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Iraqi premier rejects resignation of seven ministers, Baghdad governor steps down
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Page 6: Politix
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China-Japan-Koreas
Official apology to China from Trey Parker and Matt Stone
South Park on Twitter “apologizing” like the NBA to China.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 10/07/2019 17:34 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under: Commies

#1  Does sarcasm translate into Chinese?
Posted by: Albert McGurque6533 || 10/07/2019 20:11 Comments || Top||


Europe
Rough Music
[AccordingToHoyt] Pratchett’s "Witches" world was so similar to my own, from jumping over fires to get married (not legal in my day, but there was memory of it) to various local folk superstitions, that it was always a surprise when he pulled something I’d never heard of.

One of these is the "rough music."

When someone has done just about enough that a small village can no longer put up with him, the men in the village get together and play a barbarous and terrible music as they nerve themselves up for the barbarous and terrible things they have to do.

...2- Europe is about 20 years "ahead" of us on the road of what a friend of mine calls the Brahamandarins taking over. The internationalist left has been in full command since the nineties. They never had a Reagan (Thatcher sort of kind of held off the tide briefly, but only in one country.) There was no eighties prosperity. Hell, slick Willie was to the right of their right. Obama is about center of their politicians, including his loathing for the country he governed.

3- Europe is in trouble BAD. The government has betrayed the people to the extent of making it almost impossible for rural populations to live with any dignity; for people to afford having families; for people to be safe in their lives, pursuits and possessions. No, I mean to a level you guys don’t comprehend. Imagine if the Obama years had lasted for 30 years now, and he controlled all the media, all the judges and most of the law enforcement.

And Europe has had just about enough. Things like Brexit and the Yellow Jackets filter through here, in the alternate news sources. I wonder how much else is going on, we have not a clue about. The fact we know about the Yellow Jackets at any level is bizarre enough, given that they are ‐ media and internet wise ‐ living in the eighties.

...First however, let me say that hearing the rough music from the rest of the world is starting to echo here. We see what’s going on there. And we hear strange and stupid stuff, like the "whistleblower of the day" and an impeachment without voting and of course, pancake-gate.

Faced with that kind of behavior you obviously think "It’s insane." And "We have to stop it."

But there is something you’re missing. There’s the good news.

The first good news, of course, is that Trump won in 2016. it was bloody impossible. The fraud was unbelievable. But he still won.

And in the midterms ‐ yes, they won the house, but think about it ‐ the fraud was UNBELIEVABLE. Literally. Banana republics were laughing at our random keeping of polling stations open, of weird shenanigans with votes down in FL and of whatever the heck the chick in Georgia thought she was doing. And they won... the house. And not with a rushing majority.

Do you know why they’re going insane? Because they hear the rough music too. And they know that they probably can’t cheat enough to win in November 2020 or even keep the house. And they’re desperate. And none of their increasingly crazier gambits are sticking.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 10/07/2019 18:15 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front: Politix
Pres. Trump's troubled relationship with spy agencies takes another dive with whistleblower
[Washington Examiner] The rift between President Trump and the nation’s spy agencies opened before he took office, when he compared the intelligence community with Nazis. Since then, he has clashed publicly with his own spy chiefs, shared classified material with Russian visitors to the Oval Office, and tweeted out a surveillance photograph from his security briefing.

That strained relationship faces its biggest test now, according to insiders, after a whistleblower accused the president of abusing his position to ask a foreign leader to help with his reelection.
Well he is the President, or do you deny that as well ?
And it leaves Gina Haspel, the director of the CIA, to rebuild relationships damaged on both sides, according to Fred Fleitz, former National Security Council chief of staff.
The "rebuilding" schedule isn't particularly ahead of schedule is it Mr. Fleitz? And where might Director Haspel been these days ?

"I don’t know whether she’ll be speaking out, but I think she’ll be doing her best to reassure the president about the intelligence that he gets and to reassure the professionals at Langley that the president appreciates what they are doing and we can move past this incident," he said.
Haspel "speaking out"....? Not unless John Brennan instructs her to do so.
Both sides blame the other for the dysfunction.

