves from guilt for supporting either of these crooks, don’t understand the most important FREEDOM we have – the right to refuse to just get in line and shut-up. If enough people refused to support these two thoroughly corrupt candidates, instead of saying we must choose one or the other, many other choices would appear. Granted, in our constitutional republic, other choices, this late in the election, aren’t easy, but they aren’t impossible.
The most consequential issues in history weren’t decided by taking the easy road.
Americans are in for a huge reality check with either of these two thoroughly corrupt sociopaths as President. Trump is a clueless dupe, who can be baited easily and is being played, not just by Hillary, but by Putin too. Hillary is compromised to the point, where she can easily be blackmailed by hostile foreign countries, who are sitting on all of her emails.
The only winner in November, with either of these two, will be America’s enemies!
One of my favorite books, which I keep on my table next to my recliner. The simple velvet ribbon bookmark with beads, is one of my quick projects.
Partisanship can, not only dull our conscience, it can throw our moral compass completely off-course, to the point that we become lost in a swirl of raging waves of overblown rhetoric, mindless lobbing of partisan invective, and end up as furtive enemies waging an escalating American unCivil War of Words. Certainly, the casualties aren’t the thousands of dead bodies that pile up in real war, but nonetheless this war comes at a great cost and is not just harmless “politics as usual” or without casualties. This unAmerican Civil War of Words is killing not only our American character, it’s killing our American republic.
Top photo: Junk on top of my craft cabinet. Bottom photo: Several candlewicking pattern leaflets.
America really began as a place where Europe’s religious malcontents, adventurers, assorted riffraff and yes, the bold and daring, decided to strike out and build their own future. That’s really who we are. We are a people, who can not only pull up our roots and plant them in a strange new land, we are a people who will learn to adapt and thrive, despite hardships. Above is a photo of the top of my craft cabinet. On the right is a container filled with ribbon scraps. The bottom photos is of pattern leaflets for candlewicking.
Candlewicking is an unique American form of needlework invented by American pioneer women, who moved West in the 1800s. Money and sewing supplies were scarce, so in the usual American fashion, industrious and creative American women began using candle wicks, which were made of braided cotton, to create a new form of embroidery, with open designs, using a colonial knot, which is similar to a French knot. Candle wicks were readily available and cheap, but the open designs allowed covering a larger space with embroidery, with less stitching.
American women weren’t just along for the ride, when they came to America, they were partners in the adventure. They helped build America too, but they also learned to create, innovate, repurpose, conserve, and strive to provide the best they could for their families.
America is a land where we are FREE to dream, as big or as little, as we choose. The photo above is a small stack of some of my dreams for future quilting projects. I use little post-it notes to mark pages in magazines and craft books all the time, to bookmark projects for the future. That Sunbonnet Sue Quilt Special is from 1986 – someday when my patience for applique peaks, I’d like to use ideas from this applique masterpiece and design my own unique Sunbonnet Sue masterpiece.
Being able to keep dreaming is part of our American spirit too.
Sunbonnet Sue is an American original, just like candlewicking. And for those who don’t think needlewomen and quilters can organize, rebel, and express themselves eloquently here’s how Sunbonnet Sue became a beloved quilt motif and how some quilters in the 1980s revolted:
“People fell in love with Sue’s sweet temperament, her ever-present bonnet, and the wholesome and good-natured vignettes of her everyday life. Soon Sue was found on postcards, greeting cards, and even became a design element on plates and dishes.
Her chunky features proved to be enticing for hand quilters and stitchers, and so Sue became preserved for all eternity in a quilt block. In the early 1900s she appeared in the Ladies Home Journal and Woman’s World magazine as well as countless newspapers and pattern magazines. During the Great Depression, Sue surged to popularity, as folks yearned for brighter and sunnier days.
Sunbonnet Sue’s popularity took a hit in the ’70s and ’80s as some quilters dared to shout, “Not all of us love Sunbonnet Sue!” A group of quilters in Kansas, known as the Seamsters Local #500, worked on a controversial quilt that came to be called, “The Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue.” The current events and social unrest of the time are depicted in the blocks of that quilt.
Sue is pictured at Jonestown, Three-Mile Island, eaten by Jaws, tied to train tracks, struck by lightning – her death is represented over and over again in applique quilt blocks. The original quilt is now in a museum at Michigan State University.”
Note: a picture of The Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue quilt is at the link above.
