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This was sent to me by a political science college professor friend.
I found it interesting and thus, am passing it on but I also found it inconclusive as to some of the possible conclusions and assumptions.
The rise in the domestic nationalistic fervor is the direct reaction to Liberalism's failure over many years and more recently from The V.A , failing to enforce immigration laws and border protection and virtually everything in between..
Any extreme political movement should be of concern. It is obvious traditional Democrats have lost control of their party to the radical far left but they still speak with one voice because winning is everything and unification has proven to be a tactic that works.
Republicans are split, seldom avoid shooting themselves in the foot because they prefer independence. Consequently, after they win they display a lack of cohesiveness and ability to govern which usually results in eventual voter discontent and loss at the polls. (See 1 below.)
Is America back or will Trump's recent response fail to be repeated when he and the West are challenged again? Time will tell.
Even Krauthammer probably became too negative regarding Trump and lost sight of his ability to change when the stimulus was morally and overwhelmingly challenging.
Those who believe they can pigeon hole Trump will likely be proven wrong time and again.(See 1a below.)
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Yesterday, we took our daughter, Amy, by to see Ben Payne , the Headmaster of The Savannah Classical Academy. Before coming to Savannah, Ben and his wife Amanda, lived in Louisville and he was the principal of The West End School. Amy and her husband,Steve, were/are big benefactors of the the school which serves a small group of inner city kids.
Ben, as always, was gracious with his time and we discussed a broad range of issues. SCA is an outstanding Charter School, has a waiting list of over 1100 and bucks the established public school model and thus, is constantly undergoing nit picking criticism from the powers that be who profess they care about education but whose actions belie their comments.
For a variety of issues SCA is always in need of funding to cover its budget shortfall and Ben is constantly seeking new sources. The environment at SCA is one of the best I have ever been exposed to and the education and care provided the students is remarkable. Ben, his staff and faculty are proving that even with less you can do so much more but he faces a constant uphill battle because SCA's success is a living embarrassment. Far too many among the local black community place retaining power over helping their own. Sad indeed.
If you have an interest in how public education can excel, I urge you to visit SCA, located on Anderson St., call in advance and tell Ben you are doing so at my suggestion.
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Spicer gets whacked by the liberal media , Pelosi etc. for his intemperance yet "Tingle Up The Leg" Chris Matthews did the same and nothing came of it because he is Chris Matthews. Talk about double standards. No wonder nationalism is on the rise. When you cannot trust the mass media to be balanced then one of the critical protective pillars of our Republic is missing.(See 2 below.)
And:
Another reason why Nationalism is rising. People are fed up with a failing government and politicians engaged in irresponsible trusteeship. (See 2a below.)
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Our low level relationship as expressed by Sec.. Tillerson. Will the few areas of common agreement carry the day? Stay tuned.(See 3 below.)
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I have ordered Congressman Ken Buck's book " Drain The Swamp." After reading, I will post my comments.
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Will Lerner finally be called to pay for her blatant acts? (See 4 below.)
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Will Lerner finally be called to pay for her blatant acts? (See 4 below.)
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The Happiest Easter to all my Christian Friends.
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Dick
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1)Interview: Richard Dearlove—I spy nationalism
Richard Dearlove frowned at the coffee pot on the table before him, as he pondered the phenomenon of Donald Trump. “I think he’s very strongly nationalist,” he said, pouring himself a small cup. The room, at a discreet location in central London, was large and empty of other people, its walls lined with 19th-century portraits. Is Trump the start of something worrying, I asked. “I think it depends on how fundamental this shift in politics in the US and other countries is,” he replied, speaking slowly. “I think the jury’s out on how far it is going to go.”
Between 1999 and 2004, Dearlove was head of the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, a tenure that included the bruising experience of the Iraq war, the drama of 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan. He joined the service in 1966 and in his time he ran MI6’s Washington station, the most significant posting in British intelligence and was also overall Director of Operations.
So he’s seen it all before. But the allegations that members of Trump’s staff had illegal contact with the Russian government during the election campaign are “unprecedented,” said Dearlove. As for the president’s personal position, he said, “What lingers for Trump may be what deals—on what terms—he did after the financial crisis of 2008 to borrow Russian money when others in the west apparently would not lend to him.” I also asked Dearlove about Trump’s suggestion that the US National Security Agency (NSA) or British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had bugged Trump Tower on the instructions of Barack Obama. This allegation was flatly rejected by both organisations and also by James Comey, Director of the FBI, who told Congress in a March hearing that “we have no information to support” Trump’s claim. “This is simply deeply embarrassing,” said Dearlove, “for Trump and the administration, that is. The only possible explanation is that Trump started tweeting without understanding how the NSA-GCHQ relationship actually works.”
