Back At The Landings. Rolland Golden At The Morris Museum. Last Night's Debate - Comments.

This was archived from the memorial service for Ronald Reagan.  You will notice that Bill and Hillary were both dozing off.  As funny as this appears, it was actually photographed at President Reagan’s Funeral.

 

 

 

 

President Ronald Reagan, who never missed a chance for a good one-liner, raised his head up and looked out of his casket and said...

"I see the Clinton's are finally sleeping together."

 

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We're home...electricity back on and seems no inside damage. Can't drive through our street...huge trees down everywhere...looks like a hurricane hit! Guess we got lucky! If you have no electricity, give a call...we have extra bedrooms!

We have a tree against our home but seems not to have broken through the roof.  Lots of debris but so far we seem lucky. The Landings Management Group reported over 1000 trees destroyed just on golf courses but not a lot of structural damage to facilities.

While away, I had a board meeting of the State Museum in Athens and if you are near I urge you take a break and visit GMOA and see the excellent Brooklyn Bridge show.

After we left Athens, we went to Augusta and stayed with dear friends and while there attended the Morris Museum, a true gem, and saw the works of our dear artist friend, Rolland Golden.  We fell in love with 'On The Road to Chateau Montegut" which was built in 900 and was the ancestral home of Rolland's wife, Stella.

Rolland is one of the South's gifted artist (go to Rolland Golden.com).  We own two of his works and would love to be the owner of "On The Road..." but probably will not be able to buy it because our insurance coverage is not going to handle the damage we have sustained. etc.

The Morris Show of Rolland ends Oct. 30.

As for last night's debate, there was nothing new.  The nation continues to lose with either candidate, Hillary's policies and behaviour, as Sec. State, proves she is a policy wonk disaster, an unmitigated liar who cannot be trusted and should not be promoted to president but she will probably win so get ready for four more years of Obama. 

Obama has also proven to be an unmitigated disaster and all you need is look around the world.  We have lost influence, are deeply in debt and our military has been decimated.  The rue of law has been shredded, our borders are hemorrhaging and Hillary will increase the debt as she gives away more goodies and will further divide the nation with a continuation of Obama's wedge issues.  Both are disciples of Alinsky so his philosophy continues to dictate the direction of America. Russia, China, Iran and radical Islamists remain on the ascendancy.  Also N Korea remains a loose nuclear cannon.

I continue to maintain, when we lost The Viet Nam War, Americans embraced and became comfortable with the idea of losing and it has infected our thinking in a variety of ways and on many levels. The impact may be subtle but it has had a devastating effect. This is why we were amenable to electing Obama, will continue by probably electing Hilllary and are willing to allow government to operate as it has been, outside the constraints of The Constitution and in total control of our lives and freedoms.

Trump's ability to govern will always be open to question but his policies and business accomplishments are positive and I will stick with him. As for his locker room conversation  I do not feel compelled, as so many on our campuses,  I need a safe zone to protect my delicate ears from hearing crude male conversation about the opposite sex.  I went to Military school, spent a little time in The Marine Corps and belonged to a fraternity. 

I am not PC driven.

One final point regarding Trump's boorish behaviour.  Remember he made these comments when he was a Democrat.

I have been told by a dear friend, who was on Hillary's Secret Service Detail, she has a toilet bowl mouth.  Trump should have asked her has she ever used the "F" word,  cursed those sworn to protect her with their own life and other vulgarities.

I hope and pray all my friends are safe and sound.(See 1 (sent to me by a very dear friend and fellow memo reader), 1a, 1b, 1c and 1d below.)

Dick

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1) The fellow that wrote this lives in Mystic/Ledyard. He is a mensa member and a former scientist with the navy. He has a blog.  He is close to 80 I think. Just a great guy. I met him and his wife at an art gallery. 

So here's the REAL story about Benghazi.

By John Malenda.

Ambassador Stevens was sent to Benghazi post haste in order to retrieve US made Stinger missiles supplied to Ansar al Sharia without Congressional oversight or permission. Hillary brokered the deal through Stevens and a private arms dealer named Marc Turi. Then some of the shoulder fired missiles ended up in Afghanistan used against our own military. It was July 25th, 2012 when a Chinook helicopter was taken down by one of our own Stingers, but the idiot Taliban didn't arm the missile and the Chinook didn't explode, but had to land anyway. An ordnance team recovered the serial number off the missile which led back to a cache of Stingers being kept in Qatar by the CIA. 

Obama and Hillary were now in full panic mode and Stevens was sent in to retrieve the rest of the Stingers. This was a "do-or-die" mission, which explains the stand down orders given to multiple commando teams. It was the State Dept, not the CIA that supplied them to our sworn enemies, because Petraeus wouldn't supply these deadly weapons due to their potential use on commercial aircraft. Then, Obama threw Gen. Petraeus under the bus after he refused to testify that he OK'd the BS talking points about a spontaneous uprising due to a Youtube video. Obama and Hillary committed treason...and THIS is what the investigation is all about, why she had a private server, (in order to delete the digital evidence), and why Obama, two weeks after the attack, told the UN that the attack was because of a Youtube video, even though everyone knew it was not. 

