November 20, 2023 · 9:02 pm

Another reason to be cautious about initial reports

This is going to be a short blog post on a CAIR-hyped story about Islamophobia last month.

Here’s the CAIR link: CAIR-Cleveland Seeks Hate Crime Probe After Vehicular Assault on Palestinian-American by Driver Shouting ‘Kill all Palestinians,’ ‘Long live Israel’ 

Here’s a November 15th update: North Olmsted man accused of faking hate crime attack near North Ridgeville.

I saw this news story of the update a few days ago and so far CAIR Ohio still has this story up as a hate crime, with no update.

Once people buy into the hate crime narrative the media and various organizations hype for political reasons, it’s very hard to convince many people those narratives were lies. In Ferguson, years ago, the entire “Hand up, don’t shoot” narrative was a lie. Many of the media’s Trump narratives were lies (and I don’t even like Trump, but I can admit a lot of the media narratives were lies) and this is how it goes with the news media.

Corrections get little to no coverage.

In Ukraine, and now with the Hamas/Israeli conflict the level of propaganda is so pervasive on both sides and then with other political groups and countries’ information operations trying to spin things, that I don’t have any idea what is true and what’s not. Our news media does a terrible job at reporting on these highly contentious conflicts.

It’s best to be very skeptical about all news reporting these days and this goes for all the political pundits too – even the ones you like. No one is immune from the bandwagon effect. In our media culture virtue-signaling boosts popularity and ratings and although the viewpoints that appeal to the left and right differ – the effect is the same. If you tout the views that are red meat to your partisan side, well, that will resonate with your followers. viewers, and get clicks.

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Filed under General Interest, Information War, Politics

November 20, 2023 · 2:42 pm

Life is about more than lemons

Used book for my first “book annotation” craft project.

With Thanksgiving fast approaching most people seem to forget the components of being thankful for all the blessings in our lives and the giving with an open heart, that heartfelt “thanksgiving” requires.

We’re surrounded by bad news being blared far and wide, in the news media and many people on social media, to the point where it’s easy to lose sight of the multitude of good things happening each and every day.

If all we focus on are the dark clouds of bad news and the worst case doom-casting, well then surely that’s going to block out some of the rays of sunshine trying to peek through. Since 2020, it seems too many people have gone off the deep end with their partisan politics, both left and right, where everyday it’s some new hyped drama they get fixated on as another ominous sign that this is “the worst time ever.”

Sure, there are serious events happening, but all the small steps that I’ve made at being better prepared and especially working on my organization leaves me feeling calmer. It’s when I go online, especially on social media, and consume hyped news and commentary tinged with fearmongering that I can feel that pull of negative influencing – and the doubts creep in about my own preparedness efforts. While it’s important not to bury your head in the sand, likewise it’s important not to let the news media drama faceplant you into a puddle of doom and gloom or keep your head spinning in a constant state of agitation. American media – left and right, because all of our media is now highly politicized, is mostly just agitation propaganda, often veering toward the old Soviet style. Of all the things for American news media to import from the communists, I would never have dreamed it would be the Soviet agitation propaganda style that lives on in our American news media.

With the news being such a cesspool of faked news and agitation propaganda to get people agitated and angry at “the other side,” well I take a very cautious approach to believing things. I like following politics and world news happenings, but I now take days or even sometimes a week or more off, where I just catch some headlines each day, but focus on other things. It takes more time than I care to invest daily to research hot news topics and get to some facts. In the past week I’ve been back to spending more time on reading and some paper crafting projects again. That led to racing down another YouTube rabbit hole by clicking on a book channel, where the young lady was talking about how she annotates in the books she’s reading.

Silly me, I thought she was talking about some sort of serious note-taking method, but it took watching a few other “book annotation” videos by young women to realize this is more a crafting/journaling type project than serious note-taking. However, by watching those few book annotation videos my YouTube feed filled up with all sorts of note-taking and “how to become a better reader” videos. Naturally, I got sucked into some of those too. I learned about the Cornell Note Taking System and the different types of reading techniques. Then there were videos on keeping a commonplace notebook and the importance of jotting down ideas wherever you’re at.

When I finally decided I’d explored this book annotation rabbit hole adventure far enough, I had ordered some book tabs, pretty colored highlighters and some other supplies for attempting a book annotation craft project. Once again, just like when I went down the “junk journaling” crafting rabbit hole several years ago, I was back to facing my wall when it comes to my books.

I do not write in my books and I do not ever bend down page corners, but most of all I try to keep my books in good condition. I don’t even lay my hardcover books down with them opened, because I don’t want the book spine damaged. I have books that I’ve had since I was a kid, that have traveled all over when we moved around the Army, and most are in very good condition. And, I do not let anyone borrow my books, unless it’s a book I won’t mind if it doesn’t get returned. That rule came about after books I cared about were not returned.

Some book YouTuber did a helpful video explaining what she learned about this crafty sort of book annotation fad. Like me, she has confused about why do this sort of elaborate book annotation and she also has an issue about not defacing her books. She set off to annotate a book using all the bells and whistles colorful tabs, pens and highlighters. She bought a book from a secondhand shop. So, I have some thrift store books and will use the one pictured above, Driving Over Lemons, for my first book annotation craft project.

How I have taken notes while reading since I was a kid is by using a notebook or notepad and index cards, where I jot down my notes and the page numbers of the book. I do use post-it book tabs to mark pages sometimes, but as soon as I’m done reading the book or have made notes on paper where I tabbed in the book, I remove all those post-it book tabs, so my book isn’t defaced.

So, why would someone with some rather OCD tendencies about “proper care of my books” even consider “junk journaling” using old books or this new “book annotation” crafting effort? Well, it’s because I keep trying to break some of my OCD tendencies, which are a form of trying to control everything.

Some people, like me, like to troubleshoot and contingency plan for everything imaginable and while that can be a good thing sometimes, it can lead to being too risk adverse and too rigid. My late husband used to tell me to just relax more and enjoy things rather than borrowing trouble constantly. He was able to shake off adversity and just charge ahead, by accepting F.I.S.H., but then you deal with it. He also had a very dry, dark sort of sense of humor, which probably helped when really bad stuff happened. I lack his type of self-confidence and I often get caught up in overthinking problems and trying to find the “best way” to do things. Most times it doesn’t take the best way to get a job done, but really just requires the willingness to get busy working on a solution. I’ve learned more from trial and error – and my failures – than I ever have from researching the best way to do most things. Workable is usually just fine, especially when time is of the essence, rather than trying to achieve perfection.

