[Wash Examiner] James Comey has recognized a kindred spirit in Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who in 1951, penned the immortal lines, "Do not go gentle into that good night ... Rage, rage against the dying of the light." To wit, the former FBI director confidently strode up to microphones following two days of contentious testimony before House lawmakers, and let it all hang out. Comey, the man some sympathetic media-types have referred to as a humble servant-leader, seized the opportunity to settle some old scores as he pilloried Fox News and the Republican Party.
"The FBI’s reputation has taken a big hit because the president with his acolytes has lied about it constantly," Comey lectured reporters following the final closed-door session with the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees on Monday. Recognizing a unique opportunity, Comey paused for effect ... and then continued: "At some point, someone has to stand up and face the fear of Fox News, fear of their base, fear of mean tweets, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement but stand up and speak the truth."
His shot across the bow at House Republicans was his latest in a recent line of partisan snipes at a political party with which he once publicly claimed affiliation. During his long government career, Comey played the near-perfect nonpartisan actor, earning accolades from both sides of the aisle. His behind-the-scenes, self-serving planting of a story that highlighted his "courageous nonpartisanship" during a now well-chronicled hospital bedside standoff with the George W. Bush White House on March 11, 2004, during the Stellar Wind reauthorization battle, is legion ‐ and earned him former President Barack Obama’s nod to become the seventh director of the FBI. About the author.
[Hot Air] Geoffrey Woo runs a small company called HVMN (pronounced "human") in San Francisco. The company, which currently has 10 employees, used to have offices in the financial district but needed to expand and so moved to a larger space in the Mid-Market area. Tuesday, one of Woo’s employees stepped outside the office and witnesses a violent assault which Woo would later say looked to him like attempted murder. Tuesday night he posted a brief video of the incident on Twitter in which a man can be seen stomping on the head of another man who is already down on the sidewalk. Woo said his neighborhood felt like a "war zone" and begged for more police help and tagging the city, the SFPD and Mayor London Breed.
The next day, Woo posted a follow up video of himself speaking to the camera. “What you just witnessed was an assault and essentially an attempted murder that happened this morning right outside my office,” Woo said. He continued, “San Francisco! We live in a pretty f**ked up city, no other way to really put it. But no one really talks about it. A lot of us just gossip about national politics, Trump this, Russia that, Mueller this, GOP, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Democrats. It’s all just bulls**t entertainment. What I care about is my day-to-day safety and quality of life.” He goes on to request that a couple of SFPD officers be tasked with patrolling the street every single day, saying his personal observation is that when cops are on hand the street is safer.
#4
Easier to shame complainers than fix the problems.
Bets on whether Mr Woo starts receiving regular visits from the city building and fire inspectors?
Posted by: Fred ||
12/22/2018 14:07 Comments ||
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#8
Not heaven, but certainly not Hades:
Bell bottomed men, skirt suits on ladies;
Stiff hairdos, more formal,
At least if you're normal.
The Eighties... San Fran on Euphrates?
#10
Bets on whether Mr Woo starts receiving regular visits from the city building and fire inspectors?
And, what would that accomplish? The odds are that he is leasing his office space. The owner of the building would be liable for any code issues discovered by the city fire and building inspectors.
[Bloomberg] President Donald Trump’s love of coal, rejection of climate science and disdain for things like fuel efficiency hark back to a smokier, smudgier era. Yet if this year has shown anything, he is one of the biggest disruptors in energy. He just does a different kind of disruption.
In a prescient essay published late last year, Jason Bordoff, founder of the Center on Global Energy Policy, wrote that Trump’s energy-specific policies would have less of an impact than his broader shifts in foreign and domestic policy. One look at the minimal impact of efforts to revive coal mining suggests Bordoff was on to something. When it comes to Trump and energy, macro trumps micro.
As outgoing Defense Secretary James Mattis put with skewering politeness in his resignation letter, Trump personifies what you could call a profound shift in U.S. foreign relations. The prior constants of free trade and security guarantees underwritten by the U.S. were the product of a Cold War that ended three decades ago. See this column for a more detailed discussion, but suffice to say the post-1945 order that nurtured the world’s energy markets is now being challenged by its chief sponsor.
Continued on Page 49
[Investor's Business Daily] Economics: What seemed like an impossibility just a few years ago is now a reality for many across the country: gasoline that costs less than $2 a gallon. It's amazing for many reasons.
