Category Archives: Recent Posts

Recent Posts

Let’s Forgive Everyone

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You are probably not going to believe this story. Talk about putting the cart before the horse, or treating the symptom instead of the disease. This is absolutely insane. It’s so insane, it’s hilarious, and I wish the “Emerald City” all the luck in the world. There is an upside here. This action just may eliminate crime in nearby cities and states when the scum says, hell, let’s go to the Emerald City so we can pillage, steal, and rob from  all them rich folks and get away with it. I love it!! I do, however, have one question though. Who is going to pay for all this? And where do these derelicts go after they are released with no charges, back to their tents under the bridges? Does anyone know someone who still lives in that soon-to-be shit hole? Ha Ha!

Elected officials in a major U.S. city plan to pass a law that will allow thieves to sell items they steal if they do it to earn money for basic needs and trespassers to set up camp on private property when it is to obtain adequate shelter. Dozens of other crimes—including assault and harassment—will be excused under the preposterous measure if suspects are poor, mentally ill or addicted to drugs. It is being crafted as a poverty defense and will allow municipal court judges to dismiss a multitude of crimes if poverty, mental illness or a substance-abuse disorder drove the perpetrator to commit them.

Even for a famously liberal left coast city like Seattle it seems like a bit much. The proposal was first introduced during the Seattle City Council’s budget deliberations weeks ago, according to a local news report. It was put on hold over a budget process bureaucracy but has gained incredible steam and appears to have enough support to alter the city code early next year. “The idea could enormously impact the city — and set Seattle apart from the rest of the country in its approach to misdemeanor crimes,” according to the news story, which includes the concerns of frustrated public safety advocates who say the law will essentially legalize most crimes in Seattle. Not surprisingly, the idea came from a “wave of activism and historic protests after the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota,” the Seattle newspaper story says. That motivated public defenders and community organizers to take advantage of the attention to police and court reforms to fix a “long-held frustration.”

The force behind the push for the new law is a leftist organization called Decriminalize Seattle that opposes policing and the criminal legal system. The group has called for defunding the Seattle Police Department by at least 50% and reallocating the funds to “community led health and safety systems.” It also demands the release of protestors arrested during recent violent uprising without charges. An organizer with Decriminalize Seattle, identified as one of the law’s catalysts in the media, says “what we’ve already known is that the misdemeanor system is basically a system of cycling people in poverty through municipal court over and over again without meeting their basic needs.” In late October Seattle City Councilwoman Lisa Herbold, who ironically chairs the public safety committee, introduced the measure to exempt low-level criminals. The lawmaker, who represents West Seattle and South Park, writes in her official city blog that it is important to make meeting an individual’s immediate basic need an affirmative defense to a crime.

The councilwoman includes a staff memo outlining the proposal, which is identified as “duress legislation” that will codify a defense against prosecution of crimes committed due to poverty or behavioral health issues. “The criminal legal system is ill-suited to address the root cause of ‘crimes of poverty’ and any involvement in the criminal legal system and incarceration causes harm,” the memo states. “As such, Central Staff understands that the intent of the proposal is to provide an exit from the system at trial and without further involvement in the system for those crimes committed because a person cannot otherwise afford to meet their immediate basic needs.” The lengthy document proceeds to reveal that the City Attorney already exercises his discretion to move away from prosecuting property crimes that appear to be committed out of “survival necessity.” The concern, however, is that future prosecutors may not continue the practice and a law must be enacted to assure individuals committing crimes to “fulfill their basic needs” have a way to “exit out of the criminal legal system.”

The proposed law comes as Seattle experiences a big spike in crime—including the highest homicide rate in over a decade—and police funding gets drastically cut to appease Black Lives Matter (BLM) protestors. This is not a new problem for the Emerald City. In the summer of 2019, a business publication wrote a troubling piece on the negative impact of rising crime in downtown Seattle. “The increasing prevalence of crime, drugs and homelessness in the downtown core threatens the city’s thriving tourism and convention business, and worries retailers concerned that the city isn’t doing nearly enough to combat the crisis,” the story says. “Downtown crime is increasing at an alarming rate: City of Seattle crime data for downtown Seattle indicate a jump in “person crimes” (aggravated assault, robbery, rape and homicide) of 43 percent between 2016 and 2018. In the downtown commercial district, there was a total of 568 person crimes in 2018, up from 397 in 2016, Seattle Police Department records show.” That was more than a year ago.

