Category Archives: Politics

June 23, 2016 · 11:28 pm

Waking up to reality

As I wrote late last night, I believe Trump’s response to Hillary’s speech, throwing everything including the kitchen sink at her, was totally misguided and completely played into Hillary’s hands.  Trump doesn’t have the media selling his spin for him anymore and he and his campaign staff, such as they are, don’t quite grasp that the media that fawned all over him and gave him endless free media to attack 16 Republican candidates has switched sides now.  He will be on the receiving end, while the media carries water for Hillary.

Politico ran a story about Lester Holt at NBC, which exemplifies why lobbing every bit of dirt on Hillary that they could muster backfired and this approach will dig Trump further into a  hole.  The same liberal media that helped bury Hillary’s email server for the last year, to run Trump’s 24/7 “GOP Insurgent Show”, is now playing the role of defending Hillary’s “honor”.

Anyone with a functioning brain knows that if the Russians, Chinese and several other foreign intelligence agencies were remotely competent (they are), they have all of Hillary’s emails from her unsecured server.  Just a few days ago, the news reported that the Clinton Foundation computers are believed to have been hacked by the Russians, so it seems inconceivable that they would not have hacked into Hillary’s private unsecured email server.  However, Trump came under attack from Lester Holt:

Donald Trump faced down multiple queries from NBC News’ Lester Holt in an interview airing Thursday over evidence that Hillary Clinton’s personal email server had been hacked, potentially by foreign governments.

“You also made the claim that her email, personal email server, had been hacked, probably by foreign governments, suggesting that,” Holt said in an excerpt released from the interview, as Trump interrupted, “Well, you don’t know that … it hasn’t been.”

Holt followed up, “What evidence do you have?”

“Well first of all, she shouldn’t have had a personal server, OK?” Trump responded. “She shouldn’t have had it. It’s illegal. What she did is illegal. Now she might not be judging that way because, you know, we — we have a rigged system. But what she did is illegal. She shouldn’t have had a personal server—”

Holt interjected, inquiring as to whether there is “any evidence that it was hacked other than routine phishing attacks.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/trump-clinton-email-server-224738#ixzz4CSkKFqwl
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

Imagine if the liberal media had brought this level of investigative journalism to bear for the past year, actually hounding Hillary for answers about her home-brew email server….    She wouldn’t be the Democratic presumptive nominee and if Trump hadn’t been given billions of dollars of free media to throw the GOP primary into chaos, he likewise wouldn’t be the presumptive GOP nominee.

If Trump were even remotely a likable person, I would feel sorry for him being played like this, but he’s not and he and the Clintons deserve each other.

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Filed under General Interest, Politics, The Media

June 23, 2016 · 12:48 am

Humor would work better

Trump delivered his speech in response to Hillary’s speech today.  He used a teleprompter and stayed on message.  Yes, really, with Trump that’s the low-bar we’re reduced to – his mouthpieces think it’s a big accomplishment that he stayed on message.  The speech struck me as a sledgehammer to clobber the listener, as much as Hillary, with an endless barrage about her history.  She came out afterwards, in a speech in NC, and played the victim on another vast, right-wing conspiracy.

Today’s speech showed Trump is trying to improve at giving prepared speeches and that’s a plus, but Trump seems flat and bored reading speeches and staying on message, which bodes poorly for a President.  His speeches should reflect more about him than be one long character assassination of his opponent.  He needs to find some personality of his own, that moves beyond bragging about himself or name-calling.

The “let Trump be Trump” chorus have it all wrong here, because Trump needs to be presidential and  his behavior should be to the level befitting the highest office in the land to even be considered for this position.  Public decorum is a must and with that in mind, here’s where I differ with all the pundits who cheered his red-meat attack today.  I think Trump could have done himself more good if he came out and talked in-depth about his vision for America, with some gibes at Hillary that were humorous or clever.  Does he have any charming or witty stories to make him seem less of a vulgar jerk? This overloaded speech, with  every piece of dirt on Hillary packed into one speech, detracted and actually trivialized the most serious ones, like her email server, which put national security at risk.

