COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Sunday, March 06, 2016

“DUMP the HUMP” - A lesson From President Hubert Humphrey

Democrats have their history wrong — and are about to make a grievous mistake 

Lesson of 1972 isn't that progressive nominees lose. Dems lose when they are out of step with voters, like Hillary 

    Democrats have their history wrong -- and are about to make a grievous mistake
    This election cycle, Democratic Party leaders are pleading with younger voters to heed the lessons of history. Echoing George Santayana’s famous warning: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” they urge millennials to take a close look at what happened to Democrats in 1972. That was the year, they explain, that the Democratic Party made a monumental blunder at its national convention by empowering young people, women and minorities at the expense of party elites. The result was the nomination of George McGovern, a candidate whose ideas were so radical that they guaranteed a landslide victory for Richard Nixon.

    Leaving aside whether such an interpretation of 1972 is accurate, there is a more fundamental issue here.  What if pundits and Democratic Party leaders are focusing on the wrong election?  What if the lessons that history has for us are to be found not in 1972 but in 1968?  What if we are heeding the absolutely wrong warnings?

    Much like 2016, the 1968 election was supposed to be a coronation. Lyndon Johnson had won the White House four years earlier with one of the landslide victories of the 20th century.  Few doubted he would be reelected, and no establishment politician even considered challenging Johnson for the nomination.  But also like 2016, a relatively obscure senator felt that there had to be a candidate in the race who would bring up issues that were in real danger of being ignored. In 1968 that senator was Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota and the issue was the Vietnam War.

    Political pundits dismissed McCarthy as a fringe candidate who had absolutely no chance of winning. But McCarthy’s campaign galvanized young people. An army of volunteers descended upon New Hampshire.  Hippies, who a few weeks earlier had been wearing jeans and long hair, decided to “Get Clean for Gene.” Young men shaved their beards, young women donned dresses and all began going door to door throughout the Granite State.

    McCarthy did not win New Hampshire but he took 20 of the 24 delegates, a result that sent shockwaves through the political establishment. Four days later Robert Kennedy, who had earlier declined to run because he assumed the election belonged to Johnson, threw his hat into the ring.  Two weeks after that in an absolutely astounding turnaround of events, the inevitable front-runner Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the race.  Much like 2016, “inevitability” was not quite as inevitable as everyone had initially assumed.

    With Johnson’s departure, the Democrats needed an establishment candidate and looked to Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey. Throughout April and May, as Kennedy and McCarthy battled for votes in the primaries, Humphrey followed a different strategy. Well aware that the majority of delegates in 1968 were not going to be selected by voters but by the party elite in the non-primary states, he focused his efforts on wooing establishment politicians. By doing so Humphrey managed to build a formidable delegate lead much like Hillary Clinton is trying to do by locking in Super Delegates, today’s version of non-elected delegates chosen by party leaders.

    When the Democrats met in Chicago late in the summer of 1968, the field had been tragically narrowed two and a half months earlier with the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Only two candidates remained, Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy. Humphrey had not won a single primary. Indeed, his primary total was a minuscule 161,143 votes. But he controlled the most delegates.  By contrast, McCarthy had received 2,914,933 primary votes, almost 20 times the number that Humphrey could claim.  Yet, by the time the balloons had settled onto the convention floor, a Democratic Party controlled by machine politicians and union leaders had chosen Hubert Humphrey as the Democratic nominee.

    As the race for the White House entered its final phase, a war-weary electorate, clearly frustrated by the status quo, had a choice.  They could go with the establishment Democrat, who promised to continue Johnson’s policies, or they could elect a Republican, who had long ago mastered the sorts of campaign strategies that are currently propelling Donald Trump’s campaign. Much like Trump, Richard Nixon offered solutions without providing specifics, telling voters that he had a “secret plan” to “end the war but win the peace” in Vietnam. And while Nixon did not target Mexicans or Muslims, he did promise to restore law and order by cracking down on entitled and unruly young people demonstrating on the nation’s campuses and black people taking to the streets in urban neighborhoods. When the results came in, Nixon had edged past Humphrey in the popular vote and had a comfortable margin in the Electoral College.




    Looking at 1968, it would seem the lesson that history has for us is that Democrats need to be really careful about assuming that the establishment candidate is the key to electoral victory. But what about 1972? Isn’t the lesson of that election that Democrats suffer their most devastating losses when they run candidates who speak to the party’s progressive base.

    Actually, no. The lesson of 1972 is something quite different. To begin with, McGovern was not a particularly strong candidate. He had secured the nomination with only a quarter of the primary votes.  The unions refused to work for him. And he ran a poor campaign. Even more significant, he was going up against a sitting president, Richard Nixon, who had brought troop levels in Vietnam down from almost half a million to around 30,000, had eased Cold War tensions by going to China and had stabilized the economy, at least temporarily, by implementing wage and price controls. Nixon would have been tough to beat under any circumstances, and McGovern was not the candidate to do it.
    But the real lesson that McGovern’s defeat teaches us is not the dangers of progressivism so much as the dangers of being out of step with the electorate. Every few decades, the existing political order is completely overturned and in the upheaval a new order emerges.  This happened in the 1930s, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced what has been called the “Republican Ascendancy” with his New Deal Coalition. It happened again in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the rise of the right replaced the liberalism of the New Deal.

