December 19, 2023 · 10:34 am

On the hunt for our American spirit

This is going to be a politics blog post of sorts, but here are three pots of cherry tomatoes I stuck on my back porch a few weeks ago. I had neglected the plants in my fall garden, so these have stunted growth and the tomatoes are tiny, but amazingly the plants are still producing. Out of the eight containers of cherry tomatoes, I picked three that looked like they might survive. These are from Burpee Veranda Red Hybrid tomato seeds and I’ve had more success in my backyard with this type of tomato than any other ones I’ve tried. Hopefully, some plant food and regular watering will help them along.

Now to the politics… Looking at where America is at and somehow believing a highly contentious presidential election year and an election, are going to do a single thing to pull Americans together seems delusional to me. I expect the divides to further deepen in the next year, but that doesn’t mean everything is hopeless..

After giving a lot of thought to our American political divides, first I’d like to give my short take on the 2024 presidential election. The 2024 presidential election can’t fix what’s broken in America.

The divides in our country can’t be healed with a presidential election, that half the country won’t accept as legitimate, and that’s where we’re at. However, I still hold out hope for America and after my quick presidential election take, I’ll explain why I’m still hopeful.

If Biden were to win – Trump supporters would be screaming the election was rigged or stolen. Mayhem would ensue.

If Biden dropped out and some other Dem. candidate won – same thing Trump supporters would be screaming the election was rigged or stolen.

If Trump won – Democrats and liberals would take to the streets with a march that would make the 2016 Women’s March and #Resist look like small fries. They would not accept the election as legitimate.

If DeSantis or Haley were to win the GOP nomination – Trump would not accept that gracefully and he’d set about to attack the GOP primary as rigged or stolen and discourage his supporters from showing up to vote. If either of them won, well, the Trump supporters and Democrats and liberals wouldn’t accept that as legitimate, especially DeSantis, since he’s determined to push back against the left’s “woke” agenda. Even though some leftie mouthpieces aren’t as harsh about Haley now, if she were to win, I just harken back to how Dems and the liberal media ranted about GWB and compared him to Hitler. This delegitimizing elections kicked into high gear in America in 2000, not 2016. The Clinton impeachment scandal and that scorched earth spin war effort (Carville called it going scorched earth) set this delegitimizing and stolen election politics into motion.

Add in all the other corruption into the mix – Trump corruption, Biden corruption, media corruption and seeing how the partisan political corruption has seeped into some of our most important institutions, like those tasked with safeguarding our national security and safety, well, I just don’t see much hope of Washington or politicians changing course and trying to work on unifying America.

However, we’re not hopeless. When people talk about other things, besides politics, usually they can still find some common ground. Although, just about anything can become a contentious political issue these days, we all have the power to try to start changing that. I need to work on moving away from the politics stuff too and especially the politics news. I’ve been trying to wean myself off politics news for a while. Then I’ll get caught up in some hot button political topic and do a bunch of googling, trying to figure it out – like the Twitter Files reporting after a House hearing a week or so ago. I wrote some blog posts and now I’m done with that (for now), because nothing I write about that is going to make a bit of difference. Plus, in the bigger scheme of things, what really matters is our families, our friends, our communities.

The partisan spin information war will continue to blow hot – because a lot of media and politicians get rich and powerful by fueling it. The rest of us just get played for suckers. That’s where the hope comes in. I think that since all the pandemic drama, the protesting dramas and all the never-ending political drama, many Americans long for a return to some sort of normalcy, where people aren’t consumed by political drama constantly. Most Americans also don’t want civil disorder or lawlessness. I still believe most of America wants a return to living where there’s a bit more tolerance and definitely stronger communities. These are things that are within the reach of every community to build, if we start making the effort. 

We have the choice to buy into the media-driven and social-media driven drama or we can work at weaning ourselves away from all the hot takes, the endless fearmongering and drama and the steady stream of “Us vs. Them” conspiracy theories that try to drag us down rabbit holes of distrust and division.

My father was a kind and good-natured man. He worked hard, was dedicated to his family, and he was one of those people who never met a stranger. He did watch the news and read the local newspaper every day, but he had no interest whatsoever in politics. He was more interested in local news and what was going on around him, oh, and his garden and yard. He had a gift for getting things to grow. That’s probably a healthier perspective. 

Most of these tempest in a teapot “national conversation” stories aren’t accurate or honest reporting, are skewed to advance a political agenda and have no relevance on anything really. There’s an entire class of political/culture punditry that makes locating videos on social media of the most extreme weirdos and then hyping them as representative of “the other side.” There are a lot of people who get rich off of this – on the left and the right. 

The demise of local newspapers has also pulled us away from paying close attention to our own communities. Cell phones leave many people living almost every waking minute transfixed on the little screen, and completely oblivious to what’s going on around them. Years ago, I quipped that America could be invaded and taken over and a sizable percentage of the country likely wouldn’t notice, unless it interfered in their cell phone service.

What’s happening right around us is way more important than some “national conversation” topic drummed up for clicks or to feed a political agenda. In any type of emergency situation – what’s going on locally is what we’re all going to need to be paying attention to. If we start working on building even a tiny bit of community around us, before there’s a crisis, well, we’ll be way ahead of the game in trying to weather those storms. We also might get better at bridging divides, one smile and small goodwill gesture at a time.

America is blessed with many natural resources, but one of our most under-utilized is our American spirit. Yes, that American spirit is still alive, if we just dig it out from under the pile of fear and hate-driven news/social media “information” overload. Americans are a people with a do-gooder gene in our national DNA. We pitch in to help other people and even countries, we rush to donate money, resources, and offer a helping hand. We can rekindle the American spirit without any government studies, new laws or government spending. We don’t need politicians for this at all – we can all begin to work on it and pass it on with a smile and lending a helping hand, as we can.

Changing our attitude and rekindling our American spirit doesn’t require some big national movement or setting up some organization or group. Any of us can work on this on our own or within our families or with a few friends or in our communities. Important things in life don’t really start with just a change of heart – it requires taking those first steps to really start. You can think about something for the rest of your life, but until you get up off your butt and start doing, nothing’s going to change.

Rather than looking at everything as Us vs. Them, I’m going to work on looking for tiny bits of common ground with people I disagree with on politics and hot button issues. With Christmas days away, this might be a good thing for many people in America to try.

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December 16, 2023 · 1:18 pm

Getting back to needlework in 2024

Do people still want to read articles and stories and books or do they prefer short bits like 60 second TikTok videos or short Twitter/X posts? I think, by and large, the popularity of short content points to shorter content is preferred. As someone who rambles on a lot, social media is a bad fit for me.

I’m very much an amateur writer and not a very good one, but when I started this blog I was terrified to write, even though I longed to write. Once I started this blog, it became a place of my own, to express my opinion and ideas. It has helped me get writing, instead of talking myself out of writing. 

However, I felt weary and tired recently writing about the new “cognitive security” (what I consider thought police) efforts forming in America and I am sick to death of blustering, lying Trump (yes, he does lie a lot too, just like the Dems trying to destroy him) and all the insane, corrupt Dem/liberal media Trump hysteria. I don’t want to race into rehashing all the details of the #Resist cabal vs. Trump battles since 2016, even though assuredly heading into the 2024 presidential election year, these issues will resurface and impact us, whether we’re burned out about it or not. 

