Just a few news items to comment on. Still safe here, and moving ahead with trying to expose their corruption and drag them to justice.
First up, the State Department can’t get Hillary’s emails released on time or find them all, but now they have Condoleezza Rice’s and Colin Powell’s – will wonders never cease. This story is just another smokescreen to muddy the public’s perception of Hillary’s private email server and sell the theme that “two, or even three, wrongs do make a right”. And beyond that it’s meant to fuel the partisanship and give her cover to keep saying other Secretaries of State did the same thing. NONE of them set up a home-brewed private email server in their homes. And if either Rice or Powell mishandled classified information they should be held accountable too. BUT so should Hillary Clinton, for her gross violations of the law:
I suspect these YUGE Trump rallies are a part of the mass delusion – bought and paid for by Trump, to include many of the attendees to fill them up, to sell the delusion of how popular he is. Sure looks like a part of the manufactured opinion cascade he’s working to create. Something is off with the entire Trump campaign, as I’ve stated repeatedly. For “Mr. the BEST”, the visible parts of his campaign are anything, but “best”. These rallies are staged agitprop (much smarter and savvy than anything Trump could develop. It appears to be part of vast foreign intelligence operations, I strongly suspect. America’s enemies are trying to divide and conquer us – keep that in mind. Fueling partisan rancor is a YUGE part of that. So anyone who takes to the airwaves and tries to fan the flames of rabid partisanship is suspect – they are easy marks for the foreign operatives to dupe, recruit and exploit:
I believe that beyond our disgraceful, unlawful President and former Secretary of State, we have several 5th columns operating at the highest level of our government and operating within both political parties, intent on using both racial and partisan anger to foment disunity. We have an executive branch completely compromised by foreign intelligence and provocateurs from several countries. And we have our mass media venues, massively bought out and infiltrated. Preserving free speech is our only hope at striving to unite our country and rebuild the American team. No one is above the law and we all must accept The Constitution as that rule of law, not mass media generated opinion polls. United we stand; divided we fall, it’s really that simple.
Oh, today I felt like doing some predictions on what to expect very soon from the corrupt Clinton political machine and corrupt Obama administration.
I predict that the news story recently about Ash Carter considering a demotion of General David Petraeus served a two-fold purpose. First, I believe it was meant as a shot across the bow, to warn other top brass to shut up and tow the line on wholesale corruption from a criminal enterprise, run by both the Clinton machine and the Obama administration. I believe the other purpose was to put the screws to General Petraeus, to coerce him to fall in line with some soon to break story on their wholesale public corruption. I believe the “greatest general of his generation” will be used to lead the mass media propaganda pièce de résistance, of an all-star cast of retired generals, to launch a character assassination of me. This is my prediction. A few of the generals to include Petraeus are criminals – yes, a person who pleads guilty to serious crimes is a criminal. The chief officer of an intelligence agency who engages in an extramarital affair is setting himself up to be blackmailed. Despite the dumbing down of society and the inability of vast numbers of people to use common sense, some things don’t change and the truth is “character” and “personal integrity” aren’t just for when you show up for work, especially when your work involved handling our nation’s most sensitive intelligence information. General Petraeus, despite the sycophantic press and punditry, demonstrated that he is untrustworthy, by the reckless disregard he showed in handling our nation’s secrets, – that is the truth, when you wash away the hype about his “greatness”:
The affair brought down the retired four-star general who led U.S. strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Petraeus resigned from his role as director of the CIA in 2012 after it was revealed that he shared with Broadwell eight “black books” that he had compiled in Afghanistan and improperly kept after retiring from the Army.
The binders reportedly contained secret codes and covert identities, as well as overall strategy discussions and security reports. Broadwell kept the books for at least four days in 2011, according to prosecutors. They were seized by the FBI during a 2013 raid on Petraeus’ home. Court documents also show that Petraeus lied about keeping the sensitive information and about giving it to Broadwell, according to the Observer. Broadwell has not been charged with any crimes.
Now, keep in mind that usually when a plea deal is cut, some more serious charges get negotiated to lesser charges or dropped, to secure the plea deal. Often in high-profile cases the government opts to accept the plea to wash the news story off of the front page, to make it go away. That Congress still invited a criminal, who admitted to committing serious crimes, which recklessly endangered US national security (yes, it wasn’t small fries here), back to Congress, to testify and fawn over him as if he really is the greatest general of his generation, exemplifies the problem in America. His credibility and reputation should reflect that he disgraced his public office – but even on the political right, moral relativism clouds clear thinking.
So, when I mentioned my situation with a retired general attacking me in my home in 1998, during the Clinton impeachment, that general too is still hitting the airwaves being fawned over as a war hero. He was forced to retire for bad conduct while assigned in a sensitive overseas position. Bad conduct and admission of committing crimes should tarnish the public shine of top brass, but not in America. Press reports, prior to his forced retirement,reported Bill Clinton flying to that overseas area to meet him and the two seemed to really chum it up. And after impeachment this same disgraced general was hand-picked by President Clinton for a sensitive, high-profile overseas position, in the same region where his original bad conduct occurred. The scuttlebutt was that this general got a foreign reporter pregnant – that’s just rumor, but that was the story that my husband, still a sergeant major on active duty, had heard.