    We are due for another upheaval and there are indications that we are actually in the middle of one right now. If that is the case, then what the election of 1972 teaches us is not that McGovern was too liberal for voters but that he was too out of step. He was trying to run as a ’60s liberal when the electorate had moved well beyond the ’60s, just as Clinton is running as a ’90s triangulating liberal when voters are hungry for change.

    History has some important lessons to teach.  They are just not the one that pundits and establishment politicians are claiming.

    77 comments:

    1. Ah, melodious stinging words from The Lady's lips to my ears....

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    2. Here Doug, something to counter your article (written by a Trump employee) praising his golf prowess (right up with Kim Jong-il).

      "Does Donald Trump cheat at golf? A Washington Post investigation.

      One morning in the mid-1990s, Mark Mulvoy was on the sixth hole of Long Island’s Garden City Golf Club with Donald Trump when the skies opened, and they ducked for cover under a nearby awning. The rain let up a few moments later, and Mulvoy, then the managing editor of Sports Illustrated, returned to the green. When he got there, he found a ball 10 feet from the pin that he didn’t remember seeing before the storm.

      “Who the hell’s ball is this?” he said.

      “That’s me,” the real estate mogul said, according to Mulvoy.

      “Donald, give me a f---ing break,” Mulvoy recalls telling him. “You’ve been hacking away in the . . . weeds all day. You do not lie there.”

      “Ahh, the guys I play with cheat all the time,” he recalls Trump replying. “I have to cheat just to keep up with them.”

      It’s a story that the current Republican front-runner hotly denies. “I don’t even know who he is,” Trump said when asked about Mulvoy’s account.“I don’t drop balls, I don’t move balls. I don’t need to.”

      But just as Trump has emerged as a national phenomenon by tearing up the rule book of electoral politics, it appears that the mega-developer’s willingness to bend the rules may apply to his philosophy of the links as well.

      The Donald is known for describing himself as a man of unbridled accomplishment and success in virtually every area he’s attempted, and his golf game has long been one of his most highly self-touted skills.

      [Why does everyone call Donald Trump ‘The Donald’? It’s an interesting story.]

      “I’ve played a lot, and I’ve played well,” he said. “There’s very few people that can beat me in golf.” On multiple occasions during his campaign, he has let voters know that he “killed” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) when the two squared off this year. “I could play him a thousand times and never lose to him,” he said. And by all accounts, Trump is a very good golfer. Just maybe not as good as he says he is.


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      1. “The worst celebrity golf cheat?” the rock star Alice Cooper said in a 2012 interview with Q magazine. “I wish I could tell you that. It would be a shocker. I played with Donald Trump one time. That’s all I’m going to say.” (“I’ve never played with Alice Cooper,” Trump said. “That’s a terrible thing to say about people, especially me.”)

        “Golf is like bicycle shorts: It can reveal a lot about a guy,” said Rick Reilly, the sportswriter who hit the links with Trump for his 2004 book “Who’s Your Caddy?” — in which Reilly lugged clubs for several of the world’s best golfers and VIP amateurs.

        As for Trump? “When it comes to cheating, he’s an 11 on a scale of one to 10,” Reilly said.

        Reilly told The Washington Post about an afternoon when Trump wrote down scores he didn’t actually achieve on his scorecard, conceded putts to himself by raking the ball into the hole with his putter rather than striking it properly (“He rakes like my gardener!”), and even called a gimme — something a player might claim for a two-foot putt — on what should have been a chip shot.

        “He took the world’s first gimme chip-in,” Reilly said. At one point, Trump, after taking a number of second shots, told Reilly to “make sure you write that I play my first ball. You don’t get a second ball in life.” In life, it may or may not be true that a person gets a second chance; and yet, as Reilly wrote, on holes 1, 13 and 17, Trump did indeed get a second ball.

        Trump disputes Reilly’s entire story as well: “I always thought he was a terrible writer,” he said. “I absolutely killed him, and he wrote very inaccurately. I would say that he’s a very dishonest writer. . . . I never took a gimme chip shot. . . . I don’t do gimme chip shots. If I asked his approval, that’s not cheating, number one. Number two, I never took one.”

        But Reilly noted something else about playing with Trump that is echoed by others who have golfed with him: He had an amazing time. Trump played with confidence and bravado, he tipped the caddies, he gave great pointers that helped his comrades with problem swings. So what if he cheats? The guy is a lot of fun!

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      2. “It’s his limo ride, his golf course. The guy paid for lunch — what are you going to do?” Reilly said. “He’s exhausting, but I want to be clear: I really liked him. It was just like being in a crazy carnival for a day. Though I’m not sure it would be so much fun when it starts to count.”

        Tony Kornheiser of ESPN played with Trump in 2008 and said in an e-mail that Trump “couldn’t have been more gracious or more fun.” Fox News anchor Bret Baier, who recently went toe-to-toe with Trump at the first debate, has played with the real estate mogul and said he was actually very nice when separated from a television camera.

        [Never mind the Megyn Kelly and Jorge Ramos clashes. Donald Trump is the most media-friendly candidate.]

