[Victory Girls] Devin Nunes is a patient man. The House Intelligence Committee Chairman from California knew about the subject matter of Trump’s infamous "wiretapping" tweet since January, but it was only recently that he was able to see proof of this surveillance. We are getting much closer to the source of the leaks and who unmasked private individuals. Be like Nunes. Be patient.
Slowly we are learning more about this surveillance that was conducted by the Obama administration. It appears that at least some of it was incidental to legitimate monitoring of Russian sources long before Trump’s campaign began. But the real scandal of the story is that the person responsible for exposing the names of private citizens affiliated with Trump’s team is not a lowly scofflaw or someone in the FBI.
#2
Look at the ValJal/Rhodes/Rice/Brennan axis with perhaps a cutout dupe for the actual release after Champ widened the distribution er in the last weeks (and probably who recommended that).
[Guardian] Imagine a society without fathers; without marriage (or divorce); one in which nuclear families don’t exist. Grandmother sits at the head of the table; her sons and daughters live with her, along with the children of those daughters, following the maternal bloodline. Men are little more than studs, sperm donors who inseminate women but have, more often than not, little involvement in their children’s upbringing.
This progressive, feminist world ‐ or anachronistic matriarchy, as skewed as any patriarchal society, depending on your viewpoint ‐ exists in a lush valley in Yunnan, south-west China, in the far eastern foothills of the Himalayas. An ancient tribal community of Tibetan Buddhists called the Mosuo, they live in a surprisingly modern way: women are treated as equal, if not superior, to men; both have as many, or as few, sexual partners as they like, free from judgment; and extended families bring up the children and care for the elderly. But is it as utopian as it seems? And how much longer can it survive?
Choo Waihong set about finding out. A successful corporate lawyer from Singapore, she left her job in 2006 to travel. Having trained and worked in Canada, the US and London, she felt drawn to visit China, the country of her ancestors. After reading about the Mosuo, she decided to take a trip to their picturesque community ‐ a series of villages dotted around a mountain and Lugu Lake ‐ as many tourists do. But something beyond the views and clean air grabbed her.
"I grew up in a world where men are the bosses," she says. "My father and I fought a lot ‐ he was the quintessential male in an extremely patriarchal Chinese community in Singapore. And I never really belonged at work; the rules were geared towards men, and intuitively understood by them, but not me. I’ve been a feminist all my life, and the Mosuo seemed to place the female at the centre of their society. It was inspiring."
#3
"I grew up in a world where men are the bosses,"
Couldn't have anything to do with 10,000+ years of evolution of which the last 4,000 recorded societies mainly of tribal, territorial and hierarchical organizations who fought and warred over resources? That it was successful males who allowed their tribes to flourish in that environment by paying the ultimate price in death and dismemberment? That maybe you exist in an artificial cocoon of the late 20th/early 21st century that can come crashing down if you keep, in your self centered ignorance, hammering at the foundations of its civilization? However, you refuse the notice the barbarian already awaiting just outside looking for an opportunity to erase over 500 years of progress.
#4
Wife has talked about this one over the decades and showed me various Chinese documentaries of the tribe. They don't take well to outsiders. All the land has been in the families for hundreds of years and it is more complicated then this suggests. The homes are not without men. The men are the brothers and fathers. The "sperm dornors" are the boyfriend(s). Usually one guy for decades or a lifetime. He lives with his sisters brothers and parents and supports the family home. Same with the girl.
Like a marriage held together for the sake of the kids, the U.S. and Turkey keep saying nice things in public, while privately fuming and slowly drifting apart.
The growing rift between the two countries stems from the intractable dispute over the U.S. plan to liberate Raqqa with a loose coalition of Syrian fighters comprising roughly 40 percent Kurdish YPG militia members, who Turkey considers terrorists.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has offered his military to drive the Islamic State out of its self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa, if only the U.S. will quit the Kurds.
Turkey regards the Kurdish Popular Protection Units, or YPG, as an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, which has been declared a terrorist group by both Turkey and the U.S.
But the Pentagon says the Kurds have proven to be the most battle-hardened and combat-effective force fighting ISIS in Syria, and it has no plans to abandon them now. Good!
Publicly the U.S. says it's still working with its NATO ally Turkey to find a role for it in the upcoming Raqqa offensive, but here's the unspoken truth: The U.S. has also judged that the Turkish military is not up to the task, based on its performance in northern Syria.