The lower photo above is a plastic container of bookmarks, made from leftover scrapbook paper, stickers and yes, I use ribbon from that container of ribbon scraps, as a way to use little scraps of ribbon, rather than throw them away. I often put several of these bookmarks in cards for friends, in books that I’m giving as gifts or just hand some to my friends and family. Often, I go in my sewing room and sit at my little craft table and make two or three bookmarks in 10 or 15 minutes, while I am thinking about blog posts to write, but I also experiment with other craft junk and styles of bookmarks, braided ribbon ones, simple ribbon ones, or even the corner bookmarks, which you can see in the photo below:
My friend, Marrietta, is an expert quilter and she does perfectly mitered corners on all her quilt bindings. She also doesn’t throw away small scraps of fabric. Many years ago she lived here, but then she and her husband moved to Arizona. Instead of working on sewing and craft projects together like we used to, we now stay in touch and share photos of our projects and inspirations on facebook. She makes all sorts of projects with small fabric scraps, but while my quick relaxation project is bookmarks, her thing is making quilted potholders.
Marrietta also taught me how to be a more productive crafter and sewer. She doesn’t make just one thing at a time. Everything is an assembly line process with her, where you break the project into steps and make four of five at a time. One time in the mid-90s, she bought these doll heads and hands, plus angel wings on sale somewhere. She had an idea for angels, so we combined our supplies, since I had a lot of ruffled lace. We used clear plastic cones, then improvised more cones from some thick acetate-type stuff, which I pillaged from my husband’s stuff in the garage. Hot glue and a couple hours and we made about a dozen of those angels. I kept one, which is in the photo below:
American women took quilting in all sorts of new directions from the staid Old World and American quilting today is still alive and thriving, in fact, American quilters share, teach, and inspire each other in online forums, with videos and blogs. Below is a picture of just a few of the potholders Marrietta has sent me over the years. The Hawaiian shirt potholder, in the center, was made with Hawaiian print fabric scraps, that a friend of hers from Hawaii mailed her
.
I can trace my father’s family tree back to pre-Revolutionary War Pennsylvania, where they arrived in Philadelphia from Germany and settled in the wilds of northeast Pennsylvania. My father’s generation spoke PA Dutch at home, but very few of my relatives still speak PA Dutch. While many Americans are proud of their ethnic roots, from whence their ancestors came, the more important thing to be proud of is being an American.
America is all about believing, that within every individual, lies great potential, no matter the color of your skin, your religion, your ethnic background, whether your’re a man or a woman – in America all things ARE possible. It is the aspirations of people for millennia to be FREE, played out, writ large in our great nation.
Watching this descent into 2016 Election Hell, isn’t just a national embarrassment, it’s the culmination of decades of social and governmental decay. The Clintons ushered in a new era of politics in America, a brand of not just ruthless partisanship, but actual information warfare waged on the national media battlefield. It’s a vile brew of corrupt fundraising, vile character assassinations, vile mass media messaging manipulation, and vile mass media collusion to sell their messaging, all sold with endless manufactured polling data.
George W. Bush barely managed to win in 2000. Barack Obama took the Clinton information warfare to a more ruthless level and due to his endless racial politics, he has avoided being held accountable for the widespread corruption within his administration. The minute you criticize him, his Alinskyite foot soldiers attack with charges of racism. Every area of the executive branch is thoroughly corrupt, even the Defense Department, where narratives substitute for facts or the truth.
Hillary Clinton and her aides, who grossly and deliberately jeopardized national security and blatantly obstructed justice, were allowed to escape any accountability, because prosecuting them would expose the widespread mishandling of sensitive information by President Obama and his White House staff. Hillary Clinton represents total disdain for the rule of law in America.
Donald Trump seems intent on playing gutter politics, like the Clinton machine, but he is also banking on overt Russian intelligence interference in our electoral process, especially with the email leaks. Donald Trump represents the very worst in America celebrity cult worship.
This post began with a photo on one of my favorite books – (“War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars”, Andrew Carroll). I keep a letter by General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, the most famous American military leader in World War I, bookmarked. General Pershing suffered great personal loss, but he still gave his full devotion to serving America. His heartfelt letter to his young son, Warren, speaks to the American spirit we need to rekindle, to get our moral compass pointing toward a stronger, united American future:
“I want you to come so that you yourself can see something of the army and see something of France. I want you to know while you are still a boy something of the fine patriotism that inspires the American soldiers who are fighting over here for the cause of liberty. They are fighting as you know against Germany and her Allies to prevent the rulers of Germany from seizing territory that does not belong to them and from extending their rule over the people of other governments who do not wish to be ruled by Germany. I might add that in order to do this the German army, under orders from the Ruler of Germany, has committed most serious crimes, and for that also we are fighting in order to punish them.
