October 18, 2024 · 2:25 pm

Unpacking some conspiracy theories: Diabolical grand strategists or amoral opportunists?

I reworked this blog post from yesterday.

We’re now three weeks past Hurricane Helene and this story is off the national news radar almost completely. The rumors flying on social media, still swirl about among the right-wing echo-chamber. With a presidential election just a couple weeks away, most of our national news will be focused on this race. Many people in western NC and eastern TN still face extreme hardship from Helene, but by and large the national news and most of the American people have moved on. I urge everyone, if it’s within your means, to donate to a charity aiding victims of this storm. I’ve lost trust in many big national charities and look for small charity efforts to support – especially local efforts.

I’ve seen several social media people, who were in the area, and their accounts about what happened vary a bit, but there are some common threads. I wrote about this topic of rumors, especially in a crisis, a few years ago, About rumor control. I experienced a crazy rumor environment during Desert Storm, living in Germany. Our husbands deployed to the Gulf and families were left in Germany, in a heightened terrorist threat environment and scared about the war. As wives called each other, rumors frequently grew into wild tales, that unfortunately many wives believed. In the 1992 we returned to the states and then I began following the Clinton spin information war.

Rumors and spin are almost always false stories being spread, although motives differ. In a crisis often people spread rumors out of fear. The right-wing echo-chamber, even the part that is openly religious, dwells in a community where rumors and fear take hold. Often sentiments of feeling that they and their beliefs are under attack and being threatened by the dominant liberal culture are voiced frequently. It’s hard to stay calm in a crisis or when you feel threatened and it’s easy to link all sorts of happenings, especially unexplained ones, together in overly simplistic ways- “they” – the evil people, are responsible for all of these terrible things.

One Helene grand conspiracy theory asserts some nefarious “they” manipulated the storm clouds and directed the path of the storm. This conspiracy theory gets linked to the evil federal government & Blackrock are going to take the land, where major lithium and other valuable minerals are located, so they can mine them. A very similar grand conspiracy theory spread during the wildfire disaster in Maui. Lithium is a vital resource for the green transformation and another mineral resource was mentioned too that is needed for the AI revolution.

My problem with all of these theories is I’ve watched our government and particularly this administration operate for 4 years – they aren’t grand strategists, in fact, they operate like what we saw in the first few days of this disaster. Private citizens showed up with helicopters to rescue people and get supplies to stranded victims, and they spent the weekend after the storm pleading for the government to send air assets. The NG was sent in, but it wasn’t until near the end of the first week when the 82nd Airborne and 101st were deployed.

Aside from the issue of whether or not technology exists that can steer a hurricane for hundreds of miles, I’m just speaking about how this administration operates – from the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle to the fires in Maui a couple years ago – it’s always a crisis blows up, they drag their feet on responding and spend more effort on trying to spin it away in the media and covering up their ineptitude than actually dealing effectively with the crisis at hand. THEN, they try to spin away their failures and criticism, claim they did a great job and point fingers at the evil right-wing, as the cause all the problems. This was the same operational model of the Obama administration and that’s because the Biden administration is filled with the same Obama people. Heck, look back to the Benghazi crisis and it’s the same response model. The Obama administration initially tried to blame an obscure filmmaker for sparking riots in the attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The administration also dragged their feet on launching a rescue effort, then lied and created more narratives to cover up their failures.

The entire Dem/liberal media COVID response effort was more of the same – lies, cover-ups, blaming Trump for all the problems. Throughout that crisis, the Dem experts kept hyping dangers and rolling out one ill-conceived social mitigation effort after another. They lied consistently and even recruited Hollywood to fuel fears and push their social mitigations – one-after-another that were never presented with real evidence that they worked or were actually based on science. It was a long-rolling example of how they just kept making stuff up to fit their agenda to control the American people, justify government waste of trillions of dollars on policies and even vaccines that don’t work, but most of all they consistently blamed evil right-wingers for daring to question or criticize their policies. When BLM launched the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, all of a sudden all those COVID rules no longer applied and it was safe for large protests and even doctors and nurses in large city hospitals poured into the streets to join the crowds.

Even globally, as the elites driving the COVID policies tried to use the pandemic as cover to launch these policies they envisioned as setting the stage for their green revolution (Klaus Schwab wrote a book called “The Great Reset” in the beginning of the pandemic). None of these “grand ideas” were carried out like some ingenious plan – it was all ill-thought out strategies, poorly executed and lots of revising to cover-up missteps. These weren’t grand strategists, but more like out-of-touch kooks.

That’s not to diminish the real harm they caused with their policies, it’s just to say it wasn’t rolled out as some ingenious plan, but as a piecemeal effort where Dr. Fauci or one of the big name policy people would churn out one stupid policy after another, in a rather ad hoc fashion and then ramp up some lame spin effort in the media to sell it, as resistance grew or people were pointing out how stupid the policies were or that they weren’t practical. So, even in this case there were elites with an actual “grand vision,” but they weren’t very good at turning their vision into some coherent plan. What we got was a big media spin show to try to con us into submitting.

This is why I’m very skeptical of some grand conspiracy theory with Hurricane Helene, involving some evil genius “they’ who plotted all of this. I think mother nature can wreck havoc and bizarre events of all sorts that we never envisioned. Growing up in the mountains, well, massive geological upheavals created those very mountains without any human hands involved and strange weather events, climatic events, and even geological upheavals can happen again.

There very likely are big business interests in lithium deposits in Appalachia and sure they might swoop in to try to buy out victims in this crisis, but that’s a far cry from some grand plan that caused all of this so the evil globalists could get their hands on these lithium deposits. It’s more that big vultures watch victims struggle, then swoop in to plunder the wreckage. I saw one video by someone there helping , who asserted that since we left Afghanistan and lost access to those huge mineral reserves, we need new lithium reserves. Well, since I criticized US policy since GWB ordered our invasion of Afghanistan and allowed the Chinese to buy all rights to those mineral reserves – we never had access to Afghanistan’s vast mineral reserves – I remembered we let China buy all the rights to those. There’s some issue of those contracts were up for renegotiation and I don’t remember all the details, but that led to some of the political turmoil that led to the Taliban seizing control of the government in Kabul, but my point is the US never had rights to the mineral reserves in Afghanistan – we let the Chinese buy those… while we put blood and treasure into trying to stand up the Afghan government and provide security for the country all those years. That’s how stupid our foreign policy was.

Of more immediate concern to me is the reports of highly toxic waste in the flood sludge. I don’t know what all industrial and other toxic waste might have washed into those flood waters. but that should be a an urgent health issue to identify and inform people in those areas. Yet, all the Biden administration wants to hype is right-wing misinformation and how that’s hurting FEMA’s response efforts.

