Democrats in Puerto Rica.
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A Trump administration supporter expresses his views. (See 1 below.)
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An actual battlefield recitation. (See 2 below.)
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About Salena Zito, the speaker I am planning on bringing To Savannah and Atlanta in The Fall.
From everything I know about her I would say she is a female version of Jack Germond, my old and dear friend now deceased. (See 3 below.)
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This is not a matter pertaining to snowflakes. (See 4 below.)
And, this from The Simon Wiesenthal Center. (See 4a below.)
Finally, the "Me Too Movement" is finally being seen for what it is.
While this is happening Stacey Abrams. who ran against Georgia's current governor and lost, was out in California recently lining up support for her run against Senator Perdue. She ducked questions but left open her apparent support for non citizens voting in our elections.
Stacey is as radical but hides it and was a supporter of "The Me Too Movement." (See 4b below.)
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The FBI has been sullied by the corrupt acts of some rotten senior apples and one can only hope they will be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1) I’m A Senior Trump Official, And I Hope A Long Shutdown Smokes Out The Resistance
By Senior Trump Official | Contributor
The Daily Caller is taking the rare step of publishing this anonymous op-ed at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose career would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
As one of the senior officials working without a paycheck, a few words of advice for the president’s next move at shuttered government agencies: lock the doors, sell the furniture, and cut them down.
Federal employees are starting to feel the strain of the shutdown. I am one of them. But for the sake of our nation, I hope it lasts a very long time, till the government is changed and can never return to its previous form.
The lapse in appropriations is more than a battle over a wall. It is an opportunity to strip wasteful government agencies for good.
On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don’t feel like doing what they are told, they don’t.
Why would they? We can’t fire them. They avoid attention, plan their weekend, schedule vacation, their second job, their next position — some do this in the same position for more than a decade.
They do nothing that warrants punishment and nothing of external value. That is their workday: errands for the sake of errands — administering, refining, following and collaborating on process. “Process is your friend” is what delusional civil servants tell themselves. Even senior officials must gain approval from every rank across their department, other agencies and work units for basic administrative chores.
Process is what we serve, process keeps us safe, process is our core value. It takes a lot of people to maintain the process. Process provides jobs. In fact, there are process experts and certified process managers who protect the process. Then there are the 5 percent with moxie (career managers). At any given time they can change, clarify or add to the process — even to distort or block policy counsel for the president.
Saboteurs peddling opinion as research, tasking their staff on pet projects or pitching wasteful grants to their friends. Most of my career colleagues actively work against the president’s agenda. This means I typically spend about 15 percent of my time on the president’s agenda and 85 percent of my time trying to stop sabotage, and we have no power to get rid of them. Until the shutdown.
Due to the lack of funding, many federal agencies are now operating more effectively from the top down on a fraction of their workforce, with only select essential personnel serving national security tasks. One might think this is how government should function, but bureaucracies operate from the bottom up — a collective of self-generated ideas. Ideas become initiatives, formalize into offices, they seek funds from Congress and become bureaus or sub-agencies, and maybe one day grow to be their own independent agency, like ours. The nature of a big administrative bureaucracy is to grow to serve itself. I watch it and fight it daily.
When the agency is full, employees held liable for poor performance respond with threats, lawsuits, complaints and process in at least a dozen offices, taking years of mounting paperwork with no fear of accountability, extending their careers, while no real work is done. Do we succumb to such extortion? Yes. We pay them settlements, we waive bad reviews, and we promote them.
Many government agencies have adopted the position that more complaints are good because it shows inclusion in, you guessed it, the process. When complaints come, it is cheaper to pay them off than to hold public servants accountable. The result: People accused of serious offenses are not charged, and self-proclaimed victims are paid by you, the American taxpayer.
The message to federal supervisors is clear. Maintain the status quo, or face allegations. Many federal employees truly believe that doing tasks more efficiently and cutting out waste, by closing troubled programs instead of expanding them, “is morally wrong,” as one cried to me.
