Team Clinton Ran Their Own Private Email Servers From New York Home….
Filed under Hillary's Email Scandal, Uncategorized
MSM Full Shields Up To Defend Hillary Clinton From Email Sunlight….
Great idea!!!
Filed under Hillary's Email Scandal, Uncategorized
Hillary Clinton’s Private E-Mail Draws Scrutiny | The Smoking Gun
Hillary Clinton’s Private E-Mail Draws Scrutiny | The Smoking Gun.
This one is even better than the “misplaced” Rose Law Firm records….. She’s above the rule of law, again, *sigh*….
Wanna See Why America Is In Trouble?
More useful idiots…. notice the Obama t-shirt, the ubiquitous modern opiate of the masses – wear one and they will follow…
VIDEO: OBAMA SUPPORTERS ENDORSE KARL MARX AS NEXT POTUS
“We just need the right guy, and Karl Marx seems to be the best candidate.”
Cultural commentator Mark Dice returns with another video highlighting how the combination of the cult of personality and general ignorance can lead Americans to agree with any ridiculous statement one can think of.
This time Dice, donning his Obama t-shirt once more, has passers by agreeing with him that it is a good idea for the German Communist economist Karl Marx, who died in 1883, to run for US President in 2016.
Describing Karl Marx as “an economic adviser to the Obama administration for many years” Dice doesn’t even have to try to convince the subjects in the video that Obama is now fully endorsing Marx, in his time a supporter of violent Communist revolution, as a candidate for President.
“Should we continue with that policy…
View original post 317 more words
Filed under Uncategorized
Willful ignorance: Bondage for the modern era?
Sometimes, well, let’s make that often, progressive politics appears to be very much a “cut off your nose to spite your face” childish temper tantrum. The ongoing flights of these social justice loco birds’ loopy reasoning can leave you dazed, dizzy and decidedly dumbfounded, but be brave and wade through the entire linked blog post, “Why Grammar Snobbery Has No Place in the Movement”, discussed in a piece, “Proper English Grammar is Now Racist”, at The American Thinker this morning.
The grammar snobbery post comes from Melissa A. Fabello, a self-described social justice warrior and an English teacher. Let’s bow our heads and pray that none of our children or grandchildren end up subjected to her politicized propaganda that setting standard English as the standard is a form of class privilege and inherently oppressive. Ms Fabello’s arguments on ‘”privilege” appear, not surprisingly, on a blog called “Everyday Feminism”. She writes:
But there’s a difference between understanding standard grammar and demanding it, between believing there’s a time and a place for so-called “proper” English and ridiculing anyone who steps outside of what you deem “acceptable.”
There’s a difference between appreciating language and being a snob.
And the last place that we need grammar snobbery is in social justice movements.
And not just because getting hung up on the correct use of homonyms or subject-predicate agreement is distracting to the job at hand, but also because purporting one form of English as elite is inherently oppressive.
In Fabello’s view, “it’s important to note that any time we create a hierarchy by positioning one thing as “better” than another, we’re being oppressive.” ( all bold-faced statements are hers, not mine). Yes, the American march to mediocrity follows the beat of some decidedly off-beat drummers. Obviously, she was not reared by my mother, the strictest teacher on there’s a right way to just about everything in life, from how to fold your underwear to how to help your neighbors.
Patricia L. Dickson, author of The American Thinker piece mentioned above, sums up this bizarre alter-universe of progressive political thought:
“The entire article is a futile attempt to justify the failure of the public school system. The author is using the soft bigotry of low expectations under the guise of social justice.”
Some of the very practices American slave owners used to keep their black slaves submissive now appear to be sold as “empowering”. In the words of Frederick Douglass, a writer whom Ms Fabello should study closely:
“Slavery does away with fathers, as it does away with families. Slavery has no use for either fathers or families, and its laws do not recognize their existence in the social arrangements of the plantation. When they do exist, they are not the outgrowths of slavery, but are antagonistic to that system. The order of civilization is reversed here. The name of the child is not expected to be that of its father, and his condition does not necessarily affect that of the child.”