Originally posted 2020-12-30 10:55:25.

Recent Posts

Looking for a Christmas Gift

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For a Marine (actually any service member or civilian who wants to know what a career in the Marines was (is) like?

Well, I have just the solution for you and there is still time if you hurry. It’s a book that will, for a Marine, rekindle many fond (and maybe not so fond LOL) memories. It’s called “We’ll All Die as Marines – One Marines Journey from Private to Colonel.” The author would be me. While I have severed the relationship with the publisher — which is a long story that I won’t get into — you can still get it on Amazon and Barnes & Noble at an exorbitant price. I sell both the hard and the soft covers (not really a paperback) for $35 & $30 respectively, personally inscribed and signed, and since it’s a present, I’ll eat the postage. You can go to Amazon, put in my name and it will take you to the book where you may read the reviews. You’ll have to hurry to get it for Christmas. Since you are now on my blog you may click on “Buy The Book,” fill out the form, and send it. It will come to me with your email address and I will shoot you off instructions, but you must hurry. Or  a faster way would be to simply email me at: sgt-b@comcast.net

Merry Christmas everyone and I wish you a Happy New Year. or let’s just say have the best new year you can, it will be rough with Joe and The Ho.

Originally posted 2020-12-17 10:32:40.

Current Events, Recent Posts

David Petraeus –

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– A Prefect Avatar for America’s Corrupt Ruling Class

Remember this guy? He’s a bud of Mattis, they called them Warrior Monks. LOL. That’s a joke. They are nothing more than high ranking retired military officers who climbed the ladder of success by BS-ing folks with their bravado and secretly sucking down gallons of Kool Aid. Neither of these “Warrior Monks have ever pulled a trigger except at the range. Before or after reading this post please go to my post of 19 June entitled “Mattis & Petraeus – Warrior Monks?” and read about what this scum did and was caught.. He should be stripped of his retirement and spending the rest of his life, in prison for what he plead guilty and got a p-lea bargain. If any of us did what this POS did, guess where we’d be? Unbelievable. Our country does not hold these high ranking scumbags accountable for anything — absolutely nothing. As I have said before, Lady Justice no longer wears a blindfold.

Below is a Warrior Monk, do you honestly think either of these hotshots ever looked like this Warrior?

General David Petraeus, for many years (decades?) lauded as the greatest and most successful soldier of his generation, just insulted, in terms paradoxically both implicit and vicious, the men who made both his military renown and his post-military success and wealth possible.

“The most significant terrorist threat in the United States is not actually from Islamist extremists, it’s from right-wing terrorists in our own country,” he recently said to a gathering of elites.

This assertion, in a sense, is unremarkable given that it has become a common ruling-class talking point. It’s a lie, of course. Your own senses tell you so. When was the last time you even heard of a “right-wing” terror attack, much less one that actually inflicted mass casualties?

Sure, the ruling class and its propaganda arm tell you that they happen all the time, but they’re lying. They don’t lie merely by predicting waves of rightist violence that never materialize—though they do predict that, often.

Remember all those “warnings” of right-wing terror that would rock America in the event of a Trump loss? Allegedly violent Trump supporters have an even stronger case than mere loss to be angry, given the fishiness of the election and their belief that it was stolen. And yet none have so much as broken a window, much less committed any acts of terror. The one major demonstration in Washington, D.C. was entirely, not “mostly,” peaceful—that is, until leftist thugs showed up to beat on the marchers. Beatings which the same people who, naturally, never apologized for being wrong about imminent right-wing violence just as naturally never mentioned.

Nor does the ruling class merely lie by saying that every act of violence by the melanin-challenged is somehow connected to Nazism—though of course they do say that, daily. They also insist, risibly, that violence manifestly committed by people who are neither white nor on the Right is nevertheless perpetrated by the white Right. Witness, in only the most recent and egregious example, the repeated attempts to attribute 2020’s Antifa-BLM riots to “white supremacists.”

