Category Archives: The Media

A GOP Post Mortem

Out of a field of 17 GOP candidates, you can track which ones the Clinton machine wanted out of the race most, by the relentless scorched earth character assassinations and as soon as any of them got even a bump in the polls, Trump moved to brand them and the mass media saturation with relentless chatter of talking heads and polls,  aided and abetted him. Drudge was an amazing agitprop agent, but FOX News too – all in for Trump, except for a short span where FOX wobbled. They are so in for Trump that they’re like Soviet apparatchiks reading prepared scripts. FOX is a foreign-owned corporation – not loyal to America or American interests – they work to fuel constant agitprop among the right.

So, there were two so-called “insurgents” left and Cruz positioned himself early on in the campaign to cater to Trump.  It took his wife being viciously attacked before he finally took a stand.  So don’t be surprised, despite the attacks on his wife, if Cruz, who had made no friends in the Senate and stands on principle, will come out and proclaim he’s all in to unite the party. Don’t be surprised if Trump makes a deal with Cruz.  Too many strange things in the Trump and Cruz campaigns.

Toss out all the psychological claptrap and look at the nuts and bolts, because it will make figuring out the cast of characters go much faster. The most tightly knit groups are first the family, then the ethnic and religious groups people are reared in. Political ideology is a potent factor too, but it’s power only exerts a great deal of influence over the most ardent believers. The first three, family, ethnic and religious ties are much tighter and harder to break.

Here’s what I see:

Obama – loves Alinsky (a far-left radical, founder of community organzing, btw) community organizer in far-left activist central, Chicago,  parents Marxists, grandparents Marxists, father also a rabid anti-colonialist, mentors , all Marxists, into black liberation theology, connected to many Marxist activists, like Van Jones and closest adviser is Valerie Jarrett, a Chicago far-left activist, whose parents were Communists.

Hillary – far-left radical Alinskyite with a Muslim Brotherhood companion, husband an epic philanderer, epic corrupt politician, but he’s likely the most brilliant political strategist in America.  She sucks at strategic-thinking and diplomacy, but she’s a world-class liar and at plotting revenge.

Trump – the biggest dupe in American history, “great” crony capitalist, got conned by Clinton operatives, the very same ones who introduced the “war room” to American politics, with such lovely strategies to take American politics into “information warfare”…. endless agitprop to divide America into hostile, frothing enemy camps – BLM and neo-nazis set to clash in Cleveland…

And then there’s

Cruz – whose father “might” have been a communist and the Clinton scorched earth team (Trump’s real political advisers, likely one step removed and being run through a surrogate – Lewandowski is my guess) dug up this Lee Harvey Oswald story (they don’t just find the skeletons in the closet, they dig up the dead and examine the bones).

I’ve always thought the Clinton sewer rats who latched onto Bill Clinton, a pretty centrist good ol’ boy, operate like the old East German Stasi or KGB in their “intelligence-gathering”. They introduced “information warfare” into American politics and their spin/talking points which is mass media saturation strategy (military swarming strategy in an information battlefield), impeachment brought out their mass media saturation coupled with ruthless character assassinations and take no prisoners assault (scorched earth – a war crime in real war).

Trump launched scorched earth against the GOP and GOP candidates. All supposedly with barely any staff or money spent – that is a YUGE lie.

Cruz’ gimmick with the Trump supporter who had all the snappy comebacks the other day – looked kind of fake to me.  It reminded me of the Trump supporter in Chicago holding a “Vets for Trump” sign, who had this whole soliloquy prepared about Reagan coming to his school as kid – seemed like he was scripted.  Just like that leftist plant at a Trump rally in the Fall with the prepared memes.  This stuff is staged agitprop and the media rolls with it – no questions asked – not even, what is your name.  That Chicago Trump supporter said he wasn’t a vet – someone just gave him a sign and that FOX reporter talked to him a long time.   The media sells this nonsense as part of the manufactured  controversies to keep America roiling in anger and  division.  During the Baltimore riot mess, the street thugs stood down and there is Geraldo on the street talking to thugs and praising them – they were anarchists, and sure sounded like they were given their talking points, when the public reaction to the rioting started turning on them.  That black grievance agitprop is orchestrated in collusion with the Obama administration…   The media just runs with stuff, no fact-checking or even getting a name, they turn this man-on-the-street staged agitprop into national conversations on TV news punditry to create a national dialogue….