        Jonathan Carr spent the 2007 and 2008 golf seasons caddying at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. He remembers a gregarious club owner who treated the caddies with the utmost respect, a man who, despite lacking a “pristine” golf swing, played with a high level of skill and an even higher level of confidence. Carr never saw Trump come close to bending the rules, although he said everyone who caddied there had heard of that reputation.

        “The caddies would say, ‘If I get on his bag, I’m going to make sure he always has a good lie,’ ” Carr said, meaning that even if Trump shanked a ball, the caddies would do what they could to place it on the fairway.And judging by Trump’s own account, he’s had plenty of good lies. He said he holds the amateur record on his own golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla., a 66. In a story about celebrity golf handicaps, Forbes reported that his is a 4 but noted they have yet to see “a real signed scorecard.”

        From a guy who once went on a mission to get President Obama to release his birth certificate, this raises some eyebrows. Ironically, Trump had only nice things to say about the president when it came to his golf game.

        “His swing looks like it’s coming along beautifully. His game looks much better,” he told The Post. “I’d love to play him for the presidency.”

        Not so much for one of his main opponents, former Florida governor Jeb Bush: “I’d love to play Jeb for the presidency,” he said, before adding: “That would be even easier than running against him in politics.”

        Trump has shown that his candidacy is immune to the types of attacks that can bring down normal Republican candidates. He’s on record mocking a war hero and praising House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), he has advocated for higher taxes, donated to Democrats and called for single-payer health care. None of that has mattered. But does his golf history provide opponents with the opening they need?

        “FACT: Former House speaker Will Weatherford said ‘he did not remember @realDonaldTrump shooting 72,’ ” Danny Diaz, Jeb Bush’s campaign manager, tweeted recently.

        But perhaps even this attack could backfire. The only other person that Reilly remembers cheating as much as Trump? None other than Bill Clinton.

        Maybe Trump’s cheating is his most presidential move yet."

        https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/does-donald-trump-cheat-at-golf-a-washington-post-investigation/2015/09/02/f8a940b2-50c4-11e5-9812-92d5948a40f8_story.html

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      3. His golf course, Ash, his rules.

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      4. "A Washington Post investigation."
        ===
        I'd take Jerry Rice's word over The Washington Post.

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    3. Romney won't rule out accepting nomination at contested convention...DRUDGE


      Romney must have his celestial underwear tucked in too tight.

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    4. You're overlooking the fact that Hillary has received Many more votes than Bernie has, and has earned about 150% More Pledged Delegates than Bernie.

      Also, the instructive election was in '84 when Mondale "Promised" one and all that he would Raise their taxes. He won his home state (Minnesota,) and Wash. D.C.

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    5. DUMP THE HUMP :: DITCH THE BITCH

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    6. Replies
      1. Practice on "Madame President." :)

        Delete
      2. Practice on Prisoner Number 3893475

        Cell Block D

        Delete


      3. You mean Señora Presidenta, don't you amigo?

        Seeing as how you are promoting that the US should be following the Argentine model.

        {;-)

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      4. :) Ah, whut the heck; them Argentinians ain't All bad. :)

        Delete

      5. Check out how the Party of Señora Presidenta went down in flames, in the course of term, and the election to replace her ...

        In 2013 ...
        The Kirchner family is not used to losing.

        But this Sunday, during Argentina's mid-term elections, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her Victory Party suffered their worst defeat since she and her late husband, Nestor, swept to power in 2003.

        To put it in perspective, since 2011 (when Cristina was re-elected after her husband's death saddened the nation) The Victory Party has lost 4 million votes, according to Clarin.

        Back then, Kirchnerism — as the party's political ideology is known — garnered 52% of the country's support. In just two years that number has dwindled to 30% (around 6.8 million votes) as opposition parties around the country have picked up steam, even in areas once considered Kirchner strongholds.


        http://www.businessinsider.com/argentinas-victory-party-midterm-2013-8

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      6. Then, when Señora Presidenta could not run for a third term, because she could not get their Constitution amended after the 2013 trouncing ...

        The ballotage was held on November 22. Daniel Scioli accepted his defeat when 70% of the votes were counted; the provisional results were 53% and 47% at that moment. The distance between both candidates slowly reduced in the following hours, leading to a victory of a smaller margin for Macri than most exit polls suggested. Nevertheless, his victory has ended the 12-year rule of Kirchnerism in the country.
        .

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_general_election,_2015

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    7. Trump's original family name was Drumpf.

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      1. Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson now supports a candidate who he claims is not a 'natural born' US citizen.
        In fact none of the top three GOP candidates, Trump, Cruz or Rubio qualify under the definition promoted by the bobal, "Counterfeit Bob".

        Beyond funny, the stuff he tries to make us believe

        Delete

    8. Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson cannot find us a single article from the "American Stinker" denouncing the GOP for not providing a real, honest 'natural born' citizen in the top tier candidates.

      What a total piece of shit he and his primary source are proving to b, after there were dozens of such posts, made in 2008, when it was a American born Black Man that they claimed was not qualified, Constitutionally.

      Ted Cruz was born in Canada, his father Cuban born.
      Neither of Marco Rubio parents were born in the US.
      Donald Trump's mother, a foreign immigrant.