Trump allies say the trouble began with the intelligence community’s distrust of the Republican nominee in 2016. Harry Reid, the then-minority Senate leader, implored officials delivering classified briefings not to divulge secrets after Trump encouraged Russian hackers to hunt down Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.
Which was clearly a campaign event joke
Then days before his inauguration, intelligence agencies revealed they believed that Russia ran an influence campaign to help Trump triumph over Clinton ‐ a conclusion interpreted by the president as an attempt to undermine his victory.
"Concluded by the president"... and nearly anyone else with a functioning brain.
Kevin Carroll, who served as a CIA case officer, said, "It’s a very troubled relationship. Trump got it off to a terrible start with comments during the transition, comparing the intelligence community to the Nazis, and then his buffoonery in front of the memorial wall the day after he was inaugurated."
"It's a troubled relationship"... and that's precisely where the Klingon's wish it to remain.
On his first full day in office, President Trump gave a speech at CIA headquarters. He stood on hallowed ground in front of a memorial to fallen agents where he launched an angry attack on the media and boasted about the size of his inaugural crowd.

It set the stage for a series of bitter public clashes, including an ongoing feud with Barack Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan.
Posted by: Besoeker || 10/07/2019 06:57 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Both sides blame the other for the dysfunction.

Had candidate Trump not hired former a former UK Spymaster and others to electronically monitor conversations at Langley, things might have been much different.

Hat tip to former NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers who bravely visited Trump Towers and demanded Donald Trump move the clandestine electronic monitoring effort elsewhere.

[Sarc off]
Posted by: Besoeker || 10/07/2019 7:09 Comments || Top||

#2  As Bob Baer says, this is obviously a palace coup attempt.

Unbelievable what times we're living through.

At this point, after not just decades of failure and massive incompetence but an actual attempt to overthrow a sitting president, it's probably best to raze the CIA completely and start over.
Posted by: Lex || 10/07/2019 9:02 Comments || Top||

#3  He has a right to be at odds with the FBI, CIA, and NSA. They have been trying to oust him from the start. Every time Brennan go live on TV we gat another false investigation. The FBI made our nation a global joke with Russiagate. Now the CIA is coordinating directly with congress to overthrow the President. The purge is just starting, we have a long way to go.
Posted by: 49 Pan || 10/07/2019 11:33 Comments || Top||

#4  To hell with rebuilding. Can their asses...every single one of them.
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 10/07/2019 11:39 Comments || Top||

#5  coordinating directly with Democrats in congress to overthrow the President

Fixed it for you, 49 Pan.;-)
Posted by: trailing wife || 10/07/2019 11:41 Comments || Top||

#6  Thanks TW! So true.
Posted by: 49 Pan || 10/07/2019 14:23 Comments || Top||

#7  A blinding flash, but it would appear the Klington's are not at all happy with the results of the 2016 election. Sort of begs the question about their attitude towards the outcome of previous presidential elections, does it not ?
Posted by: Besoeker || 10/07/2019 15:19 Comments || Top||

#8  Given the 'sudden' escalating recent and ongoing clashes in the ME and NA, history may find that the conflicts were only mitigated by orchestrations of the transnational shadow government community.
Posted by: Skidmark || 10/07/2019 16:53 Comments || Top||


One Look At Trump's Latest Video Will Strike FEAR In Every Hypocrite Dems Chest
Short Franchi video.
The Trump video, clips of Democratic politicians talking about the Clinton impeachment effort, starts around mark 1:42.
Posted by: Besoeker || 10/07/2019 04:21 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Yea, right?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru PB || 10/07/2019 5:51 Comments || Top||

#2  They will just ignore and increase their dosage of psychotic medicines.
Posted by: Dale || 10/07/2019 7:44 Comments || Top||

#3  While it won't really affect the shameless Democrats themselves, we should throw out this video to every blog and forum we can, because it's great.

Also, the majority of democrat voters are not 'those who value America', but those easily bribed and stoked into political support for their immediate benefactors. But there have to be a mass of undecided, liberal, tofu-eating vegans and Kennedy fans with strange haircuts who can still be enlightened.
Posted by: Dron66046 || 10/07/2019 7:54 Comments || Top||

#4  All we need are the Reagan Democrats and their contemporary equivalents in western PA, MI and WI to tip the balance in 2020.