I avoid the feelings and psychobabble or the endless dissection of polling data and focus groups crap and try to identify the messages being sold and how often they are repeated to create opinion cascades.  The Left is down to hashtag messaging, while the Right still tries to “win the debate” – you can’t win against a mass media saturation swarming with talking points – talking points are like  the commercial jingles that get into your head and you can’t forget them.  There’s no “debate” to be won and Trump gets this – he is a salesman and his comment about  how he could  shoot someone on 5th Avenue and his supporters would remain loyal or his comment that if his crowds started leaving his rallies,  all he had to do was start yelling “build that wall”………he’s a con man who knows his marks.  He never bothered to come prepared to “win a debate” – he was there as a hit man, prepared for  character assassination hits.  The media sold his character assassinations as winning though.  The GOP candidates played checkers and Trump was playing sophisticated information warfare.  Once Rubio and Cruz tag-teamed him and made him look stupid – he bailed on debates.

And out of all the campaign spokespeople in America, Trump who hires the “best” picked Katrina Pierson – a Tea Party volunteer for Cruz’ Senate campaign, a woman with ethnic slurs in her social media, and a woman who was alleged to have had an affair with Cruz.  How on earth did she come to Trump’s notice???    Just like I believed that Fields/Lewandowski controversy was staged.  I suspect Cruz ,the other insurgent, might be a YUGE fraud too- a candidate who moved ever further to the right of Trump and although he’s a brilliant man – positioned himself so far out of the mainstream, kept the wacky religious sideshow with Beck going, and used bizarre rhetoric that he knew was inflammatory “carpet bombing” …   In IN things got too strange – the Carly announcement, and even Heidi Cruz, knowing the sensitivity about Trump hyping the Cruz birther issue, she was saying Cruz is an immigrant???  If a Cruz/Trump pact emerges the GOP should be very worried – their party was taken over by the two “Insurgent” campaigns.

Sure the party politics in DC is a sea of corruption and needs to be cleaned up – but Trump is a crook – that is what crony capitalism is – buying politicians and he’s an extreme narcissist, who can be easily played – just tell him he’s “great” and he loves you…  Cruz – I am not sure what he is – another mystery like Obama. Cruz was down on the border handing out teddy bears to those swarms of illegals with Glenn Beck, then he’s tough as nails on illegals now – just like Trump was for and against illegals, abortion, and his enablers sell him as he doesn’t have any ideology  – he’s just all about “Make America Great Again”….

Look, this scorched earth stuff is planned by ruthless Leftist professional operatives who already had this research dug up long before the 2016 campaign even kicked off. They track every move these candidates have made from birth and they send operatives to talk to people, to pour through court records, and every government file they can get their hands on – they aren’t like Republican opposition researchers. Trump had perfectly timed character assassinations with coordinated media stories planted to fuel it, but a shell of a campaign staff  (a Potemkin Tower). Trump initially had Roger Stone, one of the dirtiest poltiical operatives in Republican politics and even he choked on Trump’s scorched earth after the “bleeding out of her wherever”, so Trump was getting advice elsewhere and on the Right, I can’t imagine him finding much deeper into the sewers than Stone.  He ran Carville/Begala scorched earth…

The bizarre antics of Cruz, the least liked candidate and most far-right, was allowed to be left standing as the other “GOP Insurgent” and now they will “unite” the party they took down.  Cruz’s campaigning with the aid of bizarre religious antics and Glenn Beck’s wacky prophecy crap, made even many on the religious right uneasy, but he was left standing in this scorched earth campaign???  It’s was all staged agitprop.  I still believe that Tea Party movement should be carefully investigated, along with all these Soros-funded agitprop on the Left.  Bad vibes from them.

Then there is Kasich, hanging around, as some last-ditch effort at trying to save the party from the hostile takeover perhaps , BUT reports say he has gotten funding from Soros.

In the larger big picture, there were two hold-outs to Obama’s “fundamental transformation”,  which is aided by hostile foreign intelligence infiltration. – the US Armed Forces and the GOP – both are being dismantled at a rapid pace – and volatile ethnic and race clashes are being deliberately fueled.

The GOP leadership should demand the FBI investigation expand the Clinton Criminal, Inc. investigation to this deliberate sabotage of the GOP primary. There is nothing to be gained by getting behind Trump, a vile corrupt crony capitalist, who either knowingly used scorched earth against his “fellow” GOP candidates or he was duped into using it, a strategy that would assure a weakened GOP in the general election.

#NeverTrump&Hillary
#NoMoreScorchedEarth
#SayNoToPublicCorruption

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Relentless repetition

 

I wanted to respond to JK’s comment today with a little retrospective.  JK said:

““The GOP leadership uniting and insisting on an FBI investigation “

Oh yeah. Easy now that you mention it.

I think I’ll send the editors of National Review an email. Piece o’ cake since there’s a whole two months to, git ‘er done, as they say. Maybe we can even get Trey Gowdy to head up the oversight.”