In 2021, I wrote about hearing part of a conversation in a local grocery store between a manager and an employee stocking store brand frozen turkeys in a bunker. Based off my fear of a turkey shortage, which several online preppers were warning about and bits of an overheard conversation, I snapped up the only turkey in the cooler of the brand I prefer – an over 18 pound turkey, which was way larger than I needed for my two sons and me. Plus, none of us are all that fond of turkey. There were plenty of turkeys available in my local grocery stores in 2021 and I had a lot of leftover turkey in the freezer to use up, but I was really happy to use that turkey carcass to make homemade turkey broth. That turkey broth went into several pots of soup over the next year. As a side note, there are always many good food sales from Thanksgiving through Christmas, so it’s a great time to stock up on many items.

Here it is 2023 and once again I thought about making something else for Thanksgiving, but then I bought a smaller turkey and there were plenty of turkeys this year too- many on sale. I haven’t ventured to making something else yet, but I’m considering a new side dish recipe. Small steps…

And with the preparedness mindset, like with everything else in life, probably moderation rather than letting preparing for every catastrophe imaginable consume your life, is a better approach. We still need to keep our daily lives primarily focused on living in the present and paying attention to the people we love. The most important thing to stockpile is goodwill toward others and to create memories to hold fast to in hard times – that requires living each day with an open and thankful heart.

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November 11, 2023 · 2:45 pm

A Veterans Day speech all about what Biden’s done for vets

It’s Veterans Day in America and the drums of war are beating louder lately. President Biden laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery and gave a speech (begins at 1:09:05 in the NBC News video above). Beyond Biden delivering this speech yelling, which was annoying, I got disgusted as his speech devolved into a campaign speech about all the things he’s done for vets. It was a truly awful partisan political speech for what should have been a national moment of unity. Somehow America’s leaders no longer seem to even try to muster even a few moments where they put aside their rabid partisan politics and work to pull Americans together.

Added to this, all morning the news has been about the large crowds of Americans, especially young people, taking to the streets again – waving Palestinian flags in America… on Veterans Day. These protestors keep ranting about eliminating the state of Israel, which they accuse of being an “oppressor” and a “colonizer.”

Back in the 1990s, Robert Bork, a conservative judge whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the US Senate in 1987, wrote a book, Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, which took a pretty negative view of modern liberalism and offered shrill warnings. Despite his tone, I think looking at where America is at now, especially with the radical leftist ideological takeover of our colleges and universities, that Bork’s warnings turned out to be accurate.

Bork was a law professor at Yale during the 1960s and early 1970s when radical activism swept American colleges. Yale had some violent incidents, like a murder and bombing carried out by the Black Panthers. He explained how instead of college presidents enforcing rules and upholding standards of conduct, all across America, college administrations caved to the radical protestors demands. The Black Panthers was only one of many radical groups that sprang up in 60s on American college campuses. Bork wrote:

“The temporary abeyance of the Sixties temper was due to the radicals graduating from the universities and becoming invisible until they reached positions of power and influence, as they now have, across the breadth of the culture. They no longer have need for violence or confrontation: since the radicals control the institutions they formerly attacked, the Sixties temper manifests itself in subtler, but no less destructive ways.”

Bork wrote that in the 1990s and we’re seeing that those Boomer age radicals among the elites, who run everything now and who pushed all the policies that have led to this craziness, are having their cushy positions of power challenged by young radicals leftists, who are even more radical than they were in the 1960s. Some of those 60s radicals still showed up at BLM marches in 2020 and are at the “Free Palestine” marches, but most don’t. They’ve moved on to amassing power, wealth and they live lives of privilege.

One of those 60s radicals, Hillary Clinton, who was one of Bork’s law students, is now positioning herself as the left’s serene, elder stateswoman. She showed up at The View last week and she’s been at other news venues to try to guide liberals toward less radical positions in regards to the Israel-Hamas war. Listening to Hillary trying to calm the waters on The View, was quite interesting – she presented a brief history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, trying to take credit for her husband’s ME policy efforts, but she carefully avoided any mention of her role as Obama’s Secretary of State, where he empowered the most radical Palestinian factions. Obama came into office determined to change the Bush policy of isolating Hamas. Obama wanted to open up dialogue with Hamas (and that legitimized them). Here’s a 2009 article from The Guardian: Obama camp ‘prepared to talk to Hamas’. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she wants to raise her visibility as a “ready to take the reins” Democrat option for 2024, if things go south for Biden.

For Americans (like me) with traditional values and a world view based on rule of law, human rights and a belief in American exceptionalism, the anti-Israel protesting and embrace of the Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas, feels like we’re in some bizarre alter-universe. Hamas would gladly slaughter these American leftists, especially gay and trans people, although they might spare Palestinian Americans. Yet, many American liberals are choosing to join these crowds drummed up on college campuses and online – just like millions of Americans rushed to the streets in 2020 to virtue-signal about BLM.

Perhaps part of the problem is the widespread subversion of our education system and perhaps in the digital information age, there’s way more inaccurate, incomplete and deliberately false information flooding social media and news sites. Perhaps part is due to young people getting most of their information from TikTok. Then there’s the alarming truth that the old way most Americans viewed the world, where modern civilization and democratic values were our aspiration has been replaced by a world view of “oppressed vs. oppressor” and the Marxist-tinged politics of the far-left among most American young people. What if the anti-Israel as a “colonizer” is only part of the far-left view and that in this leftist framework America is an even worse “colonizer” and this large segment of Americans raging about Israel also want to tear down America too. I doubt a single one of these people protesting would lift a finger to defend America and a disturbing number of them would rush to aid the people attacking our country.