Don’t trust your own eyes and ears? How about “data”? Terrorism expert Timothy Furnish has found since the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Islamic terrorists have murdered just under 28,000 people worldwide. The global death toll over the same period from every act of violence even plausibly—that is to say, not necessarily—connected to “white supremacy” is 346. Or 1.5 percent of the Islamist butcher’s bill. This is the “grave, urgent threat” that David Petraeus insists poses the greatest danger to our country.

Petraeus may be lying from conviction. Certainly, all his peers in the ruling class believe, or profess to believe, that native-born whites are uniquely evil and hell-bent on killing their fellow citizens. And it can be hard to tell genuine ruling class belief from merely useful cant. Yet there’s no doubt that this particular lie is useful—to them. It’s one of the key ways in which the ruling class libel and smear dissent against their rapacity and misrule. So Petraeus has an interest in saying what he said, whether he believes it or not.

Who Does Petraeus Think Made Him a Success? 

Who is David Petraeus? Currently, he’s a partner at KKR, one of the world’s two or three most important private equity firms. What is “private equity”? The charitable way to describe that activity is the buying up of failing or underperforming companies and making them more profitable via a ruthless imposition of focus and efficiency. The less charitable description is “vulture capitalism”: hunting down value, wherever it may be, and stripping it out of even successful companies by closing facilities, laying off workers, outsourcing production and any other move that might reduce costs and (further) enrich the firm’s new owners.

Whatever you may think of private equity—salutary driver of market discipline or greedy despoiler of the American heartland—the fact remains that David Petraeus is not a private equity investor nor an analyst capable of restructuring even the smallest company. He’s a former military officer—a capable one, by all accounts—now getting rich from the profits of private equity by trading on his former service and (especially) his domestic and foreign government contacts.

Which is what makes the lie especially egregious coming from Petraeus’s lips. Why is David Petraeus famous? That is, apart from getting fired from the CIA over an extramarital affair and receiving a slap on the wrist for illegally sharing classified information with his mistress? His prior claim to fame, the one that won him his current job and stature, was to have successfully presided over the Iraq “Surge” of 2007, in which a bloody, three-year insurgency was finally quashed.

How was the Surge accomplished? In part by spreading around an enormous number of American greenbacks to buy off local militias. But also, in part, via “COIN,” or counter-insurgency warfare doctrine, a body of thought and practice revived from its post-Vietnam oblivion by David Petraeus. (This is another pillar of Petraeus’ fame; a so-called “soldier-scholar,” he has a Ph.D. from Princeton.)

One tenet of COIN as reimagined, and implemented, by Petraeus is that soldiers attempting to pacify an insurgency must show their “virtue” to the local population by taking risks, i.e., exposing themselves to danger. This is not, to say the least, what soldiers are ordered to do in nearly all other combat situations. But many thousands followed this particular order.

Again, whatever you may think of the Iraq war—nobly-intended tragedy, pointless adventure, deep state conspiracy—or the Surge, there can be no doubt that Petraeus’s success was achieved on the backs of American soldiers—many of whom lost their lives, and many more others, limbs, to achieve it.

Where did those soldiers come from? The overwhelming majority of American service members who volunteer for dangerous combat roles grow up in red, rural, conservative America: the South, Appalachia, the Rust Belt, the Mountain West. The majority are also, not to put too fine a point on it, white—exactly the demographic that the ruling class has in its targeting sights when it lies about the alleged threat from “right-wing terrorists.”

Why the Need to Insult?

It’s no exaggeration to say that, without these proto “right-wing terrorists” and the milieus from which they emerge, the United States military would have no combat units at all. To say the least, woke transsexual gender studies majors from the blue coasts are not showing up in droves, or even singly, to Officer Candidate School or basic training. Neither are the children of the upper, upper middle, and increasingly the middle classes.

The military, at least for its combat missions, is more reliant than ever on that part of America that the ruling class openly despises. What would it do without them? Stop fighting constabulary wars? Either that or scour the rest of the country to recruit men far less committed to the mission, and probably less good at their jobs, than those who volunteered to fight the post 9/11 wars and made the Surge a success.

Why insult these people, then? Why denigrate their families, faith, and communities by insinuating that the places from which they come are breeding grounds of terror, violence and hate? For, from where else may we assume this alleged “right-wing terrorist threat” originates? Portland? Santa Monica? The Upper West Side?