Trump’s speech played to her speech from yesterday and she has him dancing to her tune.  He responded and that’s a defensive posture.  Watching him deliver this speech, his followers cheered it as proof positive Trump can “act” presidential, but he seemed miserable “acting” presidential and that should concern his big name GOP enablers.  I feel sure the old, real Trump will burst forth again and they will need to keep their slop buckets at the ready to do damage control and continuously clean-up after him.

Above is a video of a President delivering humor that made everyone laugh, even his political adversaries.  Hillary delivered her speech perfectly and her speechwriter(s) had some clever lines, like the one about Trump writing many books, but they all end at Chapter 11.  That was a very clever line and Hillary delivered it perfectly.  She pulled it off, despite being a very humorless, wooden political hack, so she’s working to soften her image as “America’s Grandma”.

Trump seems most human talking about his kids and that’s where he seems genuine and he would come across much better if he quit with the relentless character assassinations, shared some amusing anecdotes and showed a bit of charm, wit, humor.

 

 

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June 21, 2016 · 11:41 pm

Hillary’s perfect triangulation strategy advances

Today, Hillary perfectly delivered a kick-ass speech on the economy.  Yep, even though all her cringe-worthy policy ideas, in truth, remain as old and tired as she is, whomever wrote this speech masterfully hit a home run and perfectly advanced the Clinton triangulation strategy.  She played the calm, doting America’s grandma, determined to keep America safe from that far-right, LOOSE CANNON, Donald J. Trump.  Who could have seen Hillary playing Bill Clinton’s triangulation strategy ….perfectly?

FOX News, formerly the host of the 24/7 Trumpathon, broke in and covered her speech live and in its entirety.  Ahh, yes, that glorious “free” media went to Hillary today.  Trump will now be playing defense and he will be in the same position he put 16 fellow Republicans using the Clinton’s scorched earth for his now defunct “GOP Insurgency Show”.    The only thing Trump will be doing is trying to defend himself against a barrage of media attacks. You can’t be “winning” if you are stuck playing defense.

The news that Trump fired Lewandowski yesterday, might give Trump’s big name GOP enablers hope that Trump can turn his disorganized, unprofessional, inept, clueless Potemkin campaign into a top-notch campaign, prepared to compete with the Clinton machine juggernaut, if anything was going right in Trump World.  Today’s news  heralds  more bad omens, of Trump’s  FEC campaign filing and the realization that his campaign is, ahem, prepare to be shocked…….. broke, a train wreck, filled with red flags to possible financial shenanigans.   The Atlantic reports:

“Another excuse for poor fundraising is that Trump is wealthy enough to self-fund, so that his shortcomings in collecting other people’s money matter less.  “If need be, there could be unlimited ‘cash on hand’ as I would put up my own money, as I have already done through the primaries, spending over $50 million dollars,” Trump said in his statement. In theory, that is true—though doubts persist about how much money he really has, and will continue until and unless he releases tax returns. Trump loaned his campaign more than $2 million to cover expenses, but that’s classified as a loan, rather than giving the money. In fact, one the most striking things about the report is how much money the campaign is paying to Trump-affiliated companies. The Mar-a-Lago Club, which he owns, received more than $432,000 for catering. Tag Air, which Trump also owns, got $350,000 for use of planes and helicopters. Even Eric Trump Wine Manufacturing pulled in $4,000. Trump Tower received rent for office space.

On occasions like this, it’s hard not to think of Trump’s comment in 2000: “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” Politico points out that Trump spent $208,000 on hats, while “by comparison, the campaign spent only $48,000 on data management and $115,000 on online advertising.” Those “Make America Great Again” hats are great merchandise, and useful for spreading the Trump brand. Data management? Not so much. But Trump has loaned himself more than $40 million now, and if he can’t ramp up his fundraising, he’ll never be able to pay himself back.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/trump-fundraising-bad/488003/

Yes, the great businessman, billionaire, only hired the best people, CON MAN Trump is exposing that the emperor has no clothes, yet one wonders how long his apologists will continue to be 5th Avenue Loyalists.   His political hack big name GOP enablers will head for the lifeboats soon if the Trumptanic takes on much more water, I suspect.