Back in 2020 with the BLM rioting, the airwaves were filled with discussions of “systemic racism” and “white privilege” along with demands that we “defund the police.” This national firestorm was ignited by BLM activists, who used the George Floyd case as the face of their national effort to force radical changes to American law enforcement – they literally wanted police departments around the country to be defunded. There were also demands to federalize all law enforcement and thus take away the constitutional right of states and local governments of having control of policing. Add-ons to the demands kept piling up, like renaming military installations named after Confederate generals and removal of all sorts of statues (not only Confederate ones) that offended the sensibilities of some “oppressed” group.

In a couple recent posts I mentioned Ben Crump and CAIR in reference to the Muslim boy in Illinois, who was stabbed to death by his family’s landlord. I did mention the Ben Crump/George Floyd connection and I don’t want to diminish this child’s murder. I hope his murderer is prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but in Illinois there is no death penalty and the federal government seeking the death penalty is much rarer than states. At the same time I don’t trust any narrative framed by Crump, who looks for cases to exploit to incite racial tensions in America and especially by CAIR, which is part of the Hamas propaganda apparatus in America. This isn’t just my opinion, it’s a fact determined by the US Justice Department when they prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation in 2004. The Holy Land Foundation was ostensibly raising money for humanitarian assistance for Palestinians, but was actually providing materiel support for terrorism. CAIR was part of a long list of Muslim Brotherhood groups operating in the US, who were also arms of the Hamas network and the US government listed CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land case. For years after the Holy Land case, CAIR decried being labeled as an unindicted co-conspirator. If anyone at the FBI knows that CAIR is the propaganda arm of Hamas in America, it’s FBI director, Christopher Wray, because in that link I provided for the Holy Land Foundation case in 2004, Wray was the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division back then.

As a closing thought, I believe Biden is being tested by all these Iranian proxy attacks on US Forces and he’s showing America’s adversaries that the Biden who bungled the Afghanistan withdrawal and who took a week to decide to shoot down an unmanned Chinese spy balloon floating across America hasn’t learned a thing, His displays of weakness are a green light to all our adversaries. The Biden administration is just like the Obama administration, where red lines weren’t really red lines and Jen Psaki at the Obama State Department would hold up hashtag signs and think our adversaries took that seriously. I doubt Biden will muster an effective response to further attacks on American forces.

Recent news reports indicate that there’s an angry fifth column inside the US government, who are demanding Biden not support Israel and demanding a ceasefire. It’s likely we’ve got quite a big “enemy within” problem that is much more ominous than the Trumpian belief in a “Deep State” out to get Trump. I think most of our educated elites have been steeped in this leftist Intersectionality/oppressor vs. oppressed ideology and no longer hold any loyalty to the United States of America. Just yesterday, I saw this news: Over 1,000 USAID officials call for Gaza ceasefire in letter. These are government employees, who signed a letter opposing the official policy of the President of the United States, whom they’re serving… Same thing happened in Congress with Congressional aides…

America is at a very alarming point.

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Filed under General Interest, Military, Politics

November 8, 2023 · 12:18 am

The craziness isn’t going away any time soon

This was an image from the weekend pro-Palestinian protests in Washington DC. It felt to me like Western civilization was surrendering:

There was a lot of weirdness going on with the authorities in Washington DC, as statues and the gate of the White House were defaced – no reports of anyone arrested. Defacement of government property is a crime, but like most things in Washington, it seems the laws only apply to some people. At the White House gates, they put up big black screens to cover up the the defacement, while they clean it up:

On a much smaller scale, last night I watched a video on YouTube by a prepper/homestead couple and they were explaining why they’re removing all their videos of their family and will no longer be posting family stuff. They’re Jewish and said they’ve received hateful anti-Semitic comments and are concerned about the safety of their family – here in America. I felt both angry that this is happening in America and alarmed.

Then today I saw news reports of an elderly Jewish man in CA, who was waving an Israeli flag at a protest, where there were both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protestors. He was reportedly hit in the head with a megaphone, by a pro-Palestinian protestor, and knocked to the ground. He suffered blunt force trauma to his head and died of the injuries. Also, this story, UPenn president calls in FBI to investigate ‘vile’ antisemitic emails sent to staffers.

Over the weekend I watched the Netflix mini-series, All the Light We Cannot See, and that story is set in WWII. The scenes of devastation of the small town in France, where most of the story unfolds, as the Allied forces are bombing to liberate France from the Nazis, made me think of the situation in Gaza, where civilians are caught in the midst of all this. I also was thinking of all the Israeli families who had family members massacred or taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7th.

I don’t have any big ideas to deal with any of this world chaos. If you feel that somehow you’re making some important statement by marching in large protests, have at it, but I’ve always believed large crowds are not safe places and I avoid them. With angry crowds or crowds where there are a lot of drunk or drugged up people, well, those crowds are even more volatile. And when you get to crowds where there are likely political zealots, who believe violence is an acceptable way to make political points, as we saw in 2020 and we’re seeing again, well, those crowds are very unsafe places to be and likely have plenty of drunks and drugged up people too.

That Netflix mini-series was good, but not nearly as good as the novel. I had read that novel several years ago and loved it, so I was familiar with the story. I don’t want to be a spoiler, but just as a general statement on people in the French Resistance, is many were ordinary people, who took great risks, just by passing along information, but they tried not to draw attention to themselves. There really is sense in trying to be the “gray man” in dangerous public situations. My rebellious side wants to speak out and argue or debate the other side into the ground, but that is a wasted effort. You aren’t likely to convert anyone to your side and the people who do listen to you or follow your social media content likely already agree with you. That’s the reality. I can admit I was furious when I saw the news of the Ben Franklin statue with a keffiyeh on it and this is the same reaction I had in 2020 when statues and public spaces were defaced and wrecked, but anger won’t change a thing.

Yes, speaking out is important, but when you’re in public where there are crowds of angry, screaming people, no one’s going to listen to you and you could end up seriously injured. I do understand the elderly Jewish man standing out there waving the Israeli flag, just like I understand people who showed up in London waving British flags against a sea of Palestinian flags and I understand Americans showing up to wave the American flag when other flags are being waved and American monuments are being defaced. However, I hope people do consider personal safety and sometimes finding other ways to speak out and work to support the things they believe in besides public screaming matches or confrontations might be a better option.

