Blog note

We had one of our dogs put to sleep Friday.  He was my former daughter in-law’s beagle and I thought he was 13, but my son told me that when he informed her of his death,  she said he was 15 years old.  He was an obese beagle, who had a cranky streak, but he loved me and followed me wherever I went in the house.   He was always laying on the floor near me when I’m on the computer.

The past few months have been a downward spiral  – heart problems, COPD, then he tore an ACL tendon in his left back leg.  Due to his medical problems and the obesity, he wasn’t a candidate for surgery.  He seemed to be doing much better lately.   He’d lost some weight and was moving more.   Although the 8 medications he was on were tiresome to administer, I was hoping he’d be around for a long while yet.  Thursday morning he couldn’t stand up and when I helped him up he was wobbly and kept falling on his left side.  I sat on the floor and fed him canned dog food Thursday and carried him outside to do his business that day, but he needed help to even stand up for that.

The vet told us he had injured his right leg and hip and he was trying to shift his weight to the left side.  She said he was in a great deal of pain and he was already on a pain medication.  We decided to have him put to sleep and that’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

Sure, there are 5 other dogs  here, but I still miss him.  Let’s see 2  were my oldest daughter’s dogs and one was my youngest daughter’s dog and 2 belong to my husband and me – all of them old dogs and some with serious medical problems, so I’ve spent quite a bit of time crying the past few days and worrying about going through this again in the near future.  I’ll try to get back to blogging this week.

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What he should have said

Here’s what President Obama should have said on Sunday night.  Sen. Ben Sasse from Nebraska articulates who we’re fighting and what we are fighting for. (H/T Truth Revolt.org)

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A niggling incongruent bit of information

Tashfeen Malik, erstwhile jihadi bride of Sayed Farhood and Islamist terrorist has been reported on since the San Bernadino terrorist attack last week.  There are many things we know and many things we don’t know and then there are things the press reported that make no sense, if you are to believe the facts as presented.  The FBI affirms that both Malik and Farhood were radicalized for some time before this terrorist attack.  They’re following all sorts of leads, but one lead they should look into is how this online marriage came about.

Muslim women raised in Western countries have been surrounded by a culture where women interact with men outside their family, without supervision or social stigma.  Malik was born in Pakistan and raised in Saudi Arabia, so why would this “devout Muslim” woman, whom Farhood’s family claims that they never even saw her face, look for an American husband or for that matter chat online with a male stranger?  Somewhere in this mess are middlemen matchmakers, perhaps jihadist family members or a jihadist group,  who arranged this marriage.  It seems incomprehensible that a devout Muslim woman, with her background, would hook-up with an American, Muslim or not – it just makes no sense, unless she was sent to carry out a terrorist attack or their families arranged this marriage.   The press just blithely reported this meeting online, no questions asked, but there’s more to it – more men involved in this.

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Words matter, so keep your dictionary handy

Here are my observations on  President Obama’s Oval Office speech Sunday night.  His narrative writers carefully chose those words, to serve as propaganda, to sway public opinion after seeing devastating poll numbers on how Americans feel about the President’s response to ISIS and Islamist terror.  For them, this wasn’t meant to be an actual change of course, only a change in word choice.  The Obama  administration does have a strategy, however that strategy is not to defeat ISIS, but to fundamentally transform (revolution) America.  If you pay attention to the Obama agenda and the things that inspire this president to get passionate and animated, you’ll discern it has nothing to do with fighting Islamist terrorists, heck, he’s planted Islamist sympathizers and enablers in the US military and throughout his administration to insure Muslim sensitivities aren’t offended rather than find a strategy to defeat Islamist terror.  That’s the truth! Now, if you juxtapose that with his actions to attack the police, while championing black thugs who get into altercations with the police, the Van Jones plan hits you in the face: it really is top down, bottom up, inside out – they are working to fundamentally transform (revolution) America

President Obama knew his speech would incite a reaction from the political far-right and actually they’re trying to create more divisiveness and that’s why they descend on these police/black clashes, Al Sharpton has an open invitation to the White House, the military has been cut and being the last bastion where an Alpha male ethos survived, they effectively neutered the US military – where our Secretary of Defense warbles on about transgenders and females in combat jobs making us stronger.  The White House reaction to this latest terrorist attack on American soil was meant to antagonize the political right – they want the racists and bigots to react, so they can justify confiscating guns from private citizens – they want to incite a race war in America – that is the truth!

