Donald and His Pinata! Is The Noose Tightening?

                                                          Who is out of step? The blonde of course!
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From a Marine in Afghanistan - Semper Fi!  Sent to me by a friend and fellow memo reader whose daughter is in service. (See 1 below.)
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The most unpredictable election cycle by Allen West. (See 2 below.)
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Going directly to the source. Gross mishandling, "jumping the gap" are now involved in Hillarious' handling of her private e mail system.

Is the noose tightening?  (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Iran dangles and the West salivates. The mullahs know money talks and commerce trumps morality. (See 4 below.)
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Hamas 'hot shots' bust up Palestinian weddings because participants are singing:

http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/a-gazan-arab-secretly-produced-this-video-for-all-to-see/
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Trump, like Obama, seems to need a Pinata but at least Trump's is more beautiful. Meygn versus GW et al.

Trump is threatening to pit his visual appeal and pique against FOX in order to thrash Meygn.  He is a master at gall.  Time will tell whether it will work.

Personally, I believe he may have overstepped and will pay a price for his chutzpah. If not, and he comes out ahead, his eventual election could be a coronation that would even top Hillarious' and we will all suffer because Donald would have proved he can drink his own bathwater and is invincible. That is a dangerous ego trip even for a president.

On the other hand, perhaps this is a technique to send a message to his legions that he is fearless and independent in spirit and will.

We have already paid a major price for seven year's of Obama's ego and narcissism. That said, Trump is vastly different. He can, at least, and does laugh at himself.
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Dick
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1

A very interesting read, a Marine's View of what is really going on.  This young man is articulate and has a flare for colorful language, and descriptive prose,  Scorpions, Chiggers & Sand Fleas.  It’s a great letter, a must read for every American citizen, and those elsewhere also. From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan: From the Sand Pit It's freezing here.  I'm sitting on hard cold dirt between rocks and shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains, along the Dar'yoi Pamir River, watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave.  Stake out, my friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles. I also glance at the area around my ass every ten to fifteen seconds to avoid another scorpion sting.  I've actually given up battling the chiggers and sand fleas, but the scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod.  Hurts like a bastard.  The antidote tastes like transmission fluid, but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.  The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water.  That requires couriers and that's where an old bounty hunter like me comes in handy. I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the hand held, and shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the hardware.  We bash some heads for a while, and then I track and record the new movement.  It's all about intelligence.  We haven't even brought in the snipers yet.  These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for.  We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin.  But you know me; I'm a romantic.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: This country blows, man.  It's not even a country.  There are no roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no government. This is an inhospitable, rock-pit shit-hole ruled by eleventh century warring tribes.  There are no jobs here like we know jobs.  Afghanistan offers only two ways for a man to support his family, join the opium trade or join the army.  That's it.  Those are your options.  Oh, I forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu, if that's your idea of a party.  But the smell alone of those 'tent cities of the walking dead' is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day. I've been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks, and Turkmen and even a couple of Pashtu's, for over a month-and-a-half now, and this much I can say for sure: These guys, are Huns, actual, living Huns.  They LIVE to fight.  It's what they do.  It's ALL they do.  They have no respect for anything; not for themselves, their families, or for each other.  They claw at one another as a way of life.  They play polo with dead calves and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family honor.  Just Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on each other's barbarism.  Cavemen with AK-47's.  Then again, maybe I'm just a cranky young bastard. I'm freezing my ass off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running out of juice, and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours.  Oh yeah!  You like to write letters, right?  Do me a favor, Bizarre.  Write a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful, sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban "smart".  They are not smart.  I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are looking for is "cunning".  The Taliban are cunning, like jackals, hyenas, and wolverines.  They are sneaky and ruthless, and when confronted, they are cowardly.  They are hateful, malevolent parasites who create nothing and destroy everything else. Smart?  Bullshit!  Yeah, they're real smart,  Most can’t read, but they've spent their entire lives listening to Imams telling them about only one book (and not a very good one, as books go).  They consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of the devil.  They're still trying to figuring out how to work a Bic lighter.  Talking to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen.   Eventually he just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it. K, enough.  Snuffle will be up soon, so I have to get back to my hole.  Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice, but I'm good at it. Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move on with your lives.  The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter bullshit and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to the screen so you will watch the next commercial.  We've got this one under control.  The worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we're doing over here.  You have no idea what we're doing, and you really don't want to know.  We are your military, and we are only doing what you sent us here to do. From a Jack Recon Marine in Afghanistan, Semper Fi.