The sinking feeling in my stomach, as I listened to Hillary’ calm, perfectly modulated speech, left me angry at the GOP leadership, those gutless wonders who stood by and let this fraud takeover the party and burn it to the ground.  In fact, most of those GOP politicians in Washington were getting on board the Trump train, even as the large donors have been holding tight to their wallets.

My loyalty is to America and the Constitution before any political party, but with the Obama “fundamental transformation” moving at warp speed to destroy the US military and undermine the rule of law as much as possible in his last few months, it seemed like the only two institutions with any hope of protecting and defending America and the rule of law, were the US Armed Forces and the GOP, which still preached fidelity to the Constitution.  Of course, the GOP feckless and hollow promises are why Trump’s “GOP Insurgency” even gained support in the first place.

Perhaps, the GOP leadership will orchestrate a counter-insurgency and dump Trump at the convention or perhaps  Hillary’s campaign will be derailed by the email server fall-out.

“Perhaps”, we are doomed without a miracle.

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Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics, Public Corruption, Uncategorized

June 20, 2016 · 12:38 am

BREXIT explained

Across the pond, the Brits will be voting in a few days on whether to leave the European Union. I saw JK had posted this video link in comments on another site, so I watched the entire video, which runs a little over an hour.  

If you want to understand the views of the British people supporting BREXIT, this video explains it quite clearly.  

If you ever wondered how does the EU really work, this video does a smashingly good job explaining the nightmarish bureaucratic maze that is the EU and how it doesn’t work.

If you want to know why Trump-style tariffs and a trade war with China would be disastrous for America, well, this video explains that too.

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June 19, 2016 · 12:04 am

“Anything but Islam” again…

The “anything but Islam” obfuscation from the Left, in the wake of the Orlando terrorist attack continues to rapidly spread, carried by vicious alien brain-eating spiders, which have taken over liberal rags and mass media.

Let’s see this radicalized Muslim whackado murdered 49 people and injured scores of others, while proclaiming his allegiance to ISIS. Nope, his motive couldn’t be his radical religious beliefs, that would make perfect sense.

So, let’s review the lies. Right off the bat they insisted the terrorist’s motives weren’t clear, but they were sure he wasn’t motivated by his Islamic faith, afterall, just because this guy had become very devout in his religious practices, had expressed support for Al Qaeda and Islamic-inspired attacks against Americans is no reason to link his jihadist beliefs to actually committing jihad. That would be Islamophobic to make that connection. “Islam is a peaceful religion”, you must repeat….. or else.

Then it was the plethora of attacking evil guns and the alleged Christian hate against gays is so pervasive that somehow Christians are responsible for this Muslim who pledged allegiance to ISIS and waged jihad. When you believe the insanity from the Left couldn’t get much worse, well, a political writer, Amanda Marcotte, at Salon explains the real cause:

In the wake of the horrific shooting in Orlando that left 50 dead, a political struggle is forming on whether to define this act as an anti-gay crime or an act of radical Islamic terrorism.

The answer, it’s quickly starting to seem, is both of these, and more. A picture is quickly starting to form of who Omar Mateen, the shooter, was. His ex-wife describes a man who was controlling and abusive. A colleague says he was always using racial and sexual slurs and “talked about killing people all the time.” Both his ex-wife and his father describe him as homophobic, with his father saying he spun into a rage at the sight of two men kissing. He was clearly fond of guns, having not one, but two concealed carry licenses. He worked at a security firm, a career that can be attractive to men with dominance and control issues. He was investigated by the FBI in 2013 for making threats to a coworker.

There is a common theme here: Toxic masculinity.