Douglass, Frederick (2009-10-04). My Bondage and My Freedom (p. 29). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.
Laws were enacted in some states forbidding slaves to learn to read or write, in the belief that their education was a threat to the slavery system (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/education/docs1.html).
Learning standard English, if not the language in the home, should be viewed as an opportunity toward advancement, just as acquiring any other foreign language can open many doors too. Promoting willful ignorance in the name of “social justice” will keep many black children locked in poverty, hopeless and dependent on the largesse of government welfare programs – from cradle to grave. Perhaps, that is the intention. Is this bondage for the modern era?
Filed under Culture Wars, Education, Food for Thought, General Interest, Politics
Rut Roh – Hillary Clinton Never Used State Dept Email Account – Only Used Personal Email for Entire Four Years…
Very interesting post at The Last Refuge blog tonight – Hillary Clinton used her personal email account while Secretary of State to conduct official business. Of course, sundance, the excellent blogger, also includes many helpful reminders of some odd happenings during Hillary Clinton’s tenure at Foggy Bottom, like the mysterious fire above her office in 2012, while they were busily trying to bury the Benghazi investigation……..ashes to ashes, it seems. Definitely, read sundance’s post and check out the links t0 refresh your memory on the timeline.
Filed under Hillary's Email Scandal, Uncategorized
David Duff on the Putin problem
David Duff across the pond at Duff and Nonsense penned an excellent piece, “So, huffing and puffing aside, what do we do next?”, exploring Putin’s geopolitical ambitions and possible western responses:
So, huffing and puffing aside, what do we do next?
Before reading my uninformed guesswork it would be best if you began by reading Fraser Nelson’s very shrewd assessment of Putin’s 21st century geo-political ‘warfare’:
So, that’s the way the world works today, by a judicious mix of money, sedition and soldiers – at a distance! The lands bordering Russia are excellent testing grounds for this new strategy because amongst the indigenous population there are large-ish numbers of Russian ethnics. Ukraine is perhaps the perfect example.
By coincidence I have just finished reading the chapters in Margaret MacMillan’s terrific history of the Versailles peace conference in 1919 which deal with the efforts of the victors to sort out the hideously complicated problems of who owns what in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. It is a problem beyond solvability! However, ‘Vlad’ thinks he can solve some of it simply by chewing up the Russian-speaking enclaves whilst standing at a distance, whistling quietly and looking ‘shocked, I tell you, shocked’ when anyone suggests that he is the one stirring things up. Like a naughty schoolboy he simply says, “Who, sir? Me, sir? No, sir! Him, sir!” The question then arises that if he is successful what will he try next? And the second question is what do we do about it?
Well, we tried economic sanctions, or at least, some pathetic semblance of them, and they appear to have been a ‘Big Fail’. Not the least of the reasons for their failure is that ‘Vlad’ doesn’t give a stuff if the standard of living drops in Russia. He will, like political charlatans always do, lean on his secret police whilst appealing to his people’s patriotism and claim that poor Mother Russia is being bullied by the West. They, being as stupid as every electorate anywhere, will swallow it whole! The other reason for the failure of economic sanctions to really hurt Russia is that the West is not united in their application. Suddenly, the Western politicians have realised that sanctions cut two ways! You stop Russia using your banking system so they stop exporting gas to you. In addition, western unity is under-mined because each country in the West has a different pain threshold vis-à-vis Russia. For example, the French were on the point of selling two large warships to the Russians when this kicked off and they were under enormous pressure from their ‘friends and allies’ to cancel the sale. (I never did quite find out what happened but my guess is that the deal went through in the end!)