I think since many Dems, liberals in academia, radical Islamist organizations in America and the liberal media are aligned to amplify the pro-Palestinian messaging in the media and on the streets, just like in 2020 with the BLM protests, that people who disagree might need to change tactics and find other avenues to reach people.

What I wish more Americans understood, is that while Israel was attacked on October 7th and Iran helped mastermind this attack, Israel is the Little Satan. America is the Big Satan. We’re the big target. That doesn’t mean we need to run around in a panic or start building a bunker in the backyard, but we all should start practicing to be more observant in public places. In our homes, well, there are various home security measures, both firearms and non-lethal options, plus a variety of home safety measures to better secure your home. There was this crazy story from Indianapolis over the weekend too: Indiana woman hit with terrorism charges in attack on supposed Jewish school, police say That woman was upset about signs on the school she thought were Jewish, and she drove her car into that school. The school was actually a Black Hebrew Israelite school and that sect is anti-Semitic and listed as a hate group. She admitted to police she was angry and thought she was attacking a Jewish school… Crazy!

With the volatility in the world political situation, the economic issues, the continuing reports of supply chain and shortage problems, and the random crazies running around, working to acquire some self-defense skills (I am lacking there), emergency supplies, like extra water and food, supplies for weather emergencies, and becoming more familiar with emergency preparedness would be a very good thing to do for yourself and your family. Plus, the more you delve into emergency preparedness, the more you’ll find there are more skills to master and things to learn how to do and by doing more things, you’ll begin to feel more empowered to tackle harder tasks.

There’s a lot of free information on preparedness online and while some is of the Doomsday variety, there’s plenty that’s sensible advice. All the information in the world won’t make a difference if you don’t get busy and start taking some steps to actually be prepared. You can’t become prepared just by watching videos or reading books. It takes learning how to do things, practicing, then working to hone those skills. There’s a meme about buying crafting supplies and actually using them are two separate hobbies. And that’s true for most things. Often, things can look very easy to do, but once you try doing it, you realize it takes some skill and skill is developed by practice. Even world class athletes didn’t just wake up one day as Olympic athletes – they put in years of practice and training. That’s been the case with many of my needlework projects – they looked easy, but then turned out to require more skill than I possessed and had to develop.

One of the best things all of us can do for our emotional well-being is to cultivate interests, hobbies, or doing things with family or friends that we find some joy in. There’s nothing wrong with taking some time to relax and enjoy life – even if there’s a lot of craziness going on in the world. The craziness doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.

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Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Politics

November 6, 2023 · 8:30 am

BLM morphs into “Free Palestine” movement

Although it’s not even a month since over 1.400 Israelis (and civilians from many other countries) were brutally massacred on October 7th, by Hamas terrorists, all around the world big protests are happening to demand an Israeli ceasefire and a stop to Israel dismantling and destroying the Hamas terrorist organization. Many prominent Democrats have come out and demanded a “humanitarian pause,” which is just a semantical word game to pretend they aren’t trying to derail Israel’s military operation, but more critical for Democrats is they’re also back to appeasing the most radical factions in their base. So, here’s a rundown of where we’re at.

A Hamas leader was asked about the Israeli ceasefire and he’s all for an Israeli ceasefire, but Hamas isn’t going to cease their attacks on Israel:

So, there you have it, the ceasefire or “humanitarian pause” the Biden administration and other European leaders are demanding only applies to Israel – not to Hamas. There’s no demand to tell Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israel or to release the hostages, some of whom are American citizens. Nope, the demand is for an Israeli ceasefire or “humanitarian pause.”

When I turned on the news Saturday, it felt like I was back in the “Summer of Love” in America, with American cities filled with raging far-left lunatics – defacing statues and trying to climb the WH gates, but of course this time there was no President Trump to blame – this time it’s all Israel’s fault… for responding to having their country invaded by Hamas terrorists and over 1.400 innocent citizens brutally massacred.

And to explain why it’s also our fault, along came former President Obama to play the moral equivalency card and try to explain that Israel is at fault… for existing. Dem politicians will rattle on about a “two-state solution” again and Palestinian leaders will reject that completely, as will Iran, because contrary to the effort to pretend “from the river to the sea” isn’t a call to drive the Jews from the Jordan River into the Mediterranean Sea, well, Palestinian leaders (and most of the Arab world & especially Iran) have clearly articulated that position over and over and over.

This entire “colonizer” narrative to try to justify Palestinian terrorism is filled with endless lies. The UN deliberately handles the Palestinian refugees differently than every other group of refugees in the world, to hinder any sort of political solution. Destroying the state of Israel is the only solution they will accept.

By creating a permanent Palestinian refugee crisis, there’s no incentive to reach a solution and billions upon billions of dollars flow through the UNWRA to corrupt Palestinian leaders and NGOs operating in the Palestinian refugee camps and it also funds the Palestinian terror organizations. It’s quite a racket and the people most poorly served by all this UN-funded corruption are the Palestinian people. In Gaza, two-thirds of the population is unemployed and 80% rely on international aid, but the one thing there’s no shortage of is rockets to fire at Israel.

President Obama was a big appeaser and apologist for radical Islamist terrorism, to the point, where no one in the US government could even use the term radical Islamist terrorism. He also purged all training on radical Islam from the US military and intelligence agencies. Obama embarked on Muslim outreach and hiring terrorist-sympathizers to focus on “Islamophobia.” So, when these stories emerge of radicals who are siding with radical Islamist terrorists being employees of the federal government, we have President Obama to thank for that.

While Obama showed up this weekend to lecture us on our failings, President Biden was at home in Delaware. Then there was a release of very bad poll numbers yesterday, where Trump is beating Biden in several swing states. David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, started tweeting yesterday – strongly hinting that Biden should step aside:

Perhaps, Dems are going to try to ditch Biden and run with someone else.

Mark Levin interviewed Michael Doran, an international affairs analyst, over the weekend and there was mention of a 2021 article Doran wrote. Here’s that 2021 article, The Realignment, by Michael Doran and Tony Badran, which explains the Obama Iran policy. The Obama plan aims to bolster Iran in the region, in the belief that Iran (a Shia state) will be a counterweight to the Sunni Arab countries. The US has been more aligned with the Sunni Arab countries, since the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 (and all that “Death to America” stuff). Robert Malley, the top Obama and Biden Iran negotiator, who this summer had his security clearance suspended and who is under investigation for running an Iranian spy ring out of the US State Department, explained the Obama (now Biden) Iran policy:

“The president’s “ultimate goal,” Malley wrote, was “to help the [Middle East] find a more stable balance of power that would make it less dependent on direct U.S. interference or protection.” That is a roundabout way of saying that Obama dreamed of a new Middle Eastern order—one that relies more on partnership with Iran.”