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2)

The Most Unpredictable Presidential Election Cycle

By Allen West

We are less than a week from the first electoral contest of the 2016 presidential cycle. The preseason is over and there is a word that describes what America has seen to this point, and may I borrow from Mr. Spock, “fascinating.” When this cycle kicked off last spring with the first candidates making their announcements, many had already decided who the heir apparent would be but, now, who knows?

On the Democrat side, it was all about one person just showing up. That was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On the GOP side, well, it was the predictable choice of Jeb Bush -- after all, the last two previous GOP presidents were his dad and brother. Now, less than a week from the Iowa caucus it all seems quite confounding, even chaotic to some.

When asked about the difference between a socialist and a Democrat by Chris Matthews, both DNC Chairman Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Hillary Clinton absolutely bombed. If Mr. Matthews wanted an answer, he had only look at the sensation called Senator Bernie Sanders. The evident answer to the inquiry is none.

The challenge for America is to understand what is a Democrat Socialist? Or, as Hillary Clinton described herself, a Progressive Democrat? More importantly, we may have to ask, do Americans care?

There are four very pertinent points one can surmise as you “feel the Bern” realizing the Democrat Socialist philosophy of governance.

First, there is the principle of wealth redistribution. Bernie Sanders promotes the concept that what is yours, is not yours; it belongs to the government for their redistributive schemes. That belief is deeply rooted in the comment, if you own a business, “you did not build that.” The premise supporting that statement was that a government school educated you and a government road provided access to your establishment. That simpleton belief fails to grasp the idea that people who create businesses hire others, and when people are prosperous and successful they provide the largesse, by way of taxes for the government to build schools and roads.

After all, Margaret Thatcher alluded, “One of the inherent failures of socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.” But, don’t tell Bernie Sanders.

Second is the principle of nationalizing production, meaning more government control of private sector industry. What are the negative results of such endeavors? Just walk the path from President Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act, circa 1978, to the financial crisis of 2008. The federal government delved into the mortgage industry because it believed that every American had a right to have a home. They did not embrace the concept of policies that enable Americans to own a home.

That leads to the third principle, social utopianism, you know, the society of the Participation Trophy. We are all equal and no one can achieve higher than the masses. And so we hear lots of talk about income equality, gender-neutral duty positions in the military, and social egalitarianism. Democratic Socialists, Progressive Democrats, and post-modern liberalism are centered upon government not recognizing the individual’s unalienable rights endowed by the Creator, but collective equality of outcomes as determined by man -- them.

And the final principle is that of creating and expanding the welfare nanny-state. We hear so much talk about the failed “war on drugs.” But there is another war that the progressive socialists declared back in the 60s -- the war on poverty. Trillions of dollars have been spent and we have only seen an increase of Americans living in poverty and on government subsistence. We are moving away from individual economic empowerment to economic enslavement and dependency. With that, comes the ensuing guaranteed electoral patronage, the real objective. It is one thing to have a safety net, it is a far different one to give away a hammock.

Just to remind folks, there is no such thing as “free.” But I think Sir Winston Churchill gave the best answer to Chris Matthews’ question, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, i.ts inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” I gotta tell ya, it does sound good but it does not end well.

On the GOP side, it appeared that the cast of very seasoned and qualified governors from successful states had an advantage. That was until they ran into the buzzsaw called the GOP base. There is a palpable anger that exists because the GOP asked for a majority in the House and Senate, and got it…the largest since after World War II. What was the result?  I only have to say Omnibus spending bill, enter the political outsiders, namely one, Donald J. Trump.

It is a phenomenon that has never been seen before in American presidential electoral politics. The “established rules” are not applicable. When have we ever seen a presidential candidate that has a massive following who eschews any real policy declarations?  Yes, I remember, 2008. No one could have ever believed that, in a time such as this, someone could rise to be a presidential candidate front-runner, seemingly without major policy positions.

We are living in historical times when you consider all that is happening in America and across the world. In the end, this race will come down to leadership and one who can convey the message of restoring this Constitutional Republic. But we may need a lesson on what that means.

Anyway, as my mom used to say in her sweet Southern voice, “Allen, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip.” Who knows what will have happened a month from now, at the end of February? One thing is certain, it is certainly the nation’s most unpredictable presidential election cycle. 