Further...the Taliban knew that this administration aided and abetted the enemy without Congressional approval when Boehner created the Select Cmte, and the Taliban began pushing the Obama Administration for the release of 5 Taliban Generals. Bowe Bergdahl was just a pawn...everyone KNEW he was a traitor. So we have a traitor as POTUS that is not only corrupt, but compromised...and a woman that is a serial liar, perjured herself multiple times at the Hearing whom is running for POTUS. Only the Dems, with their hands out, palms up, will support her. Perhaps this is why no military aircraft was called in...because the administration knew our enemies had Stingers

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1b)  Clark Hunt, CEO and Owner of the Kansas City Chiefs called a meeting with all of his Coaches, Players and field staff and firmly told them,

"You are all simply paid performers on a stage and that field is my stage!

You will stand, with your hand over your heart and with respect, when our Country's National Anthem is being played or you will no longer be a Kansas City Chief, a Coach for the Kansas City Chiefs or have any association with the Chiefs Organization!

I will immediately fire you, no matter who you are!" You can make your political statements off the field, but when you're employed by me and I'm signing your check,

I demand that you make our fans proud and not embarrass them."

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1b) BREAKING REPORT: FBI Agents Have Shock Plan to Deal With “Cowardly” Clinton Investigation

Michael Reagan, son of former President Ronald Reagan, warned last week that a number of FBI officials were so incensed over director James Comey’s mishandling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s improper use a private email server that they were considering resigning from their posts.

A new report published Thursday by the New York Post suggested that Reagan may have been right.

“Veteran FBI agents say FBI Director James Comey has permanently damaged the bureau’s reputation for uncompromising investigations with his ‘cowardly’ whitewash of … Clinton’s mishandling of classified information,” the paper reported.

The biggest complaint was that Comey purposefully impeded the investigation by applying certain ground rules that had been requested by Clinton’s team of lawyers.

“In my 25 years with the bureau, I never had any ground rules in my interviews,” maintained retired agent Dennis V. Hughes, who served as the first chief of the FBI’s computer investigations unit.

When Comey offered Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills an immunity deal, for instance, he included a stipulation that his agents could not search her laptop for emails that might incriminate her boss.

Comey later agreed to destroy the laptop. He also permitted Mills and other witnesses with immunity to submit “demonstratively false statements” and, even worse, essentially get away with not answering certain questions.

Even when the director interviewed Hillary Clinton herself, he displayed a blatant bias by reportedly limiting it to just 3-1/2 hours and never calling her back for a second session. Then, three days after the interview, he conveniently cleared her of criminal wrongdoing.

“The FBI has politicized itself, and its reputation will suffer for a long time,” Hughes said of Comey’s behavior. “I hold Director Comey responsible.”

In agreement was retired FBI agent Michael M. Biasello, who said, “Comey has single-handedly ruined the reputation of the organization.”

Director James Comey may have once been an upstanding FBI agent and director, but because of his actions in the Clinton investigation, he has managed to transform himself into a weasel

And because of his weaselly behavior, there was a rumor that a slew of his finest agents were about to quit. Can you blame them?


1c)

ARMY WARNS THAT FUTURE WAR WITH RUSSIA OR CHINA WOULD BE 'EXTREMELY LETHAL AND FAST'

Leaders say warfare in the coming decades will be fundamentally different from the past 25 years.

An 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper runs through smoke during a reenactment of the bridge assault undertaken by the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II during Operation Market Garden. (U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Mary S. Katzenberger)

To envision the wars of the future, first remember those of the distant past, with their soul-numbing artillery barrages and unstinting waves of conventional enemy forces. Then speed up that mental newsreel and imagine a ground war accelerated by artificial intelligence and precision munitions, nested in a larger strategic sphere where everything is moving at Internet velocity.

That’s the picture that Army leaders are working from as they try to prepare their force to deter and defeat America’s enemies over the next few decades.

The nation faces existential threats from “modern nation-states acting aggressively in militarized competition,” said Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, Army deputy chief of staff for operations, plans, and training. “Who does that sound like? Russia?” He spoke on a future-of-the-Army panel at the annual meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army in Washington on Tuesday.

China is a growing threat as well, if not one that can project force globally yet. Together, these two powers are mustering conventionally massive militaries that are increasingly technological  — and forcing the Pentagon to contemplate and prepare for “violence on the scale that the U.S. Army has not seen since Korea,” said Maj. Gen. William Hix, Anderson’s deputy. “A conventional conflict in the near future will be extremely lethal and fast. And we will not own the stopwatch.”

By that, Hix meant that wars will start with minimal notice, and grind through forces more quickly than has been the case in the recent counterterrorism operations. So the Army has to find ways to keep readiness high, and to learn how to replenish them more quickly.

Interface design will play a key role in that, said Katharina McFarland, acting assistant Army secretary for acquisition, logistics, and technology.

“You travel all over the world, don’t you?” McFarland asked the gathered audience of soldiers, Army civilians, and industry reps. “You can pretty much get in a car anywhere and drive it.”