Sure, the US needs lithium and other mineral reserves for the green transformation, but what I’m getting at is this conspiracy theory, as presented, about Helene, has a lot of holes. The administration trying to cover-up their response failures seems much more likely. This administration wants this disaster off the front pages, especially this close to a presidential election. Imagine headlines if there really is highly toxic waste present in the floodwaters and mud and the federal government knows about it, but is trying to downplay it (I think this is likely true). I know how much effort has gone into Dems covering up other big scandals and this often fuels more wild right-wing conspiracy theories, that often get in the way of exposing the real Dem cover-ups and corruption.

From what I’ve seen in this sequence of events – the governor of NC & WH were slow to respond in the first days after the disaster. And I believe there’s likely some effort at covering up that slow response and perhaps there’s a serious health hazard the federal government might be downplaying. I’ve seen no evidence of some grand plan of some “they,” including controlling the weather.

I believe the victims of Helene will be forgotten by the federal government and by most Americans (including most of the loud, right-wing online crowd), who quickly move on to the next big story to fight about. The left vs. right spin battles aren’t about helping Americans, they’re about driving narratives and ginning up controversy.

Among the right, there are many popular pundits and social media personalities, whose bread and butter is “connecting dots” of all sorts of truly unconnected events into big conspiracy theories, Many people buy into almost all of them, even though 99.9% of these connected dots theories are bs. What they are is constant money-making by feeding right-wing grievances. Grand conspiracy theories that lack hard evidence linking the pieces together only fuel more anger, more divides and can get in the way of helping the actual victims. The worst effect of these grand conspiracy theories is they work to spread fear and disempower people. Fear weighs you down and gets in the way of unleashing all our human potential – it sucks us of our God-given power of personal agency – to forge ahead, even in the most extreme adversity.

I’m not saying people need to hush, don’t have a right to their own views, or that I know it all about anything. In America we do have the right to believe in and talk about conspiracy theories – and sometimes those do turn out to be true, even though most don’t. I’m all for people expressing their views, even controversial ones. What I’m saying is tread cautiously about buying into grand conspiracy theories, because they usually aren’t true – especially with this inept bunch of nitwits in the Biden administration. They always cover-up their failures to respond promptly or assess a crisis situation accurately. And rather than a grand conspiracy theory, what’s unfolding could much more likely be a chaotic cover-up effort, like in Benghazi, the pandemic, the Afghanistan withdrawal or the wildfires in Maui.

Don’t assign superhuman powers to these corrupt nincompoops, that leave you feeling powerless.

In Helene, the WH has been busily churning out photo-ops about all their grand relief efforts and one press conference after another about their “whole of government” approach to dealing with this disaster, to cover-up for their slow response and failures. However, their biggest narrative about Helene is to rant about right-wing misinformation impeding FEMA’s efforts and endangering FEMA workers… At the same time they’re ramping up alarm about dangerous right-wing misinformation and even a story about NG reporting two trucks of armed militia hunting FEMA workers.

No matter what the crisis, at home or abroad, this administration, just like the Obama administration, can be counted on to be leading from way, way behind, then spending more time trying to do damage control for their failures than actually finding solutions. And in the end, the Dem spin crowd will blame Trump or the right-wing conspiracy theories for causing all of the problems with this disaster response. The evil right-wing will become the obscure filmmaker of Benghazi scapegoat for this crisis.

By the time government investigations into this disaster response happen most of the country will no longer care and none of the lessons learned that could improve disaster response will likely be implemented. That’s the way the federal bureaucracy operates – each partisan side embarks on endless investigations, hurling allegations of nefarious wrongdoing back and forth, while American victims suffer. I’m not wasting a lot of energy or fuming about the government in this disaster.

The big lesson I’m learning is that individual citizens have real power and personal agency to respond quickly, to effect real results fast. In this disaster they demonstrated the ability to network in innovative and creative ways. Individual YouTubers and people on other social media initiated fundraisers, coordinated with local churches and other people on the ground to get assistance rolling in before the government even responded. Many churches and religious groups jumped into action. Teams of private groups and organizations rolled in and organized amongst themselves, even bringing air assets before the government responded. Individual citizens showed the true spirit of America and the best of us. If we call the government, especially in Washington, to come save us, well, we will probably find out no one’s answering.

Americans all over the country and even some people beyond our borders saw people in crisis in NC & TN and wanted to help. That’s the spirit of America that will save our country, not all the partisan fighting, political drama, and definitely not letting fear of the government and corrupt elites take hold.

America is a country dedicated to the empowerment of individuals and individual liberty. Individuals rushed into action and saved lives in this disaster and mobilized. That should be the lesson learned.

The photo above is a small piece I stitched a long time ago. The more chaotic and crazy things become, I’m finding more calm and inner peace by trusting that God is in control. I spent a good part of my adult life avoiding religion, even though I was raised going to church. I used to consider myself pretty much agnostic. In the past 25 years, I came to know that it is only by the grace of God that I am still here and free to speak my mind. I hope more Americans start trusting in each other rather than placing trust in politicians or the government. Individuals united in common causes can work miracles, as we’ve seen with the relief efforts in NC & TN. People just saw a need and pulled together to help. They’ve provided a true beacon of hope, in a world filled with cynicism and distrust.

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October 11, 2024 · 10:28 pm

An in-depth look at our DEI & Intelligence problems

I listened to this Shawn Ryan Show interview of John Gentry, a college professor with a background in military service, intelligence analysis and academia. Gentry wrote a book, Neutering the CIA: Why US Intelligence vs. Trump Has Long-Term Consequences.

This interview is almost 3 hrs. long, but I think it’s worth the time. Gentry delves into the long history of hostile foreign information operations against the US and where we’re at with our own domestic information operations problems.

10/12/2024 – In this interview Gentry lists Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as our biggest threats from information operations, but I think the spread of Wahhabism in the US, funded by various Middle Eastern entities and countries, is still a potent threat. Although most Americans want to forget about radical Islamist threats like Al Qaeda and ISIS and move on from the “forever wars” in the ME, our enemies in the radical Islamic world haven’t forgotten about us.

I assume most Americans know that the overarching power struggle in the Islamic world is between the two branches of Islam – Shia and Sunni. Wahhabism is a conservative Sunni group, which has spawned radical groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS. Iran is run by Shia zealots.

Here’s a link from 2003 with information on Wahhabism and Islam in the US.

