libertybelle diaries

November 13, 2015 · 3:13 am

America’s future leaders

I read about this video at Malcolm’s blog, waka, waka, waka, so I clicked and watched Neil Cavuto tell Virginia, that sorry, there really is no Santa Claus. Virginia (in this case college student, million-student march organizer, Keely Mullen) insists that the “1%” will pay for the free college tuition, absolution of student debt and a $15 an hour wage for all campus jobs, she is demanding. Please note that stunned, deer-in-the-headlight moment at the 50 second mark, when Cavuto intrudes on her fairy tale visions. Sadly, for America, Mullen just might be representative of America’s best and brightest college students…….. our future leaders:

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Filed under Culture Wars, Education, General Interest, Politics

November 11, 2015 · 3:19 pm

Short Veterans Day Tribute

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Filed under American Character, Food for Thought, General Interest, Military

November 11, 2015 · 12:04 am

The good, the bad and the buttinski

The Fox News Business GOP debate is over. Hooray!!! This GOP debate covered more substantive issues than the CNBC debate or the previous FOX News debate, with the focus clearly on policy rather than pitting the candidates against each other.

Here’s my quick, completely amateur rundown. Jeb didn’t do enough to resuscitate his campaign. Kasich repeats the same stuff in each debate and it’s too moderate to win over the GOP base. Trump acted calmer and gave more detailed answers, which came across as more serious answers and less bombast – he did himself some good. Cruz didn’t hurt himself, but his stentorius delivery, like he’s a Roman orator, comes across as if he’s talking down to people – there’s something cold about it.

Carson gets a “meh” – nothing lost, nothing gained. Paul gained more support from his small niche of supporters, but did not expand his reach.

So, let me give a gold star to Rubio, because he really shines in the debate format. He comes across as knowledgeable, upbeat, well-studied on issues, but most importantly – he radiates likeability.

Now, last, here comes the biggest loser – Carly Fiorina. Her continual interruptions to grandstand and launch into boring soliloquies on her policies diminished her to an angry harpy rather than a Thatcher-esque figure. For once, I was in complete agreement with Donald Trump, when he complained to the moderators about Fiorina’s continual interruptions, Her dour recitations of her talking points and her arrogance doesn’t project well at all. She lacks all the likeability that Rubio oozes. Too bad she wasn’t in the second string debate and Christie in the first string, because he did fantastic in the second string debate.

Still, don’t have a “favorite” and remain uncommitted. I disliked Trump less and disliked Fiorina a good bit by the time this debate was over. Then again, I found her whining for days on end to get on the main debate stage as a typical feminist gimmick, where it seemed at some point she’d be borrowing Hillary’s “glass ceilings” lines. Christie good-naturedly moved to the second string and took it like a man. Okay, I’ll stop there, ha, ha, ha.

An America Monarchy?

On Sundays my family began having Sunday dinner together, since my oldest daughter and four granddaughters moved back to this state in June. We’re still missing one daughter who lives in another state with her husband, but these dinners with my two sons, my oldest daughter and my four granddaughters almost invariably include my other daughter as my kids live on their cell phones and text back and forth constantly. Last night, my sons were discussing their views on Hillary Clinton’s private email server and frankly their views surprised me.

Both of my sons have studied The Constitution and yet when discussing this private email server, their comments left me wondering if, at the core, my view is antiquated and obsolete. They kept insisting that the State Department information on Hillary’s server belongs to the executive branch and since the President is in charge of that, this information belongs to him and he can decide what’s classified or not whenever he wants. I kept saying, “the information belongs to the executive branch, not to the individual officeholders – it isn’t theirs personally”. The whole problem Hillary Clinton faces is she treated “official State Department information” as if it belonged to her – personally. “Am I off-base? Is my view, that the President and all of our government officials are merely holders of their offices, sworn to uphold The Constitution and the public trust, in carrying out the duties of their offices, misguided and naively idealistic? I remember Watergate, in which retrospectively, the gravity seems much smaller than in the callous disregard for national security in this private email server scandal, where Hillary Clinton set up this system in such a premediated manner, to avoid scrutiny of her official business and all the official correspondence she generated on a daily basis. My sons, on the other hand, just shrug and seem okay with whatever the President decides on her private email server and handling of classified information, saying, “the information belongs to him, he can do whatever he wants.” He was sworn to uphold the “office of the President”. Do we now have an absolute monarch, who can do whatever he wants?