Needless to say, here ‘in this our septic Isle’, the cold-war warriors are out in force squeaking that we must build up our armed forces to face the threat. What threat, exactly, I ask, and how do you propose to deal with it militarily with an army, navy and air force that, even if you doubled it, would be miniscule compared to what the Russian behemoth could put in the field? (And anyway, given the fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan would you trust our ‘Brass’ to manage an exercise on Salisbury Plain let alone Eastern Europe?)
Ah, cry the warriors, but in conjunction with our allies in NATO we would be a force to be reckoned with. To which I would reply – what allies? The Germans decided decades ago to minimise their army and instead to invest their money into Mercedes-Benz! Well, lots of other German industries as well but you take my point. They were able to cut their defence budgets and concentrate on making money whilst they nestled under the warm, comfortable protection of America throughout the cold war. Consequently, their military today is even more pathetic than ours! Not that they really want to get involved in a punch-up with Russia because they sell several ‘zillion’ Mercedes-Benz cars to them as well as relying on Russian imports of gas!
Needless to say, the most vocal people agitating for ‘strong counter-measures’ against Russia are the Euro fanatics in Brussels. They realise that one of the outcomes of this Russian pressure could be the implosion of the European Union. At this point, I would ask the more militaristic of my readers whether they are prepared to risk war with Russia for the sake of Mr. ‘Juncker the Drunker’? The ‘Eurocrats’, of course, being almost totally concentrated on Europe have not quite realised that the great, big, magical, American umbrella under which they have lived so comfortably for so long has been quietly rolled up and put in a cupboard somewhere in the White House and no-one is quite sure where!
So, a new century and a new set of problems. But at least let us try and face them intelligently and without recourse to old solutions to old problems. Above all, let us deal with them realistically. And by “us“, I mean Britain, not this mystical entity they call ‘Europe’. I see absolutely no British interests at risk in Eastern Ukraine. My advice is the same as that offered by Cpl. Jones to his platoon leader, “Don’t panic, Capt. Mainwaring!”
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, History, Politics
Modernity meets the Amish
G. Murphy Donovan’s latest article at The American Thinker, “Arrested Development and the Internet” discusses a book, Mind Change, written by a British neuroscientist, Susan Greenfield, the Baroness Ot-Moor, who also sits in the House of Lords. He writes:
“Susan Greenfield’s Mind Change is a courageous broadside at cyber culture, a dose of reality therapy for the Internet, social networks, video gaming, cyber gadgets, and the damage they might do to malleable, developing minds.
The key word is minds, not brains, mind you. You can think of your brain as a mind only if it has a personality. Clearly, cyber millennials have brains, but Susan’s lament suggests the jury might still be out on adult personalities. Greenfield is concerned for the most part about the growth of self, not cells.”
More than a decade ago, the internet seemed to me to be like the Wild West, vast open space to explore, few rules, and no defined culture. We allowed our children to roam free in this new terrain with very little supervision, guidelines, or guidance. Sure, commercial entities sprang up offering pricey services to serve as electronic internet babysitters for our children – parental controls. The video gaming landscape ran red with blood and mayhem, where murder and violence fed every psychopathological and sociopathological trait, in the imaginary persona young people (mostly boys) took on in ever-increasingly violent “role playing”.
The American cyber “culture” never developed as a “culture” in the sense of people connected together by traditional ethnic/religious/social values and therein lies the danger. Political propagandists, big business entities , and many far left academics built a Potemkin village, where we and our children lead imaginary lives.
That criminal entities and terrorists should find safe haven operating on the internet should not come as a surprise. Islamic fascists seized the internet technology as a cheap means to take their movement global, actually creating a unique internet culture, utilizing high-tech videography to sell their rebranding of a 7th century death cult. Of course, back in the 90s, American left-wing pols warned of right-wing zealots forming militias using the internet to communicate, collude and conspire too. And a plethora of criminals, deviants, and assorted organized criminal elements all found the internet an appealing new terrain to exploit too.
