What can be more entertaining than watching Bill Clinton wax on about honoring a commitment….. Always the dedicated political strategist to promote the wife he so loves and is so dedicated to, Bill Clinton spoke out against President Obama’s cavalier disregard for his promise that Americans would be able to keep their healthcare insurance under Obamacare. Yes, the former president, with an eye toward distancing he and his beloved wife from the giant sinkhole that is swallowing up President Obama’s second term, signature legislation, his legacy and maybe even other Democratic electoral aspirations too spoke up about keeping your word. “My, my, don’t lie” is the new Clinton political mantra…… The Clintons turned moralists, what a joke. (story here and video here)
Category Archives: The Media
WebMD receives $4.8 million to educate doctors on Obamacare
Writing about the stories that the mainstream press buries us in is not my usual choice of topic to write about, but here’s just a small part of the insidious way in which accepting large sums of money from the government can create an impression of a conflict of interest and harm a company’s reputation. WebMD enjoys a reputation as an unbiased honest provider of healthcare information. With the advent of the internet, like millions of other people, I utilize online medical information websites or as my youngest daughter says, “Everyone tries to be a google doctor.” WebMD is one of my favorite medical information websites, up until now that is. The Washington Times reports that WebMD received a $4.8 million dollar contract from the federal government “to teach doctors about Obamacare”, after WebMD ran several positive articles about Obamacare before the actual launch of the Affordable Care Act. (story here)
Eggs Benedict
Where do we go from here with our incoherent foreign policies? Under this President no single foreign policy position articulating American interests clearly and unambiguously exists, but many hazy, wisps float about, with little focus or strategic sense and as soon as you try to shine the harsh light of reality on them, into thin air they vanish. To change course requires a degree of introspection that probably lies beyond the egocentric political mouthpieces in either of our political parties and it certainly, based on the past 4+ years, presents a challenge well beyond the most overrated politician in American history, whose foreign affairs and strategic thinking abilities fall well below a level required for commanding U.S. Armed Forces and deciding the weighty issues facing our republic in decline.
Here we are, more than a decade into military engagements, in an ever more hostile Muslim world, and yet this President can’t seem to forge together any semblance of a strategically sound path forward. Certainly it’s true that he inherited a misguided, American adventuristic policy from his predecessor, but rather than coming up with some organized, collaborative exit strategy with our Iraqi and Afghan partners, this egomaniac decided to just fold completely on the ground, while simultaneously embarking on an unchecked drone war.
All those reliable wailers on war crimes and American torture during the two GWB terms fell strangely silent, which screams loudly that they were nothing but political ideologues above all else. Where are all the protestors about an out of control executive branch that escalated a drone war into many countries beyond the geographical confines of any traditionally accepted sense of a “battlefield”?
Nightwatch, the excellent intelligence analysis site pointed out some important considerations regarding President Obama’s escalated drone war in the November 7,2013 edition (report here), referring to the selection of the Pakistani-Taliban’s new leader, Mullah Fazlullah:
“Fazlullah’s election signifies rejection of Prime Minister Sharif’s peace overture. It also highlights a degenerative leadership pattern resulting from the US program of leadership decapitation. First, there is always someone waiting for the chance to be leader. Second, the new leaders are less experienced and wise than the men they replace. Third, the new generation of leaders is more extreme and theologically rigid than its predecessors. Finally, the new leaders tend to be unknown to intelligence relative to their predecessors. Decapitation is not a permanent solution to an insurgency or an uprising.”
How the American public ever went along with such an unethical program where the executive branch operates its own hit list and we silently allow even American citizens to be summarily executed based on “secret” files compiled by the executive branch, with no trial or due process, but only the President and his CIA director seeming to decide who lives and who dies and why. That a 16-year-old American kid was executed by a drone strike and the mainstream press yawned and took a pass on seriously investigating and reporting this shows how unreliable and politically motivated our “free press” really is.
Now that we’ve set the precedent for international lawlessness regarding our drone war, that fat chicken has come home to roost for this President and his CIA kill list organizer, John Brennan, as they now uneasily watch as 87 countries possess drone technology. Since President Obama set the international standard of striking with no respect to sovereignty or international norms, and his policy is a huge pile of scrambled policy eggs (Washington Times report here). He can run around flapping his wings, but he’s literally cut off his own head when it comes to moral force and setting a standard for others to follow. You know, it’s only fitting that this President will be the prime casualty of his own drone policy, decapitating his own leadership ability more than any terrorists. Scrambled, over easy, nah more like eggs Benedict, a traitor to our American values.