OH is in the bag already.
FL looks solid.

Only need PA + one other swing state to win easily.
Posted by: Lex || 10/07/2019 10:01 Comments || Top||

#5  Part of a military strategy is to isolate the battlefield, by denying the enemy the means to reinforce their strength. I've heard long time Donks who said they'd never vote for Trump, but will not vote for anyone for President this next election.

The coup plotters are intent on delegitimizing Trump. They're delegitimizing the central government. Trump is just showing them for what they are. No principles but the lust for power.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 10/07/2019 11:02 Comments || Top||

#6  Have ANY of these elected DOLTS discovered YET WE ARE A REPUBLIC?
Posted by: ranture || 10/07/2019 13:26 Comments || Top||

#7  Nadler looks like a big, fat toad.
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 10/07/2019 13:44 Comments || Top||

#8  #7 What did big fat toads ever do to you?
Posted by: charger || 10/07/2019 16:25 Comments || Top||

#9  Toads serve a useful purpose in nature. Considerably more than can be said about the Nad.
Posted by: Besoeker || 10/07/2019 16:29 Comments || Top||

#10  LICKING TOADS IS NO FAIRYTALE: SIDE EFFECTS AND DANGERS
Posted by: Skidmark || 10/07/2019 16:56 Comments || Top||

#11  Whoa, thanks for that timely warning! I was just about to lick the heck outta that dude. Retch.
Posted by: Choluger Gray9729 || 10/07/2019 17:05 Comments || Top||

#12  1. Dems got chests?
2. Nad's got nads?
Posted by: Glenmore || 10/07/2019 19:58 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Donald Trump is a symptom of a new kind of class warfare raging at home and abroad
And oldie, but still a goody
[USAToday 1/15/2019] To understand events around the world today, one must think in terms of the class struggle.

This sentence sounds like something that could be written by a doctrinaire Marxist. But it is nonetheless true. Much of the current tension in America and in many other democracies is in fact a product of a class struggle. It’s not the kind of class struggle that Karl Marx wrote about, with workers and peasants facing off against rapacious capitalists, but it is a case of today’s ruling class facing disaffection from its working class.

In the old Soviet Union, the Marxists assured us that once true communism was established under a "dictatorship of the proletariat," the state would wither away and everyone would be free. In fact, however, the dictatorship of the proletariat turned into a dictatorship of the party hacks, who had no interest whatsoever in seeing their positions or power wither.

Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas called these party hacks the "New Class," noting that instead of workers and peasants against capitalists, it was now a case of workers and peasants being ruled by a managerial new class of technocrats who, while purporting to act for the benefit of the workers and peasants, somehow wound up with the lion’s share of the goodies.

...But the New Class isn’t limited to communist countries, really. Around the world in the postwar era, power was taken up by unelected professional and managerial elites. To understand what’s going on with President Donald Trump and his opposition, and in other countries as diverse as France, Hungary, Italy and Brazil, it’s important to realize that the post-World War II institutional arrangements of the Western democracies are being renegotiated, and that those democracies’ professional and managerial elites don’t like that very much, because they have done very well under those arrangements. And, like all elites who are doing very well, they don’t want that to change.
Look at the current crop of Democratic candidates - each and every one a member of Nomenklatura
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 10/07/2019 01:09 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Progressive capitalism is anything but capitalism.

It's a way to maximise rent-seeking and funnel the maximum amount to the establishment.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 10/07/2019 3:08 Comments || Top||

#2  In fact, however, the dictatorship of the proletariat turned into a dictatorship of the party hacks, who had no interest whatsoever in seeing their positions or power wither.

"Power corrups, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

~ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, 13th Marquess of Groppoli, KCVO DL (10 January 1834 – 19 June 1902), was an English Catholic historian, politician, and writer. He was the only son of Sir Ferdinand Dalberg-Acton, 7th Baronet,[1] and a grandson of the Neapolitan admiral and prime minister Sir John Acton, 6th Baronet.[2][3] Between 1837 and 1869 he was known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Baronet.