It’s important that just because we’re hearing about the Iranian threat (Shia) in the news more now, especially with the Iranian threats against former President Trump, we don’t forget the other radical side of the house of Islam.

And with all these looming threats from abroad, I sure wish our intelligence agencies hadn’t been so corrupted by the extreme Democrat effort to destroy Trump and the Obama administration effort to impose DEI in the federal government. The DEI push has eroded a merit-based system of trying to hire the best qualified people for positions and replaced it with hiring people based on diversity and equity being the top priority. Although, most Americans weren’t even aware of DEI until the past few years – President Biden signed the Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce in 2021, continuing Obama’s 2011 DEI policy:

“Federal merit system principles include that the Federal Government’s recruitment policies should “endeavor to achieve a work force from all segments of society” and that “[a]ll employees and applicants for employment should receive fair and equitable treatment in all aspects of personnel management” (5 U.S.C. 2301(b)(1), (2)).  As set forth in Executive Order 13583 of August 18, 2011 (Establishing a Coordinated Government-Wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce), the Presidential Memorandum of October 5, 2016 (Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in the National Security Workforce), Executive Order 13988 of January 20, 2021”

Don’t feel bad if you weren’t aware of all this DEI stuff, because part of the way the left cons Americans is by pasting kind and caring labels on policies that are designed to destroy American foundational principles and values. Diversity and equity sound benign and equity even sounds very similar to equal opportunity, but their meanings are miles apart. In this interview I learned some details about this DEI push during the Obama years that I was unaware of. DEI has also been infused into the UN policies. It’s a global effort.

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October 7, 2024 · 4:56 pm

A couple baking daily bread even in a disaster

This is an amazing story:

I donated to them last night.

There are loads of links for charities to donate and some are well-known ones and loads are just ordinary people. This couple working by candlelight to bake bread for their neighbors in need, just speaks to a special kind of selfless service.

I try to focus on my own family first and then my friends and neighbors. I was very lucky with this storm, but other people here in my community weren’t.

The first thing I did after this storm was take 4 tanks of oxygen, that have been sitting in my garage since my husband died three years ago, and took them to a dear friend, whose husband is on oxygen 24/7. We had talked about these oxygen tanks before and he has some extra tanks, but since this power outage was worse than usual, even here, I wanted to make sure he had them.

That wasn’t anything at all really and the morning after the hurricane I wanted to slap myself for not doing it months ago, when I realized how much wind damage we had and there was a shelter in place order. As the morning went on I realized how many people in my county were without power. It was a fluke, that my section of my street didn’t lose power, but everyone all around us did.

I guess most people around here are watching the news about this next hurricane and all that discussion about paths and spaghetti models makes me more anxious. We aren’t in the direct path and it looks like we might get some rain.

There are a lot of good people in America, I believe.

This couple are among the best of us.

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October 6, 2024 · 9:06 pm

The spirit of America is still alive

This blog post is a long ramble, but I want to get this stuff off my chest. I realize most people don’t follow the news as closely as I do, but I’ve been analyzing the Dem spin information war closely since 1999.

I heard a crazy story at the grocery store the other day, from the lady in front of me in line at the check-out. She told me that this past week, when the power was out in a nearby town, there was a confrontation at a gas station where a customer pulled a gun fighting over ice. One of my sons told me there were stories like that in Augusta too and he said the Walmart had a security person by the ice. I never thought about people going berserk over ice, but when the power’s out and you aren’t prepared to keep you fridge and freezer going, ice might become a precious commodity. Civil order can degrade quickly – that’s something we should all understand.

Most people aren’t even minimally prepared for emergencies and there are way more people with learned helplessness, who expect other people to save them, than people with a self-reliant mind-set. Watching this hurricane Helene disaster, made me think of a blog post I wrote in 2012, Survival: The Mind-Set. I’ve been committed to preparedness since I was a Girl Scout, as a kid, but I avoided the term “prepper.” In 2012 I wrote:

“Reality TV garbage, like Doomsday Preppers and the fixation on extreme survival skills, like Bear Grylls, marginalize  the seriousness of learning practical steps to take to be prepared.  In fact, stockpiling and building a fortress probably won’t increase your odds of survival anyway. The surest way to survive lies in building that team, where individual strengths and skills can lead to  innovation, creative-brainstorming and more ideas on how to tackle our problems, even in the most dire situation.  If you are stranded by rising water, calling Washington won’t help you, but calling your neighbors, who can pool resources sure might.”

The first responders are almost always going to be your neighbors and local officials, like your police and fire department, but in a massive disaster, like with the flooding in NC and TN, we should expect a prompt state and federal government response. The people in TN & NC are shining examples of neighbor helping neighbor in this disaster. They should be very proud of their people, who often get ridiculed as backward hicks from Appalachia. I grew up in rural PA, in the mountains, that are part of the Appalachian Mountain range and close to the Appalachian Trail. I understand how backwoods people get treated.

There’s plenty of time to do a post mortem on FEMA and problems with this disaster response and that should happen, so that problems can be addressed and better policies and procedures implemented.

Every American watching this on the news should be motivated to start taking practical steps to become better prepared for emergencies, learn more skills, and even if you’ve been committed to personal preparedness for a long time, it’s time to go assess your supplies, skills, and look for gaps in your preparedness plans and supplies. I have a list of things I want to do better or stock up on.

Elon Musk’s Starlink has been mentioned repeatedly as a lifesaver for communications in a disaster. Donald Trump wasn’t the only one who didn’t know anything about it. I had heard about it, but not being interested in technology, it wasn’t something I learned anything about, so I googled it. One of my sisters told me buying a Starlink kit might be a good thing to have and I think so too. These are the kinds of things I’m reassessing.

Sure, I’m disgusted with the Biden administration and yes, I do believe they were very slow to respond – Biden was on the beach and Kamala was at a big fundraiser in San Francisco last weekend, they weren’t concerned about the hurricane at all. Fort Bragg in NC and Fort Campbell in TN weren’t called in until a week after the storm. They were awaiting orders. Now, it’s all about how to spin it for damage control, but I am trying to leave my anger and disgust aside and trying to focus on positive things.

One of my sisters messaged me that she has attended two FEMA emergency communications webinars with her civilian job. She’s retired from the Air Force and worked in Public Affairs at the Pentagon years ago. She was lamenting that she thinks we aren’t as prepared as we were more than a decade ago and she expressed disgust at the DEI focus in her FEMA webinar training. She said the one before hurricane Helene focused mostly on climate change and pushed out a concept of Radical Collaboration, whatever the heck that means. She said they talked at length about stakeholders in shared spaces. And this is a direct quote from my sister, “It was all bullshit from a practical standpoint. It seems FEMA is mostly absent from meeting Helene victims in their shared spaces.” She also told me FEMA’s top communications person worked in campaigns for various high-level officials her whole career and has no practical experience in disaster response. She said they knew Helene was coming & the focus was on climate change, not disaster response.