I know people who are struggling and I shop at Walmart, Dollar General and Dollar Tree frequently. Dollar Tree went from everything $1 to everything $1.25 in 2022. One of the Dollar Tree stores in my area now carries some merchandise that’s at even higher price points. I bought a thin fleece throw for $5 there last week. I wanted a thinner throw, because I have several heavier fleece throws already and wanted something lighter for those days where I’m just a little bit chilly. 

There were so many empty shelves in that Dollar Tree store and I kept noticing that. In the Walmart Neighborhood Market store I frequent, the pasta section was pretty sparse again the other day. And that’s how it’s been going since 2020, empty sections here and there throughout the stores. Nothing ever really returned to pre-COVID days that I can see. Sure, I can find plenty of food, but it seems obvious to me that the efficient systems of our complex food supply networks, that many retailers rely on, aren’t working as well as before 2020.

Then there are winners of the 2020 social mitigation efforts. Amazon, which now fields it’s own fleet of Prime delivery vans, I pass all the time in my neighborhood, seems like one of the biggest winners. We all adjust and I do use Amazon frequently. Amazon also has Amazon Fresh grocery deliveries in some areas, but not where I live. Like many Americans, I live where there’s not a big selection of grocery stores to choose from, although Publix is building a store here. I can’t see myself paying Publix prices, even if they do make shopping a pleasure. We’ve had Food Lion, Kroger, and Walmart in my town for a long time. Many rural areas have even less selection and people have to drive longer distances to get to those stores.

2024 is another presidential election year and the odds of it being calm, orderly and no big commotion seem very remote, while the chances of it being more craziness high. 

Anytime you even suggest stocking up food, water and supplies in case of an emergency, many people react like you’re an insane Doomsday lunatic and the reactions to “prepping” are often very negative and dismissive. I’ve always stocked up extra food and supplies, but I realized in 2020, once I started reading more and watching online pantry organization/prepping/homesteading content that I really needed to rethink my preparedness efforts. 

First off, I have always been a catastrophizer type person, worrying a bit too much about all the “what ifs.” Watching online prepping stuff was a mixed blessing, where some of the information was very helpful, but some came with non-stop doom and gloom, predicting collapse, calamity or SHTF was about to befall us in days, next week, in a few months. What I needed to focus on was getting my pantry and supplies better organized and then figuring out what type of stocking up works better for me. I’m still a work in progress. I’m better-prepared in several areas, but have a lot of work to do in others. 

However, I don’t want my life to be consumed by the news or preparedness efforts. I need some light and hope and laughter in my life too. Adopting the glass half-full attitude might be challenging, if you’re a worrier, suffer from anxiety, or are a catastrophizer type person, but just the awareness that you are that type of a person might help you start catching yourself and then refocus to looking at all the positive things rather than fixating on the worst-case scenarios.

Becoming better prepared is beneficial for all of us. Our ancestors couldn’t turn to government or private charity programs for assistance – they had to rely on themselves to figure out solutions. If you look around your home and you don’t keep any extra food, water and some basic supplies on hand, then perhaps, you might consider stocking up a little bit more or taking a basic first aid class or learning a new practical skill. 

Learning useful skills doesn’t have to be approached as if you’re preparing for the Apocalypse. You could hone some basic sewing skills with making a few gifts or something practical for everyday use. Or you could approach some projects from a repurposing/recycling/upcycling viewpoint. I love those sorts of taking something old and turning it into something new projects. In recent years, making junk journals (just check YouTube, there’s an entire Junk Journal community) has been a way to use some of the piles of ephemera and scrapbooking and rubber stamping supplies I accumulated long ago. I think I made this Christmas junk journal, pictured above, out of old Christmas cards, stickers, and ribbon, around 2018-2019.

Learning to make Amish knot rugs/toothbrush rugs out of old sheets and fabric has been a very enjoyable craft/sewing/repurposing project. I learned to make Amish knot rugs watching YouTube videos. Before I purchased actual Amish knot rug needles, a YTer showed how to bend a large paperclip into a usable needle. So, my first bending up paperclips for another use was not for recreational substance use… it was for a needlework project.

That’s my dog, Lucy, laying on an Amish knot rug I made several years ago. Below is a better picture of her, minus the redeye. She died a couple years ago and she was a very sweet dog. I picked her up in a Dollar General parking lot and went inside the store to ask if they had any idea who she belonged to. The cashier told me she’d been running around the parking lot for days. I decided to take her home, because I was afraid she’d get hit by a car with the highway right there. I handed her to my husband and he said, “What’s this?” and I told him that’s a Sweetie Pie. I had to run out to do more shopping. While I was gone, our youngest daughter had stopped by and talked to my husband about Sweetie Pie. She messaged me, while I was shopping, and told me this dog was not going to be called Sweetie Pie and that her name was Lucy. So, Lucy it was. She had severe anxiety attacks going to the vet and started having seizures whenever we got to the door of the vet. It happened several times and the vet decided it would be better to keep vet appointments for Lucy to the bare necessity and she prescribed medication for me to give Lucy before vet appointments. Even dogs can have anxiety problems triggered by stressful situations.

High on my list of things I want to do in 2024 is get back to working on counted cross-stitch projects again. 

The photo at the beginning of this post is a small cross-stitch kit I stitched in 2019. I remember in 2018 my late husband was in the hospital for weeks. One day, I decided to run to a Joann’s Fabric and Crafts store to take a break from the hospital and found that discount “Bee Friends” kit. What could be better… I love cute pictures and I love sayings and quotes, so that Bee Friends cross-stitch was so much fun to stitch. 

I’ve got enough cross-stitch stuff to last me two lifetimes and I’ve tried to give kits and supplies to my daughters and granddaughters over the years. I’ve tried to encourage friends to take up cross-stitching too. One granddaughter attempted a stamped cross stitch project, but her embroidery floss getting tangled got her frustrated very quickly. One of my daughters learned how to do counted cross-stitch and plastic canvas needlework, but she doesn’t have much spare time and needlework does take time.

With rummaging through Christmas decorations, I came across these two small counted cross-stitch projects I did decades ago. I have piles of completed cross-stitch projects, awaiting framing or deciding how to finish them into something – an ornament, wall-hanging, etc. 

No matter what else 2024 brings, I’d like to make 2024 a year of getting back to my needleworking passion, because I sure miss the joy it brings me.

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December 15, 2023 · 5:21 pm

Trump-Russia 3.0 begins

Patterns:

David Corn was instrumental in spreading the Trump-Russia Collusion story. Here’s a March 20, 2017 Howard Blum piece, How Ex-Spy Christopher Steele Compiled His Explosive Trump-Russia Dossier, in Vanity Fair:

“In early October, on a trip to New York, Steele sat down with David Corn, the 58-year-old Washington-bureau chief of Mother Jones. It was a prudent choice. Corn, who had measured out a career breaking big stories and who had won a George Polk Award in the process, could be imperious, a ruthless man in a ruthless profession, but he was also a man of his word. If he agreed to protect a source, his commitment was unshakable. Steele’s identity would be safe with him.”

