It is believed that among the options are combined special forces raids and pre-emptive missile strikes
Source: Trump orders military advisers to prepare plans to hit North Korea – Mirror Online
Russia and Iran say they will respond to American aggression following air strike in Syria
9 AprRUSSIA and Iran have said they will respond to further American military actions following the air strike in Syria last week. In a joint statement, the command centre for the two countries and alli…
Source: Russia and Iran say they will respond to American aggression following air strike in Syria
Syria: US warns Assad over using chemical weapons again | World news | The Guardian
9 AprTensions with Russia rise as US says Assad must abide by deal not to use chemical weapons but fails to outline objectives
Source: Syria: US warns Assad over using chemical weapons again | World news | The Guardian
Trump’s Options for North Korea Include Placing Nukes in South Korea – NBC News
8 AprThe National Security Council has presented President Trump with options to respond to North Korea’s nuclear program, including putting American nukes in South Korea or killing dictator Kim Jong-un, multiple top-ranking officials told NBC News. Both scenarios are part of an accelerated review of North Korea policy prepared in advance of Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week. Tune in to Nightly News tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET for more on this story.
Source: Trump’s Options for North Korea Include Placing Nukes in South Korea – NBC News
Mark Caserta: Will Trumpgate become a modern-day Watergate?
7 AprMark Caserta: Free State Patriot editor
April 7, 2017
It was arguably the biggest political scandal in our nation’s history.
In the early morning hours of June 17, 1972, burglars were arrested inside the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate building in Washington, D.C., attempting to wiretap phones and steal secret documents.
Subsequent investigations would reveal the crime was connected to President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign. Ultimately, 40 government officials would eventually be indicted or jailed and the president of the United States would be forced to resign in 1974.
In January, a New York Times column by Charlie Savage, reported “the new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the NSA may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations.”
The column detailed methods by which information may be acquired such as satellite transmissions, phone calls, emails and messages between people abroad. The ultimate result would be more officials searching through more data containing private information about innocent people.
But, why, after eight years in office, did Obama feel compelled to change this intelligence sharing just before leaving the White House?
Allow me to share what many believe transpired.
These new rules were signed into effect just weeks after Obama and the Democrats were shocked by the stunning presidential victory of Donald J. Trump. Reeling from their sense of loss and hopelessness, I believe there was an initiative to begin gathering any available information that would help delegitimize the incoming administration.
And liberals are so pleased with themselves, some just can’t keep their mouths shut about it.
On March 2, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, Mika Brzezinski interviewed a former top Obama administration official who acknowledged efforts by “colleagues” to gather intelligence on Trump’s ties to Russia before Donald Trump took office and to “conceal the sources of that intelligence from the incoming administration.”
Predictably, liberal Democrats and the mainstream media have attempted to deflect the real story of illegal wiretapping and sharing of information with a bogus narrative suggesting the Russians influenced the 2016 presidential election.
Yet, not an ounce of proof has been submitted that the Russians influenced a single vote in the election.
If the Obama administration committed a premeditated act to acquire intelligence on Donald Trump, and the required privacy protections were not enacted before disseminating, the Justice Department must hold them accountable.
Democrats may, indeed, have “re-enacted the villainy” of Watergate, with this so-called Trumpgate.
If so, indictments and jail time should be forthcoming.
Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger and a Cabell County resident.
Doug Smith: The Tyranny of Perfection
5 AprMy country ’tis of thee…
Doug Smith: Author and historical, social and political editor for Free State Patriot
April, 5, 2017
My wife is a perfectionist.
So, I live with this phenomenon and understand it. She was the sort of Straight A student who would be very upset at getting a 99, if someone else had ever gotten a 100, or getting a 100 if extra credit made a 103 possible. This all made her a driven and excellent student, but not a very happy one.
Nothing she ever did was going to be good enough for her. Now, being a much more laid back sort, I find myself shaking my head at this attitude, because it is amazing that a straight A, Summa Cum Laude student so frequently growls “Stupid, stupid, stupid” at herself. You think you might get a little credit for those A s, and the long nights? No?
Now, she is not alone. The Utopians among us, clear back to Plato, and moving all the way to today’s progressives and socialists, build in their mind a perfect society; one which has never existed, but might, if only they were put in charge. Now not to pop their collective little bubbles, but if some 6,000 years of human civilization has never produced a Utopia, what in the world would make them think they are so much smarter, wiser, and better than a Solomon or Marcus Aurelius that they will finally get it done?
And there has not been a perfect society or civilization, ever. But the Utopians live lives of noisy misery, focused on every fault of the best civilization the world has seen. By their emphasis on the problems, they miss the joy of what they have, lack appreciation of the good, and buy into many Brooklyn Bridge fantasies of how good things could be if only. Moral relativism is a miserable frame of mind when it leads you to long for the gulags and empty shelves of Russia, and decry the missing 10 % in the 90 % society.
Western civilization, and American civilization, is the highest, best, and most desirable the world has yet seen. (Easy snowflakes, don’t have your stroke just yet. I’m not done assaulting your sensibilities.) It is not perfect, but then all nations, being peopled by, well, people, are imperfect. Still, the horse kissers, (as in gift), who decry the blessings they enjoy by being born into or permitted to live in the greatest nation in the history of the world, have a peculiar blindness and tunnel vision when it comes to the nation and culture which spawned and nurtured them.
Let s review the record.
Ok right up front. The United States had slavery. Yep. Sure, did. And in the 16th through 18th century, so did a large portion of the world. The countries from which many American slaves came had a long history of capturing and selling slaves. And in fact, many still do. Slavery is rampant today, in the 21st century, throughout the Muslim world, for which the critics and snowflakes of America love to act as apologists.
The United States also had a long growing moral objection to slavery, nearly derailing the formation of the nation’s Constitution. It took several decades, but then erupted into a war which raged for four years, left over half a million dead, and devastated the country. Aside from the revolt of Spartacus, which was fought BY the slaves, trained as gladiators, and ended in disaster, what nation has ever in history fought such a war to destroy an economy based on slavery, and free slaves? Feel free to do your own research, but spoiler alert: none, ever.
It was a long an arduous process bringing former slaves closer to parity with the rest of the citizenry, and we are not without problems yet. But a quick look at Ben Carson and Barack Obama must tell anyone looking, that tremendous progress has been made.
Yet there are those who still focus on Thomas Jefferson holding slaves. As though nothing else has ever