Then during impeachment, I believe the Clinton sewer rats started digging into who I am, because I exposed their propaganda technique and LIES in clear, coherent language that was cutting through their spin. So, let’s review here for a second, Hillary Clinton, not only ran an illegal private email server from her home, she also ran an illegal private intelligence-gathering operation with Sid Blumenthal and Tyler Drumheller. So, is it really that impossible to imagine Hillary Clinton conjuring up some “dangerous right-wing nut stalking her on the internet lie” to convince this general to lead an illegal ad hoc military operation on American soil, especially when that general hates my guts? My personal letters caused him a great deal of embarrassment and he already hated me because of the lies his wife had fed him during Desert Storm.
I believe this time around, they will dupe a couple other generals into joining in with my character assassination. And they will get my kids and people, close to those helping me gather proof, aid in assassinating their characters too. Just remember when this breaks, as I feel sure it will, soon – look at who is speaking the TRUTH and defending The Constitution from all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Compare my team, to those who speak out to discredit and disparage our integrity, then ask yourself if they are foreign agents or dupes (those close to us, who were fed lies and turned). Be alert for buzz words fed to them – manifesto, plotting, etc. along with the sexual innuendo about my emails. Everything will be revealed in time, that I promise you. My psychic powers predict this time it will be a public execution, so to speak, because I am not backing down from them. and I do have a comprehensive strategy;-) So, when you see her team of retired generals take to the airwaves, please remember that you read it here first.
Trump decided to skip the Thursday debate and the buzz centers on the Megyn Kelly flap, but truly what is the real motive – to harm FOX news and specifically target one woman. Trump, using his high-profile as a presidential candidate, now leads a mob action to try and ruin one American citizen’s career, over one question she asked in August that angered him. Is this the type of leader America needs?
Sure, he’s trying to suck the oxygen out of the other candidates and keep the attention on him, but he is trying to hurt FOX and Kelly – make FOX lose money and he wants Kelly fired. Is this what America needs in a President?
I still believe he hired the “best” political operatives and those are not on the Republican side. There’s a high stakes mass media propaganda game playing out and there’s a high stakes political game between the Clintons and President Obama playing out. At the moment, with leaks from the FBI about the gravity of Hillary’s email situation weighed against the mutual adoration comments from Obama and Hillary, it appears the Clintons are winning in that tug of war. I also believe Trump is a dupe in this saga – the circus clown act, while the Clintons sit back with their popcorn and drinks and enjoy the show.
The triangulation strategy is in play, Bernie the kook on the left, Trump on the right, with the path clear right up the middle for Hillary and it is working. It’s all about “winning”, for not only Donald Trump, but for the Clintons too. Hillary can sit back and relax while Trump’s sideshow keeps the attention on him and the GOP and conservative punditry snarl and snipe at each other (classic divide and conquer strategy), confident that Obama will not indict her.
Welcome to the new Amerika.
For regular readers, please go read news somewhere else, watch FOX news or CNN or MSNBC, read National Review or the Daily Kos, because this is going to be a long regurgitation of old LB rambles and you’ve heard all of this before. Yes, I am going to get on my soapbox.
Many things bother me, about not only Donald Trump, but also about his campaign and even beyond that, this entire presidential race. Yes, populist anger swirls in the far edges of both political sides. This populist discontent allowed for Bernie Sanders to gain traction on the left and now we have Trump on the right. For months I’ve been going on and on about mass media manipulation and propaganda and my suspicions that Trump hired dem political operatives: read here, here, here. From a Dec. LB post:
The only team The Donald is on, is his own. He does not care about the GOP party or causes per se, they’re just the vehicle he is driving to become President, where he believes his dynamic business acumen will single-handedly “make America great again”. He’s right on many issues – even in his latest kerfuffle about Muslim immigration, on the main points he’s right – it doesn’t make sense to be bringing in Muslim immigrants from several countries that are hot beds of Islamist terror and where the collapse of government in many of these regions makes adequate vetting impossible. And he nailed the alarming truth that the Obama administration doesn’t know what the hell is going on with their own immigration policies. A pause makes perfect sense.
Time will tell if the Carville/Begala campaign modus operandi, that I strongly suspect is playing out in the Trump campaign, is true or just a nutty conspiracy theory. For me, it doesn’t take much imagination to envision Bill Clinton calling Trump when he caught wind that Trump was considering running. Trump and Bill Clinton golf together and have known each other for years. Trump was a yuge Clinton supporter. So, the phone call could have been as simple as this:
Bill Clinton calls Trump : Hi Donald, I hear you’re thinking of throwing your hat into the 2016 race?