But more than this display of ignorance by the White House, Dearlove is troubled by the changing face of European politics. The anxiety is striking coming from him, because last year—in the pages of Prospect—Dearlove set out his view that Brexit would not in itself harm the UK’s security or its intelligence work. Wider developments on the continent, however, are another matter. “For me, the intriguing question is what’s going to happen in the French and the German elections,” he said. “I don’t think at the moment [Marine] Le Pen will win the French presidency. But let’s say she comes close to winning—whoever beats her is going to have to probably move to the right,” including “a more activist nationalist foreign policy.”
That word again—nationalist. It is striking to hear anxieties about the world taking a sudden nationalist turn being aired by a man who is, by profession, supposed to be measured, detached and discreet. But there is no longer much doubt that the political mood has changed. It’s being felt in the US, Britain, France, and also in Germany, where the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) has been gaining ground. “[If] the AfD begins to get up to around 30 per cent in the German elections that will indicate a pretty firm shift in German politics,” said Dearlove. It will, he said, also begin to affect Britain’s Brexit negotiations with the European Union.
“The politics of the Brexit negotiations are going to be really fundamentally affected by this shift in thinking in the countries with whom we are negotiating,” he said. “So on the one hand you’ve got Brussels-type mandarins saying one thing—but it doesn’t reflect the political reality of changes in Europe. And I think, on the freedom of movement issue, for example, a lot of European countries are going to be moving towards the position that the UK would like to adopt.”
Dearlove is a very still man. He speaks fluently but slowly, which is suggestive of his childhood, which was spent in a small isolated fishing village on the southern Cornish coast. His accent is not of the south west, and was long ago hewn into the familiar brogue of the British foreign service. His measured manner gives his often forthright judgments all the more punch. A traditional servant of the nation state, he is critical of the open turn the world has taken during the years when the globalisers were in charge.
“Complete freedom of movement and uncontrolled migration into Europe is catastrophic,” he said. “Obviously one recognises the benefits of some migration, but when you get 1.3m people coming into Europe—that was the figure in 2015. And the total net migration into the UK was 270,000. The total entry, counting EU and outside the EU, was around 600,000. These are massive numbers.
“The CIA published these predictive papers around 2001,” he said. “I think it was published before 9/11. And at that point they were indicating that mass migration, particularly from the south to the north—particularly out of Africa—was going to be a huge problem for the European continent.
“If you look at the figures for population growth and unemployed youth and that sort of phenomenon, leaving aside the instability in the Middle East, we shouldn’t really be particularly surprised by what’s happened. We just didn’t prepare for it.”
The idea that the recent increase in immigration could have been foreseen 16 years ago is certainly open to challenge. And yet Britain’s failure to anticipate and prepare for the ensuing social and political pressures brought about by large-scale immigration is beyond question.
That pressure is causing a rightward drift in British politics and when I asked Dearlove whether he thinks that drift will continue he says, “I think for the time being, yes,” but that in the longer term, prospects for the populist tendency are limited. “It’s not really in the character of British politics to have extremists. Let’s face it, Ukip has done its bit, hasn’t it? I don’t see Ukip being a one-issue party really surviving as it is. I see something coming in, which may suck up some of its support. There are potentially a lot of Lib Dem voters out there as well. Where did they go?”
Britain’s security challenges were made horrifyingly clear by the March attack in Westminster, when Khalid Masood, a man from Kent, drove a car through crowds on Westminster Bridge before stabbing a policeman in the grounds of the palace of Westminster. I reported from the immediate aftermath of the attack, in which four people died. The attacker was shot and killed.
“The Islamist terrorist threat is obviously serious but containable and ultimately manageable,” Dearlove told me in an email the day after the attack. “We have to keep a sense of proportion about it; successful terrorist attacks have been few in number. The situation would only change with several mass casualty incidents which would threaten that sense of proportion and drive society towards an extreme response. At the moment I judge that as unlikely to happen. Containment of the threat with occasional failures can continue almost indefinitely.”
Dearlove told me that despite the terrorist threat to Britain, it is not the most serious challenge the country faces. “The deterioration of European politics, with the rise of parties on the extreme right, is a far more serious problem for the UK. It is not in the UK’s national interest to see continental Europe being split apart by the revival of nationalist movements as a post-Brexit Britain returns to a mid-Atlantic rather than continental orientation to its foreign policy.