Every time feminists talk about toxic masculinity, there is a chorus of whiny dudes who will immediately assume — or pretend to assume — that feminists are condemning all masculinity, even though the modifier “toxic” inherently suggests that there are forms of masculinity that are not toxic.

So, to be excruciatingly clear, toxic masculinity is a specific model of manhood, geared towards dominance and control. It’s a manhood that views women and LGBT people as inferior, sees sex as an act not of affection but domination, and which valorizes violence as the way to prove one’s self to the world.

For obvious political reasons, conservatives are hustling as fast as they can to make this about “radical Islam,” which is to say they are trying to imply that there’s something inherent to Islam and not Christianity that causes such violence. This, of course, is hoary nonsense, as there is a long and ignoble history of Christian-identified men, caught up in the cult of toxic masculinity, sowing discord and causing violence in our country: The gun-toting militiamen that caused a showdown in Oregon, the self-appointed border patrol called the Minutemen that recently made news again as their founder was convicted of child molestation, men who attack abortion clinics and providers.

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/13/overcompensation_nation_its_time_to_admit_that_toxic_masculinity_drives_gun_violence/

There you have it……… “toxic masculinity” made him do it.

Ahem, Ms Marcotte, as to your assertion: “they are trying to imply that there’s something inherent to Islam and not Christianity that causes such violence.”, let me answer that in one word for you – JIHAD. That is what is inherent in Islam that is NOT in Christianity.

My head is going to explode… where is my fainting couch?

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

June 18, 2016 · 3:12 am

Who said subtitles can’t be funny?

Steve Hayward posted this video. Here’s the link to the his article.

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Filed under General Interest, Humor, Politics

June 16, 2016 · 10:02 am

After Orlando: Clinton 2.0 scorched earth unleashed

I’ve hesitated commenting on Orlando, so first here’s the political situation. In the wake of the Orlando terrorist attack, while Donald Trump added another talking point for the Democratic party, the rest of their script remained predictable, totally dishonest, deliberately deceptive and a messaging marvel to behold. While Bernie still clings to a few threads to be relevant, for all intents and purposes, the Dems are unified and Orlando appears to be a watershed event to get them all marching in lockstep.

Donald Trump’s cheerleading section, as usual, applauded that he was saying things no one else will say, touching on common sense themes like a moratorium on taking in Muslim refugees, in light of fact that despite Jeh Johnson’s disingenuous assurances, there’s no way to thoroughly vet refugees from Iraq and Syria, due to the political instability, ditto that for Somalia and ISIS stated they will use the refugee crisis to get ISIS militants into the US.   Trump made a common sense point, except with the terrorist in Orlando, he wasn’t a refugee or an immigrant, but a born and raised, American citizen and Trump’s common sense policy would not have prevented this terrorist from being in the US.

Then Trump played identity politics, as he tried to use the tragedy to shamelessly  and clumsily pander to the LGBT community. If there were any doubts that his Sunday tweets and comments, instead of winning over gays, backfired and helped galvanize the fractious Dem minority and special interest groups, well just look at how fast the LGBT community smacked down Trump’s pathetic political pandering.

Trump could have demonstrated some calm, resolute leadership, but instead it was the same old loudmouth bragging, callous and bizarre tweets, insensitive remarks and the same old need to eclipse any story, no matter how grave, with himself.  He sent a tweet on Sunday thanking his followers for congratulating him for being right on terrorism , trying to capitalize on being seen as a tough and resolute leader in a crisis, but by yesterday he looked to be desperately searching for an angle to be heard over the Dem talking points… Without any warning he knifed the NRA in the back, completely overlooking the politicization of terrorist watch lists by the Obama administration, when he announced he supports restricting people on terror watch lists from buying guns.

Since Monday, Republican leaders, as usual, seem unsure of how to deal with Donald Trump, who spends more time sabotaging and undermining the GOP than he does fighting Hillary Clinton.  So, many GOP leaders are avoiding the press….. abandoning the media field and allowing the Dems to control the 24/7 news cycle, unchallenged.