Trump: Yes, I am.
Bill Clinton: Well, you know I believe Hillary is the best candidate for 2016, but I wish you good luck and you know, Donald, the one bit of advice I’ll give you is you’ll need great political advisers. A national race is really complicated.
Trump: Well thanks for that advice. I am still putting a campaign staff together.
Bill Clinton: No problem Donald, you know I am already taken (laugh, laugh), but the best political advisers are Carville and Begala. Those GOP political advisers don’t have the guts to run a tough race.
Trump: Thanks, you know me, I want the best political advisers. You know I’m going to fund my own campaign, if I jump in. Do you think Carville and Begala would work for a GOP candidate.
Bill Clinton: I can’t speak for them, but you know, business is business, so you’d have to talk to them yourself.
Set-up done. It could have been that easy for Bill Clinton to manipulate the downfall of the GOP primary. Carville and Begala easily could have advised Trump to keep the business relationship secret, because Republicans go into derangement mode about them. It’s obvious Bill Clinton threw his weight around and called in all sorts of favors within the Democratic party to bury this email server scandal and the Benghazi committee investigation to get her campaign on track.
So, how does the Carville/Begala mass media saturation propaganda technique work – well it’s a military “swarming” strategy played out on a mass media battlefield. It is dangerous, it is insidious and it is used in countries where free speech is silenced and mass brainwashing goes into keeping people in line. It is antithetical to our American way of life and it IS a threat to The Constitution of the United States.
Over the months I’ve watched the relentless use of particular phrases by Donald Trump – the “winning”, “make America great again”, but most of all that constant repetition of his polls numbers. The last time I saw this technique used so effectively was during the Clinton impeachment saga. Back in October, I became suspicious:
At first, I thought this would be impossible, but as I’ve watched Trump continue to agitate and throw out these verbal hand grenades at any in the GOP field, who looks like he/she might move up in the polls, then add in all these outrageous lines he keeps throwing out to alienate wide swaths of the electorate, it all seems orchestrated and contrived. A couple days ago he was blaming GWB for 9/11 and not keeping America safe, yet it was President Clinton who let bin Laden go and who did nothing to deal with Al Qaeda’s attacks on American interests – USS Cole, Khobar Towers, Mogadishu ring any bells. No, Trump attacked GWB…
I began to think Trump’s operating like a Clinton sewer rat and he sure fixates on the polls – just like the Clintons. Every other word he speaks is about his poll numbers and the press feeds on that too. This training the American public that polls determine what’s right and wrong, not the merits of the issue, worked like a charm during the Clinton impeachment. “Who cares if a President lies under oath – the American public doesn’t; just look at the President’s poll numbers”, went the argument. The media sold that line of reasoning and the American people bought it.
I have repeated many times that I was attacked in my home during impeachment. I could not get anyone in my family to believe me and I still can not prove any of it – the entire saga is tabbed at the top of my blog – Messages of mhere. I was just a homemaker commenting on the Excite message boards in 1998. A few days ago, on a National Review comment section, I mentioned my situation:
susanholly
Her paranoid obsession with seeing vast, right-wing conspiracies around every corner is what led to her landing in this private email server mess in the first place. She wanted to thwart those dastardly “right-wingers” from having access to her official State Department communications. Now that she has been caught breaking the law and all of her emails have been exposed, to not only those mean Republicans, but likely to hostile foreign intelligence services too, her defense sounds as tired and pathetic as when her husband, then the chief law enforcement official in the land, lied under oath.
I’m a nobody homemaker and I’ve spent 16 years trying to find a way to expose what happened to me. I started a blog and then decided to try contacting several journalists a few years ago and tried telling them my story. I wrote about what happened to me during impeachment, while writing commentary countering the Clinton spin. I’ve posted the link to my story in various places in comments sections. I used pseudonyms in my story on my blog, but every person is real and I offered several journalist the real names of every “character”. My purpose was not to become “famous”, but because my husband was an active duty solider and I believe Army assets and a retired general were used to attack me in my home. I believe she was behind it. Lacking a way to prove any of this has kept me from going public. That retired general has been a reliable Dem shill since his precipitous retirement prior to impeachment and my husband served under that general, earlier in their careers during Desert Storm. Oddly enough, private letters I wrote during Desert Storm to my husband’s company commander, relating my adventures with this general’s wife, butting heads over her wearing her husband’s rank, as the queen of family support activities in the brigade, made it all the way to the Dept of Army after Desert Storm, I believe. The Army back then had some “command team” idea akin to the “co-president” and as a NCOs wife and being a former solider myself, I will never bow down to some stupid woman using borrowed power to boss me around. My husband is a veteran of Grenada and Desert Storm. My story sounds so impossible and I have no political connections or power, but in light of this incredible reckless effort of setting up a private email server in her home to thwart her imaginary right-wing foes, perhaps someone might someday investigate my story.