I know everyone is weary of all of this stuff, but yesterday there was news of an ex-FBI counterintelligence official being sentenced for colluding with a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. Here’s the ABC story, Ex-FBI counterintelligence chief Charles McGonigal sentenced to 50 months in prison for working with Russian oligarch

In regards to the Steele dossier, Christopher Steele was also working for Oleg Deripaska. Here’s a November 22, 2021 Washington Examiner piece: The many Russian links to the operatives behind the Steele dossier. This article states:

“Steele was working for Vladimir Putin-linked oligarch Oleg Deripaska before, during, and after his time targeting then-candidate Donald Trump, and the former MI6 agent was hired to put the dossier together by an opposition research firm, Fusion GPS, which was simultaneously working for Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya of the now-infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. The Clinton campaign hired Fusion.”

Here’s another bit from that Washington Examiner piece:

“Deripaska paid Steele to investigate Manafort after accusing the Republican operative of stealing millions from him, and Steele sought help from Fusion in early 2016. The firm soon hired Steele to conduct anti-Trump research.”

Today Dems kicked off another Trump-Russia narrative citing a CNN story, The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump. They had started some big Trump the Authoritarian spin attack in the past few days and even Paul Ryan, former Republican Speaker of the House, pitched in on this Dem spin attack:

Dem, liberals and liberal media on X are trying to amplify this missing binder story, which is based on “sources familiar with the matter told CNN.”

Here’s Jen Psaki pondering the damage Trump might do:

Yesterday it was more “Trump the Authoritarian spin” – the same Trump, who as president, had his personal account shut down on Twitter, … is supposedly going to shut down the internet, when that would take agencies in the US government, who, it sure looks like to me, are actively leaking to destroy Trump. I think they’d assuredly be more likely to pull the plug on a Trump-run White House and silence him than shut down the internet in America. Geesh, this Dem-incited hysteria is ridiculous.

This CNN big story is another unauthorized leak to the liberal media to trash Trump by intelligence officials, lending assistance to another Dem spin attack.

Here’s what I put in my Twitter profile when I started on Twitter years ago :

Speech is power, speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. – Emerson

#DefendTheConstitutionAlways

#StopTheSpinInformationWar

#SayNoToPublicCorruption

I still believe in all these. 

At this point, if Trump has some binder of Trump-Russia related intel, I think we’d all be better off having it released to the American people, so we can move on from all this Dem Trump-Russia spin garbage.

I won’t vote for Trump or Biden and I dislike Trump a great deal, but this Dem spin war has corrupted America’s intelligence agencies and the FBI – agencies vital to America’s security and it needs to be exposed and end. All this intelligence leaking to the media – always one-sided leaking to aid Democrats and attack Trump is a serious threat to America’s national security and likely way more serious than some “binder on Russia.”

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Filed under General Interest, Information War, Politics

December 12, 2023 · 6:31 am

A pennywise tale

Just wanted to share this story:

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December 11, 2023 · 8:27 pm

Sorting butterflies from moths

This post is about the CTI League, again.  In my Dec. 9th blog post, I referenced a September 15, 2020 Wired article, One Data Scientist’s Quest to Quash Misinformation, which explained Sarah-Jayne Terp’s odyssey in her quest to quash misinformation.  I understand that quests require a certain determination that what you’re doing is right and that it matters.  For me, defending free speech in America matters and so does protecting The Constitution.

One of the bits of human interest in that Wired piece was that Terp likes buying half-completed cross-stitch pieces at second-hand shops and finishing them.  I used to be addicted to counted cross-stitch, watching the stitched design appear on the blank cloth, by following a gridded chart on paper.  As I stitched more years, I began to make changes to patterns sometimes, changed recommended colors, even occasionally combined different patterns together or designed my own pattern on graph paper. 

However, I would never want to finish other stitchers half-completed needlework, because so many don’t keep the back of their needlework neat and tidy.  I want the back of my needlework to look as neat as the front, so I’d end up having to pull out all the mess and redo that too.  Much more enjoyable, for me, to start with a clean slate, so to speak, rather than cleaning up someone else’s mess.

I also love doing jigsaw puzzles for the same reason, watching the picture appear as I connect more and more pieces together. When my kids were young and doing puzzles that fit into frames, to make it more challenging, I encouraged them to dump the pieces from several puzzles together on a pile in the middle, as they sat on the floor with the frames.  The older ones often had two or three frames, while the younger two had one frame.  They had to work together to put all those puzzles together and that’s the thing as problems become more complicated – it takes a lot of teamwork to solve them.  America is facing some very complicated problems and there’s no teamwork among our political leaders, that’s for sure.

I came across another Wired article, this one from September 29, 2020, The Cyber-Avengers Protecting Hospitals From Ransomware: As medical facilities strain amid the pandemic, they’re especially vulnerable to cyberattacks. A global coalition of volunteer experts has stepped into the breach.  This article explains the formation of the “all-volunteer” Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or at least this is the public narrative.  Ohad Zaidenberg, an Israeli intelligence researcher, Marc Roger, a British information security expert and Nate Warfield, an American Microsoft security manager contacted each other and decided to band together during the pandemic and on March 14, 2020, the Cyber Threat Intelligence League was founded to fight ransomware attacks against hospitals.

According to this Wired article, after the trio formed, Rogers was seeing “any number of tall tales circulating on the internet” and of course, in a time of global crisis, who ya gonna call?  “So Rogers pinged a data scientist he’d been working with over the past couple years. “Hey,” he wrote. “How busy are you?”

He called Sarah-Jayne Terp.

The Wired article continues, explaining that Terp was very busy, running two groups working to adapt tools of cybersecurity to dealing with misinformation (cognitive security is this new field).  And she’d been on the road sorting butterflies from moths “spending the previous nine months criss-crossing the US on a one-woman quest to better understand how misinformation affects middle America.”

The British data collector spent nine months trudging across America studying those MAGA moths.  What a task to try to understand ordinary Americans’ viewpoints, as opposed to the elite butterflies among the left.

Again, this Wired article was September 29, 2020 and the mission had expanded from protecting hospitals from ransomware attacks in March 2020 to by September 2020:

“”Rogers tells me the league’s misinformation team had recently started tracking campaigns targeting the George Floyd protestors. They’d seen posts saying that antifa was causing riots and that were trying to bait Black Lives Matter supporters to attend protests intentionally scheduled to conflict with second amendment rallies. It was a bit far afield from the league’s original mission, but the volume of misinformation was so great and the potential for harm—both viral and violent—so high. “You have sophisticated groups who are doing this, who have great attention to detail,” he says. “Protests can create life-threatening situations.”

Clearly, their mission had shifted from protecting hospitals into partisan politics.

Imagine if those MAGA moths thought George Floyd was a fentanyl addict, resisting arrest and didn’t buy the entire liberal media narrative – how unacceptable is that…  Or what if they noticed the glaring double standard that the people who protested lockdowns were spun up by liberal media as evildoers threatening public safety, who should be stopped, while the George Floyd protestors taking to the streets were cheered as heroic champions for justice by that same liberal media.  Now, that would be totally unacceptable…  

Again the Twitter File journalists claim: “The whistleblower alleges that a leader of CTI League, a “former” British intelligence analyst, was “in the room” at the Obama White House in 2017 when she received the instructions to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a “repeat of 2016.”