On Aug. 24, Turkey launched "Operation Euphrates Shield," sending tank and troops into Syria with the stated objective of pushing ISIS back 60 miles from its shared border, and the unstated goal of keeping Kurdish forces from controlling an unbroken swath of land stretching back into Iraq.
This past week, Turkey declared Euphrates Shield a success and ended the mission, a move Pentagon sources say was in fact largely because the U.S., Russia and Syria stymied the Turkish offensive from any further gains.
The Turks did take the northern Syrian towns of Jarablus, Dabiq and al-Bab from ISIS, but their plan to move against the Kurds in Manbij was foiled when the U.S. positioned Army Rangers just outside the city and declared Manbij was in no further need of liberation.
And the Turkish forces had also suffered heavy losses in the fight against ISIS in al-Bab, or as one Pentagon official put it, "They got their asses kicked."
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/02/2017 11:45 ||
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Link ||
[11130 views]
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[National Review] Horrifying!" inveighed an indignant Hillary Clinton at the last presidential debate, less than three weeks before Election Day. What so horrified her?
Donald Trump’s refusal to pledge that he would accept the legitimacy of the election. Trump speculated that the electoral process could be rigged. Until he saw how it played out, the Republican nominee said, he could not concede that the result would be on the up-and-up. Trump offered a three-part "rigging" claim.
There was the allegation for which he’d already been roundly derided: A foreign element could swing the election -- specifically, "millions" of ineligible voters, a reference to illegal immigrants, the bane of his campaign. Further, there was the gross one-sidedness of the media’s campaign coverage -- scathing when it came to him; between inattentive and fawning when it came to his opponent, whose considerable sins were airbrushed away. Finally, there was deep corruption: Clinton, he maintained, should not have been permitted to run given the significant evidence of felony misconduct in her mishandling of classified information.
Meanwhile, law-enforcement agencies of the Democratic administration bent over backwards to give her a pass, and congressional Democrats closed ranks around her -- conducting themselves in committee hearings more like her defense lawyers than investigators searching for the truth.
#2
A Guy walks into a store. He sees three brains on display. One is a Libertarian Brain, priced at $300. The second is a Republican Brain, priced at $275. The third is a Democrat Brain, priced at $5,000,000. The Guy asks the sales clerk, "Man, why does the Democrat brain cost so much more than the other two?" Clerk replies, "Well, sir, that brain has never been used”.
#5
The left knows that if they keep hammering out the nonsense the driveway voters will start to believe it. In polls millennials already believe Trump is an illegitimate president.
The only real response is to create a bunch of jobs and improve the economy the way he was before he got tripped up in the Health Care issues.
[The Hill] Billionaire Mark Cuban on Saturday went on a tweetstorm explaining his theory about President Trump's ties to Russia, concluding he doesn't think Trump was behind any collusion during last year's presidential race.
"No chance this is a DJT led conspiracy," Cuban wrote in a series of tweets, referring to Trump's initials. He argued that Trump "isn't detail oriented, organized or big picture enough" to pull off any such "conspiracy."
Instead, Cuban argued in a series of tweets that Russian President Vladimir Putin "recognized [Trump's] greed and took advantage by back channeling coordinated misinformation in an attempt to influence voters."
"Russians have made him a lot of money buying condos and investing in his buildings and hosting his beauty pageant," Cuban wrote of Trump. "That makes them his friends. He ignored their backgrounds. But that's not unusual. Starbucks takes anyone's money and so do most businesses including mine."
The Dallas Mavericks owner went on to argue that Trump wasn't thinking about Russian influence when he hired Paul Manafort as a top adviser to his campaign. Trump viewed it as a "win win," Cuban argued, with Manafort either helping Trump win the election or being good for future business deals with Russia if he lost.
Cuban theorized that Trump didn't stop to think that Manafort or other advisers who joined his campaign and who had ties to Russia were motivated by Moscow. Trump was thinking more like a businessman than a politician, Cuban argued.
[Daily Caller] Sifting through the tumultuous aftermath of President Donald Trump’s election, a former clinical psychologist steeped in understanding cultural Marxism, shares his observations on how Democrats are working to distract and delegitimatize Trump.
According to Tim Daughtry, author of "Waking the Sleeping Giant," our elections since 2010 demonstrate citizens want Washington to stop governing against the will of the people as it drives the nation towards liberal progressive socialism. The clear 2016 ballot box message, he says, was "change course, secure our borders, get rid of Obamacare, put in some free market reforms, get our economy going again" with this man, who has never held elective office.