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3) FBI going 'right to the source' in Clinton email probe, interviewing intel agencies

By  Catherine Herridge, Pamela K. Browne

The FBI is going straight to the source in its investigation of classified emails that crossed Hillary Clinton’s personal server, speaking with the intelligence agencies – and in some cases, the individuals – that generated the information, two intelligence sources familiar with the probe told Fox News.

Investigators are meeting with the agencies and individuals to determine the classification level in the emails. The step speaks to the diligence with which the bureau is handling the investigation, despite the former secretary of state’s claims that the matter boils down to a mere inter-agency dispute.

"This is not merely a difference of opinion between the State Department and the Department of Justice," one intelligence source, who is not authorized to speak on the record, told Fox News, referring to comments on the Sunday talk shows and by the Clinton campaign downplaying the FBI's investigation. "The bureau will go directly to depose specific individuals in agencies who generated the highly classified materials."

The source added, "At the end of the day it will be a paper case. Emails never disappear because computers never forget.”

A former senior FBI intelligence officer, while not directly involved in the Clinton email investigation, previously told Fox News it was standard practice for the bureau to go directly to the originating source because it is cleaner and maintains the integrity of the investigation.

"You want to go right to the source," Timothy Gill Sr., a former senior FBI intelligence officer, said. "Investigative protocol would demand that."

Fox News first reported that intelligence beyond "Top Secret" known as "SAP," or "Special Access Programs," was identified in the Clinton emails on her unsecured private server. Access to SAP is restricted to only those with a "need to know" because exposure of the intelligence would likely reveal a human asset or method of collection. The findings were shared with the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees in a Jan. 14 letter from the intelligence community inspector general.

Fox News also confirmed that at least one email contained intelligence from human spying, known as "HCS-0," which is code for highly sensitive human intelligence operations.

The FBI investigation is centered around Clinton and members of her staff to determine if they deliberately trafficked and shared information from highly classified sources onto an unsecured private email system.

"The bureau does not waive its primacy in espionage cases," the intelligence source said, referring to USC 18 793 and 794. "The security investigation is now part and parcel with the criminal [public corruption] investigation." The source said both tracks are being pursued "vigorously" and there is a sense of "incredulity as to what is being discovered."

Violations of US 18 Section 793 fall under "gross mishandling" of national defense information. Potential violations under Section 794, "gathering or delivering defense information to aid" a foreign government, are more serious and challenging to prove.

Howard Krongard, former inspector general of the State Department, told Fox News, "I continue to believe the question of how [and from whom] material actually got from the classified network to Hillary Clinton's server is the key to the puzzle."

It is not possible to "cut and paste" from a classified network to an unclassified system, like Clinton’s personal email account, to perform what is known in intelligence circles as "jumping the gap." 

Paul Sperry, a media fellow at the Hoover Institution, reported Saturday in the New York Post that Clinton and her top aides "had access to a Pentagon-run classified network that goes up to the Secret level as well as a separate system used for Top Secret communications."

Former intelligence and law enforcement officers say one of the most likely scenarios is that an individual who had access to classified information summarized it in their own words or provided details during exchanges via email, which is a criminal violation and goes against non-disclosure agreements.  

"The spillage could occur by somebody basically ignoring those guidelines. It would have to be that way. There's no possible way she could transfer media off of an SCI high system … onto an unclassified server," said Dan Maguire, a special operations veteran who spent 46 years handling highly classified information and being deeply engaged on special access programs.

"I think it reflects, probably two things -- perhaps an ignorance on the part of the individuals involved who've been doing this who are trying to please their boss and don't recognize the sensitivity and how that impacts on national security, and then an element of arrogance to even think or consider that you would pass information on an unclassified file server," Maguire said.

A review of the Clinton emails has found at least 1,340 containing classified information. A State Department challenge to two emails classified at the "Top Secret" level failed, as Fox News first reported in December. The agency that gets the information in effect owns the information, and has final say over its classification.

In its most recent statement on classified information found on Clinton’s server, the Clinton campaign described the issue as an “interagency dispute.”

Spokesman Brian Fallon said, “It does not change the fact that these emails were not classified at the time they were sent or received. It is alarming that the intelligence community IG, working with Republicans in Congress, continues to selectively leak materials in order to resurface the same allegations and try to hurt Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The Justice Department's inquiry should be allowed to proceed without any further interference." 

Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.


3a)Hillary Clinton STILL doesn’t have a good answer for questions about her emails
By Chris Cillizza 

Hillary Clinton. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg News)

Hillary Clinton was rolling along during a CNN-sponsored town hall on Monday night in Iowa. She was forceful and aggressive. Then moderator Chris Cuomo asked her about her email controversy.

Here's the back and forth:

CUOMO: [The Des Moines Register] did question your judgment, though, when it came to the email issue.  They said, and you know this, but for the audience, in 2008 "when she says" — "when she makes a mistake, she should just say so."  This weekend they said that’s a lesson that you have not learned. Yes, you apologized, but only when you needed to, not when you first could have. Fair criticism?

CLINTON: Well, I think that they’re — you know, look, I was delighted to get the Register’s endorsement. And it was a very generous one. And, yes, I think that’s a fair criticism.

You know I had no intention of doing anything other than having a convenient way of communicating, and it turned out not to be so convenient.  So again, we’ve answered every question and we will continue to do so. 

But you know — maybe being faster, trying to scramble around to find out what all of this means, I probably should have done that quicker. 

CUOMO: You’re willing to say it was an error in judgment,  you should’ve apologized…

CLINTON: No. I’m not willing to say it was an error in judgment because what — nothing that I did was wrong.  It was not — it was not in any way prohibited.  And so…

CUOMO: Not apologizing sooner I mean.

CLINTON: Well, apologizing sooner, as soon as you can. But part of the problem, and I would just say this as, not an excuse but just as an explanation. When you’re facing something like that, you got to get the facts. And it takes time to get the facts. And so when I said, hey, take all my emails, make them public. That had never been done before, ever, by anybody. And so we’ve been sorting our way through this because it is kind of a unique situation.  

I’m happy people are looking at the emails. Some of them are you know, frankly, a little embarrassing…

(LAUGHTER)

You know. You find out that sometimes I’m not the best on technology and things like that. But, look, I think it’s great. Let people sort them through. And as we have seen, there is a lot of — you know, a lot of interest. But it’s something that took time to get done. 

And here's what it looked like:

Hillary Clinton pressed on email server during Iowa town hall

Play Video1:54

CNN host Chris Cuomo questioned Hillary Clinton on the email server she used during her time as Secretary of State during the Jan. 25 town hall in Des Moines, Iowa. (CNN)

Not the best. Or even close.

What's clear from her answer is a) Clinton continues to believe that this issue is such a non-issue that it doesn't even deserve a response and b) maybe because of that belief, she continues to not have a concise response to questions that the email story raises about Americans' trust and confidence in her.

Remember that it took Clinton months and months (and months) to acknowledge the obvious — that she needed to apologize for the whole situation (even if she, in her heart of hearts, believed she had nothing to apologize for). She eventually did just that in an interview with ABC's David Muir in September; the next few months, whether by coincidence or because of that apology, were the best of her campaign.

But it's clear from Clinton's response to Cuomo's prodding on Monday night that she simply doesn't really understand why the issue is still a problem for her — in the primary fight against Sanders and/or the general election race. When asked whether she should have apologized sooner, Clinton responded: "I had no intention of doing anything other than having a convenient way of communicating, and it turned out not to be so convenient. So again, we’ve answered every question and we will continue to do so."

Then she went to her too-legalistic-sounding pat response of the months before the apology — and, in so doing, might have made things worse from a political perspective. "I’m not willing to say it was an error in judgment because what — nothing that I did was wrong," Clinton told Cuomo. "It was not — it was not in any way prohibited."

That, of course, is a legal point, not a political one. Clinton continues to not grasp the difference. Legal arguments work in a court of law. This campaign is being fought in the court of public opinion. The same rules simply don't apply.

Imagine this: A TV ad featuring video of Clinton's insistence that "nothing I did was wrong" overlaid with news reports about the number of classified and top-secret messages found on her private server. Now, that might not prove that Clinton was incorrect when she said that she never sent or received any emails marked classified at the time. But, man oh man, does it help drive the narrative that she bent the rules —because, well, she could.

It is, of course, possible that sometime soon the FBI investigation, of which Clinton is not reportedly a target, will turn out to be a giant nothing-burger — a move that would significantly defuse the energy around the issue. (Conservative Republicans would almost certainly still believe that she had done something wrong, but the issue would probably lose salience for the ideological middle of the country.)