Filed under Foreign Policy, Military, Politics, The Media
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should
Here’s a must read opinion piece, A Judgment on Intelligence, at The American Thinker on the latest spying brouhaha over the US eavesdropping on Angela Merkel’s cellphone. The author, Herbert E. Meyer, begins, “Despite everything you’ve gleaned from spy novels and movies, the most important raw material for a successful intelligence service isn’t information; it’s judgment.” From there he elaborates on that very issue of judgment.
Filed under Foreign Policy, Politics, The Media
101 take on 1 lone bully, grab your tissues
Grab your tissues, another of those touching (more like ridiculous) stories on “bullying” about an aunt who organizes her facebook “friends”(correctly termed list of random people whom you might or not know, but what’s in the meaning of a word anyway, right?) to rally together to support her nephew in confronting his bully (story here at the Blaze ). With 101 against 1, geesh, even Napoleon would have retreated in the face of those odds. C,mon, what the heck is going on with this hyping bullying and turning it into a national crisis, where talk swirls about criminalizing this behavior? Are kids really so much more vicious than in previous times? Is the internet the catalyst? Or does the failure fall closer to home, with parents (most likely parent, actually) failing to teach and train (yes, kids need training just as much as dogs) basic manners and self-control? And will the solution come from parents doing their job or will the ever-intrusive state solution be what forces the cultural course correction? Or, as Gladius likes to phrase it, perhaps, “we are essentially doomed”.
Let’s face facts, this new media type event is becoming a typical ploy for media attention. If the aunt really thinks she helped her nephew learn a new survival skill, she’s very deluded. If the nephew thinks these clowns who showed up are really his friends, he’s in for a sad awakening when the cameras move off in search of another ridiculous antic that passes for a “teachable moment” in America these days. Let’s not forget the “reformed” bully, who didn’t want to look bad in front of the cameras, in addition to being surrounded by 101 opponents, c’mon does anyone believe this silly staged event changed his behavior for the long-term? The press eats up these absurd stories, but make no mistake they are playing to a deliberate push (“nudge” is the Cass Sunstein preferred term) to looking for outsiders to solve your problems. In the real world, you teach kids how to cope with bullies (I fought them, as my sisters can attest to how many fights I got into with bullies on our school bus), you don’t orchestrate some camera-ready moment seeking media attention. All this plays to the larger push toward sensationalizing a human behavior as old as human existence and casting it as a unique new problem in need of experts (usually in plentiful supply in academic and government circles) to impose new ways to deal with the behavior. Thus, boys who act like boys, wanting to run, play, hit and break things, become sufferers of ADD or ADHT, in need of relentless drugging and therapy and bullies present a new challenge, in need of national programs to combat. Like sheep, most Americans follow along, preferring to be led along this path that leads to relying on the government pastures and government shepherds to mind us. Yes, mean old libertybelle will continue to be the incorrigible black sheep, because I’d rather be the last voice in this American wilderness telling people, “Think for yourself!” and “This is a bunch of bs!” than to submit to having my mind controlled by this relentless stream of made-up problems with their government solutions at the ready.
Filed under Culture Wars, Education, Politics, The Media
But hey, they sound good…
That old tired proverb, “necessity is the mother of invention” should be drilled into our military planners’ heads, as evidenced by this report in the “At War: Notes From the Front Lines” column in the New York Times a few days ago, “Insights Into How Insurgents Fought In Iraq”, by John Ismay, which chronicles a detailed look at not only the types of weaponry used by insurgents in Iraq, but even more importantly the creative and inventive ways in how they used them. The article brings to the fore that there is no magic force equation, like our doctrinaire belief in “overwhelming force” being the only consideration in strategic planning. We possessed all the force advantages and insurgents came along and improvised continuously, as this article explains, using even a weapon, the obsolete RKG-3 Soviet-era grenade in creative ways to capitalize on a convoy formation weakness, whereby they engaged close-up with our convoy straggler vehicles. Ismay goes on to explain that Iraq was awash in all sorts of weaponry and insurgents made not only tactical decisions based on the terrain (often urban areas), but also were able to form strategic plans, where they adapted quickly and improvised, while we were slow at securing weapons caches.
