For Those Likely To Be Impacted By Irma - Be Safe, Be Sensible and Duck If You See A Flying Object Headed Your Way.

To all my friends who are likely to be impacted by Irma, be safe and be sensible.  If anyone is unable to find some place to go, if you promise not to steal their possessions, we have a few friends from our 40 years of living in Atlanta we can call upon. If we leave we are staying with dear friends (actually like family) in Atlanta.

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This article was sent to me by a friend and fellow memo reader. 

 

Not sure Nolte is right about The Democrat Party being dead. Perhaps the party we once knew is dead and has been replaced by a far more radical extension of the old party. If Trump finds he cannot accomplish anything with Republicans he might , unwittingly, resurrect the Democrats.

Antifa is a spreading virus whose impact has just begun.  (See 1 below.) 

In this posting, the unknown author does a lot of speculating and connecting dots.  Perhaps he is correct. Whether he is or not it makes for interesting reading. (See 1a below.)

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The first hits close to home. The second is just funny.(See 2 and 2a  below.)

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Diplomacy without force and a willingness to use it is like a car without gas.

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No nonsense Israel. (See 3 below.)

Dick

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By 

John Nolte.

Yes, the MSM has admitted they got 2016 exactly wrong and that they are out-of-touch with the average American. What truly terrifies the media about 2016, though, is something that has remained largely unspoken.

It is what Trump’s victory said so clearly about the MSM’s inability to influence public opinion and, by extension, the outcome of elections. What has also remained unspoken is the media’s desperate and dangerous reaction to this waning influence.

As a 25 year media-watcher, I have never seen anything close to the propaganda campaign the national media launched to defeat Donald Trump last year. It was 24/7, it was coordinated across every news outlet, it was all-hands-on-deck. And Trump still won. Which can only mean that the media’s influence has eroded to a point where, despite hurling every kitchen sink available, they suffered a humiliating loss last November.

Before I get into the grit of the nit, it is important to keep in mind that our media is nothing more than the communication branch of the Democrat Party. When you look at everything the media does — the lying, the campaigns of personal destruction, the fake news, the focus on stuff like Melania’s shoes — this explanation is the only one that makes sense. The media is a full-blown leftwing political operation run, for the most part, by former Democrat operatives like Jake Tapper, George Stephanopolous, and Chuck Todd, as well as those related to Democrat operatives.

Knowing that, and knowing the long history of leftwing regimes (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Chavez, Castro), we know what a leftwing political operation does when its influence begins to diminish. Because their ideas are so unappealing and are proven failures, the left ultimately has no choice but to embrace violence and censorship. This truth is as old as the Bolshevik Revolution, and this is exactly what we are seeing unfold today in our own country. Rather than politicians, though, it is our media that has turned dangerously militant.

Rush Limbaugh is absolutely correct, the Democrat party is dead. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the party’s two supposed leaders, are non-entities. From top-to-bottom, the party is a feckless pile of incompetence. Knowing this, the media has told Schumer and Pelosi to hold their beer as they seize the levers of power in the leftwing cause. As a result, the media has used billions of corporate dollars to launch a propaganda campaign to unseat Trump and to keep the divisive issue of identity politics thriving.

Naturally, this rabid pursuit of so-called  “social justice” is meant only to serve what has always been the overriding goal of leftwing tyrants: control of our lives through a centralized government.

Nevertheless, this represents the least of our media’s sins.

The media campaign to censor and silence the political right, most especially on the college campus and online, is being waged on two fronts: through the ever-expanding definitions of “hate speech” and the “alt-right,” and through large corporations.

At this point, pretty much every conservative position on abortion, homosexuality, border security, the police, affirmative action, immigration, terrorism, etc., has been labeled as hate speech by the establishment left and many in the media. Moreover, the holding of these beliefs makes you an automatic member of the “alt-right,” which aligns you with white supremacists.

Now that this phase is in place, now that mainstream conservative and Christian beliefs have been toxified as hate, whether they are already aligned with the media or because they have been bullied by the media into joining the cause, the mega-corporations that now control our primary means of communication — the public square that is the Internet — are instituting a wave of  censorship.

Hiding behind the media’s absurdly expanded definition of hate (or fake news), America’s Googles, Facebooks, Twitters, advertisers, and Web servers are blacklisting conservatives, banning populists, and outlawing their ideas. People are being disappeared from the public square or, out of fear of being disappeared, they no longer feel comfortable to speak freely.