I want you to see some of the battlefields of France with me, over which the American soldiers have fought in carrying out the great purpose of our people. It will enable you to realize later in life just what sacrifice means and just what degree of sacrifice our army is called upon to make and which they have made and are making bravely and courageously.”
He promised his young son a trip to France to see the battlefields and in words meant for his son only, General Pershing sums up the larger purpose, simple, poignant and meant to be private, a father trying to teach his son what we hold dear. He kept his promise to his son and here’s a photo of young Warren Pershing with his father in France.
General Pershing spoke of selfless sacrifice. His entire life was a testament to serving America first, which is a far, far cry from self-serving Donald Trump’s America First or Hillary’s endless opining of being America’s #1 victim of the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”. We need leaders who are personally willing to serve America first
This might be a serious national security issue – in fact, I feel very strongly someone in our counter-intelligence should be investigating this matter!
Today on Twitter I retweeted a tweet, just so I would have it and because it’s about something that has been bothering me since 2013: Elizabeth O’Bagy. I strongly suspect John McCain is being targeted by a hostile foreign intelligence service, to make him look bad. I strongly suspect he was set-up in 2013.
Here’s the Tweet from the afternoon (9/28) and I don’t know if this has been Photoshopped or not – BUT it is VERY peculiar.
I sure suspect that Alicia Machado Wikipedia exposure was a savvy foreign intelligence agency at work, but this crap is even worse. A person commented, “FYI Nikolaki is censored in France”.
A few years back, I was exploring “crowd-sourcing” and a “conservative” blog, The Last Refuge Blog”, which has gained a good deal of attention in this 2016 election. They had a “crowd-sourcing” format, that covered, among other topics, the black grievance industry, of black political leaders/activists sensationalizing police/black issues. To make a long story short, I was fascinated with the amount of information they churned out, but I wondered about the fact-checking process and I wondered why they allowed overtly racist comments. I posted some comments on Islamic history from the Islamic Golden Age (YES, there really was an Islamic Golden Age). My comments were blocked and I ended up being banned.
When Trump entered the race, something bizarre happened with The Last Refuge blog – it became the Trump Polling Update Center, with constant streams of “Trump winning in all the polls” propaganda and campaign insider information. Considering the Trump campaign has been a disorganized hot mess, I found it amazing that this blog had up-to-the-minute insider campaign news, videos, and PILES of polling information.
Sure, my questioning nature makes me consider “conspiracy theories”, but the TRUTH is sophisticated intelligence agencies around the world, run long-term programs targeting their adversaries (these are by nature “conspiracies” – in that these secret activities are meant to undermine or harm their adversaries). So, it’s no big deal to me, to be dismissed as a “conspiracy nut”, because I just keep digging for information.
The Russians are reported to be engaged in a high-level of interference in our election.
Back in the Fall of 2013, I became curious about the push by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) to urge President Obama to get engaged in the Syrian civil war. The argument was we needed to stop ISIS and arm the “moderate Syrian rebels”. Why on earth we would jump into a civil war, with Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya in chaos, Egypt trying to regain stability after the Hillary/Obama backing of the “mostly-secular” Muslim Brotherhood, eluded me. Then there was the basic question: what is the end game plan if ISIS and Assad are defeated? The truth is Syrian rebels were varying shades of Islamists – none actually “moderate” and all of them, even though they fight each other, when push comes to shove, they will work together against Americans.
A young woman emerged from the ISW, as the subject matter expert on Syria, Elizabeth O’Bagy. Everyone from Jonh Kerry, to John McCain, to the media bought into O’Bagy, because the ISW put her forth as The Expert on Syria. O’Bagy, did not have a doctorate degree, she was the political director of a lobbying group called the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF). She wrote a paper on Syria, in 2012, for the ISW and in her bio, she listed her thesis topic as “female militancy”. Since the ISW never even vetted her educational credentials, I doubt they looked closely at her background. She was exposed as having lied about her educational credentials and was fired by the ISW. Senator John McCain, turned right around and hired her, as a legislative assistant.
