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Friday, May 19, 2017

Pakistan Observer: US bureaucracy at war with Trump


US bureaucracy at war with Trump

http://pakobserver.net/us-bureaucracy-war-trump/
Geopolitical Notes From India
M D Nalapat  
CNN has been a reliable medium for the permanent US bureaucracy to get its views telegraphed across the globe. Embedded in US policy, the channel has seldom deviated from the messaging favoured by the Washington Beltway, whether this be the refrain that Saddam Hussein was storing mountains of WMD in his closets or that Muammar Kaddafy tortured and killed his fellow citizens on an industrial scale. During the past two years, it has served as a potent recruiting tool for IS, by constantly repeating the falsehood that Bashar Assad in Damascus is conducting a genocide of Syria’s Sunni majority. This when wife Asma as well as 70% of his ministers are themselves Sunni.
Interestingly, there are only anonymous “government sources” that CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other media outlets committed to ensuring the successful impeachment of the 45th President of the United States. Perhaps because these are all either serving or retired members of the Clinton brotherhood within the permanent bureaucracy. During their eight years in office, followed by eight George W Bush years, the Clintons ensured that those loyal to them were protected, and indeed had their careers boosted. This because easier once Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the US, given that the “Obama administration” was in large measure a continuation of the Clinton administration of the 1990s. The other side of such generosity was a feral vindictiveness fixated on those whom the Clintons believed were disloyal to them or did something opposed to the Clintons or to their favourites.
The Clinton machine quickly drew first blood after the swearing in of Donald John Trump, securing the resignation of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn...

Forbes Opinion: NY Vs DC

NY Vs DC



There is an important and damaging cultural divide between the Trumps and the governing system that the president and his closest allies are trying to tame.  Call it New York vs. Washington, or business vs government, but it comes down to this:  the president hasn’t gotten control over the bureaucracy, much of which is in open rebellion against him.  You can see it by the remarkably low numbers of political appointees currently approved by the Senate, as by the torrent of leaks aimed at damaging Trump and his top aides.

The New Yorkers—famously, the Trumps themselves, the Kushners, and the bankers in the Cabinet and the White House—seem to have come to Washington expecting that, once The Donald had been sworn in, the bureaucrats would do what they were told.  The New Yorkers—as we saw during the election campaign and throughout the transition—did not believe they needed a large organization, staffed with their own loyal followers.  They thought the important thing was to make the right decisions, and install a few key officials at the very top.

Please click here to read the entire opinion column...



Sunday, May 7, 2017

Jenny Beth’s Journal: $1 trillion spending bill isn’t ‘what Trump voters wanted or expected’

Jenny Beth’s Journal: $1 trillion spending bill
isn’t ‘what Trump voters wanted or expected’

  • May 4, 2017
  • President Donald J. Trump during the election talked a ‘big-league’ game about shaking things up in Washington, D.C. but, if the $1 trillion spending bill heading to his desk is any indication, President Trump has botched the art of this deal and continues the trend of leaving hardworking taxpayers out to dry, Tea Party Patriots Co-Founder Jenny Beth Martin says in her latest column.
  • The Hill has the commentary:
    [President Trump] got rolled so badly [on the spending bill] that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi bragged about it openly.
    And why shouldn’t they brag? From minority positions, they: Prevented President Trump from getting any money to begin construction of the border wall he campaigned on; prevented him from being able to cut off federal funding for so-called “sanctuary cities;” halved his supplemental defense-spending request, and put conditions on it; refused to terminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood; refused his proposed significant cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, and blocked his proposed staff cuts there; increased funding for the National Institutes of Health; refused to defund the National Endowment for the Arts or the Legal Services Corporation, among others; and actually increased domestic discretionary spending, rather than cut it or even hold the line.
    No matter how hard the administration may try to spin this as a victory for Trump, it’s not. It’s not what Trump voters wanted or expected when they sent him to Washington.

Friday, May 5, 2017

MIT Is Making Kid-Friendly Communist Propaganda


Jarrett Stepman

MIT Is Making Kid-Friendly Communist Propaganda

In order to make the deadliest ideology of the 20th century palatable to young Americans, Communism for Kids is coming to a bookstore near you.

This newly released book from MIT Press “proposes a different kind of communism, one that is true to its ideals and free from authoritarianism.”

The death toll from communist regimes in the 20th century is well-documented. One study found that more people were killed under communism than homicide and genocide combined, and only 9 million more people were killed in World War I and World War II combined than under governments of this ideology.

Communism seemingly gets a pass to be reimagined as a sweet fable.

Another study showed how the mass killings of civilians by their own governments took an immediate nosedive after the collapse of the Soviet Union and international communism.

According to the Amazon synopsis, the book weaves a fairy tale of “jealous princesses, fancy swords, displaced peasants, mean bosses, and tired workers.”

It is bewildering why MIT Press would publish a book that cutesies up the political creed that gave the world Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and many more of the world’s most prolific mass murderers. None of these brutal dictators are mentioned in the book, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

Communism seemingly gets a pass to be reimagined as a sweet fable while it’s inconceivable that a book called Fascism for Kids would ever be printed by a reputable publisher.

Marion Smith of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation wrote, according to The Washington Free Beacon:
While I can imagine a book so titled that would make a valuable contribution to a reader’s understanding of the truth about communism, the book MIT Press published is not it. Communism for Kids whitewashes and infantilizes ideas that, when put into action, have cost more than 100 million lives.
This odd attempt to get kids into communism is unlikely to spawn a new generation of true believers on its own, but it does highlight the growing problem for younger Americans who are generally clueless about even recent history.

As The Daily Signal previously reported, a study from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that millennials in particular are stunningly ignorant about what occurred under the Soviet Union and other communist regimes just a generation ago.

One-third of millennials surveyed actually believe that more people were killed under former President George W. Bush than under Soviet dictator Stalin.
Under communism, tyranny is a feature, not a bug.

If one truly wants to teach young Americans what communism is really about, it would be better to hand them a copy of the classic Animal Farm, by George Orwell.

The book is an allegory – using farm animals as stand-ins – about the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia a century ago. The revolutionary promise of “all animals are equal” is used to overthrow farmers, but quickly turns into a new, even more oppressive tyranny under animal overlords.

A reign of forced labor, intimidation, and terror puts the animals under the thumb of their new masters – their ideals used to prop up an all-powerful regime. The refashioned creed becomes “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” In the end, human, or rather “animal,” nature proved to be more powerful than any ideology.

As the Roman poet Horace once said: “You can drive out nature with a pitchfork, but she will ever hurry back.”

This lesson from Orwell would be a much better way to teach young people about destructive ideology than a fanciful account of how “true” communism – minus the mean authoritarian stuff and mass murder – would be truly grand.

Under communism, tyranny is a feature, not a bug.
Republished from The Daily Signal.
Jarrett Stepman
Jarrett Stepman is an editor for The Daily Signal
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
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