Sunday, January 20, 2019

another picture speaking thousands of words;


how stupid do you have to be is the question asked here and some of the answer is, if you don't know the history of this land, that's a good starting point when you begin to act in ways that demonstrate that clearly;


Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Some high school young men from a private Catholic school in Kentucky had been encouraged to attend an anti-abortion “March for Life” near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on Friday. Nearby, Native Americans were rallying for their rights.
Vietnam Vet Nathan Phillips some a mean crowd of white teens in Trump’s red “Make America Great Again” caps harassing four African American young men. He was beating his drum and chanting, and came forward, drawing the attention of the young thugs, realizing the danger, he said.
They then mocked and taunted him, doing a bad sing-along of his chant, and then one of the teens, an unbearably smug look on his face, planted himself in Phillips’s way and trapped him in the ugly crown of Mean Boys. They were chanting “Build the Wall.”
Covington High School and the Diocese of Covington in Kentucky have condemned the boys’ behavior.........https://www.juancole.com/2019/01/stupidity-shouting-american.html
here is a serving of reality for you flag waving patriotic 'we're never wrong' fellows;


4,000,000,029,057. Remember that number. It’s going to come up again later.
But let’s begin with another number entirely: 145,000 -- as in, 145,000 uniformed soldiers striding down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue. That’s the number of troops who marched down that very street in May 1865 after the United States defeated the Confederate States of America. Similar legions of rifle-toting troops did the same after World War I ended with the defeat of Germany and its allies in 1918. And Sherman tanks rolling through the urban canyons of midtown Manhattan? That followed the triumph over the Axis in 1945. That’s what winning used to look like in America -- star-spangled, soldier-clogged streets and victory parades.
Enthralled by a martial Bastille Day celebration while visiting French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris in July 2017, President Trump called for just such a parade in Washington.  After its estimated cost reportedly ballooned from $10 million to as much as $92 million, the American Legion weighed in. That veterans association, which boasts 2.4 million members, issued an August statement suggesting that the planned parade should be put on hold “until such time as we can celebrate victory in the War on Terrorism and bring our military home.” Soon after, the president announced that he had canceled the parade and blamed local Washington officials for driving up the costs (even though he was evidently never briefed by the Pentagon on what its price tag might be).
The American Legion focused on the fiscal irresponsibility of Trump’s proposed march, but its postponement should have raised an even more significant question: What would “victory” in the war on terror even look like? What, in fact, constitutes an American military victory in the world today? Would it in any way resemble the end of the Civil War, or of the war to end all wars, or of the war that made that moniker obsolete? And here’s another question: Is victory a necessary prerequisite for a military parade?
The easiest of those questions to resolve is the last one and the American Legion should already know the answer. Members of that veterans group played key roles in a mammoth “We Support Our Boys in Vietnam” parade in New York City in 1967 and in a 1973 parade in that same city honoringveterans of that war. Then, 10 years after the last U.S. troops snuck out of South Vietnam -- abandoning their allies and scrambling aboard helicopters as Saigon fell -- the Big Apple would host yet another parade honoring Vietnam veterans, reportedly the largest such celebration in the city’s history. So, quite obviously, winning a war isn’t a prerequisite for a winning parade.......https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-19/us-military-winning-no-really-it
five minute video speaking of the perpetually offended;


https://youtu.be/95SmHaumMkw
the value of money is a frangible thing when push comes to shove. so far the great unwashed have no troubles with what passes as money but imagine what will happen when things get dicey;


as a birth right quaker i aught to remind you all that we were the first abolitionists and have stood for beatings when changing our stand would provide comfort but we're genetically forced to speak for what we believe to be true, and fred here makes many good points that the 'politically correct' crowd would go apoplectic over;


A storm, methinks, is just over the horizon: The genetics of intelligence, perhaps of behavior. Geneticists know that intelligence is largely genetic. They know better than to say so. But research advances rapidly. Laboratories close in on the responsible genes. Things like genomic-sequence correlation proceed apace. Within ten or fifteen years, I will guess, the genetics of IQ will be firmly established. If the results turn out as seems likely…then what? What does a pseudo-democracy do when clearly stratified by intellectual capacity?

The mainstream media seem to sense the danger. We see descriptions of genetics as “pseudoscience,” hear muttering about ”scientific racism” and eugenics and just like Hitler. This is the bleating of child minds. Genetics is absolutely mainstream science. Following the field requires some knowledge of biochemistry which requires some knowledge of organic chemistry which requires some knowledge of general chemistry and some knowledge of eighth-grade algebra. Since few, even among the bright,  wield these credentials, the public can still be told that genetics is racism. This won’t last......https://www.theburningplatform.com/2019/01/18/the-white-mans-burden-reflections-on-the-custodial-state/
friends who tell me about hurricane trump's plans and actions they expect him to take seemingly don't pay attention to what he's alleged to be doing currently, like in syria;


Everything is in disarray in Donald Trump’s White House. All of its residents are against him and his policies, and everyone is poised to “attack” their spiritual leader. As soon as Donald Trump says something or takes a political decision, his closest “household members”, the National Security Advisor, John Bolton, and the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, immediately respond with contradictory statements. And we will not even mention the reaction from his sworn enemies, the Democrats. This creates an impression that the White House has now transformed into some backwater theater, which has put on this schtick play for local residents. Please judge for yourself:
The moment the US President made a decision to withdraw American troops from Syria, almost all the liberals, conservatives, and even pacifists and feminists (particularly concerned with the Kurdish issue) immediately descended on their leader and started accusing him of betraying the nation’s interests while backing those of Russia, Iran and Turkey. The establishment was unable to contain its wrath, as Donald Trump had failed to coordinate his decision with a single US institution, which left the Department of State, the CIA and the Pentagon in the dark.
A letter from a group of Democrats and Republicans in response to Donald Trump’s statement on Syria has caused quite a stir. Congressmen from both parties are convinced that the head of state rushed into making that decision. This document reads as follows “We believe that such action at this time is a premature and costly mistake that not only threatens the safety and security of the United States, but also emboldens ISIS (a terrorist organization, banned in the Russian Federation), Bashar al Assad, Iran, and Russia. If you decide to follow through with your decision to pull our troops out of Syria, any remnants of ISIS in Syria will surely renew and embolden their efforts in the region.”
The Secretary of Defense, James “Mad Dog” Mattis, immediately left his post “barking loudly”. In the end though, he admitted the White Helmets organization not only lied about the fact that Bashar al-Assad’s regime employed chemical weapons, but also stage managed “demonstrations” of such use. In an interview with Newsweek, he openly said that the United States did not have any incontrovertible proof that Bashar al-Assad had deployed chemical weapons against his own people. What is more, all the evidence collected, including reports from incidents in Ghouta (2013) and Khan Shaykhun (2017), does not prove anything whatsoever. The Pentagon chief also noted that poisoning by organophosphorus compounds did, in fact, take place, but Damascus was not involved in these acts.
What was definitively established was that the missiles used in the 2013 chemical attack were clearly the work of amateurs. The Syrian Arab Armed (SAR) Forces have never resorted to employing such “home-made” weapons. The White Helmets, on the other hand, who supposedly took part in missions to save all the injured in chemical attack zones, were in no way affected by harmful chemicals or even their residues, which, according to expert chemists, was not possible, in principle.........https://journal-neo.org/2019/01/20/u-s-inarticulate-policy-towards-syria/