USA Today reports that almost one in five gas stations in the country are charging less than $2 a gallon. As many as eight states could soon have an average price of under $2, the paper said, citing data from GasBuddy.
The national average for gasoline last week was under $2.40, according to the Department of Energy. In the Midwest and the Gulf Coast, it's barely above $2.
$2 A GALLON IN CONTEXT
Let's put that in some context. First, there was a time not too long ago when President Obama insisted that $2-a-gallon gas was a thing of the past. "We can't just drill our way to lower gas prices," was his constant refrain.
Earlier this year, Democrats made hay when gas prices neared $3 a gallon. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer blamed "President Trump's reckless decision to pull out of the Iran deal." He said it caused "soaring gas prices, something we know disproportionately hurts middle- and lower-income people."
#1
So, it's worth examining assertions and outcomes:
"You can keep your doctor." - Turns out, no, not so much.
"We can't drill our way out of this." - Turns out we sort of can.
"Ignoring malcontent students in public schools will lead to more justice." - Tell it to Parkland.
"We have to be at war, everywhere, all the time, forever." - Outcome not yet announced, but some already have their minds made up and they will freely call you an idiot if you don't agree...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/22/2018 10:10 Comments ||
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#2
Gas is $1.73 in my part of Texas.
Funny how things work once you get the enviro-wackos out of the way.
[GEFIRA] Though the end of the European Union is inevitable, the proponents of a further integrated or federal superstate are busy making a last effort to achieve their goal. The opposition against the project is mounting with every day. Europe is suffering from economic stagnation, and is facing a demographic calamity.
The pro-European establishment’s last hope was the newly-elected French President Emanuel Macron who was to revive the economy and integrate the European Union under French leadership. Gefira was of the opinion that all these expectations were misplaced. The once great nation is broken beyond repair. France’s problems are much worse than those of Italy. Though Italy has a higher debt-to-GDP ratio than France, France has a larger budget deficit, and the difference is that while Italy has a trade surplus France has a trade deficit, so the country cannot pay for its imports.
While the Italian "populist" Mateo Salvini is earning the nation’s respect, Emmanuel Macron’s popularity is at a historic low. All of France is engulfed by riots, civil unrest and looting. In city after city, village after village, protesters have been clashing with the police for weeks now while President Macron has nothing to offer to appease them, unless he violates the budget deficit boundary of 3%.
Like the Soviet Union once was, France is a sizeable social-multicultural experiment, and like the empty shops in communist countries, the demographic changes in France are visible in every section of the society, but nobody dares to name them. Once the whole world saw that the French team playing at the FIFA World Cup was made up of almost exclusively Africans, and even on Twitter Africans boasted about it. Yet, the French establishment insisted that those Africans were genuinely French. Dissenters were branded as racists or Nazis.
[NYP] Keeping score of the daily ups and downs of the Trump revolution is tricky business. Some days, it looks as if the president is making good on his promise to liberate America from the stranglehold of the political elite and corrupt government insiders.
Then there are days like Tuesday, when the deep state asserts its power and proves it’s not dead yet.
True, it was only one day, but it was an important one. And the results were lopsided.
The brazen quote of the dismal day comes from New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood after she got the president’s family foundation to agree to dissolve itself under court supervision.
"This is an important victory for the rule of law, making clear that there is one set of rules for everyone," Underwood crowed.
If there really were "one set of rules for everyone," Underwood would have been arrested on the spot and charged with perjury.
Her claim of equality before the law is about as bald-faced as a lie can get.
Recall that she presides over an office that turned a blind eye to years of suspect conduct by the Clinton Foundation, in apparent solidarity with the Clintons’ politics, then singled out the Trump Foundation for fine-tooth scrutiny as Democrats built their resistance to his presidency.
That’s not to say the Trump Foundation always acted honorably. Charges of "self-dealing" are serious and there were abuses of its privileges. But with just $1.7 million left to spend, after it distributed a reported $19 million over a decade, the foundation was relatively insignificant in Trump World.
[NR] Comey is a bigger political figure than ever before but has revealed himself to be exactly what critics always said.
Never before has a former FBI director boasted about taking advantage of an administration’s disorganization for his own ends.
But never before has a former FBI director been as self-satisfied as James Brien Comey Jr.
In an interview at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Comey delighted his Upper East Side audience with his tale of how he exploited the Trump White House’s disarray in its initial days to send two FBI agents to talk to then-national security adviser Michael Flynn without honoring the usual processes (e.g., working through the White House counsel’s office).
