Politicization Of Agencies - Not Healthy. Sen. Church and The CIA. ISIS Remains Robust. "Ole Joe" And His Deserved Medal. Explaining Streep et. al.

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One of the most significant negatives Obama  imposed on government was the politicization of its various agencies.  The recent flack over the leaked documents involving Russia and Putin is clear evidence that politics has transcended honest objectivity .  Any president must have confidence that what he is being told is reliable and that it remains private and is not leaked.

Our intelligence community has made a series of blunders. Some of their mistakes can be traced back to Sen. Church who sought to restrict the CIA's ability to operate in the field.  Church was turned off by the scurrilous people CIA operatives dealt with and Church placed his sense of righteousness above good sense and our nation's most important needs - to learn all we could about those who meant us harm.

We are still paying the price for what Sen. Church brought about.

Holder politicized The Justice Department and then we have the IRS. To undo the harm may take years and may never be accomplished. Time will tell.
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ISIS, Obama's JV Team, are improving their technical capability and are proving to be very resourceful. To hear Obama tell it,ISIL, has been largely defeated/crippled.  (See 1 below.)
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One of the least auspicious political  positions in D.C can be that of the Vice President.  His job generally is to serve the President and not be seen or heard from.  John Nance Garner said being V.P was the equivalence of a bucket of warm spittle, Harry Truman did not even know about The Manhattan project.

Presidents engage their vice presidents as they see fit.  Some seldom even have lunch with them. JFK did not really care for Lyndon , Thought he was crude.  Nixon did not rely too much upon Ford. Reagan had a good relationship with George W. Bush but Reagan remained the star and so it has gone. George Bush relied upon Dick Cheney  and Cheney drew flack away from Bush.

Yesterday, Obama paid his respects to Vice President Biden and though I have often said "Ole Joe" has seldom been right, he has served the nation long (44 years) and with credit and the medal he received was well deserved.

In his response, "Ole Joe" stretched the truth a bit in lauding Obama but he generally does. Apparently after 8 years the two families have grown beyond just being politically connected, They, apparently,  have become true friends.

I hope Trump has the good sense to allow Pence into his inner circle and that Bannon and Kellyanne
and others close to Trump recognize the value Pence brings to the position of Vice President.
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Swedes in denial. (See 2 below.)
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Why Meryl Streep and her elitist friends resent Middle America's deplorables.  The latter's values are light years away from those of the elites who do not understand why  deplorables want what they have and /or aspire to have. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)

ISIS using small drones to drop bombs on Iraqis

By Jeff Schogol

Col. Brett Sylvia leads roughly 1,700 soldiers who make up Task Force Strike, which is advising Iraqi troops and other security forces who have been fighting to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group since early November.

As Iraqi security forces have moved into Mosul, they have been attacked by commercially purchased drones dropping small munitions “akin to a small, little grenade,” said Sylvia, who is also commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division.

ISIS has been using drones for a while, but as Iraqi forces moved closer to Mosul, they began encountering enemy drones more frequently, Sylvia told reporters on Wednesday at a Pentagon news conference.

“Really, that’s when we saw them using them in armed fashion,” he said.

Sylvia stressed that the drones ISIS is using are not complex. ISIS has “the same ability that any 13-year-old kid in the States” has to purchase commercially available drones online, he said.

Right now, ISIS fighters in Mosul are using quadcopters that are no larger than a couple feet in diameter and can fly for about an hour, he said.

“It’s not as if it is a large, armed UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] that is dropping munitions from the wings – but literally, a very small quadcopter that drops a small munition in a somewhat imprecise manner,” Sylvia said. “They are very short-range, targeting those front-line troops from the Iraqis.”

Without getting into specifics, Sylvia said U.S. troops have been able to “bring to bear some of our technical capabilities” to help the Iraqis shoot down nearly a dozen drones.

Iraqi federal police also recently captured an ISIS drone launch and recovery site, he said. ISIS fighters abandoned many parts for the drones as they retreated.

Their effectiveness, and the quantity of drones available to them, has certainly decreased, Sylvia said, as the drones have been “shot out of the sky” or as these areas have been taken over.

No U.S. troops have been killed or wounded by the drones, said Sylvia, who deferred questions about whether the Iraqi security forces had suffered casualties to the Iraqi defense ministry.

He did say the drones have caused some equipment and structure damage, and some civilian casualties, because “certainly, they are not concerned about whether or not any of the civilians in Mosul are killed or wounded.”

Iraqi security forces have retaken most of eastern Mosul, but they face a tough fight in the western part of the city, where ISIS is dug in, Sylvia said.

“There has been an extensive defensive work that has been done in western Mosul,” he said. “They have certainly been working on that area and even, in some cases, have greater defenses built in western Mosul than they did in eastern Mosul.”

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2)

Ami Horowitz traveled to Swedish no-go zones and discovered something horrifying

Rape and violence has exploded across Sweden due it's immigration policies. Watch to see what Sweden has done to itself. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 3) Why liberal elites  are so resentful of  middle America This week we saw a few perfect examples of why liberal coastal elites are so resentful of middle America: It’s because the supposed rubes and rednecks aren’t more resentful of the elites — or, more specifically, the elites’ “success.” They don’t aspire to be like their self-appointed betters. Some Americans just don’t need much; they don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to have a 1,500-square-foot house, watch football and go to church on Sunday. They don’t want to leave their hometowns to come to Silicon Valley or Washington, DC, or Manhattan. They place great value on community and living near family and carrying out family traditions. That’s not hate, that’s not stupidity, that’s not racism — it’s their own version of the American dream. On Monday Ned Resinkoff, a senior editor for the progressive ThinkProgress, wrote in detail about how rattled he was that his plumber, “a middle-aged white guy with a southern accent,” may have voted for Donald Trump. The idea that his plumber may have different political beliefs left Resnikoff so rattled he “couldn’t shake the sense of potential danger.” Two days earlier Melinda Byerley, founder of a Silicon Valley-based tech startup that does “free-range, artisanal, organic, customized marketing” with “Birkenstocks-on-the-ground expertise,” tweeted her expert opinion on Middle America’s jobs-`attraction problem. It wasn’t very nice. First she said Middle America needs to realize “no educated person wants to live in a s- -t-hole with stupid people,” which is why she said more big corporations don’t move to the Heartland: “Those towns have nothing going for them,” with “no infrastructure, just a few bars and a terrible school system.” Educated people such as herself wouldn’t live in rural areas because they won’t sacrifice their superior tolerance and diversity to do so. Nor do her highly educated friends want to live in states where the majority of residents “don’t want brown people to thrive.” And of course there was Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes acceptance speech, railing against Trump and his voters — delivered in a bejeweled dress in the company of people draped in clothing worth millions of dollars in an auditorium that looked like Versailles. Her rip on people who prefer football and mixed martial arts as entertainment over high-art film was also telling. Their comments are the exact kind of sneering condescension that provoked the election’s anti-elitism backlash, said Bruce Haynes, a GOP strategist in Washington. “And what is interesting is that we always suspected that these people felt this way, but now they are not even hiding behind the façade anymore,” he said. Most Americans simply don’t want or desire the same things that these people hold up as valuable; they don’t need a mansion, they don’t rack up frequent-flyer miles. They want different things — a place to live, a decent job, education for their kids. It’s more than enough for most people. But Streep and Byerley and Resinkoff and the people who were cheering on their screeds cannot imagine being satisfied with any of that, because their universe is so different. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++