The idea that you’re protecting people by controlling what information they’re allowed to see or what they can say is vastly different than protecting people, businesses, organizations, government computer systems from malicious cyberattacks.  In America people have the right to believe whatever the heck they want, even disinformation and misinformation.  They also have the constitutionally-protected right to free speech – especially political speech. The alleged Obama tasking – to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a “repeat of 2016,” seems bolstered by these two Wired articles.  It’s one thing to have eyes outward to hostile foreign information operations and try to counter that disinformation/misinformation than targeting Americans’ free speech.  It would take finding a lot of go-arounds to get around our 1st Amendment free speech protections.

So, if the quest began being tasked in 2017 by Team Obama to stop a “repeat of 2016” to 2018 brainstorming in Tampa with Pablo Breuer, the military director of the Special Operations Command Donovan Group (2018 link : “Pablo Breuer is currently the director of US Special Operations Command Donovan Group and senior military advisor and innovation officer to SOFWERX”), while Trump was president and the objective is to stop a “repeat of 2016,” I wonder if anyone in Trump’s national security team was aware of their work and I wonder how much government money was funding it.  Did anyone in Congress know about their work or have any oversight?

Then by March 2020, it’s COVID “Cyber-Avengers” to the rescue and by September 2020, they were tracking misinformation targeting those “mostly peaceful” George Floyd protestors, who were victims of being baited… as they burned the police precinct down in Minneapolis, ripped down statues, looted stores, etc.   What the hell…

Nothing to see here, at all.  Sure, I completely believe these Wired narratives of the genesis of “cognitive security” and the  CTI League as just noble volunteers… on a quest to protect our beliefs from being hacked… (my eyes have already rolled back into my head).

Here’s a Washington Examiner article worth a read: Top Republicans throw support behind major Biden ‘censorship’ lawsuit by conservative media.  It appears the Republicans weren’t in the loop on any of these new censorship regimes that the Obama crowd in the Biden White House set-up and I think it’s a safe-bet, no one in the Trump administration had been involved in that information loop.  

The Twitter Files piece, CTIL Files #1: US And UK Military Contractors Created Sweeping Plan For Global Censorship In 2018, New Documents Show, mentioned CTI League “volunteers” who were actively serving in the FBI and other agencies being involved in this effort:

“According to the whistleblower, roughly 12-20 active people involved in CTIL worked at the FBI or CISA. “For a while, they had their agency seals — FBI, CISA, whatever — next to your name,” on the Slack messaging service, said the whistleblower. Terp “had a CISA badge that went away at some point,” the whistleblower said.”

I hate that ranting about a “deep state” that Trump did, but geesh, he might have been completely right.

All I know for sure is Democrats and the liberal media will become an impenetrable wall of “nothing to see here” and it will be the same Dem spin playbook as usual – their time-tested admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations… rinse, repeat.

12/14/2023: Adding a note here, because with using my snarky tone, I minimized what the Wired article said about Rogers concern about two groups with opposing views being manipulated online into showing up at the same location to protest could lead to violence. I  let my disgust with FBI director, Wray, testifying under oath to Congress about Antifa not being an organization and being dismissive of Antifa being any sort of threat, despite Antifa’s history of violence in Portland and Seattle. There were numerous reports of Antifa being present at some of the BLM rioting in 2020, but I wanted to clarify that what Rogers appeared to be mentioning could be a cause for concern 

There was a report of an event like this happening in TX several years ago. In that event no groups had actually scheduled protests and someone or some group was just posting messages trying to incite supporters of two competing causes to show up at the same location. The 2017 article cites federal lawmakers blaming Russian facebook pages, but considering how dubious claims of Russian disinformation have turned out to be, who knows… the Clinton campaign paid and had the bogus Steele dossier created, alleging Trump-Russian collusion, Dem operatives and Silicon bigwigs created fake Russian bots in a 2017 Senate race to smear a Republican Senate candidate as being supported by Russia, the dubious track record of the Hamilton 68 dashboard set up to identify Russian disinformation online, and the US Senate report on Russian social media operations being written by a company where the CEO was one of the participants in that Dem false flag operation creating fake Russian bots in 2017.

In general someone or some group online trying to create confrontations between competing groups in the real world could be dangerous. However, that doesn’t mean I want a “cognitive security” force policing speech in America.

I interpreted The Wired article as being sympathetic to BLM. BLM was a radical group started by self-avowed Marxists and they were pushing “defund the police” in 2020, which created mayhem in many urban police departments. There was a great deal of violence associated with the BLM organized George Floyd protests in 2020 and I believe the mainstream media tried to spin that away – “mostly peaceful protestors” one CNN reporter reported, as buildings were burning in the background.

“A report from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project estimated that between May 26 and August 22, 93% of individual protests were “peaceful and nondestructive”[40][41] and research from the Nonviolent Action Lab and Crowd Counting Consortium estimated that by the end of June, 96.3% of 7,305 demonstrations involved no injuries and no property damage.[42] However, arson, vandalism, and looting that occurred between May 26 and June 8 caused approximately $1–2 billion in insured damages nationally, the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history, and surpassing the record set during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.[6][43]“

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests#:~:text=However%2C%20arson%2C%20vandalism%2C%20and,the%201992%20Los%20Angeles%20riots.

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December 10, 2023 · 12:04 pm

Another link to peruse and ponder

Not a post here, just a link to a Matt Taibbi thread, CTI Files #4: The Hamilton 68 Connection, linking Terp, Jonathon Morgan, and the Hamilton 68 dashboard. Terp and Morgan worked on another NGO effort in 2014, joining Ushahidi, a Kenyan software company, open-source intelligence group (crowdsourcing). Wonder how much American taxpayers have sunk into these Dem/liberal cyber (NGO) efforts?

Morgan was the CEO of New Knowledge (now called Yonder), that specializes in information integrity. He also participated in a 2017 Dem false flag operation (creating fake Russian bots) against a Republican Senate candidate in AL. He’s linked to the Hamilton 68 dashboard, which ostensibly tracked down real Russian bots and fake Twitter accounts, yet were mostly just lists of ordinary people. Plus, his New Knowledge company was hired to pen the US Senate report on Russia’s social media operations.

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December 9, 2023 · 10:45 pm

A tiny bit more information on CTI League & a rant

After some time trying to learn a bit more about the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, it’s mission, when it was formed, who was involved, how it is funded, etc., I still have more questions than answers.   Most of all I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around the term “cognitive security,”  which comes with a whole new language, loads of military-type acronyms and borrowing military terms and applying them to information operations within the United States and abroad. This new field of cognitive security is reportedly being developed to identify threats and combat misinformation. 

The Taibbi, Schellenbeger, Gutentag, Substack article asserts: “The whistleblower alleges that a leader of CTI League, a “former” British intelligence analyst, was “in the room” at the Obama White House in 2017 when she received the instructions to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a “repeat of 2016.”

I haven’t come across any information to corroborate this British intelligence analyst in the Obama WH in 2017, but the British CTI League person is Sarah-Jayne Terp.