The violence comes, of course, from the media’s personal army of Brownshirts, the leftwing terrorists in Antifa. Just like Hitler’s henchmen, Antifa spreads out across the country to violently silence speech that the left does not want heard. And it is not only against neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. Almost all of the chaos, rioting, and violence waged by Antifa over the past two years has been against everyday Trump supporters, everyday Republicans.

To encourage Antifa’s wave of violent suppression, our media either ignores and downplays their crimes, promotes their cause as righteous, blames their violence on Trump and his supporters, compares them to heroic World War II soldiers, or in the case of NBC’s Chuck Todd, attempts to legitimize this violence against the political right.

Now, does anyone have any more question about why the media is so desperate to take away our Second Amendment rights?

1a)  This may explain a few things that recently happened at The White House...........author unknown

"Apparently, liberals and never-Trumpers are so isolated in their political circles that they have no concept how things work in the real world of business and corporate America. For example, they completely fail to grasp the concept of the "hatchet man".

Allow me to explain:

Say you are a business tycoon. You just successfully completed a large-scale acquisition and merger, bringing together multiple smaller companies into one conglomerate. After the merger, you want to put your own people in charge of everything. However, all those smaller companies had their own executives - and, at least for the short term - you need to keep many of them around to keep things running. So, you keep many of those executives around, and let them retain their own senior staff. You even appoint one of them - the head of the largest of the companies you acquired- to be the CEO of the conglomerate, and he pledges to get all the departments working together harmoniously.

After a transition period, some of them are doing fine in the new conglomerate - but others are clearly causing trouble. In fact, the one you appointed CEO is clearly a disaster. The newly merged departments are working against each other. Furthermore, you have good suspicion he is dealing in insider trading - nothing you can take to a prosecutor, but there is a lot of circumstantial evidence building up. Worse, he is not only doing his own dirty dealing, but it appears he may even be leaking intellectual property to your competitors, helping them take market share from you. Clearly, he has to go - and go now.

Problem is, many of the senior employees in your conglomerate are loyal to him. If you just fire him and put in your own chosen CEO, you know you could get a lot of backlash from disgruntled employees. And in your business, there is such a small profit-margin that you really can't afford anything at all that threatens performance. So what do you do?

In comes the hatchet man.

The hatchet man is someone you bring in for the sole purpose of slashing the problems and shaking things up over a very short period of time - but doing it in a way that deflects any blame or blowback away from you. As soon as the problems are hacked away, the hatchet man leaves - taking the ire and resentment with him, and leaving you free to bring in your new team for a fresh start.

This happens in the business world all the time. And Donald Trump is a businessman. He knows this. He has lived this. We've seen him do it on "The Apprentice." We've read about it in his books. This is not a surprise to anyone. Except for liberals and never-Trumpers.

Enter Scaramucci.

Liberals and never-Trumpers see the past two weeks as proof of a Hitler-clown-circus spectacle, as evidence that Trump is unhinged and our government is in the hands of madmen. Anyone who understands the business world and Donald Trump fully understands that what we just witnessed was a perfectly executed hatchet man maneuver.

When Trump won the election, he essentially performed the political equivalent of an acquisition and merger. He brought together different political factions - establishment Republicans, conservatives, tea party, religious right, moderates, independents, cross-overs - into one winning political coup. For some, it was a hostile takeover - and if they were going to be dragged in against their will, they would sure as hell resist.

This is where Reince Priebus came in.

Priebus, as the then-chairman of the Republican National Committee, was hired as White House Chief of Staff to be a sort of post-merger CEO. It was his job to bring all these political factions together and get them to work harmoniously. But he failed. Worse, there is ample evidence to suggest he not only failed, but worked against Trump and the Trump agenda. Look at the leaks. Look at all the chaos. Look at all the bureaucracy continuing to work at odds with the president. Priebus - and a number of other people around him - had to go.

Back to Scaramucci.

Donald Trump has known for some time that Priebus was a disaster. He was going to give him his six-month trial period - that's a fairly common thing in the private sector. After that, heads were going to roll. But Trump himself doesn't want to be the hatchet man. He needs to be able to lead after the bloodbath. So what does he do? He turns to an old friend he has known for many years - someone with nothing to lose, someone who can step in with a hatchet and hack away, someone who can then just walk away from it all and leave the slate clean. He turned to Scaramucci.