This article goes on:

“This project to create a new Middle Eastern order, which now spans two presidential administrations, deserves a name. The “Obama-Biden-Malley-Blinken-Sullivan initiative” is quite a mouthful. Instead, we hereby dub it “the Realignment.” That it should fall to us, and at this late date, to name a project on which many talented people have been working for the better part of a decade is more than a little odd. Typically, presidents launch initiatives as grand as this one with a major address, and they further embroider their vision with dozens of smaller speeches and interviews. One searches in vain for Obama’s speech, “A New Order in the Middle East.”

“Obama, it seems clear, felt his project would advance best with stealth and misdirection, not aggressive salesmanship. Biden, while keeping Obama’s second-term foreign policy team nearly intact, is using the same playbook. He and his aides recognize that confusion about the “ultimate goal” makes achieving it easier. Indeed, confusion is the Realignment’s best friend.”

If you’ll recall when news broke of this horrific Hamas attack on Israel, the Biden White House was at pains to state there was no direct evidence Iran was involved, because above all else the Team Obama goal is to not only “fundamentally transform America,” they want to transform the Middle East too and they’re banking on aligning the US with the mullahs in Iran, who rant, “Death to America.” They believe the terror masters in Iran will be rational actors on the world stage and act responsibly when they acquire nuclear weapons… This crowd in the White House is also the same crowd who trusted the Taliban’s word and we ended up with the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. Then they were negotiating with Putin and believed they could dissuade Putin from invading Ukraine. If there’s one thing this crowd has no shortage of it’s confidence in their own diplomatic brilliance.

In my previous post, I mentioned both 2020 BLM George Floyd star, Ben Crump and CAIR representing the family of the murdered Muslim boy in Illinois in October. This weekend we saw the 2020 BLM movement revamped into the “Free Palestine” movement – a few sign and costume changes, but the defacing statues and trying to storm the WH is the same. I’m not sure what they’ll call this rampaging in the streets, since “Summer of Love” won’t work with us close to winter time.

Hamas has a highly effective global propaganda operation and they’re aligned with BLM, as these massive protests demonstrate. CAIR has been the Hamas propaganda arm in America for decades. The media is filled with reporters who will carry water for Hamas propaganda without question, as that false story of the Gazan hospital being hit by an Israeli missile showed – no verifying facts – they all just ran with the story.

The Biden administration isn’t going to forcefully retaliate against Iran, as US troops come under attack in the region. They still want to suck up to Iran and work to turn Iran into the power-broker in the Muslim world, despite the US government experts repeatedly stating Iran is the #1 state sponsor of terrorism in the world.

In 2020, the American people were lectured by the left that the BLM rioting, looting and destruction of statues was the result of centuries of oppression of black people. We were told the solution was to “Defund the Police” and check “white privilege.” This past weekend, former President Obama came out to lecture us that we are responsible for Hamas terrorism, because the Palestinian people are oppressed. And their solution is to demand an Israeli ceasefire and “Free Palestine.” Buckle up, because we’re in for some rough times.

My next post is going to be about emergency preparedness and a reminder that if you aren’t prepared or haven’t ever seriously thought about emergency preparedness, now would be a good time to do so.

Update, November 6, 2023, 11:07 am – Well, it didn’t take long for the first liberal media hot take to downplay the “Free Palestine” protest vandalism and mayhem to drop. Here’s Mary Bruce, ABC News Chief White House Correspondent:

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics

November 2, 2023 · 9:24 pm

“Islamophobia” they say…

This post is going to be a timeline covering how the Biden administration is going to try to have it both ways by publicly mouthing support for Israel to respond against the horrific Hamas attack on Oct. 7th, where over 1,400 people were massacred in heinous ways, while doing everything they can to hype “Islamophobia” and throw roadblocks in the way of Israel destroying Hamas.

October 17th – The media ran a story about an Israeli missile hitting a hospital in Gaza and mass casualties. That story was false. It was a Hamas rocket that misfired and hit the hospital parking lot and not mass causalities. This false story inflamed violent, anti-Israel protests around the world:

October 20, 2023: President Biden gave an Oval Office speech affirming US support for Ukraine and Israel, but he focused more on Ukraine than Israel and he blabbered on about “Islamophobia.” There was a highly publicized murder of a Muslim boy in Illinois on October 16th and Biden mentioned that. I’m not going to argue about details, because the DOJ is investigating this, but I’ll offer one word of caution that with cases where the assailant and victims had some relationship – landlord/tenant in this case, there are often other issues and in this CNN story I linked, CAIR seems to be the media spokespeople for the Muslim family. CAIR is the Council on American Islamic Relations, founded in 1994 by leaders of the Islamic Association for Palestine and mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda. I’m not trying to justify or minimize the murder of this child, what I’m saying is I don’t know all the details and I don’t trust any narrative being stage-managed by CAIR. I’m adding this news article after posting, because it has a photo of the attorney for the mother, who was also stabbed… Ben Crump: Man pleads not guilty to hate crime in fatal stabbing of 6-year-old Muslim boy in Illinois. Ben Crump (George Floyd fame) and CAIR lawyers together… go figure.

October 23, 2023: Karine Jean-Pierre, the WH press secretary, answered a question about the rise of antisemitism in America, by stating there’s no credible threats and that the real threats are against Muslims and those perceived to be Muslims:

The next day she walked that back a bit, but it seemed bizarre to focus so heavily on “Islamophobia” and be so dismissive of the rise of anti-Semitism in America, when the incidents are cropping up all over and the angry protests supporting Hamas have been raging across American college campuses and cities.