Here’s a September 2020, Wired article, One Data Scientist’s Quest to Quash Misinformation, which explains the work of British data scientist, Sarah-Jayne Terp, who has a long career, including as a defense researcher for the British government and her work in developing the field of “cognitive security.”  This article goes through how in 2018 Terp was invited by Pablo Breuer, who was the military director of the Special Operations Command Donovan Group, NSA advisor and Cyber Command, to participate in an exercise the US military was hosting in Tampa.  At this event, a third person, Marc Rogers, a cyber-security expert discussed the growing problem of misinformation. This paragraph in the Wired article explains how it began:

“Terp spent the day in Florida brainstorming how to fool a modern foe, though she has never seen the results. “I think they instantly classified the report,” she says. But she wound up at dinner with Pablo Breuer—the Navy commander who had invited her—and Marc Rogers, a cyber­security expert. They started talking about modern ­deception and, in particular, a new danger: campaigns that use ordinary ­people to spread false information through social media. The 2016 election had shown that foreign countries had playbooks for this kind of operation. But in the US, there wasn’t much of a response—or defense.”

Breuer, Terp, and Rogers met again and this began their work at creating this whole new cognitive-security field.  I have no idea how much government money has flowed into setting up these private efforts (military contractors?), what the US military and intelligence role is in their efforts, or what type of government oversight exists. 

So, the Taibbi, Schellenberger, Gutentag article with a whistleblower alleging a 2017 meeting in the WH to come up with a counter-disinformation program to stop a repeat of 2016, I wonder what a “repeat of 2016” even means.  Then in 2018 besides this war-gaming exercise where Terp, Breuer and Rogers in Tampa reimagined D-Day in the present day, they were dreaming up “cognitive security” ideas.

From the Wired article, Terp apparently believes people’s beliefs can be hacked: ““Beliefs can be hacked,” Terp says. If you want to guard against an attack, she thought, you have to identify the weaknesses in the network. In this case, that network was the people of the United States.”

The rest of this post is a rant – fair warning:

C’mon, the military experts spent decades telling us that the key to “winning” in Afghanistan was “winning the hearts and minds,” but now we’re supposed to buy into policing speech is necessary in America to protect Americans from having their “beliefs hacked,” by malignant ideas and misinformation.  What about trying to win their hearts and minds with better ideas?  The way to combat misinformation is to build trust within communities and with people and talk more, not less. 

The free flow of information and ideas is the best antidote to misinformation, not some data experts and brain-hacking gurus deciding who to put on more government watch lists.  There, I saved us billions of dollars on how to combat misinformation – encourage more free speech and sharing ideas.

The best way to dispel darkness is more light and conversation.  All these policing speech efforts end up isolating people and making people hesitant to speak freely – it quells what makes America free and vibrant.  Watching that video of an older woman who talks about gardening trying to be careful about what words she used a couple days ago was painful to watch, but this has been happening for years on college campuses, with progressive agendas being crammed down our throats, where you’re attacked if you don’t use the politically-correct words, and hate speech is defined and dictated by progressive gatekeepers.  It’s also been happening online for years, where the gatekeepers are almost always liberals.

Democrats and these experts would likely never admit that Democrats have operated a spin information war since the 1990s, sending out talking points and buzz words to media talking heads to repeat ad nauseum, orchestrating smear campaigns, and trying to marginalize right-wing Americans as backward, religious zealots and then they wonder why right-wingers won’t listen to them anymore.

I do know the Clinton political machine initiated their brand of “spin information warfare” in the 1990s to advance their political agenda.  They bragged about their spin war constantly.  Their spin war relied on mass media (liberal-dominated) to run their spin war – aggressive repetitive messaging operations, replete with loads of buzzwords, marginalizing dissenting views, demonizing anyone who got in the way of their orchestrated smear campaigns. 

I know they tried to silence people who posted online, because of what happened to me in 1998 during the Clinton impeachment, when I countered their spin messaging crapola during impeachment on the Excite politics message boards.  Not going to rehash all of my own experience again, but I realized then that if someone, with not even a speeding ticket, could become a target of an illegal intimidation effort, it could happen to anyone.  Can’t prove anything – don’t know any powerful people and anyone in the Clinton crowd is above the law – that’s the reality. 

As the Dem spin war in the liberal media intensified over the years, the right-wing media sphere grew in response, largely fueled by right-wing talk radio and FOX News.  The burgeoning crowd of right-wing celebs (many grifters) often jump on the bandwagon of every crazy conspiracy theory imaginable, from the 90s to today.  Of course, there’s now a large right-wing online sphere too.  So, yes there is a misinformation problem on the right too, and for decades I’ve wondered how much hostile foreign information operations effort goes into fueling the American right vs. left battles and also inflaming various other racial and ethnic controversies. 

With the Dems and liberal media, well, it went off the rails completely with the #Resist effort born when Trump won the election in November 2016 and then 4 years of non-stop efforts to destroy Trump.  A 2017 Obama WH meeting, with a Brit intelligence analyst in the room, would have had to have been in those 20 days in January.  Trump was inaugurated January 20, 2017.  I remember well the media and Dem hysteria about “military parades” and Trump wanting to be a military dictator. 

When a “respected” historian is blabbering about Melania’s Rose Garden renovation and the liberal media elites are tweeting about it being “an authoritarian design,” despite her Rose Garden plans being widely reported in liberal media before the renovation occurred and those plans were going back to the Jackie O design, it seems to me the Twitter Democrat/liberal media spin crowd lost their minds.  Melania put together a team of professionals and historical experts who handle those sorts of projects in Washington.  The crazy went so far as to some nuts ranting on Twitter about so many white roses in the new design being racist.  Those were JFK tea roses. 

There were so many attacks against Trump that were completely nuts- but the Steele dossier was a Clinton dirty trick, which was fed into the US State Department and FBI – public corruption of a level that’s hard to fathom and Dems and the liberal media have been crickets about all that.  And then the liberal experts wonder why right-wingers buy into anti-government conspiracy theories… 

I can immediately say that if this “cognitive security” stuff was hatched within the Obama administration, I will never trust any part of it. Then again, I think the Patriot Act should be buried too.  “Security” programs that take wings in a crisis atmosphere lead to mass overreactions and fear and panics about security can lead to people buying into terrible ideas – like lockdowns and worse.

In 2020 with COVID, I believe it was former Clinton Secretary of Labor, Robert  Reich who tweeted, advocating sending COVID anti-vaxxers to camps.  Perfectly normal… But, hey, around the same time, Democrats and liberal media were selling “Defund the Police” and making excuses for rioting thugs and criminals.  Rioters burned down a police precinct in Minneapolis and prominent Democrats were fund-raising to post the criminals bail…  You can’t make this stuff up.

Yes, things went just a tad too far during COVID and this cognitive security field blossomed, all in the name of public health and protecting us from having “our beliefs hacked.”  There were epidemiologists and vaccine experts in the field, who were banned on social media, for daring to hold opinions that differed from the Fauci edicts.  People were fired for refusing the COVID vaccine, soldiers were booted out of the military. Now we’ve had Biden railing about dangerous “MAGA Extremists” and the US military hunting down “white nationalists” in the ranks and a Chairman of the JCS blabbering about “white privilege” for a couple years.   So much for focusing on warfighting…

I don’t want to see another list or labeling exercise from elitists, in the government or funded by the government, where it’s all liberals who are grouping Americans and labeling them as threats.   I came across a piece on Terp’s training, with all the different types of “threats” (people’s online messaging and behaviors) and labeling them into groups.  When the whole Dem/liberal media “Russian disinformation everywhere” hysteria ensued, there was some effort to protect us – the now defunct Hamilton 68 database, which was putting together lists of online accounts who were supposedly “Russian bots.” 