Comey said that in a different administration, it was "something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with." He apparently didn’t consider how that might sound to anyone not already inclined to enjoy the wit and wisdom of James Comey, or old enough to remember when an FBI director pushing to "get away" with things wasn’t so amusing.
A lot of people have been diminished by the Trump years, Comey among them. He’s a bigger political figure than ever before but has revealed himself to be exactly what critics always said ‐ a politically savvy operator who matches his bureaucratic skills with an impregnable sense of self-righteousness.
#2
He will have to live to the end of his days knowing that this country would have been better off if his mother had consulted planned parenthood just before he came into existence.
Posted by: Daniel ||
12/22/2018 4:12 Comments ||
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#3
He belongs in jail. If we had an AG with any balls, he'd be there. Trumps biggest mistake was appointing Sessions and then letting the swamp rat stay so long after he showed just how bad he was.
#4
We saw the same behavior with John Koskinen in the IRS scandal. They are smug and insufferable because they know they will get away with it. And with their pensions intact.
[PJ] According to Census Bureau data released on Wednesday, the state of Illinois lost a net of 45,116 people in 2018 -- the fifth straight year the population of the state has suffered a net decline and the worst year yet for population loss.
Chicago Tribune:
This is terrible news for House Speaker Michael Madigan and his cronies who in recent decades have steered the Illinois General Assembly toward higher taxes, rising public debt and anti-business policies that discourage employers from locating, expanding or just keeping their workforces here. Residents fed up with the economic climate here are heading for less taxaholic, jobs-friendlier states.
The new numbers confront Democrats who’ve run the legislature ‐ and who keep raising taxes ‐ with realities they’ll wiggle to explain but can’t deny: As the nation’s population expands, the populations of Illinois and eight other states are declining. On their watch, an Illinois once revered as a land of opportunity now is in decline.
More ominously, every other state in the Midwest is growing.
Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House and the most powerful politician in the state, will have a new toy to play with in January. Newly-elected Governor J.B. Pritzker knows who his boss is and will ask "how high" when Madigan orders him to jump.
The rest of the census report isn't any better. About 114,000 people left the state for friendlier climes.
I am accusing you gross misconduct as a moderator.
As a reader, contributor and commenter since 2009 I have never seen the kind of misconduct by a 'moderator' until the unfortunate day you transitioned from a reader and a commenter to 'moderator'.
1) You are deleting comments at random of commenters that in no way violate rules of conduct at this site.
2) When commenters engage in a debate of an issue you attempt to shut that debate down when it is not in violation of rules of conduct. When one of those commenters call you out on that attempt you go on a comment deleting rampage.
Your personality issues clearly do not point to a reasonable resolution, therefore I am saying strongly that you need to cease moderating.
I am taking a screen shot of this comment and if you chose to delete it I have that information available for others to view. If other moderators chose to delete the comment and investigate Besoekers misconduct, that is fine with me, but leave a comment that clearly indicates you are looking into the issue.
As an excellent site focused on national security issues a rogue individual harassing community who are in dialogue of their opinions demeans the spirit of the site.
Posted by: Neville Dark Lord of the Wee Folk7365 ||
12/22/2018 0:45 Comments ||
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#2
Classic Rant #1. I however do not agree. Tis the season.
#4
Politicians elected with Union backing and money signing pension programs that basically reduce the citizens of Illinois into generational tax servitude. Can you say conflict of interest? Can you say abandonment of fiduciary responsibilities?
#6
Ref #1: He has a personality? Them's fightin' words!
It was a good rant. Not sure what the issue is here exactly, but two things I do know:
Oftentimes, someone has to act as the grownup to keep the place tidy.
Occasionally, comments get deleted accidentally. It happens.
Yes, Classical Liberal, Besoeker has been a moderator since 2015. He takes the responsibility seriously, both in terms of providing articles and in terms of keeping an eye out for spammers and certain of our madder posters. Hemingway, for instance, and drunk-voice-to-text guy. The Sink Trap did not survive one of Fred’s upgrades, so our only weapons are deleting posts and blocking posters.
That dear Neville Dark Lord of the Wee Folk7365 does not agree with Besoeker’s decision is one of the risks of moderating. I do not question Neville’s claim to have been a reader and commenter since 2009. The frustrating part is that he is clearly one of those who takes a new anonymous identity each time he posts, so I have absolutely no idea who he is, nor how he has behaved all these years, nor even whether his dislike of Besoeker predates Besoeker accepting Fred’s invitation. This, of course, is the reason one goes anonymous, and is his right, but there are downsides to that decision.