October 30, 2023: I posted this comment on Twitter/X. Here’s a link to explain the Dem/liberal media narrative flip after the Orlando nightclub shooting in 2016, Reminder: The press blamed Christian conservatives for the Pulse nightclub shooting. It was a vicious smear.:

October 31, 2023: FBI Director Wray testified in front of Congress and stated that anti-Semitism was at historic levels, and makes up over 60% of all religious hate crimes being investigated. So, how to square the WH the day before doubling down on Islamophobia is the big problem, not anti-Semitism:

November 1, 2023: Vice-President, Kamala Harris announces:

November 2, 2023: The global effort to hype “Islamophobia” and throw obstacles in Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas is underway .

And on and on it will go. The Republicans in the House insisting they needed to separate funding for Israel and Ukraine played right into Dems hands and the Biden administration has announced Biden will veto that separate aid for Israel bill, which will aid the “Islamophobia” crowd’s effort to hobble Israel’s military operation to destroy Hamas. It also buys more time for the global “Islamophobia” propaganda effort to hype the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. This is a global progressive propaganda effort working in tandem with the international cabal of Palestinian activists and mouthpieces, I believe.

The narrative flip to downplay anti-Semitism raging across the world and in America is underway and the efforts to hype the Palestinian cause is now coming from the White House.

And for the record: Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas in 2021 and October 7th is what they got in return:

And if that’s not bad enough, here’s a FOX News report: Timeline: US forces in Iraq and Syria were attacked at least 28 times between since Oct. 17. Meanwhile Biden keeps warning Iran to stop and that we’ll respond, but so far it’s been meaningless retaliations and lip service. If you thought the Afghanistan Withdrawal Debacle was a nightmare, I fear America is in for much worse with this “Islamophobia” crowd in the driver’s seat of American foreign policy.

Update: I forgot to put in the October 17th media meltdown over the Gaza hospital/mass casualty report from Gazan officials, which the media ran with and then later that entire story imploded. I added that Oct 17th story

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October 28, 2023 · 1:00 pm

We’re gonna have to become crows

I don’t know if Senator Cornyn will leave this post on Twitter/X up, but “Over 18,000 ‘gotaways’ slipped into the US in 16 days,” is only part of our border crisis that has concerned me and millions of Americans for a long time. Yet, until the October 7th Hamas attack, penetrating the Israeli border, brutally massacring over 1,400 civilians and taking hundreds hostage, our liberal media and Democrats, paid lip service to the Democrats open borders policies. President Biden named Vice President, Kamala Harris to head up policy efforts to stem migration in March of 2021 and she downplayed the problem.

This post isn’t going to be just bashing the liberal media and Democrats or promoting Trump over Biden, because frankly I wish both of them would retire from politics. Where many people, myself included, are struggling is deciding what media sources are reliable or is blanketly trusting or not trusting everything certain media or journalists report a better approach? Or should we look at a variety of sources from various parts of the political spectrum, since the term “mainstream media” no longer seems to mean moderate or centrist? It’s really hard to decide what media to trust, because even the traditional standards most news media relied on with editing have disappeared in the internet age, where “stealth-editing” happens constantly and brings to mind the oft-repeated Orwell quote:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984

The liberal media played along with the Dem effort to criticize the Trump border policies and efforts to secure our border, but also worked to discredit FOX News reporting on our border crisis. This politicized media reporting actively downplays a real threat to the safety of all of us.

I am certainly not a Trump fan, but for all the liberal media and Dem hysteria about Trump, his foreign policies were better for America and the bigger issue is all of us are at risk of increasing crime from the waves of Mexican drug cartel activities our porous border facilitates and there’s a very real risk of terrorists entering our country unnoticed.

Here’s another example of the liberal media carrying water to prop up a failed Biden administration foreign policy effort – Biden reversing the Trump ban on aid to Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas (a group the US has designated a terrorist group since 1997). Well, that reversal actually helped fund Hamas, who then launched a horrific terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th.

There’s a lot of face-saving efforts (and revisionist history) going on in America by what I’ll loosely call the liberal elite. This crowd floods liberal media with commentary (and edicts), but most of all labels and disparages people who don’t’ agree or dare question the accepted wisdom that comes from on high from the “expert class” on anything from COVID, to the BLM movement, to the open border, to just about any policy pushed by the political Left in America.

I do believe in listening to subject matter experts, but I also believe in being able to question them. And when some subject matter experts, who challenge the prevailing view, are silenced, like what happened during COVID, where those dissenting experts in the field had their social media accounts removed and any posts online where their views were advanced censored, well, it’s natural to wonder why no one can ask questions.

The above post on Twitter/X a few days ago shows Foreign Affairs magazine doing stealth editing on their online version to allow Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, in the Biden administration, to edit his essay in their November/December issue, which went to print before Oct. 7th. The National Security Advisor is the senior advisor to the President of the United States on national security issues. In his essay, Sullivan was doing victory laps about the Biden administration ditching the Trump policies in the Middle East and bragging about how the Biden approach had deescalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy. Then Hamas invaded Israel and massacred over 1,400 civilians. The Trump administration had cut off aid, because aid is routinely funneled to supporting terrorism. Biden pledged $290 million in aid to the Palestinians.

That the very programs Sullivan helped craft actually aided Hamas’ Oct. 7th attack is bad enough, but then for Foreign Affairs magazine to stealth edit to allow Sullivan to save face in their online version, after the Biden policy spectacularly failed, speaks not only to how closely the cabal of the liberal elite in media and politics work together to prop each other up, but also speaks to the moral rot.

JK, a frequent commenter on my blog, a few days ago recommended a Foreign Affairs essay, The Dysfunctional Superpower, by Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense and former CIA director, which is in the current Foreign Affairs magazine too. This Gates article is highlighted in this RealClearPolitics article, Bolstering U.S. Foreign Policy by Repairing U.S. Dysfunction, by Peter Berkowitz.

I didn’t subscribe to Foreign Affairs magazine and I have done away with almost all subscriptions over the years, because I’d rather put more money toward other things, especially working on my emergency preparedness efforts. With everything going on in the world, I debated whether I wanted to subscribe to Foreign Affairs just to read Gates essay and the answer was no, but then as I was looking at the subscription information, it also includes access to Foreign Affairs archives and that made me rethink the issue. I did subscribe and their archives go back to their first volume in September 1922. I’ve done a tiny bit of browsing in their archives and plan to do more. The Gates essay is definitely worth reading too.