Daughtry says America is clearly facing a crisis over the "consent of the governed" as citizens demand a responsive national government, just as the British turned from globalism of the European Union in their surprising Brexit vote last June. Trump’s inaugural address echoed this very theme as, to cheers, he promised to transfer power back to the citizen, from a small Washington elite.
"The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of the country. Their victories have not been your victories," Trump said, echoing his defense of the "forgotten man and woman" who elected him.
This civil war is very different than the last one. There are no cannons or cavalry charges. The left doesn’t want to secede. It wants to rule. Political conflicts become civil wars when one side refuses to accept the existing authority. The left has rejected all forms of authority that it doesn’t control.
The left has rejected the outcome of the last two presidential elections won by Republicans. It has rejected the judicial authority of the Supreme Court when it decisions don’t accord with its agenda. It rejects the legislative authority of Congress when it is not dominated by the left.
It rejected the Constitution so long ago that it hardly bears mentioning.
It was for total unilateral executive authority under Obama. And now it’s for states unilaterally deciding what laws they will follow. (As long as that involves defying immigration laws under Trump, not following them under Obama.) It was for the sacrosanct authority of the Senate when it held the majority. Then it decried the Senate as an outmoded institution when the Republicans took it over.
It was for Obama defying the orders of Federal judges, no matter how well grounded in existing law, and it is for Federal judges overriding any order by Trump on any grounds whatsoever. It was for Obama penalizing whistleblowers, but now undermining the government from within has become "patriotic".
There is no form of legal authority that the left accepts as a permanent institution. It only utilizes forms of authority selectively when it controls them. But when government officials refuse the orders of the duly elected government because their allegiance is to an ideology whose agenda is in conflict with the President and Congress, that’s not activism, protest, politics or civil disobedience; it’s treason.
After losing Congress, the left consolidated its authority in the White House. After losing the White House, the left shifted its center of authority to Federal judges and unelected government officials. Each defeat led the radicalized Democrats to relocate from more democratic to less democratic institutions.
This isn’t just hypocrisy. That’s a common political sin. Hypocrites maneuver within the system. The left has no allegiance to the system. It accepts no laws other than those dictated by its ideology.
Democrats have become radicalized by the left. This doesn’t just mean that they pursue all sorts of bad policies. It means that their first and foremost allegiance is to an ideology, not the Constitution, not our country or our system of government. All of those are only to be used as vehicles for their ideology.
#3
If you visit Washington, you can go to the National Archives and visit this room, where the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are on display. The room is almost cold in the interest of preserving the documents, and the atmosphere communicates that you have just entered the political Holy of Holies of the United States of America. As you walk further down the Mall, and across the river to Arlington, you are continually reminded that the words on those faded documents have repeatedly been affirmed by the blood of brave Americans.
The left has nothing like this. And what's worse for them is that the left no longer has, if they ever did have, the intellectual machinery to produce anything like the Constitution. The best they can do is to personally attack the founders, to distort their words, and to prevent our children from learning about them. But that's just ankle-biting born of intellectual poverty.
What the left has produced is The Narrative, an ill-defined set of spiritual and intellectual chains for those stupid enough to wear them. But the Narrative in turn depends on the Rainbow Coalition, which is an illusion. The components of the Coalition have nothing in common other than the idea that the power traditionally ascribed to white male Americans should be theirs instead. You must not ask what black Southern Baptists really think about gay marriage, or what Catholic Hispanics think abut abortion.
But the real bone in the throat of the Narrative and the Rainbow Coalition is Islam. Some Islamics assimilate quite well, and others are content to bide their time. But if Islam has its way, in the long run our hyper-offended feminists are going to have their faces slapped off and our married gays are going to be defenestrated, possibly by the poor refugee children who now tug at our heartstrings.
(sorry -- that got more preachy than I wanted)
Posted by: Matt ||
04/02/2017 11:40 Comments ||
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#4
Preach on Matt, it needs to be said, and often. The alternative is Genocide by Government.