Back in October 2015, I wrote:

She sailed through that hearing and the Dems on the committee never wavered from their talking points: “this hearing is a right-wing witch hunt” and “this is costing the American taxpayers $4.7 million.” A few of those Dems, to include Congressman Cummings, groveled so shamelessly, that’s it’s obvious they wanted to secure enough Clinton brownie points to merit consideration for cabinet posts in her administration

She knows the Obama Justice Dept. is not going to indict her. Bill Clinton must have done some really nasty backroom brawling to get Biden to come out and make that Rose Garden speech – Obama has surrendered to the Clintons. With Biden dropping out and the GOP field kept in constant disarray by Trump, sadly, the path is clear for Hillary.

Expect the Dems and their aiders and abettors in the press to talk about the wondrous Thomas Pickering and this ARB committee (Accountability Review Board) for several days to help bury this Benghazi hearing. That committee did not keep any written or videotaped record of any of its work – there are no transcripts or video of witnesses that appeared before this committee and as you heard yesterday one member (retired Admiral Mike Mullen) tried to tamper with having a witness testify to Congress .  That witness was Charlene Lamb – the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, who denied a request from the top diplomatic security officer in Libya to retain a 16-man military team for diplomat security – (http://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/14/sen-boxers-latest-take-on-benghazi-mirror-mirror-who-cut-the-funding-for-diplomatic-security/comment-page-1/ ). – that’s your fair and impartial ARB Hillary and the Dems mentioned over and over and over. It is also Mullen who described that the ARB committee kept no record of its proceedings – just went off of personal notes to produce its report (pages 21-22): http://oversight.house.gov/wp-…

Every dem on that committee did what Trump has done for 10 months – repeated the same short talking points  for 11 hours straight.  They did not deviate.  Then the media and some high-profile big name peeps did interviews to dismiss the Republicans and then the news media declared Hillary won and the polling got driven home that she “won”.  You can’t break through mass media saturation.  It creates a messaging wall – those talking points are what gets driven home.  That is the only thing most people remember – it is mass media brainwashing!  Watch any dem on TV – they repeat their talking points as often as they can and they circulate these talking points to a virtual army of media folks – TV, online, they even have hordes of them on comment threads, they were in those Excite politics  message board back in 1998.  The liberal media colludes to facilitate it.

You can dissect how Trey Gowdy did, but no Republicans can get their message through this wall on any issue- unless the far-left liberals and Democrats want it to get through.  Any Republican could give an airtight case on anything and it will never get through this messaging wall.  The Republican PACs and the other campaigns spent millions on ads, but without that mass media saturation, dominating the 24/7 news cycle, and the constant repetition of  winning in the polls (I would love for some researcher to count up how many times Trump has said he is “winning in the polls”  – It creates an opinion cascade – people believe he is winning, so they get behind the winner.  No one rushes to get behind a “loser”, which the media repeated endlessly too – they carried Trump’s talking points non-stop.

 

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Trump already built a wall

Time for the GOP leadership to unite around demanding a FBI investigation into how the Trump campaign came to be running scorched earth against 16 other Republican candidates. It is a rigged game that takes collusion with mass media elites to pull off this strategy – billions of dollars in FREE media was given to Trump. Trump can spew about the millions in paid ads other Republicans spent against him, well, the truth is no amount of paid ads can defeat a candidate running scorched earth/mass media saturation, because they will never gain enough mass media saturation to make a dent against it. The scorched earth/mass media saturation assures that the 24/7 news cycle is all focused on whatever those using it are selling. It’s the Clinton talking points spin (lying to the American people) on steroids.

The mass media saturation is the military strategy of swarming played out on a mass media battlefield – it creates a messaging wall that can not be broken through. It’s large scale mass brainwashing more at home in totalitarian regimes, where tyrants control the media. The Clintons colluded with their liberal big media elite friends  to control the media in America. Trump might have FOX in the general, a foreign-owned media corporation, but then again he may not. The American owned big media is all liberals. The mass media saturation strategy was developed by far-left Alinskyite Marxists.

Sorry, any presidential candidate who runs the Carville/Begala scorched earth/mass media saturation strategy is a CROOK – it is wholesale public corruption on an epic scale. Of course, that so far only the Clintons who run Clinton Corruption, Inc. and Trump, the “great”crony capitalist of NYC have been able to carry it off should clue the GOP’s leaders in that they’ve allowed their party to be hijacked by a CROOK, just like the Clintons.

I would vote for any of the other 16 GOP candidates and even Bernie is more ethical than either Hillary or Trump, although the fact that a leftover Marxist from the 60s is even gaining traction in an American presidential election speaks to cultural collapse, in not only the Democratic Party, but in America. So, I will never vote for Hillary or Trump and I just can’t bring myself to cast a vote for a Marxist for president – I’ll be writing in in November.