Moderating at Rantburg is a balancing act undertaken in moments carved out from daily life. The discussions here are as valuable, if not more so, as the articles themselves. But sometimes a commenter will get carried away into flame war territory, some are spammers or — like drunk-voice-to-text guy — just plain spew nonsense. And then there is Hemingway, under a variety of nyms, who claimed a military background but was outed by Pappy as a wannabe Scott Thomas Beauchamp, writer of luridly false articles about the war for The New Republic magazine as the Baghdad Diarist. And even that long ago blocked Saudi lad, JUSTICE, who had a thing for my armpit hair and a friend who’d taken CompSci101.
Besoeker was not the only moderator who deleted your posts, Neville Dark Lord of the Wee Folk7365. They were following the rules laid down by Steve White when he was senior moderator — I missed the excitement yesterday, or I’d have got involved then. But if you would like to join the moderating crew, my dear, please drop me a note in the O Club with your contact information. I would dearly love someone to take on the Britain/Europe Moslem Colonist beat, which needs more attention than I can give it.
P.S. Thank you for your description of Rantburg as an excellent site focused on national security issues. I shall treasure that.
[UPI] THURSDAY, Dec. 20, 2018 -- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram -- the list of popular social media outlets is long and always expanding. But could staying connected through them lead to depression?
That's the question posed by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Nearly 1,800 Americans, aged 19 to 32, answered questionnaires about their activity on 11 popular social media sites. On average, the participants spent just over an hour a day in total on social media, and went to their accounts 30 times a week.
Whether engagement was measured in time or number of visits, the people in the top 25 percent of social media users had significantly higher odds of depression than the bottom 25 percent, between 1.7 and 2.7 times the risk.
[AmGreatness] The United States is no longer the sole superpower in the world. Of course, it is the most dominant force on the planet, but that dominance‐relative to the capabilities of other countries‐has declined. Revanchist states, such as Russia, China, or Iran‐even "friendly" states that have become disenchanted by the West, such as Turkey‐are now arising to complicate U.S. foreign policy in ways not experienced since the nineteenth century. This is particularly true in the vital region of the Middle East.
If the world has entered a multipolar age in which many, variegated powers compete with one another in an endless game of dominance over limited territory and resources, then the Mideast is the definitive example of the trend. All of the problems the United States is facing today are playing themselves out with terminal intensity in the land between Europe and Asia, also known as the Middle East.
Riven by ethno-religious, tribal, and historical tensions, the Middle East is experiencing harrowing changes. In many respects, the same kind of turmoil that drove Europe mad during their religious feuds several centuries ago are now driving politics in the Middle East today; the only difference being more advanced weaponry. Today, a potentially nuclear-armed Iran is gobbling up the region, as are the Russians.
Continued on Page 49
PEARL-CLUTCHING IS A WASHINGTON SPORT
Everyone in Washington is screaming that Trump is handing Syria (and the wider Middle East) over to Russia, Iran, and their newfound allies in Turkey, while at the same time selling out America’s erstwhile Kurdish friends to be annihilated by the Turks over long-standing religious, political, and historical differences.
The experts, once again, are wrong. Their appraisal of American military power and reach undercuts the fact that the United States still will be capable of striking back against enemy targets that may appear in Syria after American forces pull out.
By pulling out U.S. forces, Trump is likely giving Turkey time to recognize that neither the Iranians nor the Russians will prove receptive to their goal of reconstituting the Ottoman Empire in the region. Israel will not be too keen on the idea, either.
Trump isn’t "handing" Syria over to anyone. The president is merely recognizing that geopolitics is about leverage. Compared to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, as well as the Russians, Iranians, and Turks, the United States has little leverage there. Keeping 2,000 Americans on the ground in Syria, with big targets painted on their backs, will not "stabilize" the region. It will likely compel Russia, Iran, and others to take harsher action against perceived U.S. interests in the region.
[Canadian Free Press] In November of 2016, the American people elected Donald Trump to be our nation’s 45th President. He campaigned on a platform of bringing our troops back home from Syria and Afghanistan and focusing on an "America First" foreign policy. By announcing he was removing our 2,000 troops from Syria, the President is following through on another campaign promise.