Donald Trump, whom more and more Americans fed-up with Obama’s non-response are supporting, is there to incite the worst among the far-right.  I still believe Trump is a Trojan Horse set in motion by the Clinton political machine, but have no proof.  To understand Trump’s appeal, refer to my post, “He never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.”  His rabble-rousing feeds Obama’s strategy and will insure a GOP defeat in 2016.  And in the midst of all this, there’s big money from George Soros and leftists funding Obama’s fundamental transformation (revolution), from BLM movement, to the Islamist apologists, to the Syrian refugee invasion.

I’ve written about it many times:

Building trust: The high road for America

The Obama/Black Grievance Community/Arab money connection?

Follow the money

Donald Trump’s response isn’t the problem

At this point, we’ve got Donald Trump, ostensibly a very recent conservative convert (Trojan Horse or dupe of the Clintons) inciting the far-right to act out and you’ve got the far-left (ensconced  in the White House, with the power of the executive branch, using executive power to subvert The Constitution and fundamentally transform  (revolution) America).  The far-left wants to incite the far-right to violence, so they can then use the levers of executive power to advance their revolution.

You can read the Van Jones plans in his STORM Handbook, but just like Malik Shabazz went from being a leader of a reviled hate group in America to the National President of Black lawyers for Justice, Jones these days isn’t a radical subversive, nope, he’s the clean-cut, well-spoken political analyst on CNN and the president of Rebuild the Dream…. what could sound more benign….

America, the Republic, is being redefined out of existence, but really the far-left wants the far-right to react violently, so that President Obama can use the power of the Presidency to strong arm his fundamental transformation (revolution) with a national police force, widespread gun confiscation from private citizens and a flurry of executive orders to quell free speech.  Loretta Lynch signaled that, by warning Americans she will prosecute hate speech.  Words matter, so keep your dictionary handy!

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Ralph Peters unloads

Ralph Peters, one of my favorite military analysts and one of America’s most creative military strategic thinkers, calls it like it is.  Please be warned Peters used a little salty language, but here again sometimes that says it best.  (Hat tip to PJ media, where I saw this video first)

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Diversity does not make us stronger

“Speaking from the Oval Office and surrounded by members of his national security team, Obama said the shooters perhaps had “mixed motives.”

“It is possible that this was terrorist-related. But we don’t know. It’s also possible that this was work-related,” he said.”

‘Mixed Motives’ in California Shooting by Michele Gorman

President Obama lives in a leftist bubble, where he turns every situation into a college classroom debate forum on his ideological causes.  He fixates on “narratives” and word choice over substance.  Most of the rest of the world lives where reality smacks them in the face, where brute force decides life and death struggle and where stark truths about human nature can’t be edited out, as some politically inconvenient line. Most of us in America live in the real world too, where we look at a situation like the San Bernadino terrorist attack, quickly assess the facts and form our conclusions based on those facts.

With unerring bad timing,  President Obama makes bold declarations about America’s enemies, where events unfold that quickly blow apart his carefully constructed “narratives.   “ISIL is contained,” the day before the Paris attack or  “No specific threat to US,”  just a week ago.

In keeping with the Obama administration bad timing, Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, announced all combat positions will be open to women the day after the San Bernadino terrorist attack by Islamic radicals.  Assuredly, Secretary Carter believes that “diversity” makes us stronger, which he stated, but here’s the truth – selecting the best qualified people for military positions and maintaining high standards makes our military stronger.

So, selectivity, not diversity makes our military stronger and that means assessing the qualifications that best meet the mission.

In grueling combat jobs, where even most men fail to meet the physical standards, common sense and endless research can pinpoint with reliable accuracy where the female anatomy falls short on meeting these standards.   The Army made sure some females made it through Ranger school, where questions of different treatment to get them through the course have been raised, but be that as it may, in reality very few women will rush to get into the elite units and few (if any) have the physical ability to pursue a career in these jobs. Adding women to these jobs adds no advantage – absolutely NONE.  It creates another PC myth that must be maintained, even if the lie costs lives on the battlefield.  That’s the truth.  The entire hoopla about opening these fields to women is really about female officer career advancement, not about making the military stronger.