He is perhaps best known for the remark, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men...", which he made in a letter to an Anglican bishop.

Posted by: Besoeker || 10/07/2019 4:08 Comments || Top||

#3  The only way to win back some freedom is to cut off the government's bottomless rice bowl. When reelected with R majority in both House and Senate, I hope Pres Trump will force through a balanced budget amendment with a requirement to pay down the national debt.

Dissolving the CIA, transferring the technical people to the DIA and shuffling off (can't fire Civil Service) anyone above second level manager to the Border Patrol would be just desserts.
Posted by: Elmavimp Glinegum6967 || 10/07/2019 5:30 Comments || Top||

#4  Heinz Höhne's The Order of the Death's Head (1971) opined that two evil movements marked the 20th Century: Fascism and...
Technocracy: the perverse idea that a dispassionate rule of experts would somehow be better / kinder/ 'more just' and et cetera ad nauseum. The death tolls prove otherwise.
Posted by: magpie || 10/07/2019 6:27 Comments || Top||

#5  Dissolving the CIA, transferring the technical people to the DIA and shuffling off (can't fire Civil Service) anyone above second level manager to the Border Patrol would be just desserts.

Amen. Dissolve the CIA and start over.
Posted by: Lex || 10/07/2019 9:40 Comments || Top||

#6  They always bring up Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex but ignore what immediately follows in the speech -

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 10/07/2019 11:07 Comments || Top||

#7  After reading about how John Podesta fell for one of the oldest tricks in the book and got his email account hacked, I don't believe the term technocrat applies. Maybe I'm not thinking of the term in its correct definition. Maybe it's supposed to imply some sort of expertise in managing the reins of power. But Podesta is obviously, pathetically, computer illiterate and technophobic and, if you can't keep up with the latest methods of managing the reins of power, you're a piss poor technocrat. I think kleptocrat suits him and his kind a whole lot better.
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 10/07/2019 11:18 Comments || Top||

#8  Not that kind of technology, Abu
Posted by: g(r)omgoru PB || 10/07/2019 11:52 Comments || Top||

#9  Yes, I admitted "Maybe it's supposed to imply some sort of expertise in managing the reins of power."

But I still think kleptocrat is more like it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 10/07/2019 13:43 Comments || Top||

#10  Technocrats understand managing a country the way MBAs understand managing a company, Abu
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 10/07/2019 13:49 Comments || Top||

#11  #6 "In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government"

...and thus often has become politicized towards a particular narrative, talking point or result.
Posted by: JohnQC || 10/07/2019 19:05 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
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Two weeks of WOT
Mon 2019-10-07
  Iraqi premier rejects resignation of seven ministers, Baghdad governor steps down
Sun 2019-10-06
  91 protesters killed by Iraqi police over week of demonstrations
Sat 2019-10-05
  Masked gunmen attack TV stations reporting the protests in Iraq
Fri 2019-10-04
  At least 35 Russian mercenaries killed fighting for Haftar in Libya
Thu 2019-10-03
  Breaking: Paris knife attacker kills 4 people at police headquarters
Wed 2019-10-02
  Soleimani claims he and Nasrallah barely escaped Israeli air raid in 2006
Tue 2019-10-01
  Uzbekistani militant among 64 killed, wounded in Faryab clashes
Mon 2019-09-30
  Yemeni army captured over '2000 troops', inflicted heavy casualties on Saudi army
Sun 2019-09-29
  Susan Rice: Obama Put Call Transcripts On Top Secret Server, Too
Sat 2019-09-28
  Egypt Armed Forces kills 118 takfiris in anti-terrorism operations in north, central Sinai; 10 army personnel killed, injured: Statement
Fri 2019-09-27
  US deploys air defense systems, troops to Saudi Arabia
Thu 2019-09-26
  Israeli woman stabbed near Modiin; 14-year-old Palestinian arrested
Wed 2019-09-25
  High Alert In India As JeM Cells Feared Active | Balakot Camp Reopens For Business
Tue 2019-09-24
  Iraqi court sentences 6 IS militants to death over 2013 car bomb attack
Mon 2019-09-23
  Aramco’s Repairs Could Take Months Longer Than Company Anticipates

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