I believe my sister is telling the truth about this FEMA webinar and I think most Americans watching this on the news or online know something is very, very wrong with this hurricane response and in this WH.

Dems and their liberal media allies are going to gaslight us any way they can to win this election. Today, some liberal media flacks were back on hyping signs of Trump’s cognitive decline and at the same time Axios has a piece out:

It’s totally insane. We have no information on the two men who tried to assassinate former President Trump. We have no answers on what condition President Biden really has, despite the almost dozen visits of a Walter Reed Parkinson’s specialist to his WH physician since January. The media just breezes past all of this. It was only a week before the hurricane, when Biden held his first full cabinet meeting in almost a year, and he turned it over to Jill to run, but now Kamala is vouching for Biden’s mental fitness. Only a few months ago Dems & liberal media claimed Biden was so impaired that he needed to step aside and let Kamala become the candidate. Trump does lie a lot, but he’s got nothing on Dems and liberal media with their non-stop gaslighting.

These people are recklessly endangering all of our lives with this charade – all for power and control. We have a seriously cognitive-impaired POTUS and CINC.

Finally, because she never goes away, Hillary did an interview and she’s angry that if they can’t force X to censor speech, they will lose total control of social media:

It’s amazing that so many Americans are now talking about how free speech is under attack and alarm about these Dem efforts at censorship, like it’s something that’s new and alarming that Dems are trying to control information in America. For years I’ve felt like a lone voice in the wilderness, as I tried to explain the 1990s Clinton spin information war, which expanded to the Dem spin information war. This isn’t some sudden new plan – they have been working on this since the 1990s. Most of the media in America, Hollywood, social media (except for X), and Silicon Valley tech giants are all big players in the Dem spin war This cabal of elites is the most corrupt, political machine in American history and they’re determined to control information and to not let Trump get in the way of their “total control.”

I don’t care for Trump and have loads of very anti-Trump posts on my blog, Almost every time Trump speaks he blurts out something that offends me or hits me wrong, but at the same time I sympathize with him. He’s also been right about many issues and his administration implemented many policies I support.

Trump is the #1 target of the Dem political machine, which will do anything to, not just defeat him in this election, they are trying to destroy him financially and use lawfare to send him to prison. I don’t know if the two assassination attempts are connected, random crazies, a foreign plot, or some nefarious plot by domestic political enemies. All I can say is I do know how far the Clinton machine went to silence a nobody homemaker (me), when I got in the way of their spin effort on a popular online political message board, during the Clinton impeachment. Trump poses a much, much larger threat to their power. I’ll be amazed if he survives to election day, but if he wins it will only get crazier.

I do not believe Dems will peacefully transfer power.

The wheels are coming off the American bus.

I hate to sound alarmist, but we are not living in normal times. Last week, with most of the southeast US reeling from severe hurricane damage, a thug union boss announced a strike of port workers along the entire east coast and all the way to Texas. The secretary of commerce, Gina Raimondo, was asked about this potential strike the day before and she said she hasn’t been very focused on that. She had no clue about the impact a major port strike would have on hurricane disaster recovery? The Biden crew don’t have a clue how to think ahead, piece information together to identify potential threats, and certainly no ability to prepare ahead of time.

There was also a large Verizon service outage and then a Bank of America outage, while over a million people in the southeast were still without power.

It wasn’t Biden or Kamala who put pressure on the thug union boss, who said he would shut down the economy to get what he wanted. It was governor Ron DeSantis, in FL, who stood up to that thug:

Hours later the union delayed their strike until January and Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, tried to take credit for negotiating this settlement, but it was DeSantis who really called that thug’s bluff.

There’s another hurricane approaching FL this week.

Things seem very uncertain these days, so we should all put some time into becoming better prepared – this isn’t something to procrastinate about. Just do the best you can and if you need inspiration, just look at the people in TN and NC, who just loaded up whatever supplies they could muster to help their fellow citizens in trouble. That organic emergency response is very heartening.

The spirit of America is still alive across our great land, even if it’s dead in Washington.

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October 5, 2024 · 1:08 pm

A different kind of MAGA hurricane relief idea

Back in the 1980s, Tom Clancy popularized a new type of military/techno thriller, where his story began with events happening around the world, a dots on a map plot, where as more dots appeared you’d start to see the “big picture” of how these dots were connected to some much bigger event unfolding.

It feels like we’re living in a Tom Clancy novel, but there’s no Jack Ryan, who will save America.

I didn’t suffer any Hurricane Helene damage, except for losing some shingles on the roof. I called the roofer and he already showed up yesterday morning to replace them. Good thing too, because we got some rain later in the day. My head is full of thoughts on this post-Helene situation and the alarmingly slow Biden response. It’s also filled with a lot of thoughts about how people react to emergency situations. I’ve seen so much online drama on X, that’s disturbed me.

The Dem/liberal media spin effort has now shifted the blame for the Biden slow disaster response to blaming Trump & MAGA misinformation for all the problems. Yes, FEMA is now the victim of Hurricane Helene and we’re back to the Dems “COVID misinformation” witch hunt mentality.

This morning I posted my ideas for a way for Republicans to counter this deceptive Dem/liberal media campaign, but more importantly to get the focus back on the real victims of Hurricane Helene:

That’s my plan to get the focus back on the real victims of Hurricane Helene and go around the Dem/liberal spin war effort.

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September 30, 2024 · 8:02 am

A bit about Hurricane Helene impacts

Hurricane Helene caused extensive damage across FL, GA, SC, NC, TN and even into VA. My area in GA had a good bit of wind damage and widespread power outages. 7,903 customers are still without power in my county and there are several counties in GA almost completely without power. We’re under a boil water advisory, a few stores are open, but not running normally, and more gas stations are now open. We aren’t in bad shape compared to hundreds of thousands of other people impacted by this storm, especially those in western NC and eastern TN.

An odd thing happened over the weekend, when one of my sisters called from PA and she was surprised that GA had such an impact from the storm and that millions of people were without power. She said she saw nothing in the news about it up there. Over the weekend America started getting more news about the devastating flooding in western NC and eastern TN – in Appalachia. My sister wondered if there wasn’t much in the national news about this hurricane, because there are Republican governors in FL and GA and the liberal media didn’t want to give them more attention, since we’re in the midst of a presidential election. There’s also that Appalachia is poor, rural white people, who are easily forgotten. I didn’t see much news about SC storm damage either and as I’m writing this SC still has 733,488 customers without power.

