Thursday, January 25, 2018

Damn Fools For Allowing Politicians To Spend Excessively. Is It An Elephant Or A Pay To Play Donkey? Erdogan. Okra For President.



A. Back off and let those men who want to marry men, marry men.
B. Allow those women who want to marry women, marry women.
C. Allow those folks who want to abort their babies, abort their babies.
In three generations, there will be no more Democrats.

And

 OKRA for President ? 
"
Hi, I'm OKRA. I'm the spokesperson for Weight Watchers but can't control my weight. I tell you how to run your marriage but I can't commit to marriage. I tell you how to raise your kids but I don’t have any. I am very spiritual, but don’t go to any church or identify as Christian. Even though I knew about Weinstein and the casting couch, I was silent, but I support the Me Too movement. I am racist to the core, but blacks can’t really be racist, so that doesn’t count. I’m black and female, so I check all the boxes. I praised Denmark for their Socialism, though I am a billionaire due to Capitalism, the economic system that allowed a dirt-poor child from Mississippi to rise to world-renowned fame and wealth. The first time I openly endorsed a presidential candidate it was a black one, Obama. Before a black candidate, I was not political. Vote for me, and I will give you transformational change, the kind you got from Obama.

Finally, words win the day:

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I will trey and explain why shutting the government is an attack on our military.

There is the obvious disruption of pay to military families who mostly live hand to mount.  Second, it means military funding reverts back to what it has been and that means the increase in Trump's increased  spending is deferred and all prior Obama restraints on spending and planning for future spending is impacted and returns.

It is evident, based on naval, accidents, increasing airplane crashes and training deaths. our military is strained.  We need enormous upgrades after years of battle use.  Less than half of our major planes are flyable and needed spare parts that are stripped from other planes and/ unavailable.

Historically, after every Democrat Administration ends and a Republican Administration follows, military spending must increase to overcome the deficiencies.  This is a fact, not fake news.

Yes, often military spending is wasteful and overcharges are frequent. Another problem is when you decrease production lines the cost per item goes up and secondly, and I know this from my investment days and conversations with many executives of military equipment companies , particularly Bernard Schwartz of Loral, the military is constantly adding bells and whistles, as the program moves down the production line, and that also increases costs.

Finally, at the end of WW 2, we had thousands of military equipment that we dumped in Pacific Waters that fish now swim around, suggesting that he who has more marbles is more likely to win the game.

There are two basic lessons to be learned.  First if you can't protect the nation those on welfare are going to suffer because the government will not be able to help them. Second, if you don't consider the true and legitimate needs of those dependent upon government welfare then what good is a government that cannot carry out legitimate obligations.  Balancing the equities of these conflicting needs leads to extreme political hyperbole, resulting in more heat than light. .

Eisenhower warned us about the military and industrial complex and his remarks were accurate and poignant. That said, Moynihan was also correct when he warned about the stifling and dangerous consequences of excessive welfare. The political debate of military versus welfare spending lends itself to demagoguery on both sides. This is why I insist government live within its revenue stream because it defines the debate and girdles various political demands for excessive  spending.

Politicians are trustees and when we allow them to spend what they do not have they are in violation of their trusteeship and we are damn fools for allowing them to do so.
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Erdogan, Obbama's closet friend, has proven to be the thug he always was.  Erdogan is now Trump's inherited mess.  What Trump does about this turkey could define his presidency.  It is time to tell Erdogan to cool it and for us to remove our planes and atomic bombs from Turkey and maybe move them somewhere else, maybe Israel?  (See 1 below.)
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 Is Mueller coming to the end of one investigation so he is free to pursue the real issue?  Stay tuned.  (See 2 below.)
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Dick

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1) Testing Trump in Syria

Turkey, Russia and Iran want to push the U.S. and its allies out.