      Come babal head, tell us none of the Republican contenders are qualified, Constitutionally.

      ReplyDelete
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      1. In Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson's world view, expressed by the "American Stinker", it was only black candidate who is not Constitutionally qualified for the Oval Office.

        The only bobal head on the blog, "Counterfeit Bob", who claims to be from that US neo-Nazi strong hold, the state of Idaho.

        Delete
      2. They gotta live somewhere, they got kicked outta Anaheim:

        The Ku Klux Klan's ugly, violent history in Anaheim, CA

        http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-the-ku-klux-klan-ugly-violent-history-in-anaheim-20160227-story.html

        ===

        Besides, it's gettin dangerous in Anaheim:

        Ku Klux Klan rally in Anaheim erupts in violence; 3 are stabbed and 13 arrested

        http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-klan-rally-in-anaheim-erupts-in-violence-one-man-stabbed-20160227-story.html

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    9. Trump Is The GOP's Frankenstein Monster! Senator Harry Reid
      ...Harry, OTOH, is looking just fine.

      https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gop%27s+frankenstein+monster
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukctzz9kJVA

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      1. Here we are, again, Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson, more evidence that the Kurds never needed US troops to keep them safe and secure.
        They were and remain more than capable of doing it themselves, with a little Close Air Support.

        06 March 2016
        Kurdish Fighters Continue to Smash ISIS, Al-Nusra Terrorists in Aleppo


        The Kurdish fighters struck the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra fighters' concentration centers near Tal al-Shaqif and a road towards Castello, which ended in the killing or wounding of several militants and destruction of their military vehicles and equipment.

        On Saturday, the ISIS attempts to capture part of a strategic road connecting Hama to Aleppo were fended off by the Syrian Army troops.

        The ISIL attacked on the positions of the Syrian army along Ithriya-Khanaser road near the village of Sheikh Hillal to capture the supplying line but they failed.

        The army later closed the road and did not permit any vehicle to pass.

        A few hours later the Syrian government force pushed the militants back and reopened the road.

        The YPG Kurds have recently bonded with the Damascus government.
        The Syrian army sent several arms cargoes to the YPG troops in the Northeastern province of Hasaka and trained the first group of Kurdish volunteer forces in the provincial capital city of Hasaka last month.

        The SDF that is comprised of mainly Kurdish fighters as well as a few hundred Syrian Arab dissident forces have received trainings from the US and have been provided with scanty US-coalition air support in their battles in Raqqa province in Northeastern Syria; but in Northern and Northwestern battlefronts, they have been operating alongside the YPG and received the Russian air backup in their Aleppo wars that started with the conquest of Tishrin Dam on the Euphrates early in February.

        Assisted by the Syrian army - that has along with popular forces and Hezbollah conquered almost all militant-held regions in Eastern, Southern, Western and Northwestern Aleppo province - and Russian air support, the Kurdish forces fighting against the terrorists in North-Northeast Aleppo province have been making striking advances against the Al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and ISIS terrorists in February.



        http://en.alalam.ir/news/1796009

        The Russians are implementing the "Rat Doctrine" and the doctrine is succeeding in defeating the Islamic State. With local forces, not US troops, providing the 'boots on the ground'.

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      2. .

        :o)

        You are hilarious, rat.

        .

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    11. ISIS Terrorists Suffer Heavy Losses under Syrian Army Artillery Shelling in Deir Ezzor -

      The Syrian Army’s artillery units opened heavy fire at the ISIS terrorists’ positions in different parts of the Eastern province of Deir Ezzor, leaving tens of the terrorists dead or wounded.

      The Syrian artillery units shelled the ISIL concentration centers and lines of defense in the villgaes of al-Baqaliyeh, Ayyash and Jafreh and some parts of the neighborhoods of al-Haweiqa, al-Jabileh and al-Sina'ah in Deir Ezzur city, which not only inflicted a major death toll on the terrorists but also damaged their military hardware in large scale.

      Reports said on Saturday that over 60 ISIL militants, including several non-Syrians, were killed after their attempts to prevail the government forces' defense lines in Deir Ezzur were thwarted by the Syrian Army.

      The Syrian Army fended off the ISIL attacks in Deir Ezzur airbase in the last 48 hours, which ended in the killing of many terrorists, including foreign nationals.

      The Syrian Armed Forces killed over 60 ISIL fighters in the last 48 hours at the Deir Ezzur Military Airport, and forced the ISIL to retreat from al-Alam Farms (launching point for their attack).

      Terrorists from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Pakistan, and Chechnya were among the ISIL killed members in Deir Ezzur airbase. The Syrian Armed Forces are now in full control of the Deir Ezzur Military Airport’s Southern perimeter after recapturing the al-Alam Farms.


      - See more at: http://en.alalam.ir/news/1796119

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    12. ISIS Lines Collapsing as Syrian Army Closes in on Palmyra, Raqqa

      With the ceasefire largely holding, the Syrian Army and its allies can now focus on destroying ISIS


      With the fragile ceasefire largely holding, the Syrian army and its allies have driven eastward into ISIS-held territory. And they've made significant gains in the last week:

      On Friday morning in the southeastern countryside of the Homs Governorate, the Syrian Arab Army’s 120th Brigade of the 2nd Division – in close coordination with the National Defense Forces (NDF), Liwaa Suqour Al-Sham (Desert Hawks Brigade), and Dara’ Qalamoun (Qalamoun Shield) – continued their advance towards the strategic city of Quraytayn, striking the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham’s (ISIS) positions at the important hilltop of Tal Quraytayn.