“Britain has played a vital role in Europe’s future when Europe has been in crisis,” said Dearlove, referring to the turmoil of the last century, adding that, “we are set to do that again as the EU goes through a period of profound change. That will in part be driven by the rise of extreme right parties, but it is important that, despite their influence, they do not control the political agenda.”
The election result in the Netherlands was cause for hope—the far-right party of Geert Wilders failed to make a breakthrough in the March general election. The question now is whether Le Pen in France and the AfD in Germany remain largely outside the government. “A cohesive Europe is still in the UK’s interest, though the nature of that cohesion may become something rather different from what we largely took for granted during what has been the high point of the EU’s existence,” said Dearlove. “Europe is now moving into a new historical phase. Post-war and post-Cold War Europe are both coming to an end and as they do we will have to endure a period of heightened political and social risk.”
And then there is Russia, the great political pot-stirrer, led by a man who seems determined to re-impose global Russian influence as a means of buoying up his domestic support. “I don’t see it as a return to the Cold War,” said Dearlove, who is more than qualified to make that judgment. “Russia has always set out to destabilise its immediate neighbours in order to exercise influence,” he said. “Putin’s on a crusade for Russia to be taken more seriously as a player in international affairs,” he said, adding that “if you analyse it historically, it’s in imperial decline.”
Dearlove then delivers another of his startlingly blunt assessments, this time of the country that was his chief adversary for most of his professional career: “It’s got a lousy economy, getting worse, it’s got terrible demographics, it’s got good strategic rocket forces and it’s got special forces and it’s able to focus its assets on issues and make its impact felt in a rather clever fashion. But that doesn’t disguise the fact that Russia’s in a mess and I don’t think we should be overawed.”
Despite its weakness, the question of how to deal with Russia poses deep problems for governments. The Kremlin has achieved pariah status after its invasion of Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea and its activities in Syria. These adventures were capped by its apparent interference in the US presidential election, where Putin allowed Russian operatives to conduct the hacking and propaganda campaign in favour of Trump that is now the subject of an FBI investigation. But how can other nations deal with a country that is so consistently wayward?
“Eastern Ukraine was a bit of a disaster really for the Russians and backing separatists in Eastern Ukraine was a hook they were keen to get off,” said Dearlove, attributing his analysis to a “few well-placed Russians that I spoke to.” The war in Ukraine is “very expensive,” he said and “it’s not really worked,” from Russia’s perspective. “Ukraine has more or less held together. The Ukrainian military has been more effective than the Russians expected and you’ve got a separatist war which is going absolutely nowhere.
“I did an event with Henry Kissinger in the States last summer with an invited audience,” said Dearlove. “He and I agreed that the isolation of Russia, which was a consequence of the evolution of Obama’s policy, was not beneficial for anybody. OK—Russia behaved extremely badly and it was difficult to pick your way through that and not end up in a situation where there’s a trade embargo and virtually a breakdown in communication. But if we can strengthen Nato and have a dialogue with Russia, which makes issues like Ukraine more manageable…” And with that, he trails off. But his intended message is clear. Better to talk to the Russians than freeze them out.
His criticism of Obama is not confined to Ukraine—Dearlove is also critical of US policy in Syria. “If the US had intervened it probably would have tipped the balance,” he said. In this situation, “the Russians would have maintained their interest by taking Assad out.” The double meaning of the last three words is perhaps unintentional.
And what about Russia’s meddling in the US election? The US’s own intelligence and security agencies have stated that they have evidence of interference. “I am pretty sure they wouldn’t have made those statements if they weren’t clear in their own minds that Russia was the perpetrator,” he said. “Trump himself seemed to have accepted that.” As for the suggestion that the Russian government holds compromising material on Trump, an allegation made in a dossier put together by Christopher Steele, a former MI6 officer, Dearlove will not comment. “The Russians must be slightly surprised themselves because they disfavoured Hillary, but I don’t think they necessarily expected Trump to be elected. And had they been confident that Trump was going to be elected they might have not behaved in the way that they have done—do you see what I mean? They wouldn’t have needed to push.”
“If they had worked out that Hillary was going to lose—they were going to have a better relationship with Trump; clearly they wanted Trump to be elected—they might not have unleashed that activity.” Dearlove laughs. It’s a restrained chuckle and as he smiles his voice takes on more of a laconic drawl. “But once you’ve started down that route, you can imagine Putin signing off on the operations.”
