The Progressive/liberal/left will not give up that is a fact and so given the damage that they have already done I would agree that a civil war is possible.
Tag Archives: Sovereign debt crises
Intellectual Frog Legs – Victory Edition…
JFK Assassination – Unintended Victim?
Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics
Re-Posted Dec 2, 2016 by Martin Armstrong
There is another side to the JFK assassination that does not actually negate some of the conspiracies that surround CIA or military involvement. It may actually expose that Oswald was the patsy who was out to kill John Connally, not JFK. Nevertheless, the events are still clouded by bureaucrats.
After Lee Harvey Oswald delivered those fatal shots in Dallas, a Secret Service officer named Mike Howard was dispatched to Oswald’s apartment. Agent Howard found a little green address book. In this book on page 17, under the heading, “I WILL KILL,” Oswald listed four men: James Hosty, an FBI agent; Edwin Walker, a right-wing general; and Vice President Richard Nixon. However, at the very top of that list was the governor of Texas, John Connally, where Oswald drew a dagger with blood drops dripping downward. Oswald motive was that he had written to Connally asking for help and got the typical bureaucratic reply letter.
Agent Howard turned that book over to the FBI investigating the case. Only later did he find out that someone tore that very page out of the book. Why? Was JFK assassinated by government agents and they needed Oswald for the patsy? Oswald’s wife, Marina, in her testimony to the Warren Commission, named Connally, and not Kennedy, as her husband’s target. Marina has also testified before the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978, repeating this same story about Connally. Oswald was obsessed with Connally, but testimony showed that he admired JFK’s important initiatives like the president’s efforts at detente with Russia. So the plot becomes interesting when one asks, “Why was that page torn out of the little green book?”
Obama Argues Against Rights for Illegal Immigrants
Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics
Re-Posted Dec 2, 2016 by Martin Armstrong
While the left continues to bash Trump as a racist for his stand against migrants, the Obama Administration argued before the Supreme Court yesterday for the same result. The Obama Administration was at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, urging the justices to strike down a court decision granting regular hearings to many migrants jailed on immigration grounds.
The press paints Trump as racist because his campaign promised a broad crackdown on illegal immigration. Acting Solicitor General Ian Gershengorn argued that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (California) distorted immigration statutes when it ruled last year that many immigrants in prolonged detention are entitled to hearings before immigration judges every six months.
The Obama Administration said that the “9th Circuit undid that legislative balance,” repeatedly stating that the 9th Circuit appeals court invented a “one-size-fits-all” policy by guaranteeing bail hearings that lawmakers never authorized. “This was a deliberate, categorical judgment by Congress,” said Gershengorn.
It is very interesting how the press is not bashing Obama for taking a hard stand against equal rights for illegal immigrants.
Hollande Bows Out in France – He Will Not Run
Armstrong Economics Blog/France
RE-Posted Dec 2, 2016 by Martin Armstrong
Well the emails are pouring in already since our post on the upcoming French elections where our model was showing that “Clearly, the socialists are finished.” We further stated: “They made a two election come back, but that was just a reaction reaching 51.63% compared to their peak at 51.76% in 1981. This suggests they will possibly be out of the final run or this will be their very last time. The 2017 election may simply be Conservatives v FN in 2017.” We warned that our model was shaping up to be a confrontation between the Conservative candidate Francois Fillon and the FN candidate Marine Le Pen.
In what is being called a shocking surprise announcement, President Francois Hollande of France on Thursday said he would not seek a second term next year. He is so unpopular, he is stepping aside in hopes that this will resurrect the Socialist party’s chances. This is the very first time since France’s fifth Republic was created in 1958 that an incumbent president will not seek a second term.
Our computer simply looks not at opinion polls, but at the market performance and the economy. This is three for three so far. It seems to be on a roll with its political forecasting. We have the Netherlands and Germany in addition to the Italian referendum. This is a global trend rejecting politics as we have known it.
Bleeding Borders Must Stop!
The invasion from the south must be stopped and sealing the border with the US military is a viable option.
Populist-Nationalist Tide Rolls On
If all the old progressives get thrown out maybe there is hope!