The effort to bury this email scandal keeps piling on fresh dirt to cover up the TRUTH as information is unearthed. The Obama administration seems to have joined the effort, with the NY Post editorial opinion, “Whitewashing Hillary — step one in shutting down the FBI’s probe“:

“Well, whaddya know? Maybe those Hillary Clinton emails didn’t include top-secret information after all.

At least, that’s the conclusion reportedly drawn by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s office — overruling the finding of Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough that two Clinton emails (from a sample of just 40) contained highly classified info.

Hmm. Clapper answers to the president — who issued clear marching orders months ago, announcing that Clinton’s server scam was “not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”

Oddly, news of Clapper’s finding got leaked to Politico soon after the Washington Free Beacon reported Clinton did indeed, right after taking over at State, acknowledge her responsibility to properly guard classified info — and that “negligent handling” of it could bring criminal penalties.”

Last week on the O’Reilly Factor, Monica Crowley reported information from two “anonymous” sources, so take it for what it’s worth. :

So, justice in America now is reliant on just one man – the FBI Director. Is this really the state of our constitutional system – justice depends on the FBI Director, James Comey, or the law is whatever President Obama decides it is? Is Hillary Clinton above the law?

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics, The Constitution

November 5, 2015 · 8:31 pm

News from amongst the Syrian rebels

This is a short post with mostly some news links, because frankly I am busy with my needlework and can’t write blog posts and sew at the same time. The Syrian rebels are making the news again. Here’s a news story I mentioned the other day and let’s hope these aren’t part of elusive “moderate Syrian rebels”:

“Hundreds of women locked in cages to act as human shields against Assad’s air-strikes: Rebels parade families loyal to president through streets as horrifying deterrent”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3301364/Hundreds-women-locked-cages-act-human-shields-against-Assad-s-air-strikes-Rebels-parade-families-loyal-president-streets-horrifying-deterrent.html#ixzz3qeD2S6En
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Next there’s this msn report of mustard gas being used in a battle in August. Note the combatants were some Syrian rebel group and the Islamic State, not Assad’s forces. Once again, let’s hope these aren’t part of the elusive “moderate Syrian rebels”:

“EXCLUSIVE-Chemical weapons used in Syrian fighting – watchdog”

Perhaps, someday we’ll get past the delusional reasoning, the hunt to create moderates among Islamists, which Stephen Coughlin, the former Pentagon expert on Islamic law and Islamic terror, explains stems from creating this false narrative of “countering violent extremism” rather than naming the source of that violent extremism. Our government actively refuses to recognize the Islam in Jihad. Here’s an excellent interview where Coughlin explains the problem:

Stephen Coughlin on “Is Al-Qaeda Really the Moderate Alternative to ISIS?” — on The Glazov Gang

On the home front, Carol Brown at the American Thinker wrote a piece:

“Good News and Bad News as the Federal Government Faces Global Jihad”, reporting on legislation being introduced by Senator Ted Cruz in the Senate and Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart in the House that would designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

To understand the mixed nuts in the radical Islamic assortment, it’s important to understand the ideology. Coughlin, mentioned above, was one of the Pentagon’s foremost experts on Islamic law and understanding Islamic terrorism, but in the Obama era, his contract at the Pentagon was not renewed. There’s been an organized and concerted effort to pretend some Islamists are “moderates”, whom we should cultivate (arm in some cases, too it appears). Now, the Cruz/Diaz-Balart legislation will not garner White House support, which promotes the narrative of the Muslim Brotherhood as mostly a secular organization.