The lessons learned from an enemy that improvises with a wide array of weapons, like in Iraq, will challenge our military planners in other hot spots, so rather than get caught up in COIN, 4th Generation War or any of the other theories, perhaps, we should take a page out of our adversaries’ playbook and put emphasis on being adaptable on the battlefield, giving commanders some leeway to improvise and get rid of some of the lawyers, bogging down our forces. The first thing we need is what they have and we are sorely missing – strategic clarity. They have a clearly understood mission, that even their most lowly suicidal nut embraces. We have media-ready sound bytes. And let’s face it, we might not be so successful in other battlefields against committed religious zealots, by showing up with suitcases of cash, trying to bribe cooperation and loyalty (not that we’ve been very successful thus far actually). We need to quit with the PC-induced military theories and deal with the real facts on the ground, which most likely will look quite different from the propagandized claptrap the political generals are spouting on TV, with dewy-eyed reporters prefacing all this crapola with: “Today I am interviewing, General Bullshitter, a renowned military expert of his generation, blah, blah, blah.” Then we get deluged in more crackpot theories, half-baked strategies that lead us nowhere………… but hey, they sound good and the clueless press and low information voters eat this up and repeat the lies.
Filed under Foreign Policy, Military, The Media
Fast forward through this fiscal crisis, pleaseeeeeeeeeee
Decisions, decisions, what Obama disaster to respond to first………… ackkkkkkk not enough first responders in the whole country to cope with his epic proportion catastrophes. Here he goes again with another “scorched earth” offensive, where he’ll find some guts to stand up for “fiscal responsibility” – make sure he keeps soldiers paid, granny from being tossed over the cliff and little American Bobby need not fear when he holds up his bowl for more government gruel, with sad eyes, begging, “Please Sir, I want some more.” Oh my God, this pathetic rerun sure gets old and some of us haven’t recovered yet from the sequestration debacle. As if that Dickens imagery isn’t enough, Obama and his team of photo-op propagandists surely have a Tiny Tim, ready to hobble before the cameras, smile adoringly at President Obama and proclaim, “God bless us, every one, but especially you President Obama, for giving me affordable health care……….”
And where are the Republicans? Oh yeah, they’re still rattling around dragging the chains, unto perpetuity, being characterized as evil, greedy, only concerned for the rich. Instead of unifying and mounting their own offensive or even defending themselves, their default position seems to be to form a circular firing squad and open fire.
No wonder most Americans avert their eyes and are watching Duck Dynasty (except for me, as I assiduously avoid reality TV). I’m stuck watching the Military channel and watching old war footage, because even my beloved History channel joined the “reality TV” bandwagon, with no history, but I can learn about truck drivers in Alaska or how some pawn shop folks make their living. Can’t we just fast forward and skip this fiscal crisis, since we all know how it ends?
A strong tonic for America
From across the pond another American serves up some apple pie baked with some very tart apples. Just last week it was Gennifer Flowers dishing up her own spicy sauce with reminiscences of the love of her life, Bill Clinton in the UK’s Daily Mail (my blog post here) and then this morning with my first sip of coffee, there’s a rambling American Pie recipe to fix American journalism by none other than, Seymour Hersh, the controversial Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist, in the UK’s The Guardian (the same paper that broke the Edward Snowden saga). You can read the full recipe here. Beware the British are coming, rofl.
Hersh derides the state of American journalism and while I’ve not agreed with many of his conclusions on various stories over the years, the one thing I do admire about Hersh is that he does his own legwork, whereas it seems like the vast majority of American journalists these days are lazy slugs, who rely upon pooled information, or even worse, they cut and paste from across the internet gathering their “facts” from many dubious sources. Sadly, our government often seems to do the same thing, as evidenced by John Kerry using the disgraced Syrian expert, Elizabeth O’Bagy’s, reporting on the disposition of Syrian rebel forces rather than intelligence from our intelligence agencies. And it appeared to me that her map became the accepted “official” lay of the land, making me chuckle. Long ago, in Grenada, my husband returned with tourist maps of Grenada, that they picked up at the zoo and the legend on that map highlighted useful facts about Grenada, as our elite troopers fought hut by hut , like the population of Grenada, highlighting it’s an island of “warm and friendly people”………. Yes, Ms O’Bagy’s map is probably just as useful at determining the lay of the land in Syria.
