monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I'm am so fed up with the outright lies tRump persistently spews and his Trumplydites repeat as if it were factual. His idiot army of minions will swallow it, hook, line, and sinker!

We will note here the happy convenience of this definition which identifies a certain mental or intellectual failing but which, axiomatically, relegates it to only one side of the political spectrum.

And who could or would argue with this attribution of the mental failing to liberals uniquely? Certainly not the Dixie Chicks whose speech rights were loudly celebrated by conservative Americans in keeping with their long-standing traditions of prizing an open mind and wide-ranging reflections/criticisms on broadly held cultural values.

Or, in another obvious example proving the discernment evident in this definition, we can cite the common habit on the right to fully acknowledge the murderous violence that marks Christian and Anglo-Saxon history when ever the subject of Muslim history enters a conversation.

This is a long, long list but let's just take one more, as Finn deserves validation for clearness in thought. Any time a conservative might find himself or herself in debate with another who is from a different country and hears this stranger make criticism of America, there is no tendency in the American conservative to reject such criticism. He or she will listen attentively, weight the matters with care and then politely make a thoughtful and educated rejoinder. Totally absent in the conservative's mind will be any felt need to insist on America's superiority over the nation this stranger is from and/or any other nation which has existed in the Earth's rich past.

If you read something today, this would be a smart choice. Paul Walman - Democrats Unsolvable Media Problem

Manafort to be indicted! News? Only that it is now out in the open.

Some people disagreed with what Dixie Chicks said, where and when they said it. Lots of similar disagreement fills these pages.

No serious person tried to bring suit that they shouldn't be allowed to criticize the president.

As it should be.

Which is why the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of seven Twitter users who say their 1st Amendment rights were violated after they were blocked from reading Trump’s personal account (@realDonaldTrump, not the official @POTUS account) after criticizing him or his policies.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tn-trump-twitter-lawsuit-20170711-story.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41313104

Article here

Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon
April 16, 2016
By Robert Parry

If there were any doubts that Hillary Clinton favors a neoconservative foreign policy, her performance at Thursday’s debate should have laid them to rest. In every meaningful sense, she is a neocon and – if she becomes President – Americans should expect more global tensions and conflicts in pursuit of the neocons’ signature goal of “regime change” in countries that get in their way.

Beyond sharing this neocon “regime change” obsession, former Secretary of State Clinton also talks like a neocon. One of their trademark skills is to use propaganda or “perception management” to demonize their targets and to romanticize their allies, what is called “gluing white hats” on their side and “gluing black hats” on the other.


So, in defending her role in the Libyan “regime change,” Clinton called the slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi “genocidal” though that is a gross exaggeration of Gaddafi’s efforts to beat back Islamic militants in 2011. But her approach fits with what the neocons do. They realize that almost no one will dare challenge such a characterization because to do so opens you to accusations of being a “Gaddafi apologist.”

Similarly, before the Iraq War, the neocons knew that they could level pretty much any charge against Saddam Hussein no matter how false or absurd, knowing that it would go uncontested in mainstream political and media circles. No one wanted to be a “Saddam apologist.”

Clinton, like the neocons, also shows selective humanitarian outrage. For instance, she laments the suffering of Israelis under crude (almost never lethal) rocket fire from Gaza but shows next to no sympathy for Palestinians being slaughtered by sophisticated (highly lethal) Israeli missiles and bombs.

She talks about the need for “safe zones” or “no-fly zones” for Syrians opposed to another demonized enemy, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, but not for the people of Gaza who face the wrath of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Yes, I do still support a no-fly zone [in Syria] because I think we need to put in safe havens for those poor Syrians who are fleeing both Assad and ISIS and have some place that they can be safe,” Clinton said. But she showed no such empathy for Palestinians defenseless against Israel’s “mowing the grass” operations against men, women and children trapped in Gaza.

In Clinton’s (and the neocons’) worldview, the Israelis are the aggrieved victims and the Palestinians the heartless aggressors. Referring to the Gaza rocket fire, she said: “I can tell you right now I have been there with Israeli officials going back more than 25 years that they do not seek this kind of attacks. They do not invite the rockets raining down on their towns and villages. They do not believe that there should be a constant incitement by Hamas aided and abetted by Iran against Israel. …

“So, I don’t know how you run a country when you are under constant threat, terrorist attack, rockets coming at you. You have a right to defend yourself.”

(end quote)

The article continues, but that's enough for most people. Her foreign policy decisions (were they even her's?) while in the sec of state role alone were enough for most thinking people to see where her presidency would lead the nation. She lied to her president about her intentions.

Remember Kids, only you can prevent a Clinton discussion.

This is so disgusting. On so many levels.

For self-aggrandisement, former presidents, including GW, who took the nation to war on trumped-up pretenses, got a library named after him.

For every president since Herbert Hoover, presidential libraries have been established in each president's home state. Papers, documents etc of presidents before Hoover are in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.

That ******* arsehole and his VP should be breaking rocks in the penn.

He has to finally have his Mussolini photo op.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41312834

What is disgusting, is that he could be president to begin with.

You might need a bit of a history lesson, my friend. Al Qa'ida was the creation of the CIA during cold war games in Afghanistan. They've been on the payroll ever since. A simple google search along those lines is all you need to complete your education on the topic.

Gross oversimplification but there are lessons there to be learned about the worldwide arms trade. Arming "freedom fighters" is great — until they start shooting at you.

Neoconservative realpolitik.

I think we should've learned our lesson, but we are still handing lots of guns to Bob, who's using them against the Freds, who are fighting with the artillery we sold them in the 90s.

And, yes, we threw a summer camp for the Freds and taught them everything we know.

Well, not everything, but those Stinger missiles, that might have been a mistake.