      ISIS is now facing attacks on at least 3 fronts:

      In the southeast, the Syrian army is also closing in on the ancient city of Palmyra:

      While the Russian were busy hitting ISIS positions in eastern Homs, the Syrian Arab Army’s 67th Brigade of the 18th Tank Division was zeroing in on the ancient city of Palmyra, where they attempting to advance to from two different flanks.

      The Syrian Arab Army’s 67th Brigade – in close coordination with Liwaa Suqour Al-Sahra (Desert Hawks) – continued their advance inside Al-Dawa in the Palmyra countryside, seizing almost the entire village after a violent battle with ISIS. Meanwhile, to the northeast of Al-Dawa, the Desert Hawks and Panther Forces imposed full control over the small hilltop of Tal Halawa near the Ancient Palmyra Quarries.


      This map shows just how close they are: http://russia-insider.com/sites/insider/files/styles/1200xauto/public/palmyra_0.png?itok=5hStcvCn


      Of course, seizing the Caliphate's "capital" of Raqqa is still the end goal, and would have tremendous symbolic value for Assad and his allies:

      [G]overnment forces have advanced along the M45-highway (Hama to Raqqah) and reached the western fringes of ar-Raqqah province while also completely repelling the ISIS offensive which had the government supply route to Aleppo cut last week. Meanwhile, Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have taken firm control of the northern region of the ar-Raqqah governorate. Last year, Kurdish forces won a last-minute battle against ISIS at Kobane city. Moreover, the YPG seized upon vital momentum and remarkably captured the entire Turkish-Syrian border area which stretches from ar-Raqqah to Hasakah together with hundreds of ISIS-held villages.


      A map of the advance on Raqqa: http://russia-insider.com/sites/insider/files/styles/1200xauto/public/Raqqah-Map_0.jpg?itok=1bOOJNzB

      Russian airstrikes have been critical to the rapid advance. And speed is of the essence: As long as ISIS remains a serious threat in Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia can use it as an excuse to "intervene."


      http://russia-insider.com/en/isis-lines-collapsing-syrian-army-closes-raqqa/ri13187

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    13. Just watched the last part of Clinton/Sanders debate. Bernie cleaned her clock.

      ReplyDelete
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      1. You must have missed the part where he Voted. Against. The. Auto. Bailout.

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      2. Is Rufus a Hillary voter now?

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    14. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    16. Were we to decrease involvement in Iraq, we should expect Shiite militias, Hezbollah, and the Baghdad and Tehran governments to increase the brutality of fighting against Sunni rebels. This is unfortunate, especially for civilians.

      But, the U.S. simply does not have the wherewithal to provide security to every part of the globe. Our half-measures actually make security worse for both them and us.

      The various Sunni rebel factions, including ISIS, al-Nusra, and the so-called moderates, would draw closer and fight harder. More Sunni rebels in Iraq would go underground, fighting as insurgents that hold no territory.


      Rebels and Regimes

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      1. Almost sounds like we need another Sunni strong-man in charge.

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      2. We need to make greater use of 'the rat doctrine' to win this thing.

        After all, it worked in Vietnam.

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      3. After all, General 'Memorial Day' rat'sass run 'em out of Iraq by Memorial Day of last year, just like he promised.

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    17. DON'T UNDERESTIMATE DONALD - HE WILL WIN

      Conrad Black


      http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/conrad-black-dont-underestimate-donald-he-will-win

      Really good long article. The Donald had been doing polling before he jumped into the ring. He knew what Americans were feeling, and what they wanted to hear. He acted accordingly and very well might go all the way.

      The Donald 'ain't no dummy' as my father used to say.

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      1. Donald Trump’s research revealed that the people wanted someone who was not complicit in these failures and who had built and run something. Washington, Jackson, the Harrisons, Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and others had risen as military heroes, though some of them had had some political exposure. Jefferson and Wilson were known as intellectuals, Madison as chief author of the Constitution, and Monroe and John Quincy Adams as international statesmen. What is called for now is a clean and decisive break from the personalities and techniques of the recent past. Donald Trump doesn’t remind anyone of the presidents just mentioned, but he elicited a surge of public support by a novel, almost Vaudeville, routine as an educated billionaire denouncing the political leadership of the country in Archie Bunker blue-collar terms.

        Last (Super) Tuesday, he completed the preliminary takeover of the Republican Party. He demonstrated his hold on the angry, the fearful, and the ashamed by passing the double test: he had held no elective office, but he was a worldly man who knew how to make the system work and rebuild American strength and public contentment. All the other candidates in both parties were vieux jeu, passe. Only a few of the governors (Bush, Christie, and Kasich) had run anything successfully, none of them had built anything, and all were up to their eyeballs in the sleazy American political system — long reduced to a garish and corrupt log-rolling game of spin-artists, lobbyists, and influence-peddlers. Bernie Sanders gets a pass, but he is an undischarged Marxist, and while many of his attacks on the incumbent system and personnel have merit, his policy prescriptions are unacceptable to 90 per cent of Americans.