Syria is a hodgepodge of multiple terrorist groups, regional forces, foreign troops and religious fighters exerting influence. Our forces have been working with the Kurdish fighters in the Northeast section of the country fighting Islamic State terrorists. The operation has been an amazing success and the Islamic State has suffered tremendous losses. In both Iraq and Syria, the terrorists now control only 1% of the land they used to dominate.
The conflict in Syria will continue with or without the involvement of the United States.
Continued on Page 49
#1
The paragraph about restocking military hardware is apropos. More whack-a-mole or B-21s and Columbia class SSBNs? I say buy the hardware and invest in the manpower.
There are going to be hellholes in this world whether the US is there or not. Let's get our own house in order now.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/22/2018 10:30 Comments ||
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#2
There are going to be hellholes in this world whether the US is there or not. Let's get our own house in order now.
Ques: A man and woman or quarreling loudly at the other end of the bar. What should you do ?
#3
Just make sure it doesn't turn into America Only. We need allies. And we should always go after the wolf instead of waiting for it to start eating our flock.
You'll find people with shared common interests in a particular matter. If they share no interest as demonstrated by their behavior, they're not allies.
[Hot Air] This is the third day in a row that a host of the president’s favorite show has unloaded on him on air for troop withdrawals. Credit to Brian Kilmeade (and Fox) for not pulling his punches despite pressure from his audience to conform and a keen awareness that the commander-in-chief was probably watching.
Although if this keeps up, I’d bet on "Fox & Friends" having one less friend next year.
Spare a thought too for poor Sarah Sanders. Instead of making straightforward defenses of Trump’s policy ‐ "Americans are tired of war and don’t understand what our national interest is in Syria" ‐ she’s forced for whatever strange reason to resort to inanities like this:
Putin said publicly within the past 36 hours that he agrees with Trump’s decision to withdraw. Russian state media is chipper about it. And ISIS doesn’t threaten Russia, or at least doesn’t need to. Surely an agreement can be reached between the axis of Assad and the jihadis to leave them unmolested in some small enclave of Syria provided that they steer their jihad towards mutual enemies like the United States. Even if it can’t, sporadic battles with ISIS is a price Russia and Iran should be willing to pay to have the United States out of their way in the region. Kilmeade’s criticism is harsh and hyperbolic (although he’s playing off of Trump’s own hyperbole) but more reasonable than Sanders’s spin.
Our media is strongly pro-intervention and even more strongly anti-Trump so the reaction to withdrawal from Syria and Mattis resigning was destined to be grim. But … it’s really grim.
#2
Obvious from the first sentence this was written by Allahpundit - squishy eeyore loser beta male
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/22/2018 9:04 Comments ||
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#3
Wait and see. I believe SecDef Mattis was right, and President Trump is wrong. Read the resignation letter. It makes sense. And if you have been there you'd know the truth of it.
A phased withdrawal with support built in for our allies in the region would have been the way to go. This move was too abrupt, and looks too much like Obama's turn tail and run withdrawal from Iraq a few years ago.
Why can't you folks admit that Trump may have made a mistake here? Well intentioned, but so was Obama when he did the same thing in the region, and you see where that got us. This was a move that will cost us by emboldening Russia in the region, as well as Turkey and Iran. And that's a nuclear armed Iran, which threatens Israel and Saudi Arabia.
By the way, going ad hominem those who disagree with you is not going to win you friends, nor win the argument. It makes you look stupid.
#4
I have no problem with saying he MAY have made a mistake here. I'm just not a perfect prognosticator as some here seem to think they are. We'll see....
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/22/2018 9:19 Comments ||
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#5
I too hope President Trump has not made a mistake, but if he has I hope its not as costly as I and others think it will be.
#7
*Mistake*... People keeping using that word loosely as if everything can be boiled down into a single Yes/No/Good/Bad evaluation of the outcome. Withdrawing will have both Good and Bad outcomes and will cause us to change our strategies...
But First: What Are we doing by staying there? We are still in South Korea and after 60-odd years and most of the South Koreans want us to stay, can we say that of the people in Syria? Do we leave now or do we leave after a repeat of the 1983 Beirut Bombing?
#9
I think the reason the troops were withdrawn might be because Erdogan intends to attack the Kurds they are stationed with. Could be wrong, but US troops dying at Turkish hands is problematic for keeping Ikrit open to say the least. Fact is, we probably won't know the full reasoning for months.