The liberal media focus is very strange in recent years and often natural disasters barely get a mention, while they fixate on hyper-partisan dramas. Being this close to the presidential election, a natural disaster in Appalachia must certainly seem like an untimely inconvenience to liberals trying to run the Kamala fake JOY campaign.

The real heart of America is on display in TN and NC, as volunteers from all over the country are pouring in to try to help, and it’s reassuring this American spirit still beats strong.

I’m trying to remain hopeful that my uneasiness with the way the WH has responded so far is wrong, but here are some warning signs that all is not well with the federal response to this disaster.

First, the FEMA director is Deanne Criswell, an Obama administration official, and she is the “first female director of FEMA.” The feminist push for “first female” in the federal government has always been about breaking glass ceilings any way they can, rather than competency. The feminist movement has always been run by far-leftists, so you get lots of high octane rhetoric and little in the way of principled leadership. Let’s hope this “first female director of FEMA” isn’t as incompetent as the “first female director of USSS,” who bungled Secret Service protection for former President Trump.

President Biden’s responses have been few and he had another odd interaction with the media yesterday, where a reporter asked him if he had any words to the victims of the hurricane. Biden’s response was, “We’ve given everything we have.” He sounded confused and unsure to me – as usual. Then late last night Kamala tweeted that she’s been briefed, but none of this displays command of a crisis, leadership or competency.

And then I saw the new FEMA guidelines under the Biden administration – DEI garbage:

These priorities led to delays in response to the Maui fires a few years ago. The chaos and dysfunction within this White House have gotten worse now and their only concern is winning this election and maintaining this charade of a Biden presidency going, as long as they need it. That’s another topic, but I expect them to try to install Kamala before the January inauguration date, regardless who wins the election. I expect Dems will contest a Trump win, install Kamala and refuse to let Trump become president – one way or another. Sounds crazy, but that’s where I’m at.

Now back to this crisis in Appalachia. It’s hard to know yet, if the FEMA response on the ground is inadequate, because it’s hard to get reliable information and a sense of the overall operation. However, the WH and FEMA have been failing completely at their PR and keeping the public informed. So, here we come to another recent bizarre image, that shows Biden is in even worse shape with cognitive decline than a few months ago, when top Dems pressured him to drop out of the race. Biden held his first full cabinet meeting in almost a year and had Jill run the cabinet meeting. Liberal media downplayed this:

I know Dems and liberal media think they can get away with any spin lie they create, but somehow I don’t think Americans will be satisfied with Jill Biden addressing the nation on an emergency response to a natural disaster:

All my instinctive reactions are twitching that something is very wrong with the federal response to this hurricane, but I keep hoping I’m wrong. Americans will still help each other in a crisis, even if our government fails, so ending on a positive note- here’s where you can donate to help the flood victims in TN and NC:

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September 18, 2024 · 11:24 pm

More surreal happenings

With all the surreal happenings in the past several days, from flame-throwing back and forth about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, a second attempted assassination of Trump and a raging battle over who is inciting violence with their words, along came Hillary Clinton to toss another Dem spin grenade into the public debate. She showed up on MSNBC, to opine about how the media is screwing up on how they cover Trump. She lectured that the media needs to stick to a narrative. And then she suggested censorship and criminal penalties for spreading Russian misinformation.

The audacity of this corrupt woman knows no bounds. It was her 2016 campaign that concocted and spread an elaborate, false Trump-Russian Collusion story, that corrupted the State Department, the FBI, our intel agencies and which the liberal media spread for years. Her latest comments reinforced my belief she and the Clinton machine will do anything to destroy people who get in their way. Without a doubt, Trump, definitely got in the way of her lifetime dream of becoming the first female president. And she’s still plotting for some way to destroy him.

Despite all the other crazy things going on, I feel certain we haven’t heard the last of Hillary Clinton,

As for Trump, there are definitely a lot of people who are out to destroy him and although he keeps praising the Secret Service, it’s hard for me to have confidence in them. They are controlled by the same administration that’s using lawfare to try to throw Trump in prison. And the FBI and DOJ involved in that lawfare are now in charge of investigating this second assassination attempt.

One other bit of news from this second assassination attempt on Trump, is for all the Trumpers who jumped into the Trump primary campaign effort to destroy Ron DeSantis and smear him, well they owe him an apology. DeSantis never hurled dirt at Trump, but Trump and his campaign were as bad as the Dem smear merchants. In fact, the right-wing activist weirdo, Laura Loomer, who’s been hanging onto Trump since the primary, admitted she regularly shared dirt on DeSantis with a Dem operative, Ron Filipkowski. Loomer spread the rumor that Casey DeSantis faked having cancer.

Right after the second assassination attempt, while all the people around Trump were rushing to drum up outrage in the media – it was Ron DeSantis who immediately saved all the social media of the suspect, before it was taken down. And it’s been Ron DeSantis who set up for FL to prosecute this case too, so that, hopefully, it doesn’t just get buried by the FBI.

Assuredly, there will be more political craziness, but I’m going to be taking some breaks from it. This past week has been extremely crazy.

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September 15, 2024 · 3:14 pm

Our country needs some serious soul-searching

Many years ago when I worked at Walmart in the fabrics and crafts department I watched what started as a silly practical joke snowball out of control. One of the two department managers came up with this practical joke to play on an associate in our department, who was obsessed about Winnie-the-pooh stuff. She gathered up the bolts of Winnie-the-pooh fabric and stuck them in a shopping cart before that associate arrived. She let me and the other associates and other department manager in on her joke and the gist was to play along when she told this associate that the Winnie-the-pooh fabric was being discontinued.

It was a harmless joke, except she decided to carry her joke further and went around the store getting other department managers to play along and tell this associate that Walmart was discontinuing all Winnie-the-pooh merchandise. Several of us told her that she was carrying this joke too far, because the associate believed her and was upset about this Winnie-the-pooh “news.” Finally she told the associate it was just a joke.

That associate was so embarrassed she fell for this practical joke that she ran in the restroom. I and another associate went in there to talk to her, where she was sobbing in humiliation. The jokester felt terrible too and she bought this associate some Winnie-the-pooh merchandise and apologized profusely to her. Sometimes people might think something is really funny, but they carry it too far.