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    18. Donald Trump: Mean-Spirited GOP Won’t Win Elections
      26 Nov 2012
      The Republican Party will continue to lose presidential elections if it comes across as mean-spirited and unwelcoming toward people of color, Donald Trump tells Newsmax.

      Whether intended or not, comments and policies of Mitt Romney and other Republican candidates during this election were seen by Hispanics and Asians as hostile to them, Trump says.

      “Republicans didn’t have anything going for them with respect to Latinos and with respect to Asians,” the billionaire developer says.

      “He had a crazy policy of self deportation which was maniacal,” Trump says. “It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote,” Trump notes. “He lost the Asian vote. He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.”

      The GOP has to develop a comprehensive policy “to take care of this incredible problem that we have with respect to immigration, with respect to people wanting to be wonderful productive citizens of this country,” Trump says.
      http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Donald-Trump-Ronald-Kessler/2012/11/26/id/465363/

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    19. The Origins of Trump Nihilism
      BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

      "The children of Republican elites do not sit in classes where a quarter of the students do not speak English. When that specter of diversity looms, parents yank their kids and put them in the prep schools of Silicon Valley that are rapidly reaching New England numbers (or maybe better southern academies that followed integration). Their children are not on buses where an altercation between squabbling eight year olds leads to a tattooed parent arriving at your home to challenge you to a fight over “disrespecting” his family name. The establishment Republicans have rarely jogged around their neighborhoods only to be attacked by pit bulls, whose owners have little desire to speak English, much less to cage, vaccinate, or license their dogs. They have never been hit by illegal-alien drivers in Palo Alto. In other words, they do not wish to live anywhere near those who, as a result of an act of love, are desperately poor, here under illegal auspices, and assume California works and should work on the premises of Oaxaca."

      "In Palo Alto where I work, there is no epidemic of bronze plaque and copper wire thievery, as there is near my home, where everything metal—Romex conduit, the dedicatory plaque at a Masonic temple, or bronze fittings on irrigation pipe—is in danger of being carted off, Vandal-like. I don’t think Mitt Romney has had a dead pit bull, in ripe rigor mortis with a rope tied around its neck, dumped on his lawn, or a beautiful Queensland Heeler, torn to shreds from dog fighting, thrown into his vineyard. Does the Gang of Eight ever get accosted in the evening by a group of tattooed thugs, claiming at your door they “are lost,” as they case your rural home? Or were they dreamers and future UC brain surgeons incognito?"

      https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-origins-of-trump-nihilism/2/

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. .

        Victor is an A-Hole.

        Why is he assigning elitist views and actions strictly to the Republican elites? The Dem elites fall into the same category. Worse.

        Likewise, it doesn't take an immigrant to be an asshole and a criminal. Go to the inner city of most American cities and you can find the same things happening even in areas not populated by immigrants. Many smaller cities and even suburbs have the same problems. You say dog fighting. I say Michael Vick.

        .

        Delete
    20. March 6, 2016

      Trump’s Muslim Immigration Suspension Suggestion Not Without Precedent

      By James Longstreet


      Are we there yet? The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952.

      Oh the outrage from the Left when Trump suggested a suspension of immigration from Muslim countries. So often he was misquoted as the “temporarily” condition was usually omitted for impact (Eleanor Clift, etc.). The Left repeatedly misquoted his suggestion ad nauseum, and sans accuracy.

      Trump’s suggestion is not without historical backup, however. In 1952, after WWII and on the cusp of the Cold War, an immigration act was passed by Congress over a Truman veto. The two pillars of this act were to first maintain the demographics of the nation. Percentages of the existing citizenry’s demographic makeup were transposed to the allowable immigration quotas. Second, and to the Trump suggestion, national security concerns could indeed halt the “infiltration” of the unwanted into the United States.


      “At the basis of The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (aka The McCarran-Walter Act) was the continuation and codification of the National Origins Quota System. It revised the 1924 system to allow for national quotas at a rate of one-sixth of one percent of each nationality’s population in the United States in 1920.”

      Regarding national security and to bolster the legitimacy of Trump’s suggestion,


      “.concerns that the United States could face communist infiltration through immigration and that unassimilated aliens could threaten the foundations of American life. To these individuals, limited and selective immigration was the best way to ensure the preservation of national security and national interests.”

      The McCarran-Walter Act,


      “…focused upon denying immigrants who were unlawful, immoral, diseased in any way, politically radical etc. and accepting those who were willing and able to assimilate into the US economic, social, and political structures, which restructured how immigration law was handled. Furthermore, the most notable exclusions were anyone even remotely associated with communism which in the early days of the Cold War was seen as a serious threat to US democracy.”