We’re all going to be dealing with this how to decide what information to trust issue for a long time due to the corruption of the the vast liberal media and the right-wing media, the corruption within the pundit class and most of all the corruption of our political class . Often I find some worthwhile information in a news article, where most of the rest of the article is useless drivel or information I don’t think is reliable. The truth is we’re going to have to become crows, as JK, explained in a comment years ago:

“There’s a somewhat useful methodology label analysts occasionally admit to using. The Crow Method. Don’t know you ever spent much time in barnyards/feedlots. … Next time you find yourself where bovines and crows are gathered, pick one crow and keep eyes on that one crow. If you’ve chosen a smart crow, the crow’ll be following a big bull and everytime the bull drops a load, the crow’ll swoop down and swirl around the bovine waste looking for the few nuggets of undigested golden corn kernels. The crow will take the corn leaving the remainder of the bullshit for the worms.”

“Better to be a Crow. Dirty work but not so dirty as being a worm. Worms’ll swallow anything.”

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October 27, 2023 · 10:27 am

Emergency preparedness isn’t a trivial pursuit

“Courage – you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn’t want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself.”

Maya Angelou

In the 1980s a new board game, Trivial Pursuit, was released. I became very fond of that game and in later years I acquired other versions. The game broke down trivia into six categories, Geography, History, Literature, Entertainment, Sports, and Science & Nature. Within my family I was the reigning queen of trivia. Entertainment and Sports were my weakest categories, but History and Literature were my strongest.

So, what on earth does acquiring knowledge of trivia, which is defined as bits of information of little importance, have to do with emergency preparedness? Well, most people consider acquiring emergency preparedness knowledge and skills they might never need to use, as a “trivial pursuit” – literally. They assume catastrophes or big emergencies won’t happen or will happen other places – the “not in my backyard” mentality.

In this blog post I’m going to share two prepper YouTube videos, which provide ideas on how to approach emergency preparedness and make it part of your lifestyle. The first video by Prepper Potpourri offers a perspective on why learning to be a jack-of-all-trades, acquiring many diversified skill sets, rather than becoming a specialist in one area, will boost your emergency preparedness success. At the top of this blog post is Prepper Potpourri’s video, The Key To Boosting Your Emergency Preparedness Success. She mentions a Prepper Matrix chart, with different categories pertaining to emergency preparedness, which can be used as a guide to help you explore and learn about various topics in each category.

That Prepper Matrix chart reminded of the Trivial Pursuit gameboard, where you start in the center of the board with a round game piece that will hold six pie pieces representing each category. As you roll the dice, you choose one of six paths to move down. At the end of each path is a pie square for one of the six categories, which earns you a piece of the pie in one of the categories, if you answer the question from a deck of trivia cards correctly. Along the way to get to the pie squares at the end of each path, you have to keep answering trivia questions. With each correct answer, you get another roll of the dice.

In emergencies, you will likely be faced with all sorts of challenges that might require you to travel down different survival skill paths to deal with them. The more knowledge and skills you have in these various survival skill categories, the better off you and your loved ones will be.

The second video I want to share is How To Have Hope In A War Torn World, by Alaska Granny, which offers some common sense advice on daily life skills. She always breaks down emergency preparedness into easy to understand bits of knowledge:

Both of these You Tube channels have years worth of videos on a wide variety of preparedness topics and how-to videos, which have helped me on my preparedness journey. I also like that they’re not constantly trying to sell all sorts of products, even though I’d understand if they decided to make more money with merchandising, like many other YouTubers do.

Even in the worst of times, people have to take life one day at a time and you can still find joy in small things. So often people surprise me with unusual skills or talents they developed in their life – a summer job they had or volunteering or from an elderly relative, even from watching how-to videos online. I learned how to pressure can in the past few years by watching YouTube videos and I’m in my 60s, so you’re never to old to learn new things. Prepper Potpourri has a lot of excellent canning videos. Alaska Granny has numerous videos on fire-starting and managing outdoors and although she’s in Alaska and I’m in Georgia, many of these skills can be used anywhere in the world. Be open to new ideas and learning new things, but most of all be open to new people.

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October 24, 2023 · 4:00 pm

A look to our south

In my blog post, Big power competitions present big challenges, yesterday I mentioned: “A few days ago when President Biden gave his speech committing the US to aiding Ukraine and Israel, China was hosting their Belt and Road conference in Beijing, which is ostensibly about international cooperation. Putin was the guest of honor. The Taliban showed up… and so did Viktor Orban (the guy Tucker Carlson was fawning all over).” 

In the above post on Twitter/X, the commander of US Southern Command, GEN Laura Richardson, explains the Belt and Road initiative in our southern hemisphere. This video clip is a minute long.

The US Chamber of Commerce on Latin America and the Caribbean conference where she made these remarks is on YouTube and there’s a moderator, along with US Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, who sounded a lot like Vice President, Kamala Harris to me – a challenge to listen to. General Richardson though is very knowledgeable and clearly explained US interests in the region and the challenges. This video has a lot of dead space and begins at 24:08 and their part in this conference ends at 56:46. I mentioned that because the entire video runs over 5 hours and has a lot of other speakers.

Richardson recommended watching this 60 Minutes interview of the Five Eyes intelligence leaders, which includes our FBI director, Chris Wray. Below is that interview and it’s 13:14 minutes long. I know a lot of right-wing Americans despise Chris Wray and rant about shutting down the FBI, but this interview is worth watching. Yes, I have issues with Wray’s focus on “white supremacy” and not on radical leftist groups in America, but this interview is about the threat of Chinese espionage in America.

Here’s a reminder that China also had that spy balloon that floated across America earlier this year and the Biden WH and the Pentagon told us there was nothing to worry about there, yet somehow that spy balloon managed to “float” over America’s most sensitive military sites. Here’s a September 17, 2023 CBS report, The bizarre secret behind China’s spy balloon:. The reporter, David Martin, asks:

So, Martin asked, “Bottom line, it was a spy balloon, but it wasn’t spying?”