I have not read Greenfield’s book, so I followed GMD’s links in his article and then googled Greenfield to read a bit more about her and her book. In this The Telegraph article, “Susan Greenfield: “I’m not scaremongering”, Tom Chivers writes:
“Susan Greenfield is keen to make it known that she is no technophobe. “I’m not a Luddite, I’m not Amish. No scientist could be a technophobe – I couldn’t do what I do if I were a technophobe.”
The issue has come up because for years, she has been warning about the dangers (and the possible benefits, she would be careful to add) of screen technologies. She is – fairly or unfairly – associated with newspaper headlines such as “Social websites harm children’s brains: chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist” and “How Facebook addiction is damaging your child’s brain”.”
Greenfield’s asserting that she isn’t Amish nor a technophobe led me to think about a book I’m currently reading, “Amish Peace: Simple Wisdom for a Complicated World”, by Suzanne Woods Fisher, which offers some interesting insight into this discussion of technology’s impact on children’s developing minds. Growing up in PA and being PA Dutch (although not Amish), I thought of the Amish as being backward and to borrow Greenfield’s description, “technophobes”. Well, here’s what I’m learning – the Amish aren’t technophobes. The Amish were some of the earliest embracers of solar power. They have practical, debated positions on new technology within their churches:
“The acceptance of the scooter reflects an Amish-style “selective modernization.” When something new reaches into the Amish community, the church leaders might give it a period of probation, weighing out its long-term effects, and each church district comes to its own conclusions. And, always, the church leaders consider where a change could lead the younger generation. They try to see beyond the immediate benefits of change to the effects it could have down the road. How could this new technology or gadget tempt someone away from the church? Or to disobey God?”
Fisher, Suzanne Woods (2009-09-15). Amish Peace: Simple Wisdom for a Complicated World (p. 39). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Fisher continues:
“The Amish consider the long-term consequences of something new and how it will affect the community’s welfare. They appreciate comfort and convenience but realize it’s not the ultimate reason for our being here. They make decisions with higher purposes in mind. Before accepting or buying a new technology, have you ever thought, what will this lead to? Consider making today’s purchase with your ultimate goals in mind. Look around your house. How many gadgets do you see that promise to save you time, effort, or money? Have they lived up to their promise? The Amish have a saying: Once drawn, lines are hard to erase. Where do you draw the line on what technology is acceptable for your family and what isn’t? How does recognizing that “line” (or priority) simplify decision making?”
Fisher, Suzanne Woods (2009-09-15). Amish Peace: Simple Wisdom for a Complicated World (p. 40). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
From another chapter in Fisher’s book, the backward Amish offer up the time-tested child-rearing value of character development and providing good adult role models:
“The work ethic of the Amish had already been instilled in Elizabeth, even at her tender age. The Amish are known for their precise craftsmanship, be it quilting, carpentry, cooking, or blacksmithing. Doing something well is a virtue. Even in school, children learn a concept thoroughly before moving on to the next assignment. They value thoroughness over haste, completion over speed. To the Amish way of thinking, a task takes the time that it takes. They also value giving a task the time it requires to do a job well. Elizabeth didn’t feel frustrated or impatient with herself, as so many do— including adults— while on the steep learning curve. So how do the Amish instill such a work ethic in their children? It’s not as complicated as it sounds. In fact, it’s something we all do, whether we intend to or not. It’s called modeling. Elizabeth’s community is made up of living examples— good ones—of how to work, how to live, and how to love others. She is surrounded by a covey of females: mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and cousins who pass on their knowledge and expertise about how to cook , clean, quilt, and be keepers of the home —all of the components that make up an Amish woman’s life— as naturally as sharing the air they breathe.”
Fisher, Suzanne Woods (2009-09-15). Amish Peace: Simple Wisdom for a Complicated World (pp. 84-85). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Many modern families behave like strangers living in the same house. Look around you and it’s almost impossible to share a meal or carry on any conversation with other Americans that isn’t intruded upon by technology – usually the cell phone, but I often see toddlers engrossed by tablets, totally oblivious to their surrounding too. Of course, I’m not advocating we all go join the Amish, but perhaps their much maligned and ridiculed lifestyle centered on simplicity and their higher purpose of serving God offers some sage wisdom on child-rearing and technology.