I get it. These are their pets. It is tough to put them down and let go, and many resist. This phenomenon was best summed up by a colleague who said, “The goal in government is to do nothing. If you try to get things done, that’s when you will run into trouble.”
But President Trump can end this abuse. Senior officials can reprioritize during an extended shutdown, focus on valuable results and weed out the saboteurs. We do not want most employees to return, because we are working better without them. Sure, we empathize with families making tough financial decisions, like mine, and just like private citizens who have to find other work and bring competitive value every day, while paying more than a third of their salary in federal taxes.
President Trump has created more jobs in the private sector than the furloughed federal workforce. Now that we are shut down, not only are we identifying and eliminating much of the sabotage and waste, but we are finally working on the president’s agenda.
President Trump does not need Congress to address the border emergency, and yes, it is an emergency. Billions upon billions of hard-earned tax dollars are still being dumped into foreign aid programs every year that do nothing for America’s interest or national security. The president does not need congressional funding to deconstruct abusive agencies who work against his agenda. This is a chance to effect real change, and his leverage grows stronger every day the shutdown lasts.
The president should add to his demands, including a vote on all of his political nominees in the Senate. Send the career appointees back. Many are in the 5 percent of saboteurs and resistance leaders.
A word of caution: To be a victory, this shutdown must be different than those of the past and should achieve lasting disruption with two major changes, or it will hurt the president.
The first thing we need out of this is better security, particularly at the southern border. Our founders envisioned a free market night watchman state, not the bungled bloated bureaucracy our government has become. But we have to keep the uniformed officers paid, which is an emergency. Ideally, continue a resolution to pay the essential employees only, if they are truly working on national security. Furloughed employees should find other work, never return and not be paid.
Secondly, we need savings for taxpayers. If this fight is merely rhetorical bickering with Nancy Pelosi, we all lose, especially the president. But if it proves that government is better when smaller, focusing only on essential functions that serve Americans, then President Trump will achieve something great that Reagan was only bold enough to dream.
The president’s instincts are right. Most Americans will not miss non-essential government functions. A referendum to end government plunder must happen. Wasteful government agencies are fighting for relevance but they will lose. Now is the time to deliver historic change by cutting them down forever.
The author is a senior official in the Trump administration.
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2) The current Ops we ‘heard’ about...but never read a post-battle SITREP:
On February 7, 2018, approximately 500 to 600 pro-Syrian forces composed of Syrian Army infantry and a few hundred Russian mercenaries attacked a US JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) outpost using artillery, tanks, and APCs in the assault. The ‘mercenaries’ were believed to have been composed of members of a Russian private military organization known as ‘The Wagner Group’. The Wagner Group has been used in the past by the Russian government to conduct special operations they don’t want Moscow associated-with directly However they are known to train at Russian bases, are composed mainly of former Spetsnaz, and are believed to be ‘advised’ by active duty Spetsnaz to an unknown degree. It would not be unfair to call them a Special Operations Force.
Prior to the battle the forces developing against the US camp were overheard on radios communicating routinely in Russian, and were known after the battle to have left Syria and reported directly to Moscow. They also used EW (electronic warfare) assets before and during the battle that are known to be sole proprietary assets of the Russian military. It did not go well for them.
Though the attacking troops and their artillery and armor were seen massing in a nearby town days before the assault, there was no indication that an attack on the American outpost in particular would take place. Normally great care is taken to keep Russian and US forces from clashing directly in Syria.
A team of about 30 Delta Force soldiers, Rangers from the Joint Special Operations Command were working alongside Kurdish and Arab forces at a small dusty outpost next to a Conoco gas plant, near the city of Deir al-Zour.
Roughly 20 miles away, at a base known as a mission support site, a team of Green Berets and a platoon of infantry Marines watched drone feeds and passed information to the Americans at the gas plant about the gathering fighters.
About 1500 hrs., the Syrian force began moving toward the Conoco plant. By early evening, more than 500 troops and 27 vehicles (made up of tanks and APCs) had amassed.