To understand the who’s who amongst the Sunni radicals this 2005 link covers The Salafist Movement from it’s inception to present holy terrors:

“The Salafist Movement” By Bruce Livesey

So, to fight the Islamic State, ruthless killers who number in the tens of thousands, President Obama last week ramped up his fight and actually sent his spokesman out to make the announcement that he was sending 50 Special Forces operators into Syria…. That no general stepped forward and resigned in protest to using military force, that has no strategic purpose whatsoever, for a shameless and stupendously stupid PR gambit, demonstrated clearly the sorry state of our military leadership and it also highlighted the callous disregard this President has for the US Armed Forces. 50 – yes, 50 to serve as walking targets for the Islamic State. Some strategy….

4 Comments

Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Islam, Military, Politics, Terrorism

November 3, 2015 · 10:36 pm

Adding it up

Here’s a typical journalist’s report from the Washington Post – this one from June 2015, on a group of refugees’ flight from Aleppo, Syria to Gmünd, Austria. The group consists of 4 adults and one child. So, the reporter, Anthony Faiola, in vivid prose, wrote about the hardships and harrowing experiences, on “The Black Route”, but I kept jotting down the dollar amounts listed and this does not include food or lodging, only the cost of transportation paid to smugglers and the cost of a smartphone, which is how the refugees communicate with each other and the smuggling network. Here’s the list:

$275 smartphone (article states that is almost 3 months of the one refugee’s pay)

$2,000 per adult (4 adults) paid to Ukrainian smugglers to take them from Turkey to the island of Tilos

$12,000 amount paid to a Syrian smuggler, whom they say absconded with their money

$330 for a 52 mile taxi ride from Thessaloniki to the Macedonian border

$550 each to pay a smuggler to get them from Hungary to Vienna, although the story says they only had half that amount by this point

Now they didn’t pay that $550 each, because that plan fell through, but excluding that $2,750, the story indicates over $20,000 was paid to smugglers to get 4 adults and 1 child to Austria.

$275 was almost three months pay for one of those men, a deliveryman in Aleppo. His niece, another of this group worked as a kindergarten teacher, then there are two other young men, whose occupations aren’t mentioned and the one child. Where did they come up with over $20,000 for this journey? These are the kinds of things I wonder about.

So many of these stories don’t add up, both in dollars and cents, but also in common sense.

6 Comments

Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics, The Media

November 3, 2015 · 7:08 pm

Some loose foreign policy threads

The mainstream media does a terrible job at gathering the back story required to make sense out of many stories that burst upon the national conscientiousness. Partisan political interests cast deep, dark shadows on the truth and as time passes, public interest wanes and the media moves on, unaware of their failure to ever report the full truth.

Let’s start with the oh so glorious Arab Spring, the media couldn’t talk enough about a few years ago. What happened to the Arab Spring? Where has “democracy” or “freedom” flourished in the Mid-East?

Libya stands as a western intervention where reporting failed to flesh out even the basics. Who exactly were the Libyan rebels facing “genocide” as Hillary Clinton states? Which European leaders were pushing to oust Gadaffi and who vetted the intelligence, which the Obama administration used in making the decision to intervene? To this day, details remain sketchy at best. Then Benghazi in the messy aftermath and still more questions persist. Hillary Clinton stated weapons were being gathered up by the US in a security effort, but what happened to those weapons? Where were they being sent? What exactly was the CIA mission in Benghazi? After that hearing where the Democrats declared everything had already been covered in previous investigations, well, I wonder why was ambassador Stevens meeting with a rebel leader from an Al Qaeda affiliate? Congressman Pompeo showed that photo and Secretary Clinton stated she had no idea, but doesn’t that information seem important in light of the attack on the US facility later that day by Al Qaeda-like rebels?

Syria also remains awash in myths and outright lies, so let’s start with the assertion that we should have intervened sooner in Syria? What justification was there for the US to intervene in a civil uprising in Syria at the outset? Of course, as time wore on the Obama administration played the genocide/gross human rights violations card and pushed intervening on the Samantha Power “responsibility to protect” mantra, but truly who were these “moderate Syrian rebels”? The entire reasoning process used with the regime change proponents seems very flawed, so can anyone explain this in simple terms?