Almost without exception, American parents insist education and showering their children with things are very important. Our media bombard us with “studies” and “experts” regaling us with catchphrases and psychobabble on how to rear our children. In the 1980s feminists conjured up a sap to working mothers, “quality time”, to assuage their guilt over devoting more time to career than to their children. Stay at home mothers continue to be maligned and the chattering “experts” continue to assault home-schooled children, despite consistent testing demonstrating that home-schooled children score higher on the standardized metrics used by the public education establishment. A large percentage of home-schooling parents, just like the Amish, opt out of the public education system based on their religious beliefs, making them a prime target for the liberal academics and left-wing politicians. They choose to actively, on a daily basis, guide their child’s character development.
The Greenfield cautionary view of cyber-technology on the development of children’s minds and the resulting backlash should come as no surprise. Leftist politics pervades academia in Western civilization, where any evidence that runs counter to the politics falls prey to the knives of mainstream media and ends up buried in the obituaries as a “fringe theory”, a notion discredited by real “experts” and if all else fails they destroy the messenger’s character.
From this stay at home mother, here are some personal observations on the development of children’s minds. Children thrive in a structured environment, with a stable family, an established daily routine and where “rules” get daily reinforcement. The carnage from shattered families proves lie to old 80s feminist trope that “quality of time” can make up for the lack of quantity of time spent rearing children. Young children learn from repetition, whether it be wanting you to read the same story over and over and over to repeating the same phrases for days on end. Which stories and phrases you teach your child matter, because a child’s mind flows naturally to imitation.
The teen years, where children vacillate between childish tantrums and adult behavior, offer challenges to parenting, where vulnerable young minds often test new values, new beliefs and fall prey to peer pressure. Without a firm family foundation, parental participation, and constant monitoring, the teen years are when kids minds strike out looking for an autonomous identity – who and where they receive their inspiration at this juncture matters a great deal. If young people spend more time focused on their digital life than on real life, perhaps the common sense deduction that these “harmless” digital contacts might not be as innocuous as the cyber industry would have us believe rests as truth, not technophobia. Sorry if your kid spends all his/her waking hours outside of school engaged in texting, using social media or playing video games, he/she isn’t reading or gaining inspiration from Dr. Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf list of books commonly known as the Harvard Classics.
More answers to why jihad
Two articles worth reading on the religion of Peace and violent extremism are at the American Thinker today. First up, “Please Read the Koran” by Edward Thal offers up a short analysis of what he learned by reading through the Koran twice. Then, Shoshana Bryen wrote, “NYPD had it Right a Long Time Ago”, countering the Marie Harf/John Kerry argument that what jihadis need is more job opportunities and for us to address their greivances.
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Islam, Politics, Terrorism
#Nothing-burger Plan
JK posted a must-read link on my last post: “Why the Iraq Offensive Will Fail” by Michael T. Flynn, retired US Army Lieutenant General/former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Flynn clearly articulates the threat and steps to take to defeat the enemy, but first let me quote him from this politico.com article:
“Yet to defeat an enemy, you first must admit they exist, and this we have not done. I believe there continues to be confusion at the highest level of our government about what it is we’re facing, and the American public want clarity as well as moral and intellectual courage, which they are not now getting
There are some who argue that violent Islamists are not an existential threat and therefore can simply be managed as criminals, or as a local issue in Iraq and Syria. I respectfully and strongly disagree.”
“We, as a nation, must accept and face the reality that we and other contributing nations of the world are at war, and not just in Iraq. We are in a global war with a radical and violent form of the Islamic religion, and it is irresponsible and dangerous to deny it. This enemy is far broader than the 40,000 or so fighters in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. There also exists a large segment of this radical version of Islam in over 90 nations abroad as well as here at home. Just ask those countries from which foreign fighters are flowing into the Levant to support this “jihad.””