Steve
Susan, OK, I read thru your blogs, and you will need to provide more explanation of why you think Hillary is behind your problems if you expect others to believe you. Why would Hillary think you a threat? Do you have direct knowledge of Bubba’s activities or Hillary’s activities? Dispensing with the cutesy nicknames would help.
Susan
Why? Well, the only place I was commenting about politics was on those Excite message boards. Unfortunately, I did not save those boards or I would have taken action years ago and trying to prove a conspiracy is very difficult. As impeachment rolled along, in the Fall of ’98 is when this occurred. I started noticing that specific arguments and things I pointed out in my posts began to be picked up by actual Republican pundits on TV and online news sites. Then I pointed out in detail that the Clinton spinmeisters were using mass media propaganda to block any other voices from gaining traction in mass media venues. I pointed out that they were setting up a manufactured opinion cascade -with relentlessly citing President Clinton’s popularity poll numbers. I think of it as much like the military strategy of swarming juxtaposed to a media battlefield, so to speak. In my spare time I have read extensively on military strategy for over 30 years – it’s an interest of mine, along with propaganda. Watching the Trump campaign, you can see another manufactured opinion cascade playing out, where through media saturation he now sits poised to present himself as the “inevitable” campaign. Americans have been conditioned to accept polls as the deciding metric in all matters, with complicity of media reinforcement.
As a matter of deduction, I know who attacked me – that man despises me – he gave me a look of total loathing at a Brigade picnic after Desert Storm. His wife, a bimbo akin to Madame Secretary, wanted to be the Army’s queen of family support. My husband deployed from Germany to Desert Storm – a lot of family support issues arose. My personal letters to my husband’s company commander during Desert Storm, to keep him abreast of some of the crap that was happening, would have been very embarrassing to that brigade commander. Let’s just say I have a snarky bent to my writing. I believe those letters ended up being submitted with the after action reports commanders write.
A few years after we left Germany, I was made aware of “some letters some wife wrote during Desert Storm” making it to the Dept of the Army, causing a big stink after Desert Storm. The woman who informed me of this was a paid family support person at the stateside post we were at. She informed me that she was close friends with that Brigade commander’s wife. She also trashed my battalion commander’s wife, who had just left this post and who also stood up to that brigade commander’s wife. All of this sounds like petty wives stuff and it is. After my meeting with this paid family support person, I became persona non grata at wives meetings and got the cold shoulder. Then by the time impeachment rolled around, my husband was ready to retire after serving over 24 years in the Army and he btw likes this brigade commander and he never listened to me about the “wive stuff” during Desert Storm. After I was attacked and knowing who attacked me and knowing that I had no political contacts, no other online contacts where I mentioned politics, and am a homebody type person, I wondered why this man would attack me and how any of this could happen. Many times afterwards. I would walk behind my back yard fence and look at that brand new tree stand, positioned to look into my back yard, and wonder how this could happen. And during that ’98 Operation Desert Fox, there was that retired general – on TV supporting it and considering his precipitous retirement that in and of itself seemed quite amazing. To this day he is a reliable shill for the Dems.
The cutesy names (code names perhaps) btw, would assuredly allow many people familiar with the Army goings on at that time to identify who exactly these people are, if I am ever able to prove this. Without having concrete proof in hand, I can’t name names in the wide open. A few years ago I had hoped I could find a real journalist to begin quietly investigating my story. I can’t prove it with crowdsourcing, that’s for sure. At this point, just consider this venting, but thank you for reading my story.
Yesterday, I dumped a lot of comments at National Review on Andrew McCarthy’s article: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430286/donald-trump-andrew-mccarthy-foreign-policy-novice?target=author&tid=900151 and I posted some comments on another article, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430329/donald-trump-supporters-dangerous-argument . This effort of Trump to convince his followers not to watch Fox news or Megyn Kelly or the attacks on various conservative pundits, who did not come along for the ride on the Trump train, runs counter to our American values. We need to encourage more public debate of issues, but that requires not only the freedom to get on that soap box, it requires the willingness to sit down and listen to dissenting opinions – a discussion is a two-way street. An exchange with a poster, bragging about not reading the articles at National Review, but just showing up to bash the writers and bash anyone who was against Trump alarmed me:
SmashingYoungMan
I think you’d be shocked at the number of people who are doing exactly what I’m doing. I doubt 10% of commenters read all of Kevin’s screeds, if any of it.
susanholly
Saying you don’t read a column and showing up to comment on said article seems so Trumpish, like not preparing for a debate or dissing people who can talk coherently about policy. Boycotting writers like Kevin Williamson or Charles Cooke, who are some of the most talented political writers in America is your loss. C,mon, this is ridiculous. I doubt I ever agreed with more than a couple things Christopher Hitchens ever wrote, but he was brilliant, his writing was a joy to behold and I learned about many opposing views, along with being gifted with truly wonderful literary references. Same goes for Maureen Dowd, who is an outstanding writer. Bragging about this decision to close yourself off from opposing opinions does nothing to make America great again, it speaks to a closing of the American mind. That happened on the left with draconian speech codes and hate speech and PC, yet now the Trump supporters are trying to shut down writers who don’t support Trump.