1a)
The Great Reversal — for now
The world is agog at President Trump’s head-snapping foreign policy reversal. He runs on a platform of America First. He renounces the role of world policeman. He excoriates parasitic foreigners that (I paraphrase) suck dry our precious bodily fluids — and these are allies! On April 4, Trump declared: “I don’t want to be the president of the world. I’m the president of the United States. And from now on, it’s going to be America First.”
A week earlier, both his secretary of state and U.N. ambassador had said that the regime of Bashar al-Assad is a reality and that changing it is no longer an American priority.
Then last week, Assad drops chemical weapons on rebel-held territory and Trump launches 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria.
This was, in part, an emotional reaction to images of children dying of sarin poisoning. And, in part, seizing the opportunity to redeem Barack Obama’s unenforced red line on chemical weapons.
Whatever the reason, moral or strategic, Trump acted. And effectively reset his entire foreign policy.
True, in and of itself, the raid will not decisively alter the course of Syria’s civil war. Assad and his Iranian, Russian and Hezbollah co-combatants still have the upper hand — but no longer a free hand. After six years of U.S. passivity, there are limits now and the United States will enforce them.
Nor was the raid the beginning of a campaign for regime change. It was, however, a reassertion of an American stake in both the conduct and the outcome of the war. America’s abdication is over. Be warned.
Moreover, the very swiftness of the response carried a message to the wider world. Obama is gone. No more elaborate forensic investigations. No agonized presidential handwringing over the moral dilemmas of a fallen world. It took Obama 10 months to decide what to do in Afghanistan. It took Trump 63 hours to make Assad pay for his chemical-weapons duplicity.
America demonstrated its capacity for swift, decisive action. And in defense, mind you, of an abstract international norm — a rationale that dramatically overrides the constraints of America First.
Trump’s inaugural address had boldly rejected the 70-year American consensus to bear the burdens of world leadership. Less than three months later, the Syrian raid abruptly changed that course with a renewed interventionism — not, to be sure, in the service of a crusade for democracy, but in the service of concrete strategic objectives, broadly defined and extending far beyond our shores.
To the North Pacific, for example. The Syria strike sent a message to both China and North Korea that Trump’s threats of unilateral action against Pyongyang’s nukes and missiles are serious. A preemptive strike against those facilities is still unlikely but today conceivable. Even more conceivable — perhaps even probable — is a shoot-down of a North Korean missile in flight.
The message to Russia was equally clear. Don’t push too far in Syria and, by extension, in Europe. We’re not seeking a fight, but you don’t set the rules. Syria shared the Sharyat base with Russian troops. Russian barracks were left untouched, but we were clearly not deterred by their proximity.
The larger lesson is this: In the end, national interest prevails. Populist isolationism sounds great, rouses crowds and may even win elections. But contra White House adviser Stephen Bannon, it’s not a governing foreign policy for the United States.
Bannon may have written the come-home-America inaugural address. But it was the old hands, Trump’s traditionally internationalist foreign policy team led by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who rewrote the script with the Syria strike.
Assad violated the international taboo on chemical weapons. Who would enforce it, if not us? Candidate Trump would have replied: None of our business. President Trump brought out the Tomahawks.
His foreign policy has gone from mere homeland protection to defending certain interests, values and strategic assets abroad. These endure over time. Hence the fundamental continuity of our post-World War II engagement abroad.
With apologies to Lord Palmerston, we don’t have permanent enthusiasms, but we do have permanent interests. And they have a way of asserting themselves. Which is why Bannonism is in eclipse.
This is not to say that things could not change tomorrow. We’ve just witnessed one about-face. With a president who counts unpredictability as a virtue, he could well reverse course again.
For now, however, the traditionalists are in the saddle. U.S. policy has been normalized. The world is on notice: Eight years of sleepwalking is over. America is back.
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2) Remember When Chris Matthews Said Hitler Didn't Use 'Chemical Weapons'?
2) Remember When Chris Matthews Said Hitler Didn't Use 'Chemical Weapons'?
By PJ Video
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer made a mistake during a press conference, and said that Hitler didn't use chemical weapons on his own people. He has since apologized and been publicly excoriated over his comment. But in 2013, back when Chris Matthews was blindly defending everything President Obama did, he said a very similar thing. Here's the text of Matthews' statement: "If you basically lay — put down a red line and say don't use chemical weapons, and it's been enforced in the Western community, around the world — international community for decades — don't use chemical weapons. We didn't use them in World War II, Hitler didn't use them." So, tell me more about how anti-Semitic Sean Spicer is...
When Congress returns from its Easter recess April 24, lawmakers will have only four legislative days left to decide on a spending plan that prevents a government shutdown.