The Army’s future weapons and vehicles need those kinds of intuitive, familiar controls. In the heat of future war, a soldier must be able to quickly learn to fly, say, three different variants of helicopters. Or move easily from a tank’s gunnery controls to an artillery console.

“How do I get TRADOC to decrease cycle time?” she said. “As an engineer, I think in terms of a simple interface — no matter what helicopter, you can get in and operate it.”

Even more revolutionary will be the impact of artificial intelligence and autonomic systems on the battlefield. “The speed of events are likely to strain our human abilities,” Hix said. “The speed at which machines can make decisions in the far future is likely to challenge our ability to cope, demanding a new relationship between man and machine.”

All this, he said, will make the coming decades fundamentally different from the past 25 years.

Bradley Peniston is deputy editor of Defense One. A national-security journalist for almost 20 years, he helped launch Military.com, served as managing editor of Defense News, and was editor of Armed Forces Journal.

1d)

The stillborn legacy of Barack Obama

By Charles Krauthammer 

Only amid the most bizarre, most tawdry, most addictive election campaign in memory could the real story of 2016 be so effectively obliterated, namely, that with just four months left in the Obama presidency, its two central pillars are collapsing before our eyes: domestically, its radical reform of American health care, a.k.a. Obamacare; and abroad, its radical reorientation of American foreign policy — disengagement marked by diplomacy and multilateralism.

Obamacare.

On Monday, Bill Clinton called it “the craziest thing in the world.” And he was only talking about one crazy aspect of it — the impact on the consumer. Clinton pointed out that small business and hardworking employees (“out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week”) are “getting whacked . . . their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.”

This, as the program’s entire economic foundation is crumbling. More than half its nonprofit “co-ops” have gone bankrupt. Major health insurers like Aetna and UnitedHealthcare, having lost millions of dollars, are withdrawing from the exchanges. In one-third of the U.S., exchanges will have only one insurance provider. Premiums and deductibles are exploding. Even the New York Times blares “Ailing Obama Health Care Act May Have to Change to Survive.”

Young people, refusing to pay disproportionately to subsidize older and sicker patients, are not signing up. As the risk pool becomes increasingly unbalanced, the death spiral accelerates. And the only way to save the system is with massive infusions of tax money.

What to do? The Democrats will eventually push to junk Obamacare for a full-fledged, government-run, single-payer system. Republicans will seek to junk it for a more market-based pre-Obamacare-like alternative. Either way, the singular domestic achievement of this presidency dies.

The Obama Doctrine.

At the same time, Obama’s radically reoriented foreign policy is in ruins. His vision was to move away from a world where stability and “the success of liberty” (JFK, inaugural address) were anchored by American power and move toward a world ruled by universal norms, mutual obligation, international law and multilateral institutions. No more cowboy adventures, no more unilateralism, no more Guantanamo. We would ascend to the higher moral plane of diplomacy. Clean hands, clear conscience, “smart power.”

This blessed vision has just died a terrible death in Aleppo. Its unraveling was predicted and predictable, though it took fully two terms to unfold. This policy of pristine — and preening — disengagement from the grubby imperatives of realpolitik yielded Crimea, the South China Sea, the rise of the Islamic State, the return of Iran. And now the horror and the shame of Aleppo.

After endless concessions to Russian demands meant to protect and preserve the genocidal regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, last month we finally capitulated to a deal in which we essentially joined Russia in that objective. But such is Vladimir Putin’s contempt for our president that he wouldn’t stop there.

He blatantly violated his own cease-fire with an air campaign of such spectacular savagery — targeting hospitals, water-pumping stations and a humanitarian aid convoy — that even Barack Obama and John Kerry could no longer deny that Putin is seeking not compromise but conquest. And is prepared to kill everyone in rebel-held Aleppo to achieve it. Obama, left with no options — and astonishingly, having prepared none — looks on.

At the outset of the war, we could have bombed Assad’s airfields and destroyed his aircraft, eliminating the regime’s major strategic advantage — control of the air.

Five years later, we can’t. Russia is there. Putin has just installed S-300 antiaircraft missiles near Tartus. Yet, none of the rebels have any air assets. This is a warning and deterrent to the only power that could do something — the United States.

Obama did nothing before. He will surely do nothing now. For Americans, the shame is palpable. Russia’s annexation of Crimea may be an abstraction, but that stunned, injured little boy in Aleppo is not.

“What is Aleppo?” famously asked Gary Johnson. Answer: the burial ground of the Obama fantasy of benign disengagement.

What’s left of the Obama legacy? Even Democrats are running away from Obamacare. And who will defend his foreign policy of lofty speech and cynical abdication?

In 2014, Obama said, “Make no mistake: [My] policies are on the ballot.” Democrats were crushed in that midterm election.

This time around, Obama says, “My legacy’s on the ballot.” If the 2016 campaign hadn’t turned into a referendum on character — a battle fully personalized and ad hominem — the collapse of the Obama legacy would indeed be right now on the ballot. And his party would be 20 points behind.

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