I thought about this with Trump hyping the “eating the pets” thing in Springfield, OH. Sure, some dark humor aspect to many of the Trump “they’re eating the pets” memes, had me laughing, BUT…

It stopped being funny when Springfield just had bomb threats in schools and children, both Americans and Haitians, are scared. I don’t care who is at fault for these bomb threats, because I feel it’s a safe bet they are related to this Trump-hyped “eating the pets” drama that Trump tried to exploit for political advantage. There are right-wing activists running around Springfield and scouring the internet for proof Haitians are eating the pets and assuredly, there are sleazy Dem operatives busily at work to set up more racial-themed false flag operations to capitalize on this situation and make Trump look like Hitler, again.

A funny meme has gone too far, but assuredly many extreme partisans don’t realize that yet. Some very influential Trump pundits are on X urging Trump to have a huge rally in Springfield, to stir up more divides in this community.

Setting up Haitians, people from the poorest country in our hemisphere, as sub-human barbarians, creates a permission structure to mistreat them. The Biden administration gave these Haitians legal status, whether you agree with that policy or not, so they are here legally. Trump’s entire MAGA schtick always veered toward dividing people and incitement. He’s also unconcerned about facts or verifying information and even in his pre-politics days, he wallowed in spreading malicious gossip.

Back in his 2016 rallying campaign he did incite people at rallies to punch protestors and a 78 year-old vet got worked up and did punch a protestor. He was arrested and faced charges. This type of Us vs. Them rabble-rousing is Trump’s trademark approach to manipulating people. He displayed this same type of behavior on J-6 too. His latest “they’re eating the pets” is Trump creating this same type of incitement to justify vilification of Haitians in one small city.

Of course, the Biden administration open borders policy created this illegal immigrant/refugee crisis situation in Springfield, OH, where around 20,000 Haitians were brought into this small town, by the Biden administration, and now compose a third of the population.

There’s a massive Open Borders system of Dems (and some Republicans) politicians who welcome cheap, third world labor, companies and a vast structure of NGOs and religious charities that rake in billions of dollars from federal funding for providing migrant services. The people in this system should be the #1 target, not the Haitians in Springfield.

By all the reporting so far, most of Haitians are working in Springfield and the most frequent complaints I’ve seen reported are about their terrible driving and causing accidents, language barriers, and the amount of federal aid and benefits they’ve received. The eating the pets and ducks stuff, was the thing Trump chose to hype.

Sure, considering the poverty level in Haiti and the practice of voodoo being common there, just about anything that moves is considered food and weird animal sacrifice stuff is part of voodoo, so it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these Haitians do eat cats and dogs and practice voodoo. That said, there are over a million immigrants in the US of Haitian descent, who have successfully immigrated here and fit into American society. Haitians can successfully assimilate into American society. While doing more reading on Haiti, I was disheartened reading about impoverished people in Haiti who mix dirt with oil and make mud cookies to feed their children and there’s even a market selling them, as something cheap to fill bellies.

Another thing I learned in the Army is you can put people from all kinds of different backgrounds together, unite them to a common value system and goals, and they can live and work together peacefully and productively. The same thing is true in America – that is the wonderful thing about America.

The real issue is dumping so many people from a completely different culture in American towns, without the consent of the residents and then not having adequate plans and resources to facilitate assimilation into American culture. These residents have a right to be fed-up that more taxpayer money is going to help these Haitians than is going to help the residents of Springfield. The residents are just supposed to silently accept the upheaval the Biden-Harris administration caused or be labeled racists, so yes, their grievances should be heard.

Stepping back from the situation in Springfield and looking at the big picture of this illegal immigration crisis, granting legal status to Haitians in Springfield is not as high a priority as the large numbers of criminals, gangs, drug traffickers, terrorists, likely 5th column elements from hostile countries that have been allowed to flood into America.

These Haitians in Springfield, if they are working and not engaged in crime, are low on the list of top priority for deportation, I think, while rounding up illegals who are criminals, gangs, drug traffickers, terrorists, 5th column elements from hostile countries should be the priority. Trump doesn’t even understand anything about prioritization or forming a comprehensive strategy. He just brags, brags, brags and repeats malicious stuff “someone told me” or “I heard that.”

While in office, Trump did do better on the illegal immigration problem than Biden, but it was not spectacular. And he had no plan for how to get through the political walls Dems kept erecting, because he does not have a clue about the US constitution or how our government actually works. His loyalists have consistently tried to sell that as a benefit (and an excuse when he screws up). but if you are trying to defeat a vast, corrupt system, you better try to understand everything you can about how they operate. The same thing is true in war – you try to study everything you can about your adversary and how they operate.

Trump, when in office, often spewed out things he was going to do that weren’t legal or even within the powers of the presidency. He’s not sitting around studying policy or trying to learn more – he’s a schmoozer, braggart, and always looking for a way to get more media attention for himself.

At this point it will be hard for me to vote for Trump and I’m feeling much like I did in 2016, when I left the top of my ballot blank. How America ended up with two candidates, who are lazy, self-indulgent, and need campaign staff and surrogates as 24/7 babysitters to prevent them from self-imploding boggles my mind. Kamala can’t speak even a few minutes extemporaneously without sinking into a wilting tossed word salad.

Trump can’t be left unattended or he’s posting crazy or self-destructive stuff on social media or inviting a psycho far-right activist to travel around with him. He took Laura Loomer, a 9/11 truther, who claims 9/11 was an inside job, along with him to a 9/11 memorial service a few days ago. That’s his level of judgment.

The babysitter clubs in both campaigns are trying to keep these two pathetic candidates on message and from self-immolating. We, as a country, need to do some serious soul-searching on how we let our country devolve to this sad state, with two complete nincompoops as candidates.

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September 10, 2024 · 11:20 am

Not just cats, but a catastrophe waiting to happen

In January 2017, right after President Trump’s inauguration there was a Women’s March, to rant about Trump’s misogyny and how women’s rights were under threat. Oddly, this march wasn’t just in the United States, but a global protest effort. Many protestors donned pink “pussyhats” hats made with cat ears, although a few went so far as to come in costumes of female genitalia. This election season, some comments by Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, have ignited the liberal “cat ladies” crowd again.

Over the weekend surreal news reports ramped up of citizens complaining about Haitian immigrant issues in Springfield, Ohio, where this city of 60,000, had 20,000 Haitian migrants, dumped there under Biden policies. A third of this town is now Haitian immigrants, who don’t speak English and where the city doesn’t have the basic services required for this massive influx of immigrants.

Here’s a Springfield resident complaining about Haitian migrants cutting off the heads of ducks in the park and eating them:

A now debunked story hit X about a Haitian woman killing a cat in a Springfield neighborhood and eating it. The incident took place in Canton, OH and the alleged cat-killer was an American citizen, Allexis Ferrell. Liberal journalists on X rushed to debunk the Haitian woman killing and eating a cat story in Springfield, to paint the Trump-supporters on X amplifying this story as MAGA racists.