Good luck to the GOP trying to unite the GOP after Trump’s scorched earth campaign, you know the borrowed military strategy of scorched earth played out on a mass media battlefield. Scorched earth is like Sherman’s March To the Sea and I assure you, here in GA those Americans whose families were vanquished in that scorched earth campaign, even today, have not forgotten. Trump can never unite the GOP, he just blew up 16 other candidates and the party’s principles, but be proud he has the morals of the Clintons.

#NeverTrump&Hillary
#NoMoreScorchedEarth
#SayNoToPublicCorruption

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A thought to ponder

Carville/Begala scorched earth is the military strategy of scorched earth (a war crime under the Geneva Conventions btw) juxtaposed to a mass media battlefield

Mass media saturation is the military strategy of swarming juxtaposed to a mass media battlefield

Combined, they have been ruthlessly used to divide America into hostile, warring factions.  Perhaps it’s time to figure out the driving force(s) behind them.

 

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GOP coup in Trump Tower a YUGE fail

Roger Stone and Trump’s big name GOP enablers convinced  Trump to hire Paul Manafort, a big lobbyist, to put together a delegate ground game for Trump and to try to transform Trump into a candidate who “acts” presidential enough to win in November.  I described it as the coup in Trump Tower, to wean Trump away from his scorched earth strategy, a strategy  run on vicious character assassinations, which are knowingly, willingly and relentlessly covered and discussed by the media to saturate the media coverage – on TV news, on online politics sites, and even down to Disqus comment threads at news sites.

It is a rigged game of racketeering and influence-peddling AND it is WHOLESALE PUBLIC CORRUPTION at the highest levels of America’s  political and corporate elites (especially those in the media elite).

The Clinton machine introduced this scorched earth/mass media saturation into  American politics and used it ruthlessly to get Bill Clinton through impeachment.  Trump, with the willing and knowing collusion of media elites, perpetrated this wholesale public corruption.  All the way back in August they decided to go all in on the Trump mass media saturation:

“Last August, Moonves even foreshadowed the oncoming media-induced Trump when, in a CBS quarterly-earnings conference call, he declared, reportedly to applause: “The coming election cycle will clearly ‘Trump’ anything we’ve ever seen before.” Perhaps this would be a good place to mention that Les Moonves is also a self-declared Clinton friend. In 2001, CBS quoted Moonves as acknowledging, “I’ve had numerous chats with President Clinton over the past few years. . . . He is a friend of mine.””

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432258/donald-trump-media-they-use-him-make-money-help-hillary

While I can’t prove whether Trump is a media Svengali and figured this strategy out on his own, was duped into it by the Clintons, or is actively playing the Trojan Horse to hijack the GOP primary, I can say, with absolute certainty, after being personally burned by this scorched earth strategy during impeachment and warily studying and analyzing it since then, that for this strategy to succeed takes mass media saturation and that means collusion with the mass media to carry it out. This strategy also takes a great deal of intensive, professional opposition research to dig up all the dirt and Trump’s supposed inexperienced, skeletal staff assuredly does not have the ability to coordinate this sophisticated of a strategy and frankly, Donald Trump is not a “detail” man – he prefers selling big ideas and activities that fan his massive ego  – like hours of media fawning over him, thousands cheering him at staged rallies, even late-night Twitter encounters with his Twitter “followers”.

Trump’s big-name GOP enablers, like Newt and Giuliani, and Roger Stone, being a sleazy GOP political operative of the first order and Trump’s first campaign manager, all know Trump is running scorched earth against the other GOP candidates and I guess they think they might actually be able to beat the Clintons in the Fall, believing she’s such an unlikable person, that it’s possible.  They are totally delusional.  The mass media saturation is required, a mass media that is overwhelmingly liberal, and where the media elites are  Clinton friends.  Trump was  a Clinton friend too,  even his daugther, Ivanka, is friends with Chelsea Clinton.  The scorched earth/mass media saturation strategy creates a rigged playing field, as the millions that GOP Super PACs and big money GOP donors spent in the past 10 months battling Trump’s scorched earth clearly show.  Yuge ad buys don’t make any impact against a 24/7 scorched earth dominating the mass media.

So, there was a coup in Trump Tower with bringing in Manafort, but Trump decided he’s sticking with scorched earth for now:

 

So much for Donald Trump 2.0, the sober, “more presidential” version programmed by Paul Manafort, the political guru he hired in a campaign shake-up earlier this month.

Chafing at guidance to tone down his larger-than-life personality — and irritated by Manafort’s purported self-promotion and his descriptions of the candidate as “projecting an image” to primary voters — Trump, the Republicans’ presidential front-runner, reportedly has ditched the advice.

In recent campaign appearances, on Twitter and in TV interviews, Trump has returned to the freewheeling bombast, and impolitic insults of his competitors, that seized the GOP grassroots by storm last year.