By The Editorial Board
The U.S. and its allies have all but defeated Islamic State in Syria, but the Trump Administration is in danger of squandering the strategic gains. Witness the unfolding fiasco there, with invading Turkish forces battering America’s Kurdish allies and threatening an area close to U.S. troops. This is what comes of muscular talk without the will or strategy to enforce it.
President Trump spoke by phone to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, and it must have been tense. Mr. Erdogan’s troops are pounding Kurdish positions in northern Syria, and on Wednesday he threatened to attack the city of Manbij, where U.S. forces are based. Mr. Erdogan is vowing to clear the Kurds out of those enclaves, and the danger is that U.S. and Turkish soldiers, two NATO allies, could soon clash.
Mr. Erdogan claims to be furious at U.S. media reports that the Pentagon plans to train a 30,000-troop Kurdish-led force in northeast Syria that he claims is aligned with the terrorist Kurdish PKK. The U.S. has tried to soothe Mr. Erdogan that the Kurdish border force would pose no threat.
But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed in a speech last week that the U.S. does plan to keep some military force in Syria for the foreseeable future. The goal is to support the Kurds and Sunni Arabs who fought with us against ISIS, block Iran from dominating post-ISIS Syria, and retain some leverage in talks to end the Syrian civil war. U.S. forces would turn the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), including Kurds and Arabs, into a “stabilizing” force.
The idea has merit. The U.S.-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units in Syria, known as the YPG, fought valiantly to defeat the Islamic State and deserve training and protection until they can protect themselves. So do local Arab groups who fought alongside the SDF.
Turkey would also benefit from a stable border zone supervised by U.S.-backed forces. Ankara has accepted millions of refugees during the Syrian civil war and doesn’t need more. A Kurdish safe zone, rich with energy resources, could also create goodwill between Ankara and the Kurds.
The question is whether the Trump Administration is prepared to do what it takes to execute such a policy. That would mean explaining to Mr. Erdogan, at the highest military and diplomatic level, how this can serve Turkey’s interests in a more stable Syria. This seems to have been a diplomatic afterthought for team Trump.
It would also mean dropping illusions about Russia’s malign influence. Messrs. Trump and Tillerson seem to believe that Russia wants to broker an end to the war—and it does, but only on its terms. If America’s Kurdish and Sunni allies control no territory in Syria, the U.S. might as well be Guatemala in the peace talks.
Speaking of malign, Russia continues to provide political cover for chemical-weapons use in Syria, almost certainly by Bashar Assad’s forces. Another chlorine gas attack occurred Monday in the rebel stronghold of East Ghouta. Russia dismissed the reports, which is convenient because late last year it blocked an extension for the U.N. group investigating such claims. Russia is also supporting Mr. Erdogan’s military campaign against the Kurds, the better to embarrass the U.S. for not being able to defend its allies.
All of this is setting up Mr. Trump for an Obama-sized strategic embarrassment. The President showed resolve in punishing Assad for his chemical attack last year and by stepping up the military campaign against Islamic State. That signaled to the region’s bad actors that the days of American retreat might be over.
But now that the U.S. and Kurds have done the dirty work, Russia, Syria, Turkey and al Qaeda want to push the U.S. out. If they succeed, Mr. Trump will pay a price in lost credibility on par with Mr. Obama’s failure to enforce his famous red line on chemical weapons. The White House has to show the diplomatic and military will to sustain a safe zone in Syria, or tell our allies they’re on their own so they can make their our accommodations with the bullies of Ankara, Tehran and Moscow.
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2) Bob Mueller’s elephant and the media blind men

By Post Editorial Board 
Bob Mueller’s elephant and the media blind men
If you want to make sense of the endless flood of media reports about Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation, it helps to recall the ancient parable of the blind men asked to describe an elephant.

One reaches out to the unknown creature, feels the trunk and says, “It’s like a snake.” The next touches an ear: “It’s like a fan.” A third grabs a leg: “It’s like a tree.” And so on through the critter’s side (“a wall”), tail (“a rope”) and tusk (“a spear”).

For months, reporters have dug up, or been fed, tidbits about what Mueller’s team is looking at and rushed into print with claims that he’s … going to nab President Trump for obstruction of justice, or show the Russians used the NRA to elect Trump, or expose Russian funding of Trump projects long ago — whatever.

And the supposed dirt inevitably comes from anonymous sources, making it impossible for readers to judge what spin has been introduced along the way.

No matter: Each report triggers days of MSNBC mouth-frothing over the pending end of Trump, and outrage on the right over the latest “smear” — complete with calls for Mueller’s head that (bizarrely) assume the Trump-hating liberal media have the story right.
And all of it misses the elephant in the room: Not one leak, ever, has suggested that Mueller has found an iota of evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians — which, recall, is what the investigation is supposed to be about.
Moreover, the Clinton-funded “dossier” that apparently launched the original FBI collusion probe now stands exposed as junk.

The coverage adds up to nothing more than Mueller is looking at every possible angle … which is his job.

That doesn’t absolutely rule out the chance that the prosecutor is on a witch hunt. After all, he did bring a lot of Hillary Clinton supporters onto his team. On the other hand, he was hiring from a pool of DC attorneys that strongly tilted that way.

But none of his actual actions so far show any such bias. Of course he was going to indict Paul Manafort and his partner over egregious (but Trump-unrelated) sleaze, and pin down Mike FlynnGeorge Papadapoulos and so on.

But the public record shows no reason to think any of them has anything on the president: e.g., the campaign rejected Papadapoulos’ push for a Trump-Putin sitdown.
This still leaves the theoretical possibility of obstruction-of-justice charges. But that seems beyond dubious when there’s no underlying crime to cover for — and Trump 1) had every legal right to fire Jim Comey and 2) never tried to shut down or impede the investigation.

It looks like Mueller is close to wrapping up, since he’s moving to interview the president — and talking to the central figure is pretty much always the final step in such investigations. (Whether Trump should talk is another matter: His lawyers surely worry that his sloppy way of talking could land him in trouble when he’s otherwise already in the clear.)

Don’t worry, media blind men: While Mueller’s closing down, other investigations — into the fixing of the Clinton email probe and the Justice Department “secret society” that may have gotten the collusion probe rolling — can ramp up.
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