“Availability cascade” is an academic term that basically has to do with manufacturing public opinion approval for a policy of some sort. Any kind of policy at all. In fact, think about how you might make an implausible idea seem plausible in public discourse, an idea no one ever even considered before. Next, think about …
Source: What if there was an opinion cascade about pet rocks?
Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, The Media
The Washington Post kept it classy with an editorial cartoon that mocked Ted Cruz’s children, portraying them as political monkeys for their father. But standing with the tradition that children are off limits when it comes to political pot shots, Cruz hit back with a cartoon of his own with a more appropriate subject matter:
Source: Ted Cruz Hits WaPo with Cartoon of His Own | Truth Revolt
Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Humor, Politics, The Media
Before this story gets buried by the liberal media, today FOX News reported:
“EXCLUSIVE: An intelligence community review has re-affirmed that two classified emails were indeed “top secret” when they hit Hillary Clinton’s unsecured personal server despite a challenge to that designation by the State Department, according to two sources familiar with the review.
The sources described the dispute over whether the two emails were classified at the highest level as a “settled matter.”
The agencies that owned and originated that intelligence – the CIA and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency or NGA – reviewed the emails to determine how they should be properly stored, as the State Department took issue with their highly classified nature. The subject matter of the messages is widely reported to be the movement of North Korean missiles and a drone strike. A top secret designation requires the highest level of security, and can include the use of an approved safe.
The sources, who were not authorized to speak on the record, told Fox News that while the emails were indeed “top secret” when they hit Clinton’s server, one of them remains “top secret” to this day — and must be handled at the highest security level. The second email is still considered classified but at the lower “secret” level because more information is publicly available about the event.”
So, when the Clinton spinmeisters twist and turn, to deflect and confuse the issue – she did receive TOP SECRET information on her unsecured private email server in her home.
Filed under General Interest, Politics, The Media
Here’s a typical journalist’s report from the Washington Post – this one from June 2015, on a group of refugees’ flight from Aleppo, Syria to Gmünd, Austria. The group consists of 4 adults and one child. So, the reporter, Anthony Faiola, in vivid prose, wrote about the hardships and harrowing experiences, on “The Black Route”, but I kept jotting down the dollar amounts listed and this does not include food or lodging, only the cost of transportation paid to smugglers and the cost of a smartphone, which is how the refugees communicate with each other and the smuggling network. Here’s the list:
$275 smartphone (article states that is almost 3 months of the one refugee’s pay)
$2,000 per adult (4 adults) paid to Ukrainian smugglers to take them from Turkey to the island of Tilos
$12,000 amount paid to a Syrian smuggler, whom they say absconded with their money
$330 for a 52 mile taxi ride from Thessaloniki to the Macedonian border
$550 each to pay a smuggler to get them from Hungary to Vienna, although the story says they only had half that amount by this point
Now they didn’t pay that $550 each, because that plan fell through, but excluding that $2,750, the story indicates over $20,000 was paid to smugglers to get 4 adults and 1 child to Austria.
$275 was almost three months pay for one of those men, a deliveryman in Aleppo. His niece, another of this group worked as a kindergarten teacher, then there are two other young men, whose occupations aren’t mentioned and the one child. Where did they come up with over $20,000 for this journey? These are the kinds of things I wonder about.
So many of these stories don’t add up, both in dollars and cents, but also in common sense.
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics, The Media
The mainstream media does a terrible job at gathering the back story required to make sense out of many stories that burst upon the national conscientiousness. Partisan political interests cast deep, dark shadows on the truth and as time passes, public interest wanes and the media moves on, unaware of their failure to ever report the full truth.
Let’s start with the oh so glorious Arab Spring, the media couldn’t talk enough about a few years ago. What happened to the Arab Spring? Where has “democracy” or “freedom” flourished in the Mid-East?
Libya stands as a western intervention where reporting failed to flesh out even the basics. Who exactly were the Libyan rebels facing “genocide” as Hillary Clinton states? Which European leaders were pushing to oust Gadaffi and who vetted the intelligence, which the Obama administration used in making the decision to intervene? To this day, details remain sketchy at best. Then Benghazi in the messy aftermath and still more questions persist. Hillary Clinton stated weapons were being gathered up by the US in a security effort, but what happened to those weapons? Where were they being sent? What exactly was the CIA mission in Benghazi? After that hearing where the Democrats declared everything had already been covered in previous investigations, well, I wonder why was ambassador Stevens meeting with a rebel leader from an Al Qaeda affiliate? Congressman Pompeo showed that photo and Secretary Clinton stated she had no idea, but doesn’t that information seem important in light of the attack on the US facility later that day by Al Qaeda-like rebels?