Inside the campaign, Politico reports, Trump has shifted some of Manafort’s responsibilities back to Corey Lewandowski, the billionaire’s embattled campaign manager, who was just cleared of assault charges in Florida. Lewandowsky was effectively demoted when Trump hired Manafort, a GOP insider, in part to give his insurgent campaign an air of professionalism and plot strategy for the convention.

Citing multiple sources close to the campaign, Politico reported Tuesday that Trump “is bristling at efforts to implement a more conventional presidential campaign strategy,” and has “expressed misgivings” about granting Manafort so much power within his organization.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-26/trump-ditches-more-presidential-demeanor-shifts-power-back-to-lewandowski

Scorched earth was knowingly and willingly run against the entire GOP primary field, by a NY liberal friend of the Clintons, under the guise that he was fighting the “GOP establishment” (a contrived conspiracy meme), all carried out with the collusion of the mass media elites.  The Clintons have their new and improved scorched earth 2.0 waiting for after the primary and the liberal media will gleefully run  The Trump Take-Down Show.

The truth is Donald Trump was hijacking the GOP primary and dividing the GOP into hostile camps (divide and conquer, anyone?).  Good luck to any Republicans who believe this “Insurgent” can unite the party and for anyone who accepts that using scorched earth is okay to win – well you have sold your soul to wholesale public corruption!

The only hope for America is exposure of this wholesale public corruption.

#NeverTrump&Hillary

#NoMoreScorchedEarth

#SayNoToPublicCorruption

 

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Drumpfzilla vs. the Witch of Chappaqua

After almost a year of this 2016 presidential campaign, the endless Trump theatrics and bogus allegations, replete with vile, petty name-calling and endless spin (lying) makes me disgusted not only with Trump, but also with his big name enablers.  I lost respect for many public figures in the process, especially Rudy Giuliani, who could go on national TV and proclaim that Trump behaves gentlemanly and is a gentleman. That level of bold-faced lying for political purposes rests as something I expect from Hillary Clinton, not from Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor.  The Trump demolition of the GOP continues and  rather than beat a dead horse and repeat the same mantra daily,  I’m working on some other craft projects and also some other topics to write about – hence, not as frequent blog posts.

My fervent hope is that both Hillary and Trump get fired  – she  to face charges and he as a total lying, conniving fraud, but of course, due to the state of America and the worship of celebrity, my hope rests as, at best, a forlorn one.  She will not be held to account for jeopardizing national security on an epic scale and Trump, a TV clown act, who definitely does not possess the integrity, intellectual heft, work ethic or frankly good manners to be President, just might insult his way into the White House.

How smart people can excuse his petty stream of  “Little Marco”, “Lyin’ Ted”, Megyn bleeding out of her wherever and Carly’s ugly face taunts, well, I don’t get it.  Top that with the fact that the man does not hire the best people, he doesn’t bother to do his homework, he’s corrupt and worse than that he corrupts those who follow him.  They begin to believe his lies and convoluted excuses and worse repeat them.  No one stole his delegates – he was too lazy, too cheap and most of all believed  he could ride free media buzz all the way to the nomination, so he didn’t bother with setting up real state campaign operations.

Trump’s latest RNC delegate rants repeat the same Trump pattern – he didn’t bother to prepare for debates and when he ended up looking like an ignorant ass – he walked away from the debates.  However, for months, his enablers bragged that he was different, he didn’t need to know details or prepare, as he would hire the best people, and he even set out mocking Carly Fiorina for her obvious dedicated study and preparation as a negative – boring even.  Heck, I caught myself thinking she does sound very prepared as if that was a negative, until I realized Trump was sucking me into his amoral relativistic thinking – he does that to people.  He will find a little grain of truth and use it to sell a whole truckload of lies and bullshit.  He also connives people into becoming willing participants in his vile attacks and smear campaigns, as they repeat his sleazy dirt.  Her studying demonstrated she was worthy of the job she was seeking and Trump’s refusal to follow the rules or put any effort into policy research shows he is UNFIT for the job.  He perverts, not only the truth, but people’s moral compass, as he sells you on his entitlement, due to he is rich (successful).

Now, he wants the RNC to ditch all the rules to accommodate him, all because of his own lack of planning and cheapskate campaign tactics have left him without viable state grassroots organization.  His free ride with mass media collusion is about to end and he’s now having to pay his way, which he is whining about non-stop.  The man is a fraud and worse than that, he corrupts everyone who buys into his delusional conspiracy victim-hood tripe.  One can only wonder how he will fare, if  he does bare-knuckle his way to the GOP nomination.  The media sits poised to turn on him and will unleash the Clinton attack machine.  Assuredly, they want Trump to burn down the GOP tent, as they have given Trump billions of dollars of free air time, to that end.   However, their fork-tongued, flame-throwing swamp monster, Drumpfzilla, seems to have acquired land legs and he’s as adept at “scorched earth” as the Witch of Chappaqua.   The blaze from 2016 may be one for the record books, but let’s hope that America is still left standing and neither of these two vile creatures ends up in the Oval Office!