In the American air operations center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, and at the Pentagon, military officers and intelligence analysts watched the scene unfold. Commanders briefed American pilots and ground crews in support of the US forces in Syria, and air assets were placed on alert.
Back at the mission support site, the Green Berets and Marines were preparing a small reaction force, consisting of roughly 16 troops in four mine-resistant vehicles, to support the Conoco plant if they were needed.
About 2030 hrs., three Russian-made T-72 tanks moved within a mile of the Conoco plant. Bracing for an attack, the Green Berets prepared to launch the reaction force.
At the Conoco plant, American SOF troops watched a column of tanks and other armored vehicles turn and drive toward them around 2000 hrs.from a neighborhood of houses where they had tried to gather undetected.
About 2030 hrs., the Russian mercenaries and Syrian forces struck.
The Conoco outpost was hit with a mixture of tank fire, large artillery and mortar rounds. The air was filled with dust and shrapnel. The American SOF operators took cover, then ran behind dirt berms to fire anti-tank missiles and machine guns at the advancing column of armored vehicles.
For the first 15 minutes, American military officials called their Russian counterparts and urged them to stop the attack. When that failed, American troops fired warning shots at a group of vehicles and a howitzer.
The attackers were not deterred.
Soon American CloseAir Support aircraft began arriving in waves, including Reaper drones, F-22 stealth fighter jets, F-15E Strike Fighters, B-52 bombers, AC-130 gunships and AH-64 Apache helicopters. For the next three hours, dozens of American air assets pummeled enemy troops, tanks and other vehicles. Marine rocket artillery was fired from the ground.
The reaction team sped toward the fight. It was dark, and the roads were littered with felled power lines and shell craters. The 20-mile drive was made all the more difficult since the trucks did not turn on their headlights, relying solely on thermal-imaging cameras to navigate.
As the Green Berets and Marines neared the Conoco plant around 11:30 p.m., they were forced to stop. The barrage of artillery was too dangerous to drive through until airstrikes silenced the enemy’s howitzers and tanks.
At the plant, the commandos were pinned down by enemy artillery and running low on ammunition. Flashes from tank muzzles, antiaircraft weapons and machine guns lit up the air.
About 0100 hrs. with the Syrian artillery fire finally dwindling from the constant US air assault, the team of Marines and Green Berets pulled up to the Conoco outpost and began firing. At that point in the battle most of the air assets had returned to their bases to refuel and re-arm.
The United States JSOC troops, allied Syrian troops, and Marines…roughly 50 in all…. prepared for direct fire engagement as the Russian mercenaries left their vehicles and headed toward the JSOC outpost on foot in full-on frontal assault.
A handful of Marines ran ammunition to machine guns and Javelin missile launchers scattered along the berms and wedged among the trucks. Some of the Green Berets and Marines took aim from exposed hatches of their vehicles. Others remained in their trucks, using a combination of thermal screens and joysticks to control and fire the heavy machine guns affixed on their roofs.
A few of the US troops, including Air Force combat controllers, worked the radios to direct the next fleet of bombers flying toward the battlefield. At least one Marine exposed himself to incoming fire as he used a missile guidance computer to find targets’ locations in the dark and pass them on to the troops calling in follow-on airstrikes.
The Russian mercenaries were effectively massacred in the battle.
An hour later, they started to retreat and the American troops stopped firing. From their outpost, the Special Operators and Marines watched the mercenaries and Syrian fighters return to collect their dead. The small team of American troops suffered no harm in the battle. One allied Syrian fighter was wounded.
What the Russians leading the attack had failed to appreciate was the US forces’ combat experience and expertise at battlefield management. They also turned out to be totally inept at countering US air assets. They thought it would be a cake walk given their armor, artillery, and outnumbering the US Special operators more than ten to one.
It was a lesson the survivors will not soon forget.