The entire Flynn article is a must read, as he lays out steps he feels we must take to defeat. not only the Islamic State, but the broader fight against adherents of a violent and radical form of the Islamic religion. In the Cold War we battled a virulent communist ideology and in WWII we fought virulent forms of totalitarianism. Sadly, many, out of religious tolerance ingrained in our American psyche, tiptoe around the threat posed by radical Islam, perhaps better called Islamic Imperialism, where the stated goal is to annihilate all non-Muslim peoples and establish an Islamic Caliphate to rule the world.
Listening to “experts” analyze Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda for over a decade, well, I often thought certain opinions got cherry-picked as the definitive summation, while often, it seemed like many “experts” weren’t even really listening to what Al Qaeda spokesmen and Bin laden were saying in their numerous communiques. When individuals or groups of individuals repeatedly declare war on your country and fellow countrymen, it’s wise to take them seriously, yet far too many of the “experts” consistently tried to whitewash the religious elements to these declared “holy war” edicts from Al Qaeda. Likewise, the Obama administration spends more time trying to conjure up straw men (right-wing, domestic sovereign citizen hordes) threats to play cheap partisan one-up-manship games with a threat emanating from a large number of Muslims’ interpretation of Islam.
“The problem isn’t that ISIS is ‘medieval’. The problem is that Islam is.What progressives mistake for modern Islam, whether while touring Algeria or on the campus of their university, is really an Islam whose practice has been repressed by the West while its ideology remains untouched. Modern Islam is in a state of contradiction. It’s a schizophrenic religion whose doctrine calls for supremacism but whose capabilities prevent it from exercising the full measure of its doctrines.
Islam is the 90 lb. weakling that wants to be the school bully. It can’t punch you in the face, so it stabs you in the back and then blames someone else. When you punch it back, it plays the victim.
This split between ideas and power forced Islamists to resort to sneakier tactics, from terrorism to mass migration, to fulfill the spirit of their religion. The underlying imperative is to restore a conquering Islam capable of humiliating non-Muslims in Muslim lands and expanding into non-Muslim countries. That is why Saddam and Iran pursued weapons of mass destruction. Why Muslim armies tested themselves against Israel. Why Al Qaeda built a decentralized terrorist network with cells around the world.”
“The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.
Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal.”
And now we have our own US State Department effort – a newly unified Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, under the directorship of Richard Stengel, whom you may listen to speaking to an NPR reporter about the new strategy here. He stated they’re looking for “credible new voices” (like Muslim Imams opposed to ISIS, former Islamic terrorists, etc.). In other words, our government once again is on a search for illusive “moderate Muslims” to aid our fight, so expect this effort to work out as well as the search for those illusive “moderate Syrian rebels”. And for those who want to say the administration is on the ball, catch this part in a February 16, 2015 New York Times report, “U.S. Intensifies Efforts to Blunt ISIS’ Message”:
““We’re getting beaten on volume, so the only way to compete is by aggregating, curating and amplifying existing content,” Richard A. Stengel, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, said by telephone on Monday. Until now, he said, the efforts to counter ISIS could have been better coordinated.
Many of the plan’s details are still being worked out, but administration officials are expected to describe at least its broad outlines during three days of meetings, sponsored by the White House and beginning Tuesday, intended to showcase efforts underway in the United States and abroad to combat what the authorities call violent extremism.”
In case you missed it: : “Many of the plan’s details are still being worked out” , in other words, President Obama once again announced another #nothingburger “plan”. Want some fries and Heinz ketchup with yours John Kerry? Never fear though, those cheerleaders at the US State Department have their hashtag signs and tweets ready to fight the Islamic State…. One, two, everyone #Yes, We Can….
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Islam, Military, Politics, Terrorism, The Media