 

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Cutting through the “fog of war”….maybe

Last weekend reports of CIA-backed Syrian rebels fighting Pentagon Syrian-backed militias emerged in numerous news reports. Here’s a LA Times report:

“Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter five-year-old civil war.”

War On The Rocks has a report with a very helpful map, which explains that this isn’t really the case in, “ARE CIA-BACKED SYRIAN REBELS REALLY FIGHTING PENTAGON-BACKED SYRIAN REBELS?” by Sam Heller, March 28, 2016. Heller reports:

“This is complicated, but bear with me. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are not a monolithic force. Like nearly every other faction in Syria, they’re spread across an archipelago of enclaves nationwide. The SDF units clashing with Syrian rebels reportedly supported by the CIA are not supported by the Pentagon —they’re from a different enclave. The U.S. military is exclusively supporting the SDF in northeastern Syria on the other side of the Euphrates River. The Pentagon-backed SDF east of the Euphrates is fighting the self-proclaimed Islamic State, not rebels with or without U.S. backing.

Allow me to explain.

The confusion around this news story is a result of wartime Syria’s jigsaw-like map of control. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the SDF umbrella under which they operate are primarily active in northeastern Syria east of the Euphrates River, where they’ve linked what had been two isolated Kurdish enclaves to form a zone of control along much of Turkey’s southern border. But they also control a still-isolated enclave west of the Euphrates River in northwestern Aleppo province called Afrin, as well as a single neighborhood in Aleppo city. Afrin remains separated from YPG/SDF territory east of the Euphrates by a long stretch of Islamic State territory that the U.S. government calls the “Manbij Pocket.”

Before February, SDF units in Afrin had periodically clashed with Arab and Turkmen rebels in northern Aleppo province, including some that reportedly receive arms via a combined intelligence cell in Turkey that includes the CIA. Then, in February, the SDF in Afrin took advantage of the chaos caused by a Russian-backed regime offensive around Aleppo city to attack the rebels from the west and grab large sections of the northern Aleppo countryside. The Afrin SDF allegedly enjoyed Russian close air support against these rebels, although they have publicly denied these reports. Some clashes have persisted since then, but the new SDF-drawn lines have mostly held.”

http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/are-cia-backed-syrian-rebels-really-fighting-pentagon-backed-syrian-rebels/

Please go read the entire article at the War On The Rocks and look at the map, which makes the disposition of the two SDP forces much clearer and  makes Heller’s explanation much easier to understand.  News agencies should spend some time trying to acquire updated, accurate maps and talk to more analysts familiar with what’s going on before running with these stories.   US policy assuredly has been a convoluted mess in the ME for a long time, but having some accurate facts from on the ground  should always be sought and might help unravel some of the media’s added knots of misinformation.

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The GOP Hostile Takeover Chugs Along

https://youtu.be/guLZo3PkZS8

 

Check out Rudy Giuliani describing the vulgar, vile Donald Trump at 31:09 on this video – the lies are limitless from Trump apologists.  Giuliani described Trump as “gentlemanly” — the man tweeting in public about Megyn Kelly bleeding out of her wherever  is really a gentleman in private….  yeah right!  So, this post is going to be a recap and some thoughts on the GOP Primary Insurgency.

Last Spring the 2016 race looked like an easy GOP victory when Hillary Clinton’s private email server scandal broke. Coupled with truly terrible campaign PR, from the initial video launch to the multiple efforts to relaunch her campaign, things looked dire in ClintonWorld. The GOP line-up, on the other hand, looked like a field of many talented Republicans and then there was Donald Trump. The media created this “Year of the Insurgent” meme and while Sanders gets mentioned as being part of that meme, despite being a “Washington insider” down to his bones, for the most part the term has been a badge of honor worn by Donald Trump and the media saturation has been on Trump, not on Sanders.

Hillary, with the help of Bill Clinton’s arm-twisting and shoving his political muscle around, is poised to glide to the Democrat nomination, head held high, serenely walking up the middle, cleared by Bill Clinton’s brilliant triangulation strategy, as I’ve repeated since last Fall.  If the match-up is against Trump, she will easily win is my prediction.

The GOP is headed to a train wreck of a convention, aided by virulent protesters funded by George Soros, by a duplicitous John Kasich, funded by George Soros and then there are the two “front-runners” in this GOP campaign, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, both surrounded by enough strange antics that one can only wonder how the GOP allowed its party to be hijacked by hostile forces.