      For the 21st Century we must substitute ISIS, Al Qaeda, et al for “communist”. The key phrases in the language describing the Act are “unassimilated aliens” and “preservation of national security”. Muslim communities spring up in the United States (Dearborn, MI) ala the “no go” zones of France, and the unassimilated demand the importation of their own set of laws (Sharia). There are groups avowing to do us harm and who promise infiltration. Trump’s suggestion falls in line with the concerns of the early 1950’s and the legislative reaction to those concerns. Are we there yet?


      http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/trumps_muslim_immigration_suspension_suggestion_not_without_precedent.html#ixzz42DaJBIu9

      ReplyDelete
    21. "Trump says anti-torture laws put U.S. at disadvantage in fight against IS
      Jill Colvin
      WEST PALM BEACH, Fla — The Associated Press

      Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says that, as president, he would push to change laws that prohibit waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, arguing that banning them puts the U.S. at a strategic disadvantage against Islamic State militants.

      During the past week, in a series of interviews and events, Trump has articulated a loose, but expansive set of principles that, if enacted, would mark a fundamental shift in the strategy the Obama administration has employed to fight violent extremism. In addition to arguing in favour of reinstating waterboarding, a technique that mimics the sensation of drowning, and “much more than that,” Trump has advocated the killing of militants’ wives and children, which appears in violation of international law.

      “We have to play the game the way they’re playing the game,” Trump said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, one day after he told an audience in Florida that he would fight to expand and broaden the laws that regulate interrogation.

      “I would like to strengthen the laws,” he added Sunday, “so that we can better compete.”

      ...."

      http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/trump-says-anti-torture-laws-puts-us-at-disadvantage-in-fight-against-is/article29047373/


      Doug, is that a slanderous mis-representation of the man? Is he lying and not writing well?

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. What if he's just doing one or the other?

        Delete
      2. My legislation would allow indefinite detention for anyone unwilling to divulge their iPhone passcode.
        Claiming to have forgotten, and then failing a lie detector test would result in death by a thousand scorpion bites.

        Delete
      3. He don't need no stinkin' legislation when he has "Executive orders" to issue.

        Delete
      4. bob was kind enough to let us know that all was cool with the executive order for the internment of Japanese people folk back in the day...

        Delete
      5. no animals were harmed - only Japanese people folk!

        Delete
      6. .

        My legislation would allow indefinite detention for anyone unwilling to divulge their iPhone passcode. Claiming to have forgotten, and then failing a lie detector test would result in death by a thousand scorpion bites.

        Would that apply even if they are dead as is the case with the couple in San Bernadino?

        .

        Delete
      7. .

        Trump is schizophrenic. He's like one of those guys in the Batman comics who escapes from Arkham Asylum.

        .

        Delete
      8. I didn't say I was cool with it, Ash. I said that is how it was done.

        My aunt used to talk about it. Japanese Americans seemed patriotic, some of the Germans - the German Bund - well, not so much. She thought the whole affair was terrible and unfair and in hindsight everyone agrees with that. Don't blame me for it, Ash, I hadn't popped into this particular peculiar universe at the time.

        I can't make up my mind about Trump. I had decided to go vote for him tomorrow, but now I'm thinking of sitting it out. I don't like Rubio, or Cruz and don't know anything about Kasich. I will 'Definitely' to mimick Rufus be voting 'other than Hillary' in the general, though.

        Delete
      9. My legislation would allow for a one time only temporary detention of Ash so as to give him a proper but unhurtful though very scary mugging so as to 'knock some sense' into the fellow.

        Delete
    22. There’s No Excuse for ‘Child Brides’ in Europe
      Recently, the Daily Beast published an article criticizing European nations for bending to the cultural norms of migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

      The article highlights the case of a Swedish city now deciding to allow underage marriages. In Denmark, minors have been found among the married couples seeking asylum. Same thing in Norway, where an 11-year-old girl was among the child brides married to asylum seekers.

      Moving on. Reuters reports a powerful religious body in Pakistan declared that a new law shouldn’t be implemented because it criminalizes violence against women. The religious body says that outlawing domestic, psychological, and sexual violence against women is un-Islamic. One religious leader says this law would make men feel "insecure." He called it an attempt to make Pakistan a Western colony again.

      Finally, an update concerning an absolutely horrific event from last week. That’s the case where a Moscow nanny was shouting "Allahu Akbar … I am a terrorist … I am your death," as she walked outside a metro station, while she was holding the head of the four-year-old child she had been caring for, and then decapitated.

      Reuters reports the woman has offered an explanation. She says the beheading was in retaliation for the airstrikes that Russia has launched in Syria. Kremlin and Russian investigators are downplaying the incident. They say the woman is mentally unwell, schizophrenic. Well, at least they’re not calling it workplace violence, I guess.
      http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/01/there-s-no-excuse-for-child-brides-in-europe.html
      http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/03/04/morning_update_internationally

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. .

        The decline of the West started in Europe and continues to accelerate there.

        However, as is evident from the quality of our current presidential campaign and the PC nonsense rampant on our campuses we can still hold out hope we can beat them in the race to the bottom.

        .

        Delete
      2. "The decline of the West started in Europe..."

        The decline of the West started in Europe with insane and self defeating immigration policy.

        See:

        Sweden

        Delete
      3. .

        The decline of the US started with an insane and self defeating immigration policy.

        See:

        Sweden

        .

        Delete
    23. I'm not voting for Trump until I've seen his Dick Certificate.

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. .