Milley replied, “I would say it was a spy balloon that we know with high degree of certainty got no intelligence, and didn’t transmit any intelligence back to China.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-bizarre-secret-behind-chinas-spy-balloon/

There’s a lot of information available from the US government and umpteen reports, plus media reporting, if you decide to go sleuthing online. I’m going to end this post with a link to a You Tube video by Sensible Prepper and although the title might sound alarming, the preparedness advice they offer is practical and sensible – no hysteria or drama.

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October 24, 2023 · 12:30 am

A few thoughts on where we’re at in America

Today I started to watch a YouTube video – homesteading/prepper genre – and I got so fed-up that I unsubscribed and decided I’m done watching that channel. The person was talking about the situation in the Middle East and insinuating that Israel allowed this Hamas attack to happen or had something to do with it, by framing it with, “how could Hamas get through the Israeli border?” and that’s the right-wing TPUSA guy, Charlie Kirk’s, framing that it must be some kind of Jewish conspiracy that’s been racing around right-wing social media, rather than that Hamas found ways to breach the Israeli high-tech border security system and launch a very carefully planned and executed attack – this was a sophisticated attack from the reports I’ve read online. I’m not assuming this person meant this as an anti-Semitic statement, but I’m sick to death of the stupid conspiracy theories that race across the Trump-right online spaces. After reading more reports of the atrocities committed, that were just released by the Israeli government, I wasn’t in the mood for this level of stupidity and ignorance.

And yes, it’s stupidity to not have a clue that asymmetrical attacks by forces with way less military power against more highly trained forces and sophisticated defensive systems, are possible and it’s something terrorist groups and guerilla type forces often resort to. Anyone who doesn’t realize that even the most high-tech and sophisticated defensive structure can be breached is an idiot. I don’t know the details of Israeli security, even though I’ve watched a lot of news about Israel over the years, with them coming under attack so often.

Heck, today was the anniversary of the October 23, 1983 Beirut barracks bombing – 241 US service members died in that blast set off by a suicide bomber driving a truck filled with explosives. That attack was linked to Hezbollah. The US invaded Grenada on October 25, 1983. I remember when my husband, who was in the 82nd Airborne deployed. I didn’t know if they were headed to the Middle East or somewhere else. The call came at night to report in with bag and baggage. I was 7 months pregnant with our second child. A lot of major crises can happen quickly. I found this article, How the invasion of Grenada was planned with a tourist map and a copy of ‘The Economist’. Well, I have two of those tourist maps that my husband used to navigate. Afterwards, my husband and some of his friends were sitting in our kitchen and they were talking about the map said, “120,000 warm and friendly people” and laughing hysterically.

There is no such thing as 100% impenetrable defenses, especially the border of a country. Israel had daily crossings of Gazans coming into Israel to work. Here’s an article from September of 2022, Israel okays 1,500 more entry permits for Gaza workers, bringing total to 17,000. This article states, “Israel will raise the quota of work permits for Gazan Palestinians to 17,000 next week, expanding a policy that defense officials view as a means of maintaining quiet on the country’s southern front.” That’s a lot of people coming and going from Gaza and so much for that working out as a means of maintaining quiet on Israel’s southern front.

There are all sorts of books on asymmetrical warfare and frankly, the question I was asking was how Hamas managed to defeat the more sophisticated defensive system the Israelis relied on. I’m sure the IDF and Israeli security forces are piecing this together carefully, because these security failures posed an existential threat to their country.

There are too many Americans, whose entire understanding of the world is all about the present American partisan battles – on the right it’s always the MAGA vs. the Libs and they avidly embrace whatever crazy ideas the MAGA pundit class feeds them. On the left there’s an alarming number of American young people ranting, “Free Palestine” and taking to the streets, ranting anti-Semitic slogans, like “from the river to the sea,” not even having a clue that this is a call for the annihilation of Israel and driving all the Jews from the Jordan River into the Mediterranean Sea. There have been numerous news reports of leftist activists tearing down posters of people being held hostage by Hamas.

This is the state of America and it alarms me.

I pulled out a book to reread today and I highly recommend it if you want to learn how to think through national security issues: National Security Dilemmas: Challenges & Opportunities, by Colin S. Gray. This isn’t some answer book on these complex issues and that’s the thing, you have to do some reading and then do some more reading to understand complex issues. Often I realize new things and realize how I viewed a situation for years was not accurate or I learn more and that added knowledge gets me rethinking my views. In many situations there are more nuances than most people realize, so I like to keep reading and learning more. I also like to listen to people who are subject matter experts and I’ve always read a lot of government reports and I like reading military history and lessons learned reports. But I am terrible at geography and always have to refer to maps.

It’s amazing to me that so many people who’ve never bothered to read anything about complicated situations listen to some yahoo pundit or someone on social media and then believe that’s some brilliant analysis. I’ve read several of the late Dr. Gray’s books and recommend his books and writings if you want to expand your understanding and learn how to think through military strategic issues and national security dilemmas.

Right now, it looks to me like America is facing our most determined adversaries (China, Russia, Iran and I think North Korea has joined the pact) working in tandem to overwhelm America and the West with crises.

If I was a betting person, I’d think China and North Korea igniting some foreign policy fires in other parts of the world is next and them launching some attacks through terrorist proxies inside the US or attacking our troops or interests somewhere around the world would not surprise me in the least.

This is the reality and it’s what our adversaries are doing – to pursue their own interests. it’s not some big Jewish conspiracy or the evil military industrial complex – it’s America’s adversaries are on the move to knock us to our knees. I believe America and the West are now facing the most challenging, rapidly changing and complicated security challenge in my lifetime.

Simplistic blathering about how the American people don’t want to get in any more wars isn’t a luxury we’re going to have if American troops come under increasing attacks and if other big players like Iran, Russia, China, or North Korea start threatening our allies and countries we have made security agreements with or there are more large scale terrorist attacks. We should be bolstering our alliances – especially NATO and our close allies in the rest of the world. Those security arrangements bolster our American security.

On a personal level, I believe everyone should be seriously thinking about personal security, having emergency food and water supplies, and learning to practice situational awareness, which doesn’t cost a thing – just pay attention to what’s going on around you, especially in public places. Don’t walk around in public engrossed in your cell phone.

And even as all this stuff is going on in the world, it’s important to still be grateful for each day and carry on your normal life – because that’s the best thing you can do for yourself and your family.

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