Trump’s mass media saturation for months on end last year, where the media gave him millions of dollars of free air time and where he relentlessly repeated his litany of buzz words and hollow phrases, came loaded down, not with policy, but with some of the most vicious sleaze was, in plain English,  CHEATING – it was cheating and fraud on a massive scale.  From many sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-2-billion-free-media_us_56e83410e4b065e2e3d75935

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-mammoth-advantage-in-free-media.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/03/15/the-medias-2b-gift-to-trump/

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/donald-trump-free-tv-ad-217387

And here’s the most elucidative account of the cheating:  “Les Moonves Exposes the Trump Media Game” 

Now add in what amounted to a rock star doing a national tour with big stadium venues lined up and plenty of nationalistic jingoism and scapegoating various ethnic groups, Trump attracted quite a crowd of bottom-feeders, along with plenty of poor whites trampled on during the past 8 years of a depressed American economy and Obama vast federal government expansion and intrusion into American daily life.  Trump promises to “Make America Great Again” and for millions of Americans, feeling powerless, he has become their savior.

In comments at various sites, I dubbed Trump’s most faithful, those who champion him no matter how vile, outrageous or deceitful he is proven to be, as his 5th Avenue Loyalists. They will remain loyal even if he does shoot someone on 5th Avenue and make up rationalizations to justify it.  The Trump phenomenon ranks as a bizarre study in mass delusion that I hope America breaks free of soon.

As to Ted Cruz, now here is another candidate that no matter how much I would like to unreservedly support him, based on his stated conservative principles, I can’t.  Cruz, a brilliant lawyer, who so carefully calculated avoiding alienating Trump supporters and refused to condemn Trump’s antics early on, hoping that if Trump fell, he could pull Trump supporters to his side, still publicly campaigns with the bizarre freak show that is Glenn Beck.  Beck has been all over the political landscape – Tea Party enthusiast, down to the border to hand out teddy bears to illegals, champion of George Washington’s values, and now prognosticator of religious prophecy.  Yet, Cruz still campaigns with him, in fact, Cruz traipsed down to the border in 2014 with Beck to hand out soccer balls and teddy bears to illegal immigrants and Beck highlighted all the good works of these religious charities receiving millions of federal dollars to administer these refugee and immigration services for the government.  It’s a YUGE racket of corruption! (here and here and here)

Trump corners the market on being able to say vulgar, inane, idiotic, crude, and over the top bombastic things with no political fall-out.  He could repeat an idiotic plan to send US troops to murder ISIS family members, all to sound tough, and his supporters excuse that as he either didn’t mean it literally or he, at least, wants to “do something”.  That plan was a war crime, ISIS terrorists routinely use their family members as human shields and don’t “scare” easily, but none of this matters to Trump supporters.  The Trump policy disparaged US troops, equating them to just hired muscle, who will commit cold-blooded murder without question.

Trump’s supporters hear Trump tough talk and cheer – no matter what the content!  However, Cruz is supposedly so smart, so why would he recently revert back to this language of “carpet bombing” bombast from earlier in his campaign,  knowing this language carries with it so much negative political  fall-out?  It makes no sense, just as his campaigning with Glenn Beck makes no sense.

Now, we get to the present tabloid trash phase of this GOP Insurgency, where Kasich stands smugly on the sidelines, hoping Trump and Cruz implode, basking in Soros cash and the GOP primary moves to the gutter of the Kardashians and Paris Hilton looks like a class act compared to Trump and Cruz.  Sure, there are those who will wail that Cruz is a victim and that Cruz’ wife was trashed with that Trump retweet of the unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz.   Sure, there are those who blame Cruz for the Super PAC release of public photos of bare-bottomed Melania Trump being splashed in papers.  And sure, Trump is close friends with Pecker, who now published the exposé of Cruz and a handful of women Cruz is alleged to have had affairs with in the National Enquirer.

All of the above can be attributed to Cruz or Trump, but something is rotten in this entire GOP primary – Cruz who can’t get along with anyone in the Senate and just created endless agitation propaganda stunts there and now we have Trump the reality TV insurgent tearing the GOP apart, but promising to bring in “Democrat converts” to rejuvenate the GOP…   So, how does Trump who brags about hiring the best people hire a sleaze of the first order like Roger Stone, who published a book,  “The Clintons’ War on Women” in Oct. 2015 and the “Jeb! And the Bush Crime Family” in Feb. 2016?  How did Corey Lewandowski rate as part of the pool of best among campaign managers?  And how on earth did this former twit, Tea Party activist, Cruz senatorial campaign volunteer,  Katrina Pierson, end up on Trump’s list of “best” candidates for campaign spokesperson?  And what are the odds that such a woman would be part of a National Enquirer spread meant to take down Ted Cruz?