Syria also remains awash in myths and outright lies, so let’s start with the assertion that we should have intervened sooner in Syria? What justification was there for the US to intervene in a civil uprising in Syria at the outset? Of course, as time wore on the Obama administration played the genocide/gross human rights violations card and pushed intervening on the Samantha Power “responsibility to protect” mantra, but truly who were these “moderate Syrian rebels”? The entire reasoning process used with the regime change proponents seems very flawed, so can anyone explain this in simple terms?
The recent dramatic increase of refugees seems like an orchestrated event to destabilize Europe. Who is behind it and who is funding the effort? All of the photos and videos show people with Western-style clothes, coats, hats, shoes, etc. Who is providing the humanitarian assistance? Who is helping these refugees along the path to Europe? Obviously many aren’t Syrian refugees, but there’s a storyline that Assad is depopulating areas of Syria? Is this true? Today, the British Daily Mail has stories of Syrian rebels fighting Assad using Alawite women and children as human shields – packing them into metal cages and transporting them on the backs of pick-up trucks and tractor trailers, to dissuade Russian and Syrian army bombings. Are these the rebels McCain and the “Syrian moderate” proponents are supporting?
Does anyone else have questions about these US foreign policy issues?
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Politics, The Media
Assuredly the professional punditry class will dissect last night’s CNBC Republican debate at great length, so here are my amateur viewer observations.
Last night’s debate started off predictably, like the two previous GOP debates, which differ markedly from the one Democratic debate, the quintessential Hillary coronation, where the entire exercise was to airbrush her scandal-ridden, lying image into the feminist icon, “first woman President”.
So, the questions began last night – personally insulting questions designed to destroy each candidate’s credibility, questions designed to incite attacks between the candidates and sadly, Kasich, Trump, Bush and Rubio played along, until Ted Cruz, the candidate who was passed over quickly in the previous two debates, stepped into the fray and neatly turned the tables on the moderators, who appeared to be left-wing shills.
After that the debate actually got into some interesting policy exchanges and although I doubt, Cruz or Christie can ever garner the GOP nomination, let alone win in a general election, they assuredly are two of the smartest minds in the GOP field.
Trump toned it down somewhat and stayed quiet a good bit of the time, so he walked away unscathed. In fact, the only candidate that seemed to diminish as the debate wore on was Fiorina, whose chances to speak sounded like rehearsed campaign sound bites and boring boiler plate partisan attack lines.
Huckabee had the best line of the night comparing the government to that US Army blimp that tore loose of it’s mooring and reeked havoc tearing down power lines yesterday.
All in all, I thought the GOP candidates finally got a chance to demonstrate why the GOP has much more to offer than Hillary Clinton, with her recycled liberal mantra from 30 years ago. Frankly, her ideas sound almost as old, tired and repetitive as her lies. You’ve got to hand it to her though, the mainstream media remains loyal and it looks like there is no level too low for them to sink to help her campaign.
Filed under General Interest, Politics, The Media
Just another response to a comment at Charles Krauthammer’s article at National Review. Same old, so save yourself the time and skip this, if you’ve read my other posts on this topic:
Bill Befort Saturday, October 17, 2015 12:36 PM
Krauthammer certainly seems to have attracted a negative fan club of isolationists and antisemites. I particularly like the guy who goes on with such relish about a nuclear Iran coming to dominate Israel; it doesn’t seem to occur to him that, if he’s right about Iran’s intentions, Israel — already a nuclear power — could decide right now to “exercise influence over Iran as a condition of Iran’s existence as a country.” That would be unprovoked Zionist neocon aggression, I guess. Anyway, there seem to be a surprising lot of NR readers who have already absorbed and internalized Obama’s retreat from the world. Paulistas, I imagine.
susanholly Saturday, October 17, 2015 3:55 PM
The issue is which news and intelligence sources are being used by the media and Dr. Krauthammer to form their opinions and the FACT is that 50 intelligence analysts in CENTCOM came forward to say their reports were being doctored to buttress the Obama administration narrative (propaganda) that his strategy to defeat ISIS is working. The neocon establishment places its trust in places like the think tank, Institute for the Study of War, run by Kimberly Kagan, which has put out several iterations of a map of the Syrian rebel forces that are incongruent to say the least and everyone – the media and the US State Dept seem to rely solely on these ISW maps, without question. This happened in 2013 also when a young Syrian “expert”, Elizabeth O’Bagy became the accepted font of knowledge on the Syrian rebels. John McCain and Sec of State Kerry quoted her by name and the mainstream media accepted her “expertise” without question – relying on this unknown young woman rather than VETTED intelligence information from our megabucks intelligence agencies. Dr.Krauthammer is not aware he has allowed his ideology and false information to impair his judgment. I certainly would like to know the names and groups whom the ISW relies on for up to date information from Syria and also a full investigation on whom our CIA actually has been arming in Syria.