The recent dramatic increase of refugees seems like an orchestrated event to destabilize Europe. Who is behind it and who is funding the effort? All of the photos and videos show people with Western-style clothes, coats, hats, shoes, etc. Who is providing the humanitarian assistance? Who is helping these refugees along the path to Europe? Obviously many aren’t Syrian refugees, but there’s a storyline that Assad is depopulating areas of Syria? Is this true? Today, the British Daily Mail has stories of Syrian rebels fighting Assad using Alawite women and children as human shields – packing them into metal cages and transporting them on the backs of pick-up trucks and tractor trailers, to dissuade Russian and Syrian army bombings. Are these the rebels McCain and the “Syrian moderate” proponents are supporting?

Does anyone else have questions about these US foreign policy issues?

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Politics, The Media

November 2, 2015 · 3:54 pm

Presidential politics… it’s a laugh

The Legal Insurrection blog has these Bad Lip Reading videos from the political debates posted:

First up, the First Democratic Debate;

Next the First Republican Debate:

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Filed under General Interest, Humor, Politics

October 30, 2015 · 11:47 am

Mutually assured destruction?

Here’s a response to a poster, Schmutzli, at the American Thinker this morning. The piece is by Steve McCann, “Behind the Benghazi Curtain”, in which he lays out the Clinton/Obama pact:

“If Hillary were to come clean and state that she was forced by Obama to go along with the Benghazi story as concocted by Obama and his staff for political expediency, then his long term legacy would rival that of Richard Nixon. Obama’s ego would never stand for that scenario. On the other hand, if the White House were to cooperate in throwing Hillary under the bus by pointing the finger of blame at her or undermining her bid for the Democratic nomination, her reputation would be in tatters for the rest of her life. Thus Benghazi is in effect a mutually assured destruction pact between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

So at this juncture in American political history the question must be asked: How much has the potential mutual blackmail scenario played into Hillary’s run for President?”

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/behind_the_benghazi_curtain.html#ixzz3q3xQGzWI
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

I responded to a comment and included what happened to me in 1998. I keep mentioning it in hopes that someone might actually listen to me and investigate. Here’s my comment:

susanholly Friday, October 30, 2015 10:40 AM

Yet, both Hillary Clinton and Obama will use The Constitution, if pushed, and it seems likely, with the Biden Rose Garden declaration, that the secret pact is a done deal – Obama has the power to pardon Hillary Clinton. I doubt it will reach that point, because it seems likely that if the FBI finds compelling evidence of criminal conduct, the Obama Justice Department will do another Lois Lerner.

You could see how Hillary avoided the press from the moment her private email server scandal broke, because the Clintons were caught off-guard with that revelation, and at first, I thought it looked like Hillary was relying mostly on her inner-circle of her girl’s club to cope with the scandal. That includes Abedin, Mills, Chelsea and a few others, but does not include Bill Clinton. As the scandal worsened, I believe that Hillary, in a reverse of their roles, had to turn to Bill Clinton to be the fixer. Since August, her campaign strategy changed dramatically and at this point she’s home free and she knows it – just look at her change from appearing cornered and furtive early in her campaign to now she’s laughing it up on late night TV.

I believe Bill Clinton, ironically, used the old boys club avenues of back room deals, to pave the way for the “first female President”, because she was too inept to fix the mess, she created, on her own. She rode his coattails to power, because he is the political genius in the family, not her.

From the many reports of the Clintons living separate lives since the Lewinsky scandal, to include reports that their staffers communicate and coordinate anything where they have to show up together, I wonder if Bill Clinton was even aware that she did all of her official business on his private server, that he had for the Clinton Foundation. The reports that he doesn’t use email would lead me to believe he might not have had any knowledge about that. Have any emails between Bill and Hillary ever come to light in the email disclosures?