Who doubts for a moment that despite all this “bad blood,” that if push comes to shove, Cruz would, in a heartbeat, jump at the opportunity to be Trump’s vice president, if offered the job?  Look at the transformation of the “nice” Dr. Ben Carson, who was vilely trashed by Trump, now singing Trump’s praises???  Look at Chris Christie???

Here’s a link to Trump with some golfing buddies, Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani…  Rush Limbaugh is also a Trump golfing buddy.  Bill O’Reilly another Trump long-time friend.   Geraldo, of tabloid trash TV, another long-time friend of Trump.  Jeanine Pirro – another Trump long-time friend – check out  her ex-husband, whose corruption derailed her career, btw.    She divorced him and rebounded with this FOX news gig.  Allegations abound about her own corruption as DA too, so who knows…  Trump’s corruption is epic and well-known, but his supporters airily dismiss it.

There’s a lot of strange stuff going on in this GOP hostile takeover and we haven’t even scratched the surface on who the real power players behind the scenes are in trying to implode the GOP.  Impacting soon, I’m sure!

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Filed under Culture Wars, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics, Public Corruption, The Media

Aquamarine vs. turquoise [repost from May 2015]

With too much going on in the news to keep adequate track of,  I’m waiting to filter it into a coherent blog post.  So, with all the anger and hate swirling, until I have something original composed, here’s a repost of an old LB blog post from May 15, 2015:

Aquamarine vs. turquoise

Finally, here is a post on factions, that’s so simple even a 5 year-old can understand the problem. Adults might get stuck in their rigid ideological beliefs. All beliefs are not morally equal – some when carried to extremes have horrific consequences for millions of innocent people, while others can do remarkable good for the entire world. That is the TRUTH.

Let’s say you believe very strongly that a color is aquamarine and I believe equally as strongly that that color is turquoise. Being that we both believe a different thing, many avenues are there for us to choose. We could argue and get so angry that we end up hating each other and never speak to each other again. I could feel so strongly about my belief that I kill you. We might even kill each other fighting over who is right. I could even decide that it’s not enough to just kill you, but because you’ve convinced your whole town that the color is aquamarine, it’s necessary to kill all of them too.

Of course, on the less extreme side we might agree to consult an outside expert on color to settle the matter, perhaps, we could call the Crayola Company, after all they’ve been naming colors since 1885 in Easton, PA, near where I grew up.

We might argue, passionately and often, clinging to our beliefs (as President Obama accused those rural people in PA), but in the American tradition, we could agree to disagree and at some point, shake hands and say, “Let’s go have pizza!” Presented to most 5 year-olds, the vast majority will agree that it’s stupid to kill other people just because we disagree, on the other hand most adults refuse to even listen to differing opinions. Maya Angleou, renowned poet, expressed it exactly right:

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

So, in America, being a country forged together by a people committed to INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM, we have The Declaration of Independence to ensure our God-given, unalienable rights are not infringed upon:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Sadly, in America our political partisanship swirls dangerously to extremes – where hate has swelled to such a level that many Americans choose to receive all of their news from sources that align with their political views. The hate and extremism goes so far that even the President of the United States works to divide Americans into hostile camps. Distrust turns Americans into furtive enemies, partisans avoiding those who hold an opposing view, with ideological walls being girded to lock out all who dare to disagree. Even codes are enacted in our universities to silence opposition.

We must tear down these partisan walls!  We must work to find common ground, or we can not face the threats beyond our borders.  President George Washington warned about the dangers of extreme partisanship in his Farewell Address:

“I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

So, beyond my stating it is a parental duty in a civil society to train your children to respect the rule of law.  George Washington tells you that it’s a duty to discourage extremist politics – the duties are required to be a good citizen.  I wrote a post in 2013 titled, “The duty of a wise people”. on this subject.

There was a time, not so long ago, when American school children were routinely taught about this speech and  American principles.  Sadly, today I suspect many school children don’t even know who George Washington was. And mentioning The Constitution, too often and too loudly, will get your name on a Homeland Security watch list as a right-wing extremist…

 

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Trump on “being tough”

As if we don’t have enough evidence that Donald Trump is UNFIT to ever be commander in chief, here’s a short piece by Kerry Jacoby, at the American Thinker, “Donald Trump and China: Read This before You Vote”. Jacoby recalls his memories of Tiananmen Square in 1989. He writes:

A year later, in a Playboy interview, here is what Donald Trump said of the Chinese government’s handling of the Tiananmen Square massacre:

“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” –

Then the interviewer changed the subject.

So, no, Trump fans, I will not vote for this man. Not in the primary, not in the general.

I saw the pictures. Nothing can excuse that statement.

This man is a monster. And he can’t have my vote.

Don’t give him yours. For freedom’s sake.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/donald_trump_and_china_read_this_before_you_vote.html#ixzz42V4YyxAl
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