In the real world, where America’s adversaries size up our force, they hear the claptrap from the Pentagon, but they watch closely what happens in reality, far away from the DC echo chamber.  President Obama has slashed our forces, he has purged top generals and promoted sycophants, his military decisions lack any coherence or strategic sense. And then we come to this latest announcement – yes, while feminists cheer about the prospect of women in combat, America’s adversaries are laughing at us.    The day after an Islamic terrorist attack on American soil, the President preened on about “mixed motives”.  Then his attorney general publicly announced her greatest fear is not another terrorist attack or keeping Americans safe, nope her greatest concern is that Americans don’t use hate speech against Muslims. And finally the Pentagon announced women in combat jobs…

America sits a divided nation – where every public institution lumbers under the weight of highly-charged factionalized fighting.  One can only wonder what event or chain reaction will set the final collapse in motion.  If our Republic is going to survive, the last thing to believe is that “diversity makes us stronger”.  What made America great was not “diversity”, it was diverse people UNITED by a belief in a set of common civic values. Having common civic values and a common belief in The Constitution would help gird up our once great nation’s crumbling pillars.  I’ve written about this need to find common ground many times (here, here, here, here and here)  and as I said more than a year ago:

Truth matters and therein the fate of America lies.  We have hostile camps in America, left and right, black, white and every shade in-between, who find it easier to treat each other as enemies rather than talk and find common ground as fellow American citizens.  We’ve got too much diversity training and not enough American citizen training:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

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A little humor is good

I found this video funny:

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You’ve got to stand for something

Plenty of home truths in this song worth thinking about!

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Just, Get Real!

General Mike Flynn, former DIA director, used the phrase that it’s time to “get real” in our fight against ISIS.  It’s time to “get real” in putting the pieces together with this terrorist attack on American soil yesterday!  The Obama administration will bend over backwards to call it everything except what it is – A TERRORIST ATTACK!    The media keeps yammering on about how this shooter in San Bernadino left this workplace Christmas party angry.  The shooter happens to be a devout Muslim, who recently traveled to Saudi Arabia – okay, that could be “not definitive”, but come on he went home and returned with his wife and reports indicate a third person and all of them were heavily armed, wearing black gear.  Well, here’s a clue from a co-worker of the terrorist:

“Baccari said his co-worker, who said he was raised on a farm with goats and chickens, was reserved. Several months ago Farook grew out his beard. He appeared committed to his family, and never displayed any unusual behavior or discussed any radical political views.”

The suspect left THREE IEDS in the Inland Regional Center before fleeing the scene of their massacre.  Sure, random act by disgruntled employee is to go home and gather together, not only the wife and guns, but IEDs lying around the house.  Sure, he went home and just randomly constructed some IEDs, because he got pissed at the Christmas party.  GET REAL!

I can tell you that for sure, that while the President will fixate on the gun problem in America, he’s barking up the wrong tree, by assiduously avoiding facing the Islamic radical problem.  I know, the left will next say the work Christmas party was insensitive and “incited” this violent response…   Yes, don’t make them angry, or else.  Just wait, this line of insane reasoning is coming.

So sick of the venal politicizing Islam’s dark, radical underbelly, after more than a decade and thousands of American lives lost in a fight where our leaders refuse to identify the enemy – it’s Islamic radicals who are following an ideology that is promoted and funded by some of America’s supposed allies in the Mid-East!  That’s not “hate”, that’s called identifying those who hate America and want to annihilate us (hint: America’s enemies).

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A “get real” approach

Spiegel Online International ran an interview with General Mike Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, November 29, 2015, which offers some excellent insights into the challenges with defeating the Islamic State.  It’s rare to find an American general who will candidly state the truth, so I find General Flynn’s “get real” approach,  a breath of fresh air.  The interview is in English.  Here are a few takeaways:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is the Balkans mission a model for the current war?

Flynn: We can learn some lessons from the Balkans. Strategically, I envision a breakup of the Middle East crisis area into sectors in the way we did back then, with certain nations taking responsibility for these sectors. In addition, we would need a coalition military command structure and, on a political level, the United Nations must be involved. The United States could take one sector, Russia as well and the Europeans another one. The Arabs must be involved in that sort of military operation, as well, and must be part of every sector. With this model, you would have opportunities — Russia, for example, must use its influence on Iran to have Tehran back out of Syria and other proxy efforts in the region.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: For that to happen, the West would have to cooperate fully with the Russians.

Flynn: We have to work constructively with Russia. Whether we like it or not, Russia made a decision to be there (in Syria) and to act militarily. They are there, and this has dramatically changed the dynamic. So you can’t say Russia is bad, they have to go home. It’s not going to happen. Get real. Look at what happened in the past few days: The president of France asked the US for help militarily (after the Paris attacks). That’s really weird to me, as an American. We should have been there first and offered support. Now he is flying to Moscow and asking Putin for help.

(Hat tip to Debra Heine, at PJ Media, who posted a more extensive piece on General Flynn’s interview)

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