It’s always amazing how our liberal media covered up Joe Biden’s cognitive decline for almost four years and finally dug up details of his decline, only when it was part of a powerful Dems’ effort to pressure Biden out of the 2024 presidential race. Two weeks of finally reporting on Biden’s cognitive decline prodded Biden to step aside. And then these journalists’ curiosity and determination to get to the bottom of Biden’s actual condition evaporated and they reverted back to pretending Biden was fine to remain POTUS until January 2025. They pivoted back to repeating old Trump smear stories and trying to repackage Kamala as a brand-new superstar presidential candidate. With this liberal media effort to debunk the Haitian immigrants stories, they managed to get loads of details quickly, because they wanted to cast the right as racists and bigots – those mean MAGA extremists.

The photo at the top is my three cats looking out my kitchen windows one morning. All three were strays. I don’t consider myself a cat lady and definitely prefer dogs. I also have two dogs in my house. My late husband and I always had a lot of pets, especially when our four kids were growing up. I would be quite upset if someone killed any of my pets and ate them.

Animals aside, there are reports of an increase in car accidents in Springfield, many of them caused by Haitian migrants. And there are reports of residents complaining about Haitian migrants squatting on their property, because there’s an acute housing shortage. There are reports of a wide variety of other complaints with Springfield residents dealing with this massive invasion of Haitian migrants, orchestrated by the Biden administration.

Naturally, there’s a video of Kamala Harris bragging about bringing in over 100,000 Haitian migrants, granting them temporary protected status, so they are here legally. This “temporary” status is likely permanent, since there’s no federal interest in sending these migrants back:

Kamala was quick to jump onboard the liberal media outrage effort to accuse border patrol agents of whipping Haitian illegals crossing the border in 2021, which an investigation completely debunked:

The federal government has been quietly dumping thousands upon thousands of illegal immigrants and those granted refugee status on unsuspecting communities, often with no warning – since the Obama years. This is a longstanding effort by Democrats. And then local communities are left trying to figure out how to cope with the ensuing strain on public services, the rise in crime, the cultural clashes, and local residents footing all these extra costs.

During the Obama presidency both illegal immigrants and legal migrants numbers exploded and the administration expanded refugee laws to grant asylum to hundreds of thousands of migrants. There was a four year pushback to crackdown on illegal immigration and trying to rein in the legal refugee programs under Trump. As soon as Biden took office, all the Trump immigration policies were tossed and they went back to the Obama plan, except this time that plan was on steroids.

Why Obama and Biden have worked to drown America with a massive, overwhelming illegal immigration flood has never been explained adequately, to me.

My own conclusion, since Obama talked about his fundamental transformation of America long ago, is that the radical left wants to collapse the American system as we know it. Democrats have been filling the federal bureaucracy with Democrats willing to implement the left’s radical agenda for decades. The usual Republican charge that Democrats want to create a Democrat majority voter bloc with illegal immigrants being added to the Dem voter rolls doesn’t seem to me a full explanation for this vast Democrat effort to destabilize communities all around the country.

The US State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services orchestrated this immigration crisis in the US throughout the Obama and Biden administrations.. The Biden policies of flying or busing migrants to towns and cities around the country, then dumping them off were the same Obama administration policies. When federal agencies dump large numbers of illegals into communities, without any warning or time to prepare, they’re deliberately trying to overwhelm and destabilize those communities.

Another main culprit in this immigration crisis are an array of NGOs and religious charities, which rake in millions of federal dollars to provide services to immigrants and refugees. They actively promote illegal immigration, because they are getting rich off of other people’s misery. Many churches, of various denominations, actively promote illegal immigration policies and have become a powerful moral force aiding the left’s radical destabilization effort via an overwhelming illegal immigration force.

This illegal immigration issue is more ominous than just illegals voting in elections. Democrats have aided and abetted 5th column elements from numerous countries hostile to the US. They’ve dumped them in communities all around our country. We have a lot more to worry about than just protecting our pets from being eaten by migrants from destitute areas around the world, where any animal that moves is considered food. Some of our leaders do realize there are trained hostile criminal and military elements who moved in under the very noses of the Biden administration. However, the FBI is likely to do their usual, after-the-fact announcement if the worst happens – they’ll say that person or group was on their radar… again.

This immigration invasion is a massive national security threat all across America.

It’s a catastrophe in the making.

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August 29, 2024 · 10:22 am

Wake-up America, China’s getting ready to make some bold moves

China is preparing to make some bold moves, but meanwhile….

There was another big kerfuffle in the liberal media about some altercation between a Trump aide and an Arlington National Cemetery official during a wreath laying ceremony. Former President Trump attended, at the request of some Gold Star families, whose loved ones died during the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle three years ago.

Naturally, within hours the liberal media account turned out to be missing a lot of details and was presented to make Trump the villain. I condemn Trump’s bizarre comment recently comparing the Medal of Honor award to Presidential Medal of Freedom awards and saying the medal of freedom was better, while sucking up to some wealthy donor lady, Miriam Adelson, who had introduced him (he had awarded her the medal of freedom as president). He was at this event to speak about anti-Semitism. Here’s what he said:

““It’s the equivalent of the congressional Medal of Honor,” Trump said of the civilian Medal of Freedom. “But the civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone that gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.”” from https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2024/08/20/trump-clarifies-medal-of-honor-comments-calls-it-the-ultimate-honor/

Trump later clarified his remarks, but it was totally self-inflicted damage and I watched the video of this lady introducing him and his gushing comments several times. His comment deserved criticism.

For me, the truth matters more than partisan politics, so the truth is the liberal media acts as just part of the Democratic Party and left-wing political organizations messaging operations. And destroying Trump has been their #1 mission since 2016. The truth also is Trump dodged the draft in Vietnam and has no understanding of military service and sacrifice. I still think he’s a liberal role-playing at being a Republican. So, our choices are the most radical left candidate ever or Trump, a mixed bag of foibles, who often landed on good policies while president. He’s not Hitler, but he’s a deeply flawed candidate whose ego and big mouth gives his adversaries endless piles of ammunition to attack him.

Naturally, trying to get past his careless remarks from weeks ago, attending this ceremony at Arlington was politically beneficial, but Trump had called these families before and that might be why they invited him.

Trump was invited by these Gold Star families to attend this ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, that’s the most important point.

Neither President Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris have ever contacted the families of the fallen heroes at Abbey Gate, during that Afghanistan withdrawal debacle.