So what does Scaramucci do? He comes in swinging. He fires a few people to make a quick example. He tells others they can "resign" right now if they want to - but if not, they will be fired. Others see what is going on and just up and quit of their own accord.

That problem CEO, Priebus? Oh, the new "structure" of the organization puts Scaramucci in direct competition with Priebus - and Priebus throws up his hands and says "fine, I'm out of here." And Scaramucci does it all in a way that is spectacularly visible to draw all the fire from Trump critics.

So how does it all end? It ends with Trump putting in his new CEO - the one he probably wanted from day one, but held back - and the new CEO says "OK, Scaramucci - you are no longer needed here."

Gen. Kelly now has a clean slate to start fresh - and Scaramucci takes all the heat. Where the left and never-Trumpers see a circus freak-show, realists from the business world see a perfectly executed post-merger hatchet-man job.

The political wonks see Kelly taking command as the first sane thing to happen in this administration. They don't realize they've been played, and played perfectly. And soon we will likely see some other changes that move the Executive Branch further towards what Trump has wanted from day one. And then watch the real swamp-drainer get to work. It sucks to be Hillary Clinton right now...

Oh, and Scaramucci? He gets a sweet deal out of all this - no doubt, he and his friend Donald Trump talked it all out first. Scaramucci was already facing a nasty divorce that would result in the liquidation of his business to divide assets. A little-known law allows people who are legally required to sell a business as a condition of employment in the Executive Branch (to prevent conflicts of interest) to defer the taxes on their profits from the sale.

Scaramucci was going to have to sell his company anyway due to his pending divorce. Now he and his soon-to-be ex-wife just saved $80 million in taxes.

So don't think for a moment all this was an unplanned mess that went awry. Scaramucci and Trump knew exactly what they were doing.

All of this was planned - and foreseen. Not just by me, but by others as well.

Scott Adams wrote before Trump was inaugurated that, to his critics, the first year of Trump would be a play in three acts:

Act One - Trump is literally Hitler.

Act Two - Trump is not literally Hitler, but Trump is incompetent.

Act Three - Trump is not incompetent, but we don't like his policies.

We've seen this play out. From election night up through the first 100 days, the left was out rioting and acting as though Trump taking office was literally the end of Western Civilization.

But after 100 days, when Trump had failed to do evil-dictator things like round up all the brown people and put the gays into camps and force women to stay home and have babies, it became farcical to continue the "Trump is Hitler" narrative.

And so from that 100 day point up until now, it has been the "Trump is incompetent" game. Look at all the chaos. Look at all the leaking. Look at all the tweets. Now, we begin Act Three. With Priebus out and Kelly in, things will settle down. Pretty soon, all the left will have to say is "we just don't like Trump's policies."...Act Three.

And once that happens, the left is dead. Because, Trump's policies are policies that most Americans actually agree with. We should put America first. Build back our economy. Create jobs. Strengthen the military.

Protect the border. Outside a few densely-populated liberal strongholds like New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and - of course - Washington, D.C., Americans in general agree with all of this. So when all the left has to say is "Trump's policies are wrong," the left will literally be telling most of America, "you people are stupid."

Trump will win 47 states in 2020. The left will be scratching their heads and wondering what the hell happened. And you'll be able to look back and say, "hey, some of us told you all this back in 2017 - author unknown

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2) 

A young woman visits her parents and brings her fiancée to meet them. After an elaborate dinner, the mother tells her husband to find out about the young man.

The father invites the fiancée to his library for a talk. "So what are your plans?" the father asks the young man. "I am a  Bible and Torah scholar," he says. "A Bible and Torah scholar? Hmmm," the father says.  "Admirable, but what will you do to provide a nice house for my daughter to live in, as she is accustomed to?" "I will study very hard," the young man said, "and God will provide for us." 

"And how will you buy her a beautiful engagement ring, such as she deserves?" asks the father. "I will concentrate on my studies," the young man replies. "God will provide for us." 

"And children?" asks the father. "How will you support children?" "Don't worry, sir, God will provide," replies the fiancée. 