The effect of a political climate where spirited, yet civil debate turns into this sort of mob effort, to shut up opposing views, bodes poorly for our republic, but if at the highest level of our political process, a mass media manipulation campaign was orchestrated and carried out to include sabotaging the opposing party’s primary process, can our republic survive? I can not prove what happened to me, but in our electronic age, assuredly the electronic connections exist that could prove connections between that Bill Clinton phone call to Donald Trump shortly before Trump announced his campaign and every contact, IF they exist between Clinton operatives and Donald Trump. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are of a piece – they, in clinical terms, are sociopaths – successful, smart, but at their core, both believe the rules don’t apply to them, so now we have the two most overblown egos in America fighting for the same job. From experience, I can tell you that Donald Trump, impulsive, vulgar, ruthless is a man barging ahead, but Hillary Clinton is a woman who believes it is her destiny to be the first female President. And women manipulate and scheme and connive, so in this match-up, despite all Trump’s bluster, Hillary Clinton will win.
I believe in the rule of law and The Constitution of the United States and I believe the FBI should be investigating this!
When I am wrong about something, I like to admit it fairly and squarely,then go eat some humble pie. So let me just admit I was wrong on one thing I found odd about Trump – I wondered if he even bothers to shake hands with his supporters at his rallies. I had read in one of his books that he does not like to shake hands and I hadn’t noticed him shaking hands with them on TV reports of his rallies. Some people, who say they went to a Trump rally, informed me he does spend time, one said he spent like 20 minutes after the rally, shaking hands. I was also informed all of his rallies are online for all to see it there. Alas, I don’t have the strength to sit through hours of video of Trump rallies, so I will just accept that I was wrong on that point, without seeing it for myself.
Being wrong on one point doesn’t make me wrong on the general failings of Trump’s character, which are well-documented and which don’t bode well for him as the standard-bearer to lead America in this perilous time. Many hail Trump’s massive successes, while ignoring his glaring personal character weaknesses, content to see his “winning” as everything, with no concern for how he got there. For a clearer explanation of the character issuses, Patricia McCarthy at The American Thinker, wrote, Through the looking glass darkly, astutely diagnosing the malady – situational ethics in action by a person with serious narcissistic personality disorder. She lists the Trump issues:
Bullying – Any systematic action of hurting a person from a position of relative physical, social, economic, or emotional strength
False Accusations – Patterns of unwarranted or exaggerated criticism directed towards someone else
Frivolous Litigation – The use of unmerited legal proceedings to hurt, harass, or gain an economic advantage over an individual or organization
Impulsiveness – The tendency to act or speak based on current feelings rather than logical reasoning
Self-Aggrandizement – A pattern of pompous behavior, boasting, narcissism, or competitiveness designed to create an appearance of superiority
Targeted Humor, Mocking and Sarcasm – Any sustained pattern of joking, sarcasm or mockery which is designed to reduce another individual’s reputation in their own eyes or in the eyes of others
Belittling, Condescending, and Patronizing – This kind of speech is a passive-aggressive approach to giving someone a verbal putdown while maintaining a facade of reasonableness or friendliness.
Many of his supporters cheer and champion Trump’s willingness to stamp out political correctness, excusing the obvious excesses, where he’s exhibited the traits listed above and gone way beyond the boundaries of good manners and civil behavior. The video posted here yesterday, where he got carried away bragging and stated he could shoot someone and his supporters would still support him serves as a shining example. His supporters will dismiss this as a “joke”, but really is this the sort of “joke” you want the leader of the free world to spout off, just to stir up a crowd? He could be the richest person in the world and I will not follow him ever. Early on, the bullying and impulsive outbursts alarmed me, then the endless attacks on anyone whom he felt didn’t treat him “fairly”, on to the vulgarity , but most of all, the way in which he so deliberately slimes people, dumping the dirt he pulls out of his fancy suit pockets, throwing it into the public arena to publicly denigrate other people, then he pretends he’s only speaking “the truth” or often he plays innocent, as if he is merely repeating what other people are saying.
At the end of the day, we need a strong, competent leader, but the last thing America needs, to unite our great nation, is a toxic leader. I worked for a a man whom I considered the most toxic leader I had ever encountered. In my small, insulated life, here again, being probably a freak in America, as I do not watch reality TV, I’d never paid attention to Donald Trump. Now that he might be America’s next President, makes it imperative to analyze him and assess his strengths and weaknesses. His most touted strengths, in his own words, rest on he’s very rich and he knows how to make great deals.