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3)
Salena Zito
Reporter, CNN contributor, host of SIRIUS XM POTUS Channel Main Street meets the Beltway and co-author of The Great Divide
Salena Zito was born and raised in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. She is a reporter for the Washington Examiner, an enterprise columnist for the New York, a CNN contributor, host of SIRIUS XM POTUS Channel Main Street meets the Beltway and co-author of the upcoming book The Great Divide
Before her two decade long career in journalism she worked for the Pittsburgh Steelers, had own pie business, and owned a theater (most famous for its stage production of Reservoir Dogs) .
Over her career she has interviewed every President since Gerald Ford and Vice-President since Walter Mondale of the United States including their competitors as well as all 22 candidates on both sides of the aisle who ran for president in 2016.
Zito rarely flies when traveling across the country, not because of a fear of being airborne, but because understanding how people are impacted by government and politics is most evident in the communities where they live. Over the past 13 years, in covering three historic swing midterm elections as well as three presidential cycles she placed over 330,000 miles on her 14 year old Jeep Liberty.
She is also a devoted history nerd, spending countless down hours at places such as Gettysburg, Antietam and Harpers Ferry as well as more obscure French and Indian War National Parks such as Jumonville Glen and Fort Necessity.
Zito is an avid cyclist, averaging 2,000 trail miles on her 15 year old bike a year, and her biggest accomplishment was completing a solo ride on the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) from West Newton Pennsylvania to Washington D.C.
In addition to cycling she spends her down time, hiking, fishing, cooking, canning and baking and most importantly with her family. Every Sunday without fail is Zito Sunday family dinner spent with her two adult children Glenn, Shannon, her husband Michael, her granddaughter Eleanora, as well as her parents, sisters, brothers-in-law and their children and grandchildren.
Zito, who before the fall of 2016 was a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist with a local following, has benefited from Donald Trump’s rise in a way few others have. She made a name for herself by filing revealing dispatches from Trump country during the campaign, which featured conversations with “Main Street voters” whose “traditions, skills, jobs and lives” are under threat by the “cosmopolitan and political classes” exemplified by Hillary Clinton.
She admonished journalists that while they took Trump “literally, but not seriously,” Trump’s supporters took him “seriously, but not literally.” Her pieces explain that regular Joes out in Ohio and Pennsylvania don’t care that the president’s lawyer and campaign chair are guilty of numerous federal crimes because “as it stands we really only [sic] have two parties; the party of the governing elite and the party of Trump.”
Her Trump voter–whispering columns earned her the New York Post job, a book deal (The Great Revolt, co-authored with GOP political consultant Brad Todd, which came out in May), a CNN contributor deal, and a joint project with Harvard’s Institute of Politics. She became a favorite of both mainstream journalists — Jake Tapper said in a book blurb that she “picked up on a political phenomenon long before polls or pundits had any idea of what was happening” — and conservatives, who see her as a rare voice of America’s traditionalist heartland. The president even sang her praises.
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4)
| College search 101 in the era of BDS: Where can a Jewish student feel safe? | |||
| DEBORAH FINEBLUM / JNS | |||
| With anti-Israel fever raging on many North American campuses, a new book offers some help in sorting out where incoming undergraduates may feel increasingly uncomfortable. 4a)Exposing France’s Anti-Semitism in the Yellow Jacket Movement
Extremes of right and left have hijacked the ‘movement’ held together by conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred
Troubling incidents of anti-Semitism have infiltrated the Yellow Jacket (‘Gilets Jaunes’) protests in Paris, and across France.
“There seems to be no end in sight,” according to Dr. Shimon Samuels, Simon Wiesenthal Center Director for International Relations, who has been monitoring the demonstrations from the Center’s Paris-based European office.
["Macron--whore of the Jews"]
Dr. Samuels pointed to a disturbing trend of anti-Semitic incidents:
The Wiesenthal Center has publicly called on all political party leaders, from Mélenchon to Le Pen, “to repudiate and publicly condemn Yellow Jacket incitement to anti-Semitism and other targets of racism in France.
Updates on anti-Semitism in the Yellow Jacket movement will be sent as they develop.
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