Sure, President Obama came out and blasted Trump in a very petulant, hyper-partisan manner. Hillary came out and bashed Trump more than she addressed the terrorist attack too, but the difference is the media pivoted and moved in unison to get in line with the Dem talking points. A main Dem talking point IS “Trump is a loose cannon”, so they were completely on message.  The cable news networks, not even Trump central (FOX News), were giving Trump 24/7 control of the news cycle, to relentlessly repeat his talking points, ergo he’s sinking fast.  Trump has no plan other than his “GOP Insurgency”. He has no viable ground game and added to the GOP disunity, his campaign remains disorganized and internally an internecine battleground too.

All of this was completely predictable watching how he operated rather than grasping at his buzz words as if they were actual complete ideas and policies.  If you want to figure out how people will perform any job, first gauge their character and then watch how they operate and by operate I mean see how they handle different tasks and challenges, how they utilize resources, both staff and material resources.  Good leadership is mostly about the leader’s character and how he operates with his team.  Any person who engages in vicious character assassinations within his own party, plays people against each other constantly, delights in publicly humiliating people and most of all makes every issue almost entirely about his own vanity will be a terrible leader.   Even Trump’s delight in being rude speaks to a person who has no respect for others.  As I’ve said many times, Trump, in every discernible way he operates, screams “toxic leader”.

Lest, anyone doubt it, the Clintons 2.0 scorched earth/mass media saturation strategy moved into full assault mode and it is a take no prisoners ruthless offensive to destroy Donald Trump and the GOP. The unified messaging coming from President Obama, Hillary, Dem Congressional leaders, on down to the LGBT community activists, who smacked down Trump’s attempt to woo them, should alarm GOP leaders. The liberal media moved into general election high gear too, spinning Orlando as the result of Christian bigots fomenting “hate” against the LGBT community and gun violence. This messaging marvel, where the Dems circulated their talking points and got all their spokespeople and the media on message within hours, should clue the GOP leaders in that the undisciplined, raving primary Trump, who loves to launch character assassinations is the real Trump, who would still rather attack fellow Republicans. He’s going to be a disaster in November.

So, when the LGBT community threw his shallow pandering back in his face, Trump pivoted and tried to steal some of the Dems thunder by attempting to steal one of their main their talking points on gun control. He made this abrupt policy change without even so much as discussing his new epiphany beforehand with GOP leaders or the NRA.

Perhaps more GOP leaders will abandon the Trump train, but at this point either with Trump as the nominee or going through the fractious process of dumping him at the convention, Trump’s “GOP insurgency” leaves the GOP a smoldering rubble. That Trump, without so much as a phone call, could sign on to a key Dem gun control plank in their messaging blitz should finally clue in even the most deluded Republicans that Trump is a total fraud and loose cannon.

Absent the FBI playing some wild card, Hillary, corrupt, vile and politically tone deaf, sits well-positioned to win by a huge margin in November against Donald Trump.

The other stunning takeaway from Orlando is the Dems hate Republicans more than they care about Islamist terrorism – that’s a reality Republicans still don’t understand and that reality is a topic I want to broach in another post.

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

June 13, 2016 · 1:15 pm

A tougher ISIS plan

My thoughts on what to do about ISIS follow.

We need to use military force to a purpose and “crushing” terrorists, who are widely dispersed in more than 80 countries isn’t feasible. The military force needs to be about taking away territory controlled by ISIS and insuring a political situation on the ground follows that does not embrace radical Islam. The proponents of “go crush them” almost invariably are the same ones who don’t want us getting bogged down in the ME again and a common refrain is “we go crush them and come home”, except that is a ridiculous idea, because unless there’s a dramatic, long-term political change on the ground, Islamic terrorist groups keep springing up in the ME.