[DAWN] WITH Pakistain’s already dismal record in the education sector, the country scarcely needed any more challenges on this front, but that is exactly what years of militancy have represented. However, a clean conscience makes a soft pillow... violent bandidosLions of Islam are not the only ones culpable in the matter, a fact that a new report by Human Rights Watch recognises. Dreams Turned into Nightmares: Attacks on Students, Teachers and Schools in Pakistain examines the issue in a more holistic way -- even though researchers could not gain access to Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... , ironically for security reasons. According to Global Terrorism Database figures that the HRW cites in its report, during the period between 2007 and 2015, there were 867 attacks on educational institutions, resulting in 392 fatalities and 724 injuries. Based on interviews with students, teachers and parents, the report highlights serious failures on the part of the provincial authorities over the course of the decade between January 2007 and October 2016. Their policy of outsourcing security responsibilities to school authorities has led to financial hardship for the administrations of academic institutions and contributed to the disturbing trend of arming teachers, while criminal cases have been filed against principals for inadequate security measures. The report also includes within its scope the occupation of educational institutions by security forces (in KP and Sindh), political groups and criminal elements. In Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... , there was a time when some schools in parts of Lyari ...one of the eighteen constituent towns of the city of Karachi. It is the smallest town by area in the city but also the most densely populated. Lyari has few schools, substandard hospitals, a poor water system, limited infrastructure, and broken roads. It is a stronghold of ruling Pakistan Peoples Party. Ubiquitous gang activity and a thriving narcotics industry make Lyari one of the most disturbed places in Karachi, which is really saying a lot.... were turned into MQM sector offices while many others in the area were destroyed or occupied by gangsters.
The report points to the lack of reliable national data on school attacks; this is a critical gap in knowledge which leaves the government ill-equipped to respond to them adequately or institute protective measures. Given it was a horrific attack on a school, APS Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. -- in which more than 140 were slaughtered, including students, teachers and staff -- that proved to be the catalyst for the National Action Plan, it is surprising that none of its 20 points pertains to the protection of education. That oversight should be addressed with the attention it deserves, especially to girls’ education, which has suffered disproportionate harm. Priority should be given to setting up rapid response units -- that can be deployed in the event of an attack on a school -- and to rebuilding destroyed or damaged infrastructure, reclaiming occupied school buildings, and providing psychosocial support to students who have suffered violence. That is one way to secure this country’s future.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/02/2017 00:00 ||
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[Washington Examiner] A new study of high school seniors from the Council of Contemporary Families is raising eyebrows this week.
The results of the study, which analyzes the results of a survey that's tracked the opinions of high school seniors' for 40 years, suggest that young people are increasingly likely to support traditional gender roles in the home -- a finding that seems surprising given society's increasingly progressive outlook on gender.
Reporting on their findings, the authors wrote, "After becoming more egalitarian for almost twenty years, high school seniors' thinking about a husband's authority and divisions of labor at home has since become substantially more traditional."
#4
I can't figure out why feminists insist on taking the male role. It's as if they think the female role is less important. If you can't have kids for whatever reason that's one thing, but if you do, raising them right is the bedrock of civilization.
#6
Many are lost but some realize the destructive path the confused have taken. Many of their friends have died or are dying. Parents and their problems are seen and they want nothing to do with them. Every vice. Anger, physical and mental destruction. I see it all the time. The breakdown of the family has many costs. Rehab is no more. 30 day supply to get you by.
#8
It's almost as if a minuscule portion of the population gets the attention, while the vast majority carry on with their lives.
Seriously -- "transgenders" are less than 1% of the population. Those with actual biological conditions (instead of those who have emotional issues) are on the order of one in ten million. For this we have to reorder society?
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
04/02/2017 17:03 Comments ||
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#9
A significant percentage of the herd will self-cull.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/02/2017 19:38 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Victory Girls] Devin Nunes is a patient man. The House Intelligence Committee Chairman from California knew about the subject matter of Trump’s infamous "wiretapping" tweet since January, but it was only recently that he was able to see proof of this surveillance. We are getting much closer to the source of the leaks and who unmasked private individuals. Be like Nunes. Be patient.
Like a marriage held together for the sake of the kids, the U.S. and Turkey keep saying nice things in public, while privately fuming and slowly drifting apart.
[National Review] Horrifying!" inveighed an indignant Hillary Clinton at the last presidential debate, less than three weeks before Election Day. What so horrified her? 
[DAWN] WITH Pakistain’s already dismal record in the education sector, the country scarcely needed any more challenges on this front, but that is exactly what years of militancy have represented. 
[Washington Examiner] A new study of high school seniors from the Council of Contemporary Families is raising eyebrows this week.