It’s one thing to lob vicious, underhanded attack on political opponents, it’s quite another watching an attack on ordinary, powerless people, all in pursuit of closing those great deals. Politics assuredly remains a mud-wrestling by pigs endeavor. Fine, politics is a tough business, an arena where the meek need not enter, however for any who believe Donald Trump is a champion of the little people, here’s a view from across the pond, a 2009 Scottish view, where one of the little people got in the way of Trump, doing what he does best, making “great deals.
In my last post I mentioned going with my female intuition. I believe and trust in it, so recently I was reading some short stories, while actually thinking about writing a blog post on something besides politics or foreign policy for a change, when I came across this very cleverly written short story that garnered being labeled “early feminist literature” or perhaps it’s chick lit. The story, “A Jury of Her Peers”, written in 1917, by Susan Glaspell, was loosely based on a murder case she covered in her career as a journalist, with the plot centering on a man strangled in his Iowa farmhouse, where the only suspect is his wife. Glaspell originally wrote the story as a play, Trifles, with the unfolding plot brilliantly showcasing how the men in this story do not take women seriously, especially homemakers and dismiss the things women deal with as “trifles”. I sure don’t want to delve into some feminist debate or as this story unfolds the morality of the choices the two women make, but instead, the way in which the male and female characters interact while observing the same crime scene rings very true to real life. Without giving too much of the story away here’s a short passage:
“The county attorney looked at the two women they were leaving alone there among the kitchen things.
“Yes–Mrs. Peters,” he said, his glance resting on the woman who was not Mrs. Peters, the big farmer woman who stood behind the sheriff’s wife. “Of course Mrs. Peters is one of us,” he said, in a manner of entrusting responsibility. “And keep your eye out, Mrs. Peters, for anything that might be of use. No telling; you women might come upon a clue to the motive–and that’s the thing we need.”
Mr. Hale rubbed his face after the fashion of a showman getting ready for a pleasantry.
“But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?” he said; and, having delivered himself of this, he followed the others through the stair door.”
Now for a look at the secret lives of real chicks, check out G. Murphy Donovan’s exposé, “Attila the Hen”, in his entertaining tale from the coop:
“In all hen parties, there’s usually a bird that ruffles too many feathers for whatever reason. So it was with our Hillary, the runt of her litter. Our petite one is so named because she is more than a bit shifty, ambiguously unpopular, and annoying in ways that only other hens appreciate; in short, a victim by default midst cool gals with attitudes.
Alas, unlike lady lips, chicken lips are lethal weapons. The big hens started with Hillary’s comb and then pecked her bald. “Pecking order,” in the bird world, is no metaphor. Nor is hair pulling. When we saw blood, we had to separate the runt from the rest.”
Ok, let’s waddle on back to the female intuition topic. Here’s a bit from a 2013 Scientific American article that explains some new research:
“Men aren’t from Mars and women aren’t from Venus, but their brains really are wired differently, a new study suggests.
The research, which involved imaging the brains of nearly 1,000 adolescents, found that male brains had more connections within hemispheres, whereas female brains were more connected between hemispheres. The results, which apply to the population as a whole and not individuals, suggest that male brains may be optimized for motor skills, and female brains may be optimized for combining analytical and intuitive thinking.”
“The side I’m on is that of America. And for very, very positive reasons.” – Minta Marie Morze
A couple weeks ago my 10 year old granddaughter, a very bright student enrolled in the gifted program at her public school, mentioned something she learned at school, which I told her is not correct and what she learned really plays into the problems plaguing America and it also speaks to our future. My granddaughter said, “America is a democracy.” Reflexively, I corrected her and said, “No, America is a republic!” Thus began a stream of back and forth, because as of yesterday she told me that her teacher still says, “America is a democracy.” I told her again that her teacher is mistaken, because assuredly, America is a republic, set up as a constitutional federal republic. However, watching the demise of federalism and the reliance on pop culture and public opinion polls to silence dissenting opinion, I’m wondering if America has descended into that hellish, brutish state where on the whims of ginning up anger and use of slick mass media manipulation (propaganda) to sway the mob, the only thing that matters is the “majority rules”.
On polar ends of the American electorate, this fraying of trust or even understanding of this basic fact crops up in ever disturbing ways. On the political left, they’ve got angry mobs taking to the streets to compel justice by force and college bullies silencing opposing views with rules imposed by fiat, “I disagree, so you can’t speak!”. In the Presidential run they’re wading in a shallow geriatric pool with a dyed-in-the-wool socialist resonating with disenfranchised Democrats and a pathological liar, riding on her gender and spewing paranoid vitriol about some imaginary dangerous right-wing conspiracy out to do her in, and by extension do in the American people too. She sees a vast right-wing conspiracy around every corner. Her answer to every problem in America is another federal program, to encroach evermore deeply into the lives of American citizens.