Yet, amazingly, there was no big liberal media furor over Democrat operatives and billionaire Democrat Silicon Valley execs. creating a false flag operation, fielding fake Russian bots supporting Roy Moore, then running a media messaging attack alleging Moore was supported by Russians, in the 2017 AL Senate race: Liberal billionaire apologizes for funding ‘false flag’ effort to link Kremlin to Republican in Alabama Senate race.  To take this Russian disinformation farce to the max, well, leave it to Dems.  One of those Silicon Valley execs involved, ran an internet security firm the US Senate relied on for their report about Russia’s social media operations:

“One participant in the project reportedly was Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of New Knowledge, a firm that wrote a report – released by the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this week – about Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election and its efforts to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.” https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-operatives-created-fake-russian-bots-in-alabama-race-designed-to-link-kremlin-to-republican-roy-moore.

Now tell me how seriously we’re supposed to take that Senate report on Russia’s social media operations…

The biggest problem is Americans largely reside in ideological bubbles, in real life and online. Getting people to step outside their bubbles more and talk to each other might lead to people beginning to build some bridges of trust in America. A bunch of elites studying us like we’re insects, awaiting being pinned into categories on a board and trying to find ways to control information flows in America will only make matters worse.

Update: 12/10/2023, I forgot the most famous Dem. claim of Russian disinformation, which came about right before the 2020 election, when the Hunter Biden laptop story broke. Here’s a 10/19/2020 Politico story: Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say, “More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

There was a social media effort banning the New York Post story reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop and banning anyone else from circulating that story on social media.

Well, it’s now clear the Hunter Biden laptop was real; we know the FBI had the laptop in their custody too.

Here’s a quote from an April 23, 2023 FOX News story, Biden campaign, Blinken orchestrated intel letter to discredit Hunter Biden laptop story, ex-CIA official says:

“Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morrell testified before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, and revealed that Blinken was “the impetus” of the public statement signed in October 2020 that implied the laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was disinformation.”

Another story from the April 25, 2023 story in the Washington Examiner, Hunter Biden investigation: Ex-CIA head hosted Blinken on podcast before leading laptop letter:

“An ex-CIA head who testified that he was influenced by then-senior Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken to coordinate signatories for an influential letter falsely claiming Russian involvement with the Hunter Biden laptop twice hosted the now-secretary of state on his podcast — including just before the letter was published.”

On August 5, 2016, Morrell was spinning about Trump before that election too, with an op/ed in the New York Times, I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton.:

“Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president — keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.”

Yes, the same crowd who was in the 2017 Obama WH, when allegedly a Brit intelligence analyst was present, as they brainstormed the creation of a counter-disinformation project to prevent another 2016, is the same crowd, who orchestrated that former intel officials letter right before the 2020 election. It’s the same crowd who was spinning up the Trump-Russia Collision hysteria with the Steele dossier, orchestrated by the Clinton campaign in the 2016 election, and leaked by Buzzfeed on January 10, 2017 (while the Dem/media spin frenzy was in high-gear to #Resist and interfere in Trump’s inauguration).

All these experts are all about patterns… well, there sure seems to me, a person on the receiving end of the Clinton spin information war effort decades ago, to be a glaringly obvious one with Dem/liberal media efforts to manipulate and control information in America… That 1990sClinton spin information war model expanded through the entire Democrat/liberal media sphere of media/social media influence.

I promise my next blog post won’t be about Dem spin information war, which should have ended when Gore lost the 2000 election, but God help America, we’re heading into another presidential election year and it’s hard to imagine what spin war nightmares await us.

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December 8, 2023 · 8:27 pm

Are Dems operating a secret “info police” league of their own?

With so many other big news events garnering media attention and a “boy who cried wolf” aura to all these highly partisan Congressional investigations, another House Republican led hearing into alleged Democrat weaponization of the federal government passed by last week with little notice. The opening witness statements were interesting and led me to some googling. The linked hearing video starts at the 36 minute mark. Committee Chairman, Jim Jordan, delivered his opening statement, followed by Democrat Representative, Stacey Plaskett, whose opening statement was a very typical Democrat, “nothing to see/Republicans are wasting our time” mantra. Plaskett was zinged last summer for what appeared to me to be a Freudian slip in an interview, where she said Donald Trump should be shot. She immediately backtracked.

Being weary of partisan investigations and Congressional grandstanding, I haven’t watched the entire hearing and don’t know if I’ll sit through the full three hours, but the opening witness statements included some information that likely is important. This hearing is an expansion of information by investigative journalists, Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi, who looked into Twitter files Elon Musk provided to them when he bought Twitter last year and a few other witnesses, who spoke on free speech and censorship.

Yesterday I watched a YouTube video by an older lady homesteader, who was talking about her first experience having one of her videos removed from YouTube. I’m not going to mention her name, because I don’t want to cause her any harm. She was so cautious about her words, as she tried to explain her video YouTube pulled. That video was from six years ago. That would hint there’s a big purge of information effort ongoing. She related her social media history getting online with her gardening videos and setting up a blog. She said that video was from a National Heirloom Expo event, where she recorded a panel of speakers, one who is a current presidential candidate and they were discussing a chemical in a popular weed-killer. Some video from six years ago, by a small homesteading You Tube channel about a panel discussion at an heirloom seed expo was just banned…

No matter how much I’d like to move on from the American spin information war, I remain convinced this information war remains a serious threat to American free speech, our personal liberty and to our republic writ large. Some will likely consider this an overstatement or hysteria, but I believe it’s reality. While most of America, myself included, with all the other news events happening, didn’t pay an iota of attention to last week’s House hearing on the weaponization of the federal government, we probably should have been taking down notes.

It’s become a regular thing for several years to see YouTube videos where the content creator(s) mentions having videos demonetized or pulled. Similar complaints about social media moderation have been ongoing on other social media platforms. Of course, the most famous social media moderation action occurred on Jan. 8, 2021, when Twitter permanently banned former president, Donald J. Trump’s personal Twitter account. Although, I’d rather not be writing about the very online American spin information war, it’s real and it’s expanding and accelerating.

In 1998 the Clinton spin team launched what they termed a “scorched earth” spin effort to derail the Clinton impeachment investigation. Looking back at their rather thuggish efforts at witness intimidation and tampering (all women), cable news repetitive messaging barrages, with James Carville ranting nightly, and their nascent efforts at online spin information warfare on emerging social engagement venues (precursors to today’s social media platforms) things were less sophisticated than today’s high-tech/surreal psychological manipulation efforts at information manipulation and control. It’s always about control.