Posted by: Charles ||
12/22/2018 14:34 Comments ||
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#10
Pull back into Kurdish Iraq. Let Russia deal with ISIS and bomb the crap out of them if they cross into Iraq.
[The Federalist] President Trump has made a bold and immensely consequential decision in pulling U.S. troops out of Syria. His detractors on both the right and left will be many. But as someone who has spent time on the ground in Iraq and Syria both with U.S. troops, local tribal militias, and rebel forces since 2005, I can tell you that it was the right one to make.
Throughout this summer, i drove into the part of northern Syria cleared of the Islamic State (daesh) that does not have a U.S. military presence. Syrian northern cities of Azaz and Jarablus were the sites of two separate stages of the Syrian war. First rebels battled the Assad regime, then against daesh. Transnational terrorists haven’t had a foothold in those areas ‐ jointly managed by Turkish armed forces and their newly created Syrian National Army ‐ for years. It is a template that could help fill the vacuum left behind as the U.S. military leaves.
Life was bustling in these cities when I visited, though scars of the sieges they faced by the Assad regime and daesh were visible everywhere. The rolling landscape along the northern Syrian countryside could easily be mistaken for the gentle farmlands of the American midwest. The kebab shops were open, motorcycle repair shops (the most popular way of getting about in these parts of the world) were bustling, and the two-lane road was packed with the traffic of trucks carrying goods into a swath of territory that is now governed by an interim government ‐ an entity recognized by officials Ankara, but certainly not by that of the Assad regime in Damascus (nor Russia for that matter).
Nonetheless, reminders that the war was still raging in other parts of the country were everywhere. Newly built camps for internally displaced persons who were forced from their homes in other parts of Syria dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see.
This new reality in Syria ‐ one where transnational terrorists do not have the luxury of a safehaven to plot attacks against the U.S. homeland and its allies ‐ is very much possible without the need of permanent U.S. military presence. The withdrawal of U.S. forces need not lead to the doom and gloom scenario of a daesh resurgence that many Washington pundits are predicting.
Other countries like Turkey who are more invested and have longer term interests are footing the bill of stabilization and they are able to do it much more efficiently and effectively for a variety of reasons ‐ to include cultural and historical connections to local communities and the land.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
12/22/2018 05:36 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[10 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
#1
Thank you for the Turkish perspective. I hope Mr. Shahbandar is registered as a Turkish foreign agent. Would hate for him to run afoul of FARA laws.
[Free Beacon] Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane said on Thursday that President Donald Trump will come to regret his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, if he doesn't reconsider the move.
"I don't discuss any conversations I may have with the president. All I can say is that I do hope he reconsiders," Keane told Fox News host Martha MacCallum. "I'm convinced that if he doesn't reconsider, he will come to regret it."
Mattis abruptly submitted his resignation letter on Thursday after meeting President Donald Trump at the White House to discuss the president's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. Mattis tried to convince Trump to reverse his decision or at least let some troops remains, but Trump refused, according to reports. Trump tweeted that Mattis was "retiring" but Mattis' letter shows he resigned over policy disagreements with the president.
"I'm certainly saddened to see Jim Mattis departing, but I also understand. I think the factors that are contributing to the resignation ‐ maybe not all of it ‐ but certainly the decisions in Syria and Afghanistan," Keane said.
The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported Wednesday that the Trump administration planned to pull U.S. troops out of northern Syria. There are currently 2,000 U.S. troops in the country that were there to train local forces in fighting ISIS. Trump has ordered military leaders to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, according to reports.
#1
"I don't discuss any conversations I may have with the president. All I can say is that I do hope he reconsiders," Keane told Fox News host Martha MacCallum. "I'm convinced that if he doesn't reconsider, he will come to regret it."
Heads up Fox News viewers, I have the ear of the president, of Gaia, Pachamama, Putin, and Shakti.
Instead of saluting and offering solutions and complimenting strategies which could lead to success, the general piles on. Perhaps Gen. Keane should resign from Fox News in protest.
#2
For Rantburg posters, I guess nothing is worse than being right when Trump is wrong.
Even the best Presidents make mistakes. Admit it, he is making a mistake here. Not in pulling away from Syria, but in how he is doing it. Just like Obama and Iraq. I recall reading many here being critical of how that was done. Same applies here.
Bailing out suddenly and completely will leave a mess, which will be exploited by our enemies (Iran, Turkey, Russia), and our allies, especially the Kurds, will be screwed by them.