With the Clintons there’s always one more, even more egregious scandal, in the offing. I was writing on the Excite message boards in 1998, during the Lewinsky scandal, under the user name “mhere”. I was attacked in my home. No one in my family would even listen to me, let alone believe my story, but it is the TRUTH. And I intend to expose every last detail of what happened to me. I wrote my story on my blog in 2013 and it is written in a light-hearted, snarky fashion, replete with pseudonyms, but every person in that story exists. Unlike the Clintons, I learned about the importance of what the Army calls “the 7 Ps”, so I have planned, since 1999, how to drag her to justice – following the law! I am a nobody homemaker, but I swore the oath to protect and defend The Constitution, from all enemies, both foreign and domestic, when I was a young soldier (Army journalist) and I will continue to fight to expose an attack on a private citizen (ME), instigated at the highest level of our government. I offered the real names of the “characters”, mentioned in my story, to several reporters over a year ago. No takers. So, I am using the comment sections on a few sites to mention my story and maybe someday, someone will actually investigate. https://libertybellediaries.com/messages-of-mhere/

Please do read about Steve McCann, as Schmutzli mentioned – it’s a story in the archives here at The American Thinker, called “Saved By Christmas”.

I can’t make anyone listen to me or believe me and in truth, FACTS should be what guides us on our path. Why I keep trying to expose what happened to me is not to get attention or some self-serving publicity, it’s because I believe she is unfit to ever serve as Commander-In-Chief of the US Armed Forces. I believe, that much like this current scandal where they’re scrambling for political survival, she came across an annoying poster on the Excite message boards who was mocking and making mincemeat of their ridiculous spin during the Lewinsky scandal. I noticed some of my lines being picked up by actual Republican political pundits, just as parts of my comments are being picked up on now and used by various pundits. The power of the Presidency cannot be used to attack private citizens!

I believe she sent her minions scurrying to find out who I am and I believe, they came across a retired general who hates my guts. I believe her minions fed him lies that I was some sort of threat to the President, which was a total lie. I was just a homemaker writing personal, political opinions on a message board. I have never had so much as a speeding ticket. I am a stickler about following the rules. And my husband and I do not own any firearms. We are law-abiding citizens. Most of my comments on those impeachment boards were about “No one is above the law” and “there’s no acceptable excuse for lying under oath”, but mostly I mocked their stupid arguments and I did refer to President Clinton as BJ Clinton, so assuredly that would anger Clinton “supporters”.

Let me expand on this retired general – he was forced to retire while serving in a foreign locale for President Clinton. The scuttlebutt that my husband, who was still an active duty Army Sergeant Major, heard at work, was that this general had to retire because of sexual misconduct, while serving in that foreign location, so assuredly he would be sympathetic to the President’s Lewinsky scandal. This general in the intervening years has become a reliable shill for the Democratic Party, up to the present, where he publicly offered support for President Obama’s Iran deal. I believe this general used other soldiers in the effort to silence me. We can not allow the Army to be used as a domestic partisan political tool – EVER!

Musings on the 3rd Republican Debate

Assuredly the professional punditry class will dissect last night’s CNBC Republican debate at great length, so here are my amateur viewer observations.

Last night’s debate started off predictably, like the two previous GOP debates, which differ markedly from the one Democratic debate, the quintessential Hillary coronation, where the entire exercise was to airbrush her scandal-ridden, lying image into the feminist icon, “first woman President”.

So, the questions began last night – personally insulting questions designed to destroy each candidate’s credibility, questions designed to incite attacks between the candidates and sadly, Kasich, Trump, Bush and Rubio played along, until Ted Cruz, the candidate who was passed over quickly in the previous two debates, stepped into the fray and neatly turned the tables on the moderators, who appeared to be left-wing shills.

After that the debate actually got into some interesting policy exchanges and although I doubt, Cruz or Christie can ever garner the GOP nomination, let alone win in a general election, they assuredly are two of the smartest minds in the GOP field.

Trump toned it down somewhat and stayed quiet a good bit of the time, so he walked away unscathed. In fact, the only candidate that seemed to diminish as the debate wore on was Fiorina, whose chances to speak sounded like rehearsed campaign sound bites and boring boiler plate partisan attack lines.

Huckabee had the best line of the night comparing the government to that US Army blimp that tore loose of it’s mooring and reeked havoc tearing down power lines yesterday.

All in all, I thought the GOP candidates finally got a chance to demonstrate why the GOP has much more to offer than Hillary Clinton, with her recycled liberal mantra from 30 years ago. Frankly, her ideas sound almost as old, tired and repetitive as her lies. You’ve got to hand it to her though, the mainstream media remains loyal and it looks like there is no level too low for them to sink to help her campaign.