Trump Effect – Mexico’s Central Bank Chief Resigns…
Media reports of Agustin Carstens resignation as chief of Mexico’s central bank have left MSM pundits and even business analysts scratching their heads. It appears no-one has any idea why Car…
Source: Trump Effect – Mexico’s Central Bank Chief Resigns…
Trump Confirms Retired Marine General “Mad-Dog” Mattis Will Be America’s Next Secretary Of Defense
by Tyler Durden
Update: Speaking during an Ohio “thank you” rally, Donald Trump just confirmed that James “Mad Dog” Mattis will be America’s next Secretary of Defense.
* * *
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen 66-year-old retired Marine General James N. “Mad-Dog” Mattis to be secretary of defense, according to The Washington Post.
An announcement is likely by early next week, according to the people familiar with the decision. Mattis declined to comment. Spokespersons for Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment.
Mattis, 66, retired as the chief of U.S. Central Command in spring 2013 after serving more than four decades in the Marine Corps. He is known as one of the most influential military leaders of his generation, serving as a strategic thinker while occasionally drawing rebukes for his aggressive talk. Since retiring, he has served as a consultant and as a visiting fellow with the Hoover Institution, a think tank at Stanford University.
Mattis has also gotten cheers from veterans and Trump supporters online, in the form of celebratory memes dubbing him the Patron Saint of Chaos (Chaos was Mattis’s call-sign in Iraq and Afghanistan), praising his lethal “double knife hands,” and saying that he “Puts the Laughter in Manslaughter.”
Mattis gets the nod ahead of a notable group who were up for the top role..
- * David Petraeus, former CIA director and retired Army general
- * Tom Cotton, Republican U.S. senator from Arkansas
- * Jon Kyl, former Republican U.S. senator from Arizona
- * Duncan Hunter, Republican U.S. representative from California and early Trump supporter, member of the House Armed Services Committee
- * Jim Talent, former Republican U.S. senator from Missouri who was on the Senate Armed Services Committee
- * Rick Perry, former Republican Texas governor
- * Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser under President George W. Bush
His bio – as one would expect – is impressive…(apart from the Theranos aspect) (via The Intercept)
Mattis is exactly what Trump is not, a soldier-scholar who knows something of the wider world.
Now 66 years old, Mattis was born in Walla Walla, Washington. His lifelong bachelordom is the source of one of his many nicknames: “warrior-monk.” He served in every major U.S. Middle Eastern conflict from the first Iraq War on. In 2001, as a one-star general, he led 4,000 Marines in a search for Osama bin Laden near the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. In 2004, as a two-star, he led a Marine division into the second battle for Fallujah. He went on to lead combatant commands at the Pentagon and NATO, culminating in two years as the head of Central Command under President Barack Obama, reportedly leaving after disagreeing with Obama’s policy on Iran.
Shortly before his departure, Mattis appears to have weighed in with the Pentagon on behalf of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes’s troubled biotech firm. He later joined the company’s board. Should Trump nominate Mattis, emails between Mattis and Holmesare likely to come up during his Senate confirmation hearing.
Professor Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina, called Mattis “loyal and discreet. He doesn’t talk out of school. He seeks out top people, and people like working for him.” Trump, Kohn continued, “is going to be advised by a National Security Advisor [Flynn] with some deep flaws. I think that having a legendary and respected retired general in charge of Defense makes a great deal of sense.”
“I think he would be an outstanding candidate,” Michèle Flournoy, widely believed to be Hillary Clinton’s frontrunner for secretary of defense, told NPR. In 2010, Seth Moulton, a decorated Marine captain who served in Iraq, praised Mattis as one of the “leaders who can speak the truth, who aren’t just constrained by the politics of the moment.” Moulton is now a Democratic congressman representing the Sixth District of Massachusetts.
Mattis has also gotten cheers from veterans and Trump supporters online, in the form of celebratory memes dubbing him the Patron Saint of Chaos (Chaos was Mattis’s call-sign in Iraq and Afghanistan), praising his lethal “double knife hands,” and saying that he “Puts the Laughter in Manslaughter.”
Indeed, Mattis is famous for speaking bluntly when it comes to describing the military’s primary function — killing the enemy — and for whistling about his work. He has lived down an eleven-year-old gaffe where he described killing as “a lot of fun, … a hell of a hoot,” but has never backed off from the stance that the military’s core function is not peacekeeping or humanitarian missions but war-fighting. He is widely credited with popularizing the motto of the 1st Marine Division — “No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy” — and turning it into a basic tenet of counterinsurgency doctrine. His letter to the division on the eve of the 2003 invasion is a cool-headed exhortation to “close with those forces that choose to fight, and destroy them.”