Trump tough talking points aren’t a strategy, they’re his usual mindless bluster and what he thinks will play well in the polls. Trump decides merits on the polls – national security is just a huge popularity contest to him – if most people agree with it, it’s “great”. You want to see how Trump really operates, just peek at the internal chaos inside his campaign or that he’s at the general election stage and still doesn’t have a viable ground game or that none of his plans is ever well-thought out with clear, coherent planning. You want to see what Hillary is like, well,  just look to the carefully focus-group tested parsing she engages in as she tries to find the right words to sell herself. In real world tests of foreign policy chops – look at the mess in Libya as exhibit A on her foreign policy “successes”.  Both of them are unfit to be commander-in-chief and both lack any real understanding of foreign policy. Their foreign policy ideas are always about what words and phrases will poll best, not about sound national security strategy.

I’m all for profiling and being tougher, but tougher needs to be smart and it starts with a comprehensive national strategy that incorporates every tool of national power to deal with the real problem and that’s not primarily ISIS, it’s a much larger threat – the collapsing Islamic civilization. As their civilization keeps falling apart its tremors and eruptions keep impacting us more and more. Some of our strategy needs to be offensive, but a lot of it also needs to be defensive to protect Americans from the fall-out. We can’t go in and fix Islamic civilization, so we need to use our military options carefully and where we have regional leaders working with us to stabilize the situation on the ground and we need to choose the areas we expend military force to ones that are of vital national interest to us.

My views are controversial. Frankly, jumping into the hot mess that is Iraq and Syria impetuously isn’t smart imho. The Russian are there, the Iranians are there – we will only get played for fools if we rush into Syria. In Iraq, Obama walked away and Iran now is the driving force behind the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government relies on Shia militias to fight ISIS and those militias are funded and controlled by Iran, so our military actions are bolstering Iran in Iraq these days, not doing a thing to defeat ISIS. The Shia control in Baghdad assures the Sunni insurgency (ISIS and other Sunni tribal groups) will continue. Let Iran and the Russians cope with that. We need to use our military force where it benefits us and rushing into Syria is a strategic trap where we will end up being the dupe.

I would engage in some tough foreign policy talks with regional leaders and Russia and China, before blabbing about carpet bombing ISIS or destroying ISIS. That entire “moderate Syrian rebels” malarkey was an hostile foreign propaganda coup and that the Institute for the Study of War was a prime spreader of that should raise a lot of red flags. It was a wild goose chase, because vetted US intelligence knew early on that the Syrian rebels were radicalized early and all of those groups were Islamist – some more Islamist than others, but nonetheless Islamist. These “experts” pushing for us to rush in and destroy ISIS are 3rd rate checkers strategic players. Putin would love to see us bogged down in Iraq/Syria, as he and the Chinese make military moves elsewhere and we are unable to respond. We need to wake-up and play the “diplomacy” game like chess players and quit being the 3rd rate checkers player on the world stage!

Obama has gutted our military and infested it with social engineering policies designed to destroy military cohesion and effectiveness. We need to rid the military of Obama’s policies and rebuild our military. We aren’t ready for some ramped up ISIS war or carpet bombing for that matter. That’s the real truth and that alone should scare every American. We need to rebuild our military

I think we should use the laws already on the books and place a ban on immigration from several radical Islam hot bed countries due to the political instability in those countries and then we need to have an across the board standard that every immigrant or refugee coming into America needs to be thoroughly vetted. Obama wants to let in 10,000 before he leaves office. It goes without saying we should have secured our borders all along – why we haven’t is a national disgrace. Putin, Soros and and other American enemies are fueling this entire “refugee crisis” – they are using it to destabilize Western countries – that is obvious. All sorts of “NGOs” are set-up from the fake passport shops to locations all along the route into Europe to feed, clothe, direct the flow of “refugees”, provide them cell phones, etc. There are Soros-funded groups in America to promote the “refugee” policy here too, but even more alarming is many Christian charities get big bucks from the federal government to provide “refugee services” and they are propaganda machines too.

As to domestic policing – how about we untie their hands and let’s quit with all the Islamophobia hype and focus on finding these ISIS terrorists and connections in America. We can do that while still protecting the civil liberties of all Americans.