Along with the Syrian “moderates”, I would like a full investigation into who were the Libyan freedom fighters from Benghazi, whom Hillary Clinton argued faced genocide and whom she used as the rationale for toppling Gadaffi, when the US military knew that Benghazi and Derna were hotbeds of Al Qaeda and radical Islamists.
You do realize some of those Benghazi freedom fighters attacked the US embassy in 2012, right? And the foreign fighters from Libya fighting our soldiers in Iraq hailed from that very same hot bed area of Benghazi and Derna. Facts matter!
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Politics, Terrorism, The Media
Let me be clear that both LTC Tony Shaffer and GEN Jack Keane gave an accurate military analysis of what’s going on with the Russian airstrikes, but Shaffer was on Megyn Kelly last night and Kelly went on and on about the Russians hitting targets other than ISIS, which is the Obama administration narrative. Shaffer explained the true nature of the targets and laid out the Russian moves objectively. GEN Keane, likewise explained the military moves objectively with Chris Wallace on Sunday. Look at both maps in the background, both from the Institute for the Study of War. The map on the Kelly show has that entire rebel area where the bulk of the strikes occurred as solid yellow which is the rebel controlled area, not ISIS. The map with General Keane shows ISIS areas in green ISIS-controlled areas within that yellow rebel zone and the largest Russian target area is a green area to the north of the regime-controlled area. The Kelly show is the more recent aired show with the less accurate map – why?
Image from Megyn Kelly’s Twitter- https://twitter.com/megynkelly/status/651207283574083584
Image from http://politibrew.com/politics/3298-general-jack-keane-how-russian-airstrikes-will-impact-region
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Politics, Terrorism, The Media
Listening to Sean Hannity dissect what is going on in Syria with Donald Trump is too much stupidity for me to take. So, I’m going to take a break from my Pinterest and looking at cute pine cone projects to make with my granddaughters this weekend and give a quick assessment of how I see matters.
The US policymakers keep talking about training “Syrian moderates” to fight ISIS for us, but that strategy is flawed from the get-go. The “moderates” want to oust Assad, NOT defeat ISIS. This problem keeps cropping up when we train them, they don’t want to fight ISIS – they want to fight Assad. Here’s a quote from this analysis by Charles Lister (UK Telegraph September 15, 2013):
“Because of the Islamist make up of such a large proportion of the opposition, the fear is that if the West doesn’t play its cards right, it will end up pushing these people away from the people we are backing,” he said. “If the West looks as though it is not interested in removing Assad, moderate
Islamists are also likely to be pushed further towards extremists.”
Though still a minority in number, ISIL has become more prominent in rebel-held parts of Syria in recent months. Members in northern Syria have sought to assert their dominance over the local population and over the more moderate rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA).
The aim of moderate rebel fighters is the overthrow of their country’s authoritarian dictator, but jihadist groups want to transform Syria into a hard-line Islamic state within a regional Islamic “caliphate”.
We train them and want them to serve our strategic mission, but theirs has a different order of battle – with Assad as their top mission. It will never work. You can’t force people to accept your view of the enemy. Even “moderates” will share much in common with ISIS as far as religion, ethnic identity, etc. Why this is so hard for the arm the “Syrian moderate” proponents to grasp, I don’t know.
The push that Assad must go, while ISIS is still fighting and occupying territory makes no sense either. We would just be leaving another power vacuum for radicals to fill or more chaos. Putin is right on propping up Assad and taking out radicals first. Hopefully he can take out enough quickly to force a ceasefire from the less radicalized rebel factions and then we should work on defeating ISIS – seriously working on it. If the area can be stabilized the only way Assad will go is through diplomatic pressures being brought to bear, so that the millions of displaced Syrians can return home.
The Assad regime leaving should be a second tier concern truthfully – stability is more important. If we fixate on arming “Syrian moderates” and politicizing every rebel target Russia hits – we will become irrelevant, because they are doing and we are Monday morning quarterbacking – it’s a weak position. We need to figure out things to do – heck, Iraq is wide open for strategic ideas and we know Iraq from top to bottom. For the time being (as long as Obama is president) Russia and Iran will advance their big game – we can’t really alter that, because Obama and Kerry are clueless nincompoops. Likewise, publicly whining about Russia’s long-term geo-strategic aims won’t help matters either. What we need are good strategies for fighting ISIS that showcase our military strengths and aren’t trapped by echo-chamber ideas. We’ve got to have more options than arming “Syrian moderates” and “safe zones” -we’ve got the finest military minds in the world!