William Treseder, a former Marine who now advises startups, said that Mattis is skilled at injecting a fighting spirit into mundane jobs. “The enemy should quiver in fear every time you sign a contract,” was Mattis’s advice to a fellow soldier working in procurement, Treseder said
While Mattis briefly flirted with his own 2016 presidential run, he chose not to leap into politics with the gusto of Flynn or retired Gen. John Allen, both of whom delivered fire-breathing speeches at this year’s major-party conventions. Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized both Flynn and Allen at a panel discussion last week for injecting politics into the military.
“Too many times when you see retired military individuals … take a very strong political stance, that sends the wrong message to America,” Mullen said. “It sends the wrong message back inside our military. Because it teaches our young ones that it’s okay. And it’s not okay; … it’s a fundamental principal of the United States of America that the military has got to stay apolitical.”
Keeping the military out of politics and under civilian control is one reason that the 1947 National Security Act requires that officers be out of military service for ten years before assuming the mantle of secretary of defense. In 2008, Congress lowered the waiting period to seven years. Congress granted a waiver to Gen. George Marshall, President Truman’s third secretary of defense, in 1950. Mattis would need his own congressional waiver to serve under Trump.
If Mattis and Trump still have disagreements to smooth over, the treatment of Gold Star families, whose children have died fighting for the U.S., would likely be one of them. During the campaign, Trump suffered a blistering attack from the family of Army Capt. Khizr Khan. He chose to push back, suggesting that Khan’s mother was not allowed to speak at the Democratic National Convention. He also appeared to draw an equivalence between his own struggles in business and the sacrifice made by the Khan family.
“I’ve made a lot of sacrifices,” Trump said in an interview with ABC News. “I work very, very hard.”
Trump’s words may have served to aggravate a trend that Mattis pointed out in an anthology he recently co-edited about the military-civilian relationship in the U.S., which describes the “atrophying” of empathy for Gold Star families. “What had been a more common experience of loss in previous wars now tends to be an isolating experience for families,” Mattis wrote, with his co-editor.
Should Mattis join the cabinet of such an unusual commander-in-chief, one of his challenges will be to balance the roles of servant and tutor.
Finally, here are 16 quotes (via FreeBeacon) to get a better feel for “mad-dog”…
1. “I don’t lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.”
AP
2. “The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event. That said, there are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot.”
3. “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”
4. “Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they’re so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.”
Flickr
5. “Marines don’t know how to spell the word defeat.”
6. “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”
7. “The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.”
8. “You are part of the world’s most feared and trusted force. Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.”
(Mattis’ Letter To 1st Marine Division)
Gen. Mattis in 2006 / Flickr
9. “There are hunters and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.”
10. “No war is over until the enemy says it’s over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.”
11. “There is nothing better than getting shot at and missed. It’s really great.”
12. “You cannot allow any of your people to avoid the brutal facts. If they start living in a dream world, it’s going to be bad.”
Gen. Mattis and Gen. Dempsey / Flickr
13. “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.”
(CNN)
14. “I’m going to plead with you, do not cross us. Because if you do, the survivors will write about what we do here for 10,000 years.”
15. “Demonstrate to the world there is ‘No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy’ than a U.S. Marine.”
(Mattis’ Letter To 1st Marine Division)
16. “Fight with a happy heart and strong spirit”
Yahoo’s Advice To Trump: Educate Children In Media Literacy To Combat Fake News
by Tyler Durden
Submitted by Joseph Jankowski via PlanetFreeWeill.com,
Writing for Yahoo News, National Political Columnist Matt Bai provides a suggestion to combat the so-called “fake news” epidemic that has become a major talking point of the mainstream media since Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election. According to Bai, we should be “teaching our kids how to consume” information in an age where the internet has provided a press to anyone with a computer and a router.
Within his article, titled “The real problem behind fake news“, Bai calls fake news a “searing hot topic these days” and mentions the infamous WaPo article which cites a shadowy, anonymous organization known as PropOrNot (Propaganda or Not) that smears many legitimate conservative and libertarian news sources like Zero Hedge, Infowars, Breitbart, World Net Daily and The Ron Paul Institute as Russian propaganda.