        If you are so defensive you have tell people you have a big dick you likely don't.

        .

        Delete
      2. Well, really, if someone implies one has a teeny dick one should at least pro forma offer up some kind of denial, I should think.

        I read up on hands and dicks. It's not, according to the article I read, your hand size that counts but the relationship between your index finger and your ring finger. Your ring finger should be, for larger dick size, longer than your index finger.

        Now that I got all you dicks looking at your fingers I will tell you my ring finger is slightly longer than my index finger.

        Ha !

        Delete
      3. .

        I have to special order gloves with an elongated ring finger just so I can get them on.

        .

        Delete
      4. :)

        aeyyieyiyi, poor Maria...

        Delete
      5. My ring finger is a full fingernail length longer.

        Guess I'll beat off in the middle of an empty parking lot in a thunderstorm and see what happens.

        Delete
    24. Maybe I'll go write in Ben Carson tomorrow. I think that's what I'll do. So what if he's dropped out.

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. He was after all the best person running.

        Delete
    25. .

      Acapulco: Tourist Mecca and Cartel Murder Capital

      There were 903 homicides in Acapulco last year, 104 for each 100,00 inhabitants, the highest per-capita murder rate in Mexico, and fourth highest in the world. In the first two months of this year, there were 149 murders—an average of 2.5 per day.

      The violence in Acapulco is suffocating its tourist sector: the average hotel occupancy rate for the year is down to 40 percent; a recent survey by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness ranked Acapulco last out of 78 tourist destinations in Mexico. The president of the Acapulco Hotel and Tourism Association, Jorge Laurel González, put it most succinctly: “If the problem of safety is not resolved there will be no tourism recovery..."


      It's a shame. Acapulco was the first place I vacationed with my wife. 40+ years can change a lot.

      .

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. The last forty years have been hard on Idaho, I can tell you that.

        Delete

    26. March 3, 2016
      Is the Islamic State Hurting? The President’s Point Man on ISIS Speaks Out

      By Robin Wright

      Brett McGurk, the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.

      Brett McGurk, the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.

      Credit Photograph by Samuel Corum / Anadolu Agency / Getty

      For the first time since its blitz across Syria and Iraq, in 2014, the Islamic State is on the defensive in both countries. Its caliphate, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is shrinking. Its numbers are down. It hasn’t launched a new offensive since May, 2015. The new U.S. Expeditionary Targeting Force in Iraq—led by some fifty Delta Force commandos—has scored the first capture of a key ISIS operative, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. The Iraqi military, meanwhile, is tightening the noose around Mosul, an ISIS stronghold and the country’s second-largest city. In Syria, a fragile new ceasefire, which took hold last weekend between the government and the rebel opposition, has turned attention on the Islamic State.

      Yet ISIS, also known as ISIL, has become a global phenomenon in the course of the past year, attracting pledges of fealty from extremist groups on three continents. It remains the world’s wealthiest terrorist organization, and the first to create its own state, from large swaths of both Iraq and Syria, with a capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa.


      Brett McGurk, a diplomat who has been involved in U.S. operations in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, began his Washington career as a law clerk to the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. He was one of the main architects of the U.S. military surge in 2006 and 2007, which pushed back Al Qaeda forces in Iraq. McGurk also led fourteen months of secret negotiations with Iran on a prisoner swap, which finally culminated in freedom for five Americans in January. He is now the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. On March 1st, McGurk reflected on the American-led campaign against ISIS during a conversation in his first-floor office at the State Department, just hours before leaving for Iraq. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.....

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/is-the-islamic-state-hurting-the-presidents-point-man-on-isis-speaks-out

        Delete
      2. Good advice:

        You have a time frame?

        The over-all campaign to defeat ISIL globally—we’re talking a multi-year campaign. But I just don’t want to put a time frame on something as inherently uncertain as warfare.

        Delete
    27. English Major Bob -
      Diagram these sentences:

      Voted. Against. The. Auto. Bailout.

      ReplyDelete
    28. Iraqi F16 fighter jets kill 50 ISIS militants including Caucasians in Hawija

      (IraqiNews.com) Kirkuk – A security source in Kirkuk Province announced on Monday, that fifty members of the so-called ISIS, including Caucasians, were killed in an air strike launched by the Iraqi F16 fighter jets southwest of the province (250 km north of Baghdad), while indicated to the destruction of a number of ISIS headquarters.

      The source reported for IraqiNews.com, “Iraqi F16 fighter aircraft shelled ISIS headquarters in Hawija (45 km south west of Kirkuk),” indicating that, “The operation resulted in the destruction of four headquarters belonging to ISIS and four plants for making booby-traps.”

      The source added on condition of anonymity, “The air strike also destroyed anti-aircraft weapons, as well as killing fifty ISIS members, including Caucasians, while preparing to carry out suicide operations in Hawija.”

      Noteworthy the areas of south and west of Kirkuk are still under ISIS control since June 2014, and these areas include Hawija, Zab, Riyad, Abbasi and Rashad.

      Iraqinews

      ReplyDelete
    29. Auto bailout = save the UAW vote at any cost.

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. You diagrammed Rufus's entire thought process.
        (Plus his repressed anger at our host.)

        Delete