Either Petraeus really believes what he said or he said it because he knows it’s what his ruling class paymasters want to hear—and especially want to hear from professional talking heads like David Petraeus. We can assume Petraeus knows the latter; he’s not a stupid man. Is this, therefore, a case where interest and belief coincide? Or was he, perhaps unthinkingly, selling out the brave men he used to command and whose success made his reputation and caused his great good fortune and wealth?

I don’t know the answer. Either way, the incident is revealing—not about what the ruling class thinks of us; we already knew that. It is instead revelatory of how insincere is their unctuous, ubiquitous praise of our men in uniform, of the sentiment behind all those incessant repetitions of “thank you for your service.”

There are many reasons to wonder how long the ruling class can keep recruiting stalwart young men to fight its wars—not least being our best-and-brightest’ s inability to win seemingly anywhere or even to define victory. Expressions of contempt such as the one uttered recently by David Petraeus are, however small by comparison, another such reason.

Michael Anton is a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump Administration. He formerly wrote under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus when he was a senior editor of American Greatness. The is the author, most recently, of The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return.

Originally posted 2020-12-07 09:37:54.

Recent Posts

Mr. Mattis Again!!

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To begin, I want to update again on my post of 9 June entitled ” An Open Letter to Mr. Mattis.” That post has gone absolutely crazy. It has well over 1,000 views from just about every country around the world and it continues to get hits every single day. In fact, I stopped counting, since I doubt it will ever stop getting hits.

And of course , Mr. Big Mouth (aka Mattis) still runs his mouth on things about which he knows nothing. Yes, he is a retired four star, so I guess he believes that makes him a diplomacy expert. Maybe President Trump should have made him  Secretary of State. LOL He may have made a mistake; however, taking on the Honorable Mr. Pompeo.

A column this week in the Washington Times by former Defense Secretary James N. Mattis that blasted President Trump‘s “America First” theme did not disclose that Mr. Mattis holds a senior position at the Cohen Group, a firm that dedicates itself to making business deals in China.

Mr. Trump‘s get-tough approach toward China — tariffs and prohibitions on Beijing‘s cyber products — is generally counter to the Cohen Group‘s objective of bringing Chinese and U.S. companies together in multimillion dollar deals. For what purpose?

The Cohen Group, founded by former Defense Secretary William Cohen and staffed by a number of former high-ranking government and military leaders, has two of its four overseas offices in China.

Mr. Mattis’ (I’m so happy to see the author got his title correct) Nov. 23 ForeignAffairs.com column was co-authored with three other national security experts, (that assumes Mr. Mattis is one also. LOL) but it was his name that gave it weight in the news media. The article’s thoughts resemble the Obama administration‘s China approach. It could be a window into how presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden pulls back from Mr. Trump‘s hardline.

Mr. Mattis is identified in his column as a former defense secretary (Fired) and fellow at the Hoover Institution, but not as a senior counselor at the Cohen Group global consulting firm in Washington.

In the column, Mr. Mattis rejects Secretary of State Mike Pompeo‘s campaign of rallying Asian countries against China‘s drive for dominance. Mr. Mattis does not mention China‘s declared economic war against U.S. ally Australia in retaliation for Canberra calling for an international investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.

China has yet to explain and document exactly how the pandemic began in Wuhan, where the virus was first discovered in 2019.

Mr. Mattis wrote, in a broad indictment of Mr. Trump‘s foreign policy: “Crucially, the United States should not press countries to choose outright between the two powers. A ‘with us or against us’ approach plays to China‘s advantage, because the economic prosperity of U.S. allies and partners hinges on strong trade and investment relationships with Beijing. Rather than treating countries as pawns in a great-power competition, a better approach would emphasize common codes of behavior and encourage states to publicly promulgate a vision for their country’s sovereign future and the types of partnerships they need to pursue it. You have got to be kidding me!

“It would also expand the cooperative space in which all countries supporting a rules-based order can work together to advance shared interests. Cooperation across different ideological systems is difficult but necessary, and there should be opportunities to cooperate with China in areas of overlapping interests, such as pandemic response, climate change and nuclear security.”