Freedom for local communities and states to manage their own affairs falls to the ever-expanding beast that crushed the very breath of liberty out of not only local and state governments, but out of individual American citizens. We’ve become a people conditioned to bow to the popular opinion poll on issues, as manipulated by mass media propaganda. When the left wants to sway Americans to a particular view – big bucks go to various activists and groups (many Soros funded) and the propaganda blitz ensues – Hollywood makes movies and TV shows promoting that view and mainstreaming it into the culture, “experts” hit the airwaves extolling it, and then the media reinforces the idea with polling data, much of it dubious, selling this view as popular and reporters will grill the outliers, who dare speak up against that view, lecturing that the majority of Americans believe the now carefully manufactured and manipulated view. It’s a type of insidious brainwashing and peals the death of liberty and The Constitution.
Now, on the political right, the use of mass media manipulation has rarely been understood, let alone used, that is until the Trump campaign, which is using the Carville/Begala playbook, as I’ve stated repeatedly. That’s what I see – Bill Clinton’s perfect triangulation lining up, if Hillary can avoid an indictment. This post is not going to be a regurgitation of my own conspiracy theory, but here’s the link to my thoughts on that. Assuredly, as I’ve stated many times, I will not ever vote for Donald Trump, because his campaign highlights the capitulation on the right to accepting manufactured hype about polls over principles. The heart of conservatism, weak though it beats, will not survive if it succumbs to the reality TV culture and slick mass media manipulation of Donald Trump, who rambles on about his poll numbers endlessly, but does not hold to conservative principles or even basic civility.
On the right then who, well, Ted Cruz promised to be a principled conservative who would take on Washington and he has stood up against the Washington insiders, but in the process his personal style engendered absolute loathing among his fellow senators, on both sides of the aisle (read Charles Krauthammer’s very astute assessment). Do I agree with Cruz on the issues? Absolutely, but here again we get to reports, many which Trump helped spread, that Cruz is so despised that many GOP establishment people would rather support Trump, whom they know is not conservative, to destroy Cruz, who is. In a less polarized era and where pop culture celebrity didn’t carry more credence than ideas and republican principles, most of the other GOP candidates, admittedly with both pluses and minuses in my view, would still be able to gain some traction. Every single GOP candidate running against Trump offers more coherent policy, offers complete sentences and thoughts, and from this Mom and grandmother, displays better manners. Trump may be mega-rich, but he behaves like a boorish jerk!
With Trump monopolizing the media cycle, with the aid of the mainstream media selling people on polls over principles, none of their messages even get noticed as the GOP’s Paris Hilton spews mostly incomprehensible gibberish. In fact, Paris Hilton actually marketed a clearer campaign message in her cute video (see above) with easily understandable policy positions, but disgruntled GOP base voters project their hopes and beliefs onto the blank canvas that is Trump’s “making America great again”, because assuredly if you write out Trump’s rambling speeches and comments, there’s a lot less there than you’d imagine and a whole lot of conflicting ideas, beliefs, proposals, all overshadowed by the relentless repetition that he is winning in the polls (popular). He’s created this aura of “inevitability”, which now is reaping a snowball effect, as more and more GOP kingmakers are weighing their options and opting to throw in with Trump, despite reservations that Trump is even loyal to the Republican party – they are willing to toss the reins of their party to a man who converted less than a year ago and has spouted conflicting gibberish, all based on he’s a winner and great at making deals. Trump is already working out deals with those despised GOP establishment folks his supporters want destroyed. Trump admitted he talked to Mitch McConnell last month – so yes, the backroom cronyism moves full-speed ahead.
That’s the gist of Trump’s campaign, because I dare anyone to actually make lists of Trump’s statements on various topics to include the incomplete sentences too, compare how they line up for consistency, try to discern core principles, then look at what he said with whom he was speaking (he’s a chameleon and can cozy up to Bill Clinton as easily as Rush Limbaugh on the golf course). Finally, when you’ve done that honest assessment, devoid of how you feel, analyze how many times he repeated his poll numbers and stated he is winning and look at how many times he said that to divert attention from an issue or question he did not answer. It’s a deliberate media manipulation tactic and it’s one perfected by the American political left, not GOP political operatives.
Here are a a few other oddities with the Trump campaign, from someone who has followed presidential campaigns since I was 8 years old in 1968. Trump wrote about not liking to shake hands in one of his books – he has a germ thing and doesn’t want dirty people touching him. Has he ever done the usual shaking hands that’s par for the course in politics? From what I have seen he flies in, does his rallies and flies back out, then does his “connecting” with voters via late night Twitter attacks and the cable news circuit, not up close and personal. His campaign started with Roger Stone as his campaign manager. Stone quit or was fired in August, when the Trump/Megyn Kelly dust-up happened. Oddly enough, Stone is still out there speaking for Trump and no other visible campaign advisers or spokespeople emerged until November, when this former Tea Party activist, Kat Pierson, started hitting the airwaves as the Trump spokesperson. Stone, according to Wikipedia, has a book due out January 26, 2016 – “Jeb! And the Bush Crime Family”. Note that since Stone quit or was fired he seems uneasy and nervous whenever he appears on TV defending Trump – something smells off to me, but hey I’m a woman and we roll with that female intuition thing.