As long as there is uncertainty surrounding that investigation, however, Clinton's inability to develop an effective two- or three-sentence response to questions about her emails will haunt her — and provide fodder for Republicans in the general election.

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4)

What Iran’s Gold Rush Buys the West

By JONATHAN S. TOBIN 

These are happy times for European nations eager to do business with Iran. The end of the international sanctions mandated by the Iran nuclear deal has set off a gold rush of European concerns eager to get in on the action as the Islamist state reenters the global economy. Iranian 

President Hassan Rouhani is on what might well be termed a victory tour of the continent, announcing vast deals with both Italy and France. But these transactions are not merely signaling the end of restrictions on doing business with Iran but an insurance policy against any possible re-imposition of sanctions, no matter how flagrantly it violates the nuclear deal or traffics in international terrorism.

The rush to dive into the Iranian economy by European businesses and nations is reminiscent of the way the nuclear deal was negotiated by President Obama and America’s Western allies. Though Iran’s need for a deal that would end the sanctions was far greater than anything the West might get out of an agreement, during the course of the talks, the concessions all went in one direction. Obama’s team discarded Western principles and promises about definitively ending the Iranian threat one by one until what was left was a flimsy arrangement that not only guaranteed the permanence of their nuclear program but also was scheduled to end within a decade.

Now rather than understand that the collapse of oil prices and Iran’s desperation for more cash puts them in a strong bargaining position, Europe is falling over itself to lavish Tehran with billions of dollars in transactions on advantageous terms. The Italians are striking deals to strengthen Iranian industries across the board including energy, steel, and shipbuilding. The French are selling Iran their Airbus jets that will essentially upgrade Tehran’s commercial fleet for the first time in decades. But those deals are, of course, just the tip of the iceberg in terms of an Iran gold rush as European investors head to Iran in great numbers hoping to get in on the ground floor of a revived Iranian economy.

But there are some basic problems with these deals that the Europeans are ignoring.

In terms of their own interests, the Europeans are forgetting a cardinal rule of international business. Anyone who pours money into a nation where the rule of law is merely a function of the whims of an authoritarian government is engaging in a form of gambling, not a rational investment. Doing business in Iran means putting your money in the hands of an Islamist state and, more often than not, at the mercy of state-run entities that do not play by the normal rules of global commerce let alone fair play. It also often means getting into bed with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, an international terror group that also operates as a business conglomerate in Iran.

But in terms of the goals of the Iran deal, the rush to normalize relations with Iran is a virtual guarantee that the promises made by the Obama administration about “snapping back” sanctions or holding Tehran accountable for violations is not to be taken seriously. Had the sanctions been rolled back over a long period, forcing Iran to show not only compliance with the weak terms of the deal but to reform its behavior with regard to support for international terrorism or its efforts to produce ballistic missiles, there might have been some hope that the new arrangement might work. But the indecent haste with which the U.S. rushed to end the sanctions ahead of schedule and the manner in which Europe has embraced Iran has granted the Islamic Republic virtual impunity. With so many billions invested in Iran via deals that are financed by their own banks, the Europeans will never agree to punish Iran again no matter what it does.

This paves the way not merely for cheating on the nuclear deal that is already set up to make Iran a threshold nuclear power but also to give it the freedom to invest as much of their windfall in missiles for Hezbollah or helping Hamas dig more tunnels under the Israeli border.

We can expect pressure to build on the U.S. to stop enforcing American sanctions that are still on the books. Those regulations make it illegal for companies sending money to Iran to use American banks. So long as the U.S. continues to label Iran a “state sponsor of terror,” that won’t be possible. But, as President Obama has shown on other issues, his unwillingness to enforce laws that he doesn’t like means anything is possible.

President Obama said it would be impossible to ask Iran to change its ways; whether its support for terror, its desire to destroy Israel, or its quest for regional hegemony and still get a nuclear deal. So he chose to ignore every other issue in pursuit of détente with Iran. But as we now see, Iran not only has no incentive to change, its business ties with Europe mean that it can spread terror while also being enriched by the West.

In striking this deal with the devil, the West hasn’t bought security or even credible assurances about Iran’s nuclear project. What it has done is to give a terror-supporting regime the kind of economic boost that gives it the ability to do as it likes without fear of any Western response. As such, the question of whether the Europeans are making wise investments is trivial when compared to one about the end of any hope of restraining Iran’s aggressive ambitions.

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