Mr. Mattis urged Mr. Biden to remove “America First” from all foreign policies.

The Cohen Group announced Mr. Mattis’ hiring in September 2019 as a “senior counselor,” calling him a “national treasure.” Which kind of treasure? His photo is prominently featured on its home page. “China is a market of enormous opportunity and complexity,” the firm states. “The Cohen Group’s (TCG) China Practice has a solid record of success with professionals in offices in Beijing, Tianjin and Washington, D.C.  Name just one.

“Building upon decades of experience, on-the-ground management expertise, and longtime personal and professional relationships throughout the region, TCG‘s China Practice helps companies succeed in the Chinese market. TCG enables Fortune 500 companies, as well as small- and medium-sized enterprises, to achieve their commercial goals in China through tailored government, business and media relations strategies.” While they steal our technologies and jobs.

Citing a recent “success,” the website said, “TCG facilitated discussions between a global pharmaceutical company and relevant Chinese government entities regarding the regulatory framework for a high-profile drug, resulting in a mutually beneficial solution for both the company and the Chinese healthcare community.” I still ask why are we buying drugs from these communists?

Mr. Mattis, a highly decorated and respected Marine Corps four-star general (Really? Who says he is a “respected four star general” and by who?) who oversaw all Middle East troops as Central Command head, resigned Come on guy’s, tell the truth, he was FIRED, he even admitted it )as Mr. Trump‘s defense secretary to protest planned troop withdrawals from Syria.

American forces are backing Syrian rebels fighting Islamic State terrorists. Mr. Trump argues he smashed the ISIS hold on Syrian territory. About 500 American troops remain in Syria.

Robert Gates, a Republican and President Barack Obama’s first defense secretary, has praised Mr. Trump‘s foreign policy.

“At least he has not started any new wars,” Mr. Gates said on “Meet the Press.” “And he has robustly funded the military. … I thought his challenging China was about time.”

Mr. Gates has said that the Western powers welcomed China into the family of nations some 20 years ago and China reacted by violating trade rules to gain advantages. (Yep)

Led by Mr. Pompeo, the Trump administration unleashed a series of actions against China‘s drive to lead the world. It uses tariffs to rein in what it calls unfair trade practices and calls out China for the illegal theft of U.S. inventions and personal identities and for rampant spying in colleges, businesses and government. And in a subsequent Op-ed piece, Mr. Pompeo shot down Mattis’ BS with mere facts!

The FBI says it opened numerous counter-intelligence probes into Chinese nationals. It estimates that China has broken into computer networks and stolen the personal information of half the American population. The FBI? Really, Is this to say they really do something besides work for the Deep State. The whole organization is as crooked as a dogs’ leg.

The Trump administration shut down a Chinese consulate in Houston, calling it nothing more than an intelligence collection hub. Mr. Trump has blocked U.S. businesses from doing deals with Chinese companies supporting the People’s Liberation Army. It has called China‘s telecommunications giant Huawei a spying tool. He has required China‘s propaganda arms in the U.S. to register as foreign agents rather than continue operations as journalists.

Mr. Pompeo and congressional Republicans have accused China of covering up the coronavirus outbreak by telling the world initially that it was not contagious as travelers arrived in the U.S. and Europe where the virus went on to infect millions.

As vice president Mr. Biden was the Obama administration‘s point man on China while his son, Hunter, engaged in networking with Chinese billionaires. He eventually worked out multimillion-dollar deals for himself and uncle James Biden. Excuse me, but where is the FBI on this?

A Senate Republican report documented the flow of cash based on Treasury Department suspicious activity reports (SARS) filed by lending institutions because they suspected illegality such as money laundering.

In 2011, Mr. Biden delivered a speech in China as Hunter was making business contacts there, promising to integrate China into American life.

“In order to cement this robust partnership, we have to go beyond close ties between Washington and Beijing, which we’re working on every day, go beyond it to include all levels of government, go beyond it to include classrooms, and laboratories, authentic fields and boardrooms.” Classrooms? LOL

Mr. Biden returned to China in 2013 with Hunter onboard Air Force 2.  Undoubtedly to seal some more cash deals for the “Boss” as Hunter referred to Basement Joe.

Originally posted 2020-12-04 15:39:53.