That WaPo article highlighted what was the second blacklist of websites to make its rounds in the mainstream press last month. The first list was put together by a nobody liberal professor from Merrimack College (let me tell you how worthy of circulation that is).
Bai writes:
The emergence of “fake news” is a searing hot topic these days, as you’ve probably heard — a new, truth-free media to go with our new, truth-free politics. The Washington Post reports that a lot of these phony stories, some of which probably influenced the election in at least a tangential way, originate with Russian “bots” programmed to confuse American readers. (Payback, I guess, for all those years when Voice of America did the same thing.)
Under enormous pressure, Facebook and Google have now promised to do a better job of curating the content that populates their sites. Which is all very comforting, if you really want software engineers assuming the role of civic arbiter that has traditionally fallen to journalists. I don’t.
And the problem with cracking down on social media sites is that it’s a little like the war on drugs. You can try to stamp out the supply of garbage news, but the Web is a vast place, and as long as someone can make money off misinformation, it will always find a crack through which to seep.
Aside from citing the WaPo hit piece on basically all effective news outlets outside the MSM realm, Bai is being reasonable. Most will agree, it is better not to have Facebook and Google taking on the role of civic arbiter and information gatekeeper. And the promoting of a crackdown on social media could lead to the very slippery slope of censorship.
The Yahoo News journalist goes on to writes:
No, the long-term solution here is about stemming the demand. The answer doesn’t lie in hectoring tech companies into policing content, but rather in teaching our kids how to consume it.
Bai says that “navigating the news media isn’t intuitive anymore” and compares it to flying a plane rather than driving a car.
“A Big Bang at the genesis of the Internet age” has fractured the entire (Media) industry and its audience into a million pieces,” he says.
“The proliferation of social media and the rise of mindless aggregation” is also causing this problem of “fake news” reaching the masses, Bia writes.
My kids will spend months of their young lives studying the Revolution and the Civil War and the advent of mass production, which is fine. In grade school, they spend some part of every year revisiting the social movements of the ’60s, which is noble and important.
But what’s called “media literacy” in the education world — the ability to consume torrents of information with some level of competence and sophistication — is still an outlier in social studies curricula, despite having been discussed now for decades. Even when it’s taught, it’s crammed into a high school unit, by which time today’s grade-schoolers will have been surfing YouTube for half their lives.
It seems like a great idea, teach kids how to objectively analyze the media. But, if we are to take the mainstream media’s labeling of “fake news” seriously, we will find ourselves telling our children that only big networks like CNN and MSNBC are trustworthy sources.
The real problem with the entire fake news narrative is that “fake news”, by PropOrNot’s definition, is really not a problem at all.
The mainstream media is telling everyone that since Google’s algorithm made a mistake by linking to a false news report, individuals now must surrender their ability to look at things objectively and only trust the big news networks.
Just look at PropOrNot.com’s blacklist, it is full of alternative news sites that now have large enough audiences to bang heads with the corporate controlled press. And considering that the trust in the mainline news is equal to that of trust in congress, this can only be seen as a way to discredit the grassroots news organizations that are threatening the old media’s reign.
The labeling of fake news should be left up the internet user who might stumble across some wrong information or even some disinformation.
It would be foolish to allow the mainstream press, an unknown organization that hides its identity and a leftist professor that teaches feminist media studies, to provide what is real and what is not.
I would also not be too enthusiastic on the public school system, that runs off federal funding, embracing the rise of alternative voices in media that are usually critical of government (the way it is suppose to be).
Matt Bai ends his piece for Yahoo with a very laughable thought.
Here’s a radical thought: If President Trump is looking for a bold and useful education initiative that might serve the incidental purpose of redeeming what’s left of his soul, media literacy would be a pretty good place to start. Getting behind a nationwide push in K-through-12 classrooms could be an important and unifying priority for the incoming education secretary, Betsy DeVos.
Willingly or not, Trump has done more than anyone else to expose the problem. The least he can do is begin to address it.
HA!
You mean the Donald Trump that absolutely ridiculed the mainstream media during a meeting last month over their blatant bias coverage of the election and misrepresentations?
Hate to break it to you Matt, but if Trump were to do that many of the websites on the PropOrNot list cited by WaPo would be presented as “real news” to our children. CNN and ABC would be identified as the establishment government lapdogs that they are.
I hope Trump takes your advice.