The Patriot Act, passed during the GWB Bush presidency, dramatically loosened the restraints on our intelligence agencies to gather information and monitor, not only foreigners, but American citizens. Sophistication in the Dem’s spin war grew and all sorts of academics devised theories and media manipulation tools to try to police and manipulate the vast media information terrain. By the Obama years, ideas and programs emerged to use things like behavioral nudge theory to manipulate (nudge) Americans into making better choices, especially in the health area. Nudge theory was the brainchild of American academic, Richard Thaler and popularized by a 2008 book, Nudge, written by Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The Obama administration embraced not only Sunstein’s wife, Samantha Power, who served in the Obama State Department and later as US ambassador to the UN, they embraced incorporating nudge theory into US government programs to nudge Americans on what to think.

We’ve come a long way baby, as the first witness opening statement by Michael Shellenberger asserted there’s an entire “censorship industrial complex,” that formed and has been evolving since 2017. He described the formation of the Cyber Threat Intelligence League in 2017. He related that he received whistleblower information and this sounds eerily like another version of the Steele dossier, replete with an assist by people in intelligence circles in the UK and the US. Here’s a bit from the Schellenberge, Taibbi, Gutentag, Substack piece, CTIL Files #1: US And UK Military Contractors Created Sweeping Plan For Global Censorship In 2018, New Documents Show, published on November 28, 2023:

“The whistleblower alleges that a leader of CTI League, a “former” British intelligence analyst, was “in the room” at the Obama White House in 2017 when she received the instructions to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a “repeat of 2016.”

So, while this is an assertion by some journalists right now, who claim they have a whistleblower providing information and documents, we’ll have to see what information comes out. It’s worth remembering Trump’s inauguration was January 20, 2017 and the Obama team, Democrats and the vast liberal media apparatus in America were going bonkers about “Trump the Authoritarian” and desperate to #Resist Trump, by any means necessary.

Another of the witnesses at this House hearing was Canadian Free Press journalist, Rupa Subramanya, who related what’s been going on in Canada to quell free speech. Using the COVID hysteria, Canada passed a new law, which allows the government to police speech and “debank” citizens for violating the speech laws. Subramanya testified more than 800 Canadians have had their bank accounts frozen, so they can’t access their own money.

Back in August I wrote a blog post, Who are the totalitarians?, where I mentioned efforts to crackdown on speech in the UK, Germany, Ireland and other countries were escalating. Now, we’re learning about a secret, hybrid UK-US program to monitor and control speech in America, hatched in the Obama White House, right before Trump took office, with tentacles into US and UK intelligence circles, but outside of executive branch (Trump’s) control and Congressional oversight, but allegedly having access to government funds.

And, as a reminder, in April 2022, the Biden administration launched, the short-lived Disinformation Governance Board, within the Department of Homeland Security, headed by a flaming liberal, Trump-hating, COVID zealot, Nina Jankowicz, who had tweeted during 2020 that she wanted the government to get tough and lock us down. That DHS effort lasted three weeks, but never fear, the left will always try another avenue to push their progressive agenda through.

Again, if this story about a “CTI league” operating outside of government control or oversight, yet with powerful partisan political guiding hands and access to government funding, is true… Who are the totalitarians?

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December 4, 2023 · 9:41 am

A bit of blathering about 2024

Fair warning, this is going to be a 2024 GOP presidential politics blog post. The Republican primary race still hosts a sizable field of contenders and since modern American politics runs on polling (a spin-driven business fueled by politicos and media in America), former president, Donald Trump has carried a wide lead all along.

I didn’t vote for Trump or Hillary in 2016, but in 2020 I was so alarmed by the bizarre from-the-basement Biden COVID Preacher campaign, that I did vote for Trump. The Jan.6th craziness and that entire “Stop the Steal” sore loser escapade made me regret that vote, even though the Biden years have been worse than I expected. In 2024, I won’t vote for Biden or Trump. I firmly believe it’s going to take a dramatic cultural shift, outside of our corrupted political system, to both Make American Great Again and “protect our democracy” that both parties keep yammering about.

My blog is filled with loads of posts about my belief that Trump’s a total fraud – Clinton friend and Howard Stern best bud turned into the GOP Savior was (and still is) too much for me to swallow, but millions of Americans got on the MAGA circus train and are still riding it. I understand why when I look across at the Democrats and liberal media chokehold on traditional American viewpoints and values. Now here’s where I see the GOP primary race.

The only two other GOP candidates with a shot, in my view, are DeSantis and Haley, who have tried various shifting messaging and staking of policy positions to gain some traction and momentum.

Haley has carefully avoided attacking Trump, while trying to don the cloak of foreign policy experience diva, of a former US ambassador to the UN… in the Trump administration. She’s largely pitched her messaging toward the NeverTrump and Trump-weary corner of the GOP and Independents.

On foreign policy, Haley puts forth many traditional Republican positions, that seem more in tune with pre-9/11 America. I understand Haley’s foreign policy positions, because they’re based on geopolitical reality, not populist pipedreams. Those positions are at odds with where Trump’s populist MAGA foreign policy circle seems to be at. Trump’s the GOP pied piper, who still merrily leads his followers along playing tunes of, not only MAGA and taking back our country, but he even offers foreign policy medleys to Putin’s a victim and NATO is our enemy too. Trump’s continuing his pattern of staking out wildly volatile policy positions. He often would announce policies that were at odds with his own administration policies, then he’d flounder around to talk his way around to his administration policies. Haley has gained a bit of traction and a bit of momentum, but she’s not making inroads into winning over MAGA Republicans, who still reportedly make up the majority of the party.

Haley likes to play the feminist card, selling a softer GOP feminist brand, which also includes playing the victim card, just like liberal feminists. With culture war issues, she often initially buys into the liberal media narratives, comes under attack from the right, then she backtracks and tries to find a position more in line with the MAGA part of the GOP. It’s doubtful she would take the fight to the liberals on most culture war issues.

Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, still sounds great on policy in interviews, but his campaign hasn’t been able to gain traction against the massive and relentless Trump and liberal media/Dem efforts to spin him into the dirt. DeSantis began trying to run on “fighting Woke” everywhere, from the schools, to the boardrooms, to the oceans white with foam… His campaign kicked off with a glitch-ridden digital launch on X/formerly Twitter, probably in hopes of trying to stake out territory owned by Trump.

Trump “owned the libs” on Twitter and used his personal Twitter account to demolish both Dem and the liberal media spin attacks throughout the 2016 campaign and his entire presidency. However, while Trump’s Twitter battles were important in the media spin war, his movement was born on the ground. His 2016 secret sauce, since the vast majority of Americans weren’t even on Twitter, was his big rally shows and that travelling political circus, which was a Hollywood-type production, selling populist snake oil along with red hats emblazoned with a new right-wing movement, MAGA. Make America Great Again rallies are where the MAGA movement really galvanized, not on Twitter. Twitter was where Trump learned to fight out spin battles against the liberal media/Dem pundit class and win.

DeSantis is great at interviews and discussing policy, but he’s awkward at the retail politics. The DeSantis X campaign fielded a constantly online cadre of personalities, many former Trump Twitter spin commandos, who tried and have failed to win over Trump supporters. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign launched non-stop personal attacks against DeSantis, his wife, his height, and even his boots. The Trump campaign attacks and the liberal media attacks against DeSantis have been largely identical – trying to mock and marginalize DeSantis and they’ve been successful.