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3) Tillerson says US-Russia ties at ‘low point,’ calls for easing tensions after Putin meeting
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a hastily arranged meeting in Moscow late Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin as he worked to ease tensions over Syria and other global crises – even as he and President Trump, from afar, continued to pressure Putin over his alliance with Bashar Assad.
Tillerson, speaking frankly during a press conference in Moscow alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, said he told Putin that U.S.-Russia relations have hit a “low point.” He stressed the need to improve ties.
“There is a low level of trust between our two countries. The world’s two foremost nuclear powers cannot have this kind of relationship,” Tillerson said.
Those tensions have mounted since Trump ordered a missile strike last week on an airbase controlled by the Assad government, in response to a chemical weapons attack. But Lavrov said Wednesday that the U.S. and Russia have agreed on the need for a United Nations probe of the Syrian chemical attack, a step that could dial down the rhetoric between the two nations for now.
Washington blames Russia's ally Assad for that attack, while Moscow says Syrian rebels are responsible. That disagreement was on display Wednesday, as Tillerson stood by U.S. claims that the evidence points to Assad – while clarifying the U.S. has no indications of Russian involvement.
Lavrov, speaking through a translator, also said special envoys would be appointed to discuss the “irritants” that have “piled up” mostly under the Obama administration.
Citing the countries’ disagreements, Tillerson said, “We need to attempt to put an end to this steady degradation.”
The news conference came after Putin met the top American diplomat for almost two hours to see if they could rescue relations between the world's mightiest military powers. Russia's alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential election also hovered over the first face-to-face encounter between Putin and a Trump administration Cabinet member.
Both Tillerson and Lavrov cited the goal of defeating ISIS as a common objective.
Lavrov also that Putin could restore a military hotline with the U.S. if Washington focuses on fighting the Islamic State and other extremist groups.
Tillerson, the first Trump Cabinet official to visit Russia, traveled to Moscow just days after the Trump administration launched missile strikes on the airbase in Syria.
Tillerson ratcheted up his rhetoric en route to Moscow earlier this week, saying “the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end” and challenging Russia to reconsider its alliance with the government in Damascus.
Trump also told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo that Putin is backing “an evil person” in Syria, and it’s “very bad for Russia.”
At the same time, Trump made clear he’s pushing for peace in Syria. He said, “we’re not going into Syria,” but said pressure will be on Russia to ensure peace.
“If Russia didn’t go in and back this animal, you wouldn’t have a problem right now,” he said.
Earlier Wednesday, during a forum at The Newseum in Washington, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked about what could be on the table at a Putin-Tillerson meeting. He spoke to their common interests.
“I think there is a shared interest in defeating ISIS in the region that we have a national security concern that should align with their national security concern," he said.
Spicer had tough words for Russia's alliance with Assad, however.
"Russia right now is an island," he said. "It's Russia, North Korea and Iran ... Russia is among that group the only non-failed state." He said Russia is "isolating" itself by standing by Assad.
Lavrov said Wednesday that Syrians should determine their future, and the objective should not be to “eliminate a political leader from the chessboard.”
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4)Roskam told Stewart House Republicans are planning of filing criminal charges against Lois Lerner.
4)Roskam told Stewart House Republicans are planning of filing criminal charges against Lois Lerner.
Rep. Roskam: The Obama Administration was very lenient with the crimes that Lois Lerner committed. And those are strong words that I’m using but the House Ways and Means Committee voted out a criminal referral to the Department of Justice which was completely dismissed by the Department of Justice… We think that Lois Lerner did two things wrong. Number one, she denied people due process and equal protection of the law based on their political philosophy. We’re convinced that there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that that’s true. And that’s a felony. Secondly, we suspect that she lied to the Inspecter General of the Treasury Department.More than 30 lawmakers sent a letter to President Trump last week calling for Obama’s IRS Commissioner, John Koskinen to step down from his post before the end of his term, Fox News reported.The IRS Conservative Targeting Scandal involved:
- Hundreds of conservative groups were targeted
- At least 5 pro-Israel groups
- Constitutional groups
- Groups that criticized Obama administration
- At least two pro-life groups
- An 83 year-old Nazi concentration camp survivor
- A 180 year-old Baptist paper
- A Texas voting-rights group
- A Hollywood conservative group was targeted and harassed
- Conservative activists and businesses
- At least one conservative Hispanic group
- IRS continued to target groups even after the scandal was exposed
- 10% of Tea Party donors were audited by the IRS
- And… 100% of the 501(c)(4) Groups Audited by IRS Were Conservative
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