Stories never end with a simple explanation. Now we find out that officials at Arlington gave these Gold Star families a runaround trying to arrange this ceremony and Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, had to intervene. From the Daily Caller, EXCLUSIVE: Gold Star Families Had Trouble Getting Trump Into Arlington Until House Speaker Intervened :

“Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had to intervene to get former President Donald Trump into Arlington National Cemetery for the third anniversary of the Afghanistan withdrawal with Gold Star families, a family told the Daily Caller.”

“The Gold Star families, who lost their children during the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, invited Trump to Arlington National Cemetery. There he laid a wreath for the 13 servicemembers who were killed serving their country in Afghanistan. However, a Gold Star family told the Caller that Arlington National Cemetery was trying to make it difficult for the former President to appear for the ceremony to honor their children, something the families requested.”

Every part of the federal government appears to be politicized and deeply divided along partisan lines, including some officials at Arlington National Cemetery, who tried to impede Trump attending a wreath-laying ceremony at the request of some Gold Star families.

During the 20 years of having US troops fighting the Global War On Terror and US regime change/democracy in the ME effort, both political parties began actively recruiting former military members, who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, to run for office. We now have deeply partisan “former-military” members in Congress, who jump into the fray on all military and foreign policy matters. This active political party recruitment of former military is how Tim Walz made it to Congress. With Walz becoming the Democrat VP candidate, information emerged recently that he had lied about serving in combat. True to form, former military Dems in Congress signed a letter backing Walz, while former military Repubs in Congress signed a letter condemning Walz for lying about his service.

The retired generals who show up in the media to comment, likewise are split along partisan lines, although the Dem-aligned ones became outspoken, rabid Trump-haters. However, among these retired Dem generals, who penned angry op-ed letters about Trump and showed up on cable news to berate him, I never saw any of them speak out about the Biden administration’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. The Pentagon claimed that withdrawal was a success, touting the large number of people evacuated during that debacle. I didn’t see these Dem retired generals criticize Biden or Harris for failing to contact these Gold Star families or even acknowledge them on the three year anniversary. Likewise, The liberal media doesn’t have anything to say about that Biden-Harris disgrace.

So, stepping back now to look at the big picture – we have a deeply divided country, including our news media we rely on for information, our elected officials, our intel agencies, our courts, our military leadership and even it appears, officials at Arlington National Cemetery.

Every federal institution seems to be deeply divided along partisan lines. And many American families are split along partisan lines.

How on earth are we going to be prepared, because our enemies see our divides and are watching? The Biden-Harris train wreck of a foreign policy continues to create opportunities our adversaries will surely try to exploit. Biden’s on an extended vacation and yesterday the media showed video of him lounging at the beach. Kamala’s preparing for her big “first interview” since becoming the official Democrat presidential candidate and she’s campaigning in GA. Here she is yesterday talking about leadership:

Our enemies are watching this vapid, silly woman and they’re watching all the American political theater. Most of all they’re watching the chaos and Biden dismantling of US military might by turning our military into a DEI project for Woke radicals to tinker with.

The floating pier project that Biden deployed to assist in humanitarian relief in Gaza a few months ago ended in failure and embarrassment, but the Pentagon spokeswoman touted that as a success, just like the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle.

In the meantime this was in the news, as China is escalating aggressive actions in the Indo-Pacific

U.S. military has no carriers in Indo-Pacific waters for first time in decades

From that linked article:

But retired Navy Capt. Jim Fanell, former director of intelligence for the Pacific Fleet, said the absence of a carrier group in the region is dangerous, noting it is the first time it has occurred since 2001, when the Japan-based USS Kitty Hawk was deployed to the Persian Gulf.

Since then both Democratic and Republican administrations have maintained at least one carrier strike group in the western Pacific to provide a strong deterrence to aggressive Chinese military activities or for a possible North Korean contingency, he said.

The current gap “sends a clear and unambiguous message to Beijing that the Biden-Harris administration is unlikely to intervene to help protect America’s national interest in Asia or those of our allies such as Japan, [the Philippines] or even Taiwan,” Capt. Fanell said.

He compared the gap to the decision by the Obama administration in 2012 not to respond forcefully to China’s seizure of the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, saying it only encouraged the Chinese military to build up more strategically located islands in the sea that are now armed with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles.

“Wherever the U.S. leaves a vacuum, [China] fills it with their military forces,” Capt. Fanell said. An Indo-Pacific Command spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the U.S. presence in the region.

Then the day after this report the Pentagon announces: U.S. military open to escorting Philippine ships in the South China Sea, senior admiral says

It’s always – make terrible decisions that create dangerous strategic opportunities for our adversaries, then pedal some weak tea assurance to our allies afterwards. This is a repeat of the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, trusting the Taliban for security outside the airport in Kabul, of Ukraine, where the Biden administration weakness emboldened Putin, of Israel, where the Biden administration has tried to hamstring Israel to appease Hamas terrorists, and of Iran where Biden removed the Houthis from the terrorist watch list and now Iran keeps arming the Houthis to attack American forces in the region.

After watching four years of Biden-Harris military decisions, well, China is going to act sooner rather than later. We have no aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific, so the Biden administration offers a fig leaf to our Philippine ally that the US military is open to escorting their ships under threat by Chinese vessels ramming them. I doubt this US being open to discussing US escort is very reassuring to them. In Manila they’ve been watching the Houthis too. The US Navy has sizable assets in the region that could have demolished the Houthis and deterred Iran, but all the Biden administration whines about is a ceasefire, while letting the Houthi attacks go unpunished. The Houthis have been allowed to severely impede shipping in the Red Sea.

The Biden Pentagon keeps sending more and more ships and military assets to the ME, but then hamstrings them from defeating the Houthis or stopping Iran from arming the Houthis.

A bunch of rebel bands have defeated the US Navy, because of the Biden administration’s epic strategic failures. Here’s the British Telegraph: The Houthis have defeated the US Navy

China, Russia and Iran are watching closely and preparing to take more aggressive actions, while the US has the JOY campaign vs. Trump now sucking up to far-left Dems, RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard, who was a Bernie Bros and is all about no more forever war…

Well, Americans better be preparing for war, because it’s on our doorstep. Weakness is as provocative as aggression. No amount of Kamala JOY and vibes or Trump embracing RFK Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again or Tulsi whispering in his ear about how we shouldn’t do anything militarily is going to save us.

If you keep getting all excited about the dramas the Kamala Joy & Vibes campaign is blabbing about or thrilled about the Trump new unity with far-left Dems, perhaps it’s time for a reality check — China is going to make some big moves sooner rather than later.

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