The conversation continues like this, and each time the father questions, the young idealist insists that God will provide. Later, the mother asks: "How did it go, Honey?" The father answers: "He has no job and no plans, but the good news is he thinks I'm God."

And then:

2a)  Last Wednesday a passenger in a taxi heading for Salford station leaned over
 to ask the driver a question and gently tapped him on the shoulder to get
 his attention. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a
 bus, drove up over the curb and stopped just inches from a large plate window.
   
 For a few moments everything was silent in the cab. Then, the shaking driver
 said, "Are you OK? I'm so sorry, but you scared the daylights out of me."
 
 The badly shaken passenger apologized to the driver and said, "I didn't
 realize that a mere tap on the shoulder would startle someone so badly.

" The driver replied, No, no, I'm the one who is sorry, it's entirely my fault.

 Today is my very first day driving a cab.  I've been driving a hearse for 25 years."

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3)

'Israel may have struck the Syrian weapons facility before Hezbollah could take over'

By ANNA AHRONHEIM

A top Israeli security expert says that there's a strong chance Hezbollah leader Hassan Nassrallah was planning on taking over the chemical weapons facility Israel targeted.

There's a strong probability that the Syrian military research center allegedly struck by Israeli warplanes on Thursday morning was targeted because of concerns that Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nassrallah had asked Damascus to hand over the facility to the Lebanon-based Shi'ite terror group. 

This assessment comes from the former national security adviser, Maj.-Gen (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, who now serves as an analyst at Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. According to him, the strike on the al-Talai Scientific Studies and Research Center may have been a consequence of Nasrallah’s visit to Damascus last week.

Nasrallah boasted of his visit to the Syrian capital in a live speech, but according Amidror, who was speaking on a conference call organized by The Israel Project, the facility may not only have been producing weapon systems for Hezbollah but was actually going to be taken over by the group as per Nassrallah's demand. 

The facility has been known for many years as a center for research and development for weapons systems, including chemical weapons. 

Noting that the strike came almost 10 years to the day of the Israeli strike on the Syrian nuclear reactor in Deir Ezzor, Amidror stated that it should be clear for Syria that Israel will not allow Iran or Hezbollah to build their capabilities because of the “chaotic mess in Syria.” 

“Just imagine if such a regime had nuclear capabilities,” he said.

While the IDF did not comment on the strike as it does not comment on foreign reports, it would not be the first time Israeli jets have hit Assad regime and Hezbollah targets in Syria. Jerusalem has repeatedly said that while there is no interest by Israel to enter into Syria’s seven year civil war, there are red lines that Jerusalem has set including the smuggling of sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah and an Iranian presence on its borders.

In a recent interview with Haaretz, former Israel Air Force Head Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel stated that Israel carried out at least 100 strikes in the past five years against the transfer of advanced weaponry from the Assad regime to Hezbollah, including the transfer of chemical weapons.

According to Amidror, while this strike would follow the same policy of destroying advanced weapon systems destined for Hezbollah, Israel actually prevented them from being produced in the first place.

“It’s another level of interfering,” Amidror stated, adding that it was the first time that the target which was attacked is a formal Syrian facility, not just a warehouse but one responsible for producing chemical weapons, rockets and missiles.

Michael Horowitz, Director of Intelligence at Prime Source, a Middle East-based geopolitical consultancy firm, told The Jerusalem Post that this Israeli strike is significant due to its location which is close to both a Russian air defense base as well a suspected Iranian missile production facility. 

Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence and Executive Director of Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) took to Twitter to state that the strike sent three important messages, namely that Israel intends to enforce its redlines “despite the fact that the great powers are ignoring them.”

Yadlin stated that it was now important to keep the escalation in check and to prepare for a Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah response.

Following the strike, the Syrian army warned against the “dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region.” 

But according to Horowitz, it is likely that any response by the Assad regime or Hezbollah would be limited.

“Thus far both the Syrian regime and Hezbollah have failed to respond to the Israeli effort to smuggle weapons from Syria and build new missile production facilities in the country,” he told the Post. 

“Beyond symbolic attacks coming from Syria, which remain quite risky in the current context with both Assad and Nasrallah busy in Eastern Syria, I think the main response will be an acceleration of Iranian efforts to entrench itself in Syria. As long as none of the “great powers” commit to countering Iranian influence in the country, Israeli can only delay what seems inevitable - namely an Iranian militarization of Syria.”

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