Love him or hate him, Seymour Hersh ends with a strong tonic for fixing part of what’s wrong with America in this Guardian story: “The republic’s in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple.” And he implores journalists to do something about it.
The epitome of macho manliness?
Oh no, I read this article about Putin’s American fans (interesting piece here at the National Journal) and then wondered, do I harbor a crush/unwarranted admiration for Vlad ??? Pssst, the article comes with more great Putin photos too;-) After all of a ten seconds reflection, with previous posts like my “Putin By A Mile”, well, sheepishly I admit – I just might. From a female perspective, it’s not that he’s a poster pin-up kind of handsome, with his lack of height and receding hairline, but he exudes machismo to the nth degree, with those bulging muscles and manly poses, frequently with a gun in hand and a large animal carcass beside him. When you juxtapose President Obama with his bumbling PC circuitous ramblings and his most daring golf poses, Putin evokes a grudging admiration in me. I would want this kind of man beside me when facing a dangerous adversary. He makes me yearn for a strong American leader, whom could and would take a stand and not waver. Perhaps, it’s not so much what all Putin is, but obviously, so glaringly what Obama is not……
Filed under Foreign Policy, Politics, The Media
Hillary might need to invest in a broom factory
In typical libertybelle fashion, my morning began with a mad dash around the internet reading headlines that grabbed my attention, perusing blogs and checking my email. Being in a rather reflective mood this morning, I pondered “truth” and to a lesser degree “accuracy” in reporting. My little Jane Harman post yesterday got me ambling down this path. We all can recite numerous occasions when our fearless leader from behind boldly charged forward to state, without hesitation, some inviolable moral stance on an issue that directly contradicts some previous inviolable stance of his. Yes, those dastardly right-wing partisans delight in digging up the videotape and playing it back, to prove that once again he “misstated”, “misspoke” or flat out “lied” and life meanders along. Now on the opposite side of the political aisle, he has loyal left-wing partisans, who feverishly tax their creative powers to create “narratives” to explain away the lies, replete with “composite” people.
Being one who loves to read dusty, musty old histories, this pondering about lying led me to wonder how much of the history we accept as “accurate” befell some previous “polishing” to restore the shine on pet political figures’ images? In recent years, the ways in which we’ve been conditioned to excuse and accept “spin” (lies) makes me ponder if we can even expect any sort of accuracy from reporters. Expecting the “truth” in a society, where actual statements and events can evaporate by sheer political pressure, even when we have videotape to easily disprove them leads me to wonder how much worse the accuracy might be before technology existed to record the actual words spoken. Many years ago, I started this personal effort to read about my pet political figures (like George Washington – can never read too much on my hero) in their own words, as much as possible. I pour over his letters and papers often and then I try to learn more about his connection to the various people he corresponded with and I try to understand how he approached life.
Compare now the task before current partisan hacks and their “polishing” task ahead, with trying to restore some shine to the images of the likes of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Whenever you think Bill Clinton’s other women exposed all there is to know about their raunchy romps, rumps and ramped up tales, they gush forth with more fantastically lurid details (along with some amazing assertions). Gennifer Flowers, in a photo-laden exposé, bares more than we want to see of her 67 year-old body in her “Ms Flowers sex advice columnist photo”, but some of the things she says bear closer scrutiny. You can read her soulful pining for Bill here in this Daily Mail piece (full exposure here). After all his women problems and the effort Hillary and her crack bimbo-eruption squad went to beating out these press fires with their brooms, Flowers asserts that Bill Clinton called her in 2005 in New Orleans and wanted to talk. That struck me as incredible, yet Flowers gushes on: she claims he’s the love of her life and despite vying for his attention, she states she would support Hillary for President too. Wow, a loyal Democrat to the end………… what’s not to admire;-) Ms. Flowers made my point about how before technology she might have been thoroughly discredited, but thanks to her clandestine phone-recordings she had tapes to prove her story, just as Lewinsky had her infamous stained blue dress.
It’s so much easier to look at long ago history with a sense of almost reverence, but with the likes of these gabby gushers’ endless eruptions poor Hillary might need to invest in a broom factory and we all will feel like washing our hands after touching this scandal again……. Yes, I almost had to reach for my smelling salts…… oh my gosh, Flowers even makes a vulgar quote about Hillary’s sex life that wouldn’t fly in an American paper, but there it is in the staid ol’ UK. I feel faint (from laughing hysterically), so it’s time to end this post.
libertybelle diaries 