You cant deny that. And you can't deny that Trump means well by bringing the troops home, but he is making a big mistake in how he is doing it. Cut and run is not how to do it.
If there’s one good thing about the political crisis triggered Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria it’s been to make people realize the US is there. As Seth Harp in the New Yorker noted, it has done everything possible to conceal that fact. . . .
Perhaps more people than were ever aware of the combat presence in Syria are outraged the US is leaving it and that is a good thing. The lack of awareness was the result of the breakdown of the national security debate and the abdication by Congress of its role in war making. The public is now like a man waking up in a strange city with a 3 week growth of beard with no memory of how he got there.
As the Los Angeles Times noted the US inherited a whole bunch of shadow wars from the past administrations. “Before he took office in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to end America’s grueling conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his second term, he pledged to take the country off what he called a permanent war footing. … U.S. military forces have been at war for all eight years of Obama’s tenure, the first two-term president with that distinction. He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.”
But they all went into the back pages.
Somehow withdrawing back Iraq doesn't seem like withdrawing back to the US. Get a grip.
#9
#8 is the not-spoken-nearly-enough truth of the day.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/22/2018 13:00 Comments ||
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#10
General, just spare me the Delphic Oracle prognostications: “Give me a one-handed Economist. All my economists say 'on hand...', then 'but on the other...” ― Harry Truman
[Study Finds] Researchers found that people who don’t feel "very strongly" about their national identity were most likely to consider life outside the U.S.
KENT, England ‐ A third of natural-born Americans have thought about packing up and living elsewhere ‐ outside the United States ‐ at some point in the future, but it may not be for the reason you think, a new study finds.
Researchers from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom and Tufts University in the U.S. say that the most popular reason (87.4 percent) to live abroad is the simple desire to explore the world. Surprisingly, whether a person identifies as liberal or conservative politically had no correlation to their hopes of moving overseas.
"While one might think that ideological orientation plays a role, at least in this pre-Trump survey, we found out that it did not, at least not directly," says Dr. Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, of Kent’s Brussels School of International Studies, in a release.
Yet while politics didn’t have a direct link, the authors found that one’s own national identity was an important underlying factor in one’s aspirations of living in another country. Specifically, those who didn’t respond that they had a very strong national identity were also more likely to leave.
#8
First, 1/3 thinking about living abroad means 2/3 (AKA 'most') are not.
Second, researchers ... say that the most popular reason (87.4 percent) to live abroad is the simple desire to explore the world. So it's not living under the brutal TrumpHitler regime that motivating people, despite what the headline hints at.
And just to throw some snark into the mix: At one time, you had to travel thousands of miles by steamer and be the only white man north of the Limpopo to experience strange and exotic cultures. Now, you can just move to one of our large cities, like Minneapolis.
#9
And just to throw some snark into the mix: At one time, you had to travel thousands of miles by steamer and be the only white man north of the Limpopo to experience strange and exotic cultures. Now, you can just move to one of our large cities, like Minneapolis.
#12
There are number of places in America that might qualify for third world living. You can easily tour some of these places: South Chicago, parts of LA, parts of Baltimore, same for Minneapolis, a large swath of Detroit. San Francisco is vying for the list. "Don't leave America and enjoy that expat experience." Most are Dem strongholds.
Want to live abroad? Join the military. I "lived abroad" plenty. You'll see the real world, not the tourist traps.
For them it would open their eyes to what real poverty looks like, and how much irrational hatred certain cultures breed and just how evil centralized government is.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Bloomberg] President Donald Trump’s love of coal, rejection of climate science and disdain for things like fuel efficiency hark back to a smokier, smudgier era. Yet if this year has shown anything, he is one of the biggest disruptors in energy. He just does a different kind of disruption.
[GEFIRA] Though the end of the European Union is inevitable, the proponents of a further integrated or federal superstate are busy making a last effort to achieve their goal. The opposition against the project is mounting with every day. Europe is suffering from economic stagnation, and is facing a demographic calamity.
[UPI] THURSDAY, Dec. 20, 2018 -- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram -- the list of popular social media outlets is long and always expanding. But could staying connected through them lead to depression?
Some perspective may be helpful retarding the ongoing topic of US troop withdrawals. 
[Free Beacon] Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane said on Thursday that President Donald Trump will come to regret his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, if he doesn't reconsider the move.
[Study Finds] Researchers found that people who don’t feel "very strongly" about their national identity were most likely to consider life outside the U.S.