The Desantis Iowa strong campaign, hyping visiting all 99 counties, in hopes of using an Iowa primary win to fuel support in other early primary states hasn’t budged the national polling. Beyond the initial interest in his Iowa campaign, there are so many other things going on in America (and beyond) for there to be much national interest in rather low-key campaign events in rural Iowa counties. Currently, the DeSantis campaign reportedly is under another reorganization shuffle and defections from his campaign to the the Trump campaign will likely intensify, unless there’s some dramatic change.

The biggest miscalculation seems to have been DeSantis’ decision to try to out-MAGA Trump and win over loyal Trump supporters by attacking Trump. There’s a glaring double standard when you listen to many Trump supporters – none of the rules of behavior they hold for everyone else ever apply to Trump. Trump even has taken to spewing lines about how he’s shouldering all these politically-motivated lawsuits for his followers – he’s your savior, doing it all for you.

Meanwhile, DeSantis promises to slay all of MAGA world’s enemies that Trump failed to do. While he has been a very successful governor, tackling the federal bureaucracy isn’t FL. Trump is light on details and big on vaguely defined promises, but DeSantis buries his own broader message in so many policy plans and promises, that it just sounds like too much noise at this point. DeSantis demolished CA governor, Gavin Newsom in a Hannity debate last week, but here again, in the bigger picture, I doubt that will result in a boost in his poll numbers.

Most of MAGA world still seems to live where hazy memories of 2016 euphoria linger, 2020 “stolen election” anger still burns, but most of all the wreckage of Biden policies hits them in the face at the gas pump, in the grocery store, when they wonder about their next electric bill… or WWIII erupting. Yet the Biden administration keeps selling Bidenomics and telling Americans the economy’s doing great. And along with all the economic disasters, remnants of the destructive “Defund the Police” policies continue to erode public safety in cities all across America, our borders are not secure, and the multitude of liberal culture war battles from transgender issues, guns, to free speech controversies still burn hot. The Biden presidency poll numbers are consistently bleak.

President Biden has worse poll numbers than Trump and the other Republican candidates. Despite all the difficulties in Dems trying to switch to another candidate, somehow, some way, I won’t be surprised if Biden isn’t the 2024 Democratic nominee.

Barring some major upheaval, Trump is on the path to the 2024 GOP nomination.

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November 29, 2023 · 9:22 pm

Israeli captives begin talking

Over the weekend there was a spun up story emerging about a Palestinian woman who was released by Israel in the hostage exchanges taking place. Israel released Israa Jabbis amidst a flurry of propaganda asserting Jabbis was a beautiful young woman before being held in an Israeli prison for 8 years. When I started to tell my sister about this news report, before I even told her the details, she said, “Let me guess, she was a suicide bomber.” Jabbis was convicted of terrorism when her car exploded near an Israeli checkpoint, so yes, she was injured in an attempted suicide car bomb attack. My sister said she was so sick of all the pro-Palestinian propaganda and how disgusting the American liberal media is. She also said that if Israel doesn’t finish off Hamas and caves to the media pressure, they’re doomed. I agree with that assessment and yet so many people inside the Biden administration are trying to stall and derail Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas.

My sister is retired from serving over 20 years in the Air Force and she also served in Afghanistan in the early years, so she’s knowledgeable about the suicide bomber/IED attacks against American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel has been dealing with this threat too, not only their military and police forces, but also Israeli civilians – for decades.

One of the interesting “lifestyle” things that got mentioned over and over with the Oct. 7th attack was that Israelis that aren’t in urban areas have safe rooms in their homes to protect them from airstrikes. However, most of those safe rooms weren’t secured against invaders breaking into their homes. Imagine living where rocket attacks are just part of daily life. That’s what the Israelis have put up with for decades now. I bet there will be security upgrades to safe rooms in Israeli homes after this Oct. 7th attack.

Why on earth anyone buys into this Palestinian “colonizer” propaganda is beyond me. The entire spread of Islam was one of bloody conquest, and forced submission of the conquered. And with displaced Palestinians when the state of Israel was established, well, more than 850.000 Jews were forced to leave Arab countries and Iran in the 20th century. That’s why this entire Palestinian victimhood narrative strikes me as dishonest.

The lying by Hamas and the “ceasefire” media choir in the Hamas-Israel war has exceeded the propaganda in the Russia-Ukraine war, where I gave up on even trying to figure out what was propaganda and what was factual information within a few months.

In Ukraine, the Obama administration created all sorts of chaos by misguided and sloppily carried out policy efforts. The Obama administration kept trying to appease Putin, with Obama even mocking the GOP 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, about his insistence that Russian aggression was a serious threat. Obama won reelection and then Russia invaded Ukraine and seized control of Crimea. Obama refused to send arms to Ukraine and he did not take any stronger US action. Russia occupied Crimea and parts of Ukraine since 2014 and that frozen conflict led to tens of thousands of deaths, as fighting continued in those contested areas. Then in 2022, Putin decided to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Biden response has been foot-dragging, with big announcements of high-dollar military aid, followed by slow-walking that military aid to Ukraine.

In Israel, the Biden blueprint was crafted by the same Obama foreign policy architects. Trump had cut off aid to Gaza, but Biden immediately started pouring aid to Gaza, which went right into the hands of Hamas. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, was taking a victory lap in a Foreign Affairs piece he wrote, about how their policy had led to a new era of peace in the Mid-East. Then Hamas invaded Israel, as that Foreign Affairs article was already being published in the print version. To spare Sullivan embarrassment, Foreign Affairs allowed Sullivan to edit his piece for the online publication… as if rewriting the article could erase how disastrous and wrong Sullivan’s foreign policy ideas really have been Rewriting an article can’t rewrite history.

The major organization aiding and abetting Palestinian terrorism looks to me like it’s the United Nations. The UN women’s rights mouthpieces refuse to denounce Hamas brutally raping and murdering Israeli women on October 7th. With these Hamas/Israeli hostage exchanges taking place now, the stories of mistreatment of Israeli hostages emerging go well beyond just Hamas. Today there’s a report that a 7 year-old Israeli boy was held captive in Gaza by an UNWRA school teacher in the attic of his home for 50 days, with barely any food to eat. There’s another report of another Israeli child being held hostage by a Gazan doctor, who treated Palestinian children, but refused medical treatment to the Israeli child. That a UN teacher and a Gazan doctor were participating in holding Israeli children captive is appalling.

At the same time this news came of Israeli children’s treatment in captivity, today the White House was hyping all the aid they’re sending to Gaza, which I shared with the X post above.

Where is the outrage about the UN’s role in aiding and abetting terrorism? Where’s the demand for an investigation? The UN is responsible for UNWRA activities in Gaza. Where is the Biden administration on condemning this? The EU and now the Germans have frozen UNWRA funding, but not the Biden administration:

“The wide German support for freezing funds came in light of findings that Palestinian learning materials were used to teach hate, glorify jihad and antisemitism

The German Development Ministry announced its entire aid budget to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) operations in Gaza will continue to be frozen, until further notice, as a result of its internal review of its Palestinian aid portfolio.”

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/europe/1701159704-germany-freezes-aid-for-unrwa-operations-in-gaza-amid-internal-review

So, far, in the US here’s where things stand: GOP targets Gaza’s biggest relief group, clashing with the White House.

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