O’Bagy and her SETF lobbying group escorted John McCain to Syria, in the Spring of 2013, on a “secret” fact-finding trip. A photo of John McCain started floating about the internet, from his trip to Syria, with allegations that he was posed with Palestinian/ISIS terrorists, in fact, the president of the SETF, was reported to have ties to Palestinian terrorists. McCain’s staff dismissed this claim. BUT John McCain turned right around and hired this woman, who had just been exposed as having lied about her educational credentials. I’ve written extensively about O’Bagy, starting on September 3, 2013:
I and many other journalists (google Bryan Preston and Patrick Poole at PJ Media) have written extensively about O’Bagy, the Syrian moderate mirage, and the reliance of top government officials on this woman’s “information” over VETTED US intelligence information:
“At another hearing that week, Kerry responded to a lawmaker’s skepticism about the existence of moderate rebels by saying that only a fraction of the fighters were “al Qaida and the bad guys.” Maybe 15 to 25 percent, he estimated.
“There is a real moderate opposition that exists,” Kerry said.
If the skeptical lawmaker was reassured, professional Syria watchers were not. Many were aghast at what sounded to them like either dangerous naivete or an outright lie, given that the U.S. government’s own internal assessments had found from very early in the conflict that al Qaida-style extremists were playing an outsized role in the rebel fight.”
As regular readers know, I am #NeverTrump&NeverHillary. These two are both morally bankrupt and the top-tier deplorables in America. Watching them try to outsleaze each other is exactly like many of us expected it would be – scorched earth all the way. Most of the mainstream media are busy dissecting Trump completely, while busily carrying water, aiding and abetting, and even doctoring photos for hard news to boost Hillary. They are corrupt. They were corrupt in the GOP primary too – giving Trump, a NY liberal, BILLIONS in free media to run his GOP Insurgency and sitting on negative Trump stories. They were helping Hillary, because Trump looked to be the easiest candidate to beat. He is as corrupt as the Clintons and in a fitting bit of irony, he has mastered the Clinton scorched earth too.
Hillary used this Hispanic beauty queen as her narrative on Trump being a deplorable misogynist. Do I believe Trump is a vile jerk, who says beyond the pale things? Absolutely! However, if you want to present someone as the paragon of offended feminist virtue and assert that Trump “fat-shamed” this beauty queen, well, he gets a chance to defend himself. Ed O’Keefe, at Washington Post Politics, posted the above, CNN video, on Twitter from 1997.
Hillary brought up beauty queen, Alicia Machado, at the debate last night, whom she claimed Donald Trump fat-shamed. In case this former Miss Universe’s, Wikipedia entry is changed, I need to post this mess that’s there now. Apparently, the Hillary and media fact-checkers didn’t bother. Here’s the entry on her personal life:
In January 1998, Machado was accused in court of aiding in an attempted murder in Venezuela, in a shooting for which her boyfriend at the time was indicted. According to the Associated Press, Machado was accused in court documents in Caracas of driving the get-away car for her boyfriend from the scene of the shooting. She was not indicted due to insufficient evidence, although her boyfriend was indicted and the judge stated that there were no alibi witnesses for Machado.[3][4] According to Reuters, the judge presiding over the case subsequently accused Alicia Machado of threatening to have him killed: “she [said] she would make sure, using her friendship with the president (Rafael Caldera), that my career as judge is ruined and then she would kill me.”[5]
In 2005, Machado was engaged to baseball star Bobby Abreu. During their engagement she was on the Spanish reality show La Granja, where she was filmed on camera during the show having sex with another member of the show, Spanish driver Fernando Acaso. She was expelled from the show and shortly after the video surfaced Abreu ended their engagement.[6][7]
On November 24, 2010, BBC Mundo confirmed that Machado had to close her Twitter account after writing a tweet that called for “peace between the Chinas”, referring to North and South Korea.[10] Her gaffe unleashed a rush of insulting posts, prompting her to go offline. “I now have a lot of psychopaths on the account and it’s best I start another one, kisses,” she signed off, according to Venezuelan media.[11]
In May 2016, Machado became a U.S. citizen.[13] She has spoken out many times against Donald Trump, who, during her year as Miss Universe, she claims called her “Mrs. Piggy” because she gained weight and “Mrs. Housekeeping” because of her Hispanic background (according to the Clinton campaign).[1] Trump said: “She was impossible” and that “[s]he was the winner and you know, she gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem. We had a real problem. Not only that, her attitude, and we had a real problem with her.”[14]
I added the bold-type. One can only wonder if she was properly vetted, since she just became a proud US citizen.. She might be the perfect Trump poster girl (pin-up?) for his immigration plan, LOL.
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