Another thing I noticed is that the Trump camp sure compiled massive opposition research, which Trump and his campaign advisers (whomever they really are) dump these nasty stink bombs at the most strategically brilliant times. For a novice politician, who can’t even spit out coherent political policies, the political astuteness of both content and timing of these attacks seems quite incredible. Any GOP competitor rises in the polls – boom, the Trump campaign dumps a full payload. The Trump campaign even seems to be feeding opposition research to The Last Refuge blog, which has become Trump Polling Update Central, and when Mark Levin came out criticizing Trump for attacking Cruz, yesterday that blog ran this hit piece of opposition research asserting the son of Levin’s fianceé works on the Cruz campaign. For Trump, who isn’t much on the details, his campaign is more effective than the Dem operatives who launched that Bush DWI stink bomb years ago. The irony of The Last Refuge blog is they no longer welcome opposing opinions from actual conservatives. It’s Trump or the road, and they ran this hit piece on Levin, which appears to be opposition research (sleaze to damage Levin’s credibility) provided to them by the Trump campaign. If Trump ends up exposed as a fraud, there will be a lot of very angry populist mobs, with so many conservatives investing so much hope and belief in Trump, so hope I am wrong about Trump being a fraud, as this could get very ugly, very quickly.
National Review orchestrated a “Stop Trump” campaign, ostensibly to save conservatism. My friend, Minta, sent me an email last night stating:
“This new issue of National Review is a big problem, but not for the reasons someone might think. The general view around here is that instead of the authors writing a manifesto about what Conservatism is, and what it means, they look as though they are attacking one person. They could have achieved the better result by supporting someone like Cruz. I love the authors of the Nat’l Review this time, but they are risking looking like elitist snobs. Where were these manifestos when Lois Lerner wasn’t indicted, when the IRS was going after the Tea Parties, when the military was being dismantled, when the VA was shown to be anti-military?”
Minta got it exactly right, the Trump supporters get angry when other conservatives disagree and conservative stalwarts like George Will end up screamed at by populist pundits like Bill O’Reilly, another speaker for the little people, who also is a friend of Trump’s, so when Trump doesn’t articulate his positions clearly, O’Reilly helpfully fills in the blanks on what Trump meant and does character references for Trump too. In this environment, Trump’s supporters are emotionally invested in Trump, in the same way Obama supporters became cultish in their belief that one man could singlehandedly transform America. They want a Messiah or a strongman, not a President, with clear CONSTITUTIONAL checks on his/her power. I want less government control and less power in Washington’s hands, especially after President Obama’s imperial presidency. Herein is why I don’t think Cruz will ever gain much traction – his fellow GOP establishment peers in Washington want him annihilated and Cruz talks like an elitist Harvard lawyer. Cruz has nowhere to go to attract voters, if he moves to the middle he loses the conservative base voters who stuck with him, the GOP establishment is throwing in with Trump and moderates will never gravitate to Cruz, with his hardline conservative record and on top of that he comes across as an elitist Harvard lawyer who talks down to the little people. He is not someone your average Joe would want to have a beer with. Rubio, Christie, Kasich all have more personal appeal frankly. They come across as nice people. Jeb is doomed by his last name, Carson hasn’t been able to convey he’s a viable Presidential choice and Fiorina, smart, does her homework, but she always comes across too scripted and worse than that she usually seems angry and uppity. She does not convey much personal warmth.
Trump has severely damaged the entire GOP field with his scorched earth campaign style, so it’s hard for me to envision any of them being able to repair that damage by November, but this is the season where anything is possible. And on the bright side, for this conservative, at least the Democrats have an even worse mess on their hands. Whatever happens, the larger question of, “Are we a democracy, where angry mobs silence dissent and popularity polls rule over principles or are we a republic grounded in The Constitution?” may become the defining issue of the 2016 campaign. In the meantime I am looking for some good books or sources to explain Our Republic to my 10 year-old granddaughter, so if you have any recommendations, please let me know.
So, the big news tonight: Sarah Palin is endorsing Donald Trump. Unfortunately, the GOP has a reality TV campaign on its hands and who better than TV reality stars, Palin and her daughter, in Trump fashion, fluttered to Twitter today to bash Ted Cruz. Tonight, Sarah Palin showed up in Iowa to announce her endorsement. She just finished a disjointed, rambling speech at a Trump rally.
Palin’s endorsement should not come as a surprise, as their mutual adoration fan club goes back a ways, so for a flashback here’s Palin’s interview of Trump, back in August on OAN. Please note their mutual whinefest over those mean mainstream media folks, who dared to ask such unfair gotcha questions (Palin was asked where she gets her news and Trump was asked what his favorite Bible verse is – just so unfair ) :
libertybelle diaries 