Here’s an excellent big picture piece by Daniel Greenfield on the civilizational crisis in the Islamic world:

Islam’s Violence is Rooted in Instability

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

June 9, 2016 · 3:52 pm

A “great” American history revisionist

Aside from his many talents and all-around “greatness”, joining the ranks of Elizabeth Warren and her Cherokee heritage and Hillary being named after a world-famous explorer,  we can now add American history revisionist  to  Donald J.  Trump’s  resumé.

From www.redstate.com:

“WAIT! Donald Trump Is To Give A Speech Near The Site Of A Civil War Battle He Made Up?”:

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Next week, Donald Trump announced that he was going to give major campaign speech and had selected the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, as the venue.

The event planning then played out in front of reporters.

“I don’t even know where yet. I think we are gonna do it in Washington at the club,” Trump said about delivering the speech at Trump National Golf Course in suburban Virginia. “Let’s do it at the club,” he said, turning to Hope Hicks, his top press aide. “I wouldn’t mind doing it on the Potomac.”

“I almost would love to do it right at the flag,” Trump said.”

The Redstate article references a November 2015 NY Times story:

STERLING, Va. — When Donald J. Trump bought a fixer-upper golf club on Lowes Island here for $13 million in 2009, he poured millions more into reconfiguring its two courses. He angered conservationists by chopping down more than 400 trees to open up views of the Potomac River. And he shocked no one by renaming the club after himself.

But that wasn’t enough. Mr. Trump also upgraded its place in history.

Between the 14th hole and the 15th tee of one of the club’s two courses, Mr. Trump installed a flagpole on a stone pedestal overlooking the Potomac, to which he affixed a plaque purportedly designating “The River of Blood.”

“Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot,” the inscription reads. “The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.’ ”

The inscription, beneath his family crest and above Mr. Trump’s full name, concludes: “It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!”

Like many of Mr. Trump’s claims, the inscription was evidently not fact-checked.”

Further on in the story, several Civil War historians are quoted refuting Trump’s claim that this was the site of his made-up “River of Blood” and he is quoted responding:

“Mr. Trump repeatedly said that “numerous historians” had told him that the golf club site was known as the River of Blood. But he said he did not remember their names.

Then he said the historians had spoken not to him but to “my people.” But he refused to identify any underlings who might still possess the historians’ names.

“Write your story the way you want to write it,” Mr. Trump said finally, when pressed unsuccessfully for anything that could corroborate his claim. “You don’t have to talk to anybody. It doesn’t make any difference. But many people were shot. It makes sense.””

That’s his story and he’s sticking to it…

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Filed under American History, General Interest, Military, Politics

June 8, 2016 · 2:44 pm

The winds of war blow hotter

My favorite analogy about geopolitical strategy is one which I don’t remember where it came from or I would attribute it appropriately. There’s a pack of dogs standing around and suddenly one dog steps away from the pack, puts his nose high in the air, ears perked up, and hones his eyes far into the distance, sensing danger.  The other dogs continue to amble about unaware of the threat.  That dog who sensed danger early is your geopolitical strategist.

Hopefully, there are a lot of US national security dogs who’ve stepped away from the pack and are looking at the internal US political situation, a leader-from-behind CINC totally clueless on geopolitics, an American public distracted by a sideshow presidential election and a US military that has been ruthlessly gutted by President Obama.  Let’s hope they are stepping into America’s most determined adversaries’ shoes and gauging our adversaries’ escalating military provocations accurately.  If you were going to escalate matters, you would choose a time when America is completely distracted.  The polarized political climate leaves America  ripe for internal factionalized hostile agitation propaganda efforts and staged riots to divert attention to domestic,  rather than foreign issues.

Time to keep scanning the far horizons and staying alert!

The last few months of escalated Russian and Chinese military provocations should have some US national security dogs on alert – things are brewing.

U.S.: Chinese jet makes ‘unsafe’ intercept of Air Force plane

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Politics