Oh, one more thought on the Russian’s targeting and keep in mind they taught geography back in the dark ages when I went to school – The Russians and all their big assets are in “western Syria”, they began hitting rebel (I wouldn’t bet money on whose who on the moderate scale in Syria) targets closest to their big assets. You would want to establish a larger safe zone for your military stuff first, right? That makes sense, don’t you think? ISIS controls eastern parts of Syria if this map is even remotely correct. The Russian moves made perfect military sense from what I can tell.
Okay, it’s back to Pinterest for me and more crafts and recipes. I found a recipe for gingerbread cupcakes with cream cheese frosting – now doesn’t that sound perfect since the weather’s a little cooler?
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Politics, Terrorism, The Media
Since the news of Hillary Clinton’s private email server came to light, her narrative has evolved to cover her designer pant suit clad butt. Let me just be blunt and to the point, she is a deceitful, bold-faced liar! The FBI continues to investigate, her enablers in the media continue to run interference and damage control for her and the damaging information and leaks continue to pound her pathetic denials of any wrongdoing into dust.
All we know just leads to more questions, which I will toss out some of mine and if you have more, please just toss them into the comments section.
With about a third of the emails she had turned over to the State Department released, hundreds contain classified information and a couple contain top secret signal intelligence, which possibly exposed ways and means of our most sensitive intelligence-gathering. Don’t forget she deleted tens of thousand of her “personal” emails, the yoga schedules and Chelsea’s wedding stuff, which are not part of these being released by the State Department. Due to her mendacity, those tens of thousands might be many more. She mentioned a “careful process” to produce her work-related emails that she turned over to the State Department (some 55,000 pages). Who assisted in that sorting and copying process and did all of those involved have the proper security clearance to handle that information? She gave her lawyer a thumb-drive(s) of the emails, which the State Department rather than securing, they delivered a safe for the lawyer to keep in his office. What sort of security did that provide in his law office?
Her loyal spin doctors, whom I have referred to as sewer rats, since 1998, continue to dodge and deflect to obfuscate with lame lines like, “other Secretaries of State used personal email too, but that’s a flimsy lie. They used personal email at times, but none used personal email exclusively to do all of their State Department business and NONE set up some insecure, home-brewed server, from which to run their own personal email account, which she had other close aides use too. She unilaterally made this decision to avoid following the FOIA rules and to hide her email activity. She took no precautions to safeguard her private server in a manner consistent with requirements for classified and sensitive information.
The Server – knowns and unknowns:
When did this home-brewed server actually come into existence, because initial reports state 2010, but a report in recent days states her server was added to a server system President Clinton already had? When did the Clintons acquire that server system, who maintained it and where was it located? Were these servers on the same system during her entire tenure as Secretary of State and housed in their home in Chappaqua or were they in an office in downtown Manhattan, as some reporters deduce? Who set this server system up and who maintained it?
Everyone has an IT person they turn to fix computer stuff. I turn to my son who is a computer software engineer for a aeronautics corporation, so why did Hillary Clinton turn to some start-up IT? With experienced security and IT personnel right in the State Department, why didn’t she consult them? After Sidney Blumenthal’s email was hacked in 2013 according to news reports she turned to Platte River Networks.
Then there’s a myriad of questions of when was her server wiped clean, who wiped it clean, where was that done and who all had access to her server throughout it’s existence? All of these people had access to unsecured top secret information. Did Hillary Clinton do anything to make sure those people were cleared for access to this information? She set up this private server, so she is ultimately responsible for classified information, to include top secret signal intelligence being passed on that server.
The bigger picture:
We’ve heard endless concerns about the NSA storing meta-data on every email sent and received in the US. Can’t they find her missing emails and aid the FBI in gathering that missing information? Of course, the Russians and Chinese (among other countries) intelligence services, assuredly have every last email from her server and the Russians and Chinese most definitely are better record-keepers than the US, so her emails will come back to haunt US intelligence for years to come. That top secret signal intelligence contained information that could expose intelligence assets and methods to our enemies too.
It only gets worse as information dribbles out. She would have been far better to own up to her private server and admit she made a terrible mistake, but instead she will brazen her way through and lie, lie, lie. But I want one simple question answered;
Has her security clearance been revoked yet?
http://www.nationalreview.com/classified-rules-hillarys-disregard-for-them
http://20committee.com/2015/08/26/hillarys-mounting-emailgate-troubles/
http://20committee.com/2015/08/24/emailgate-gets-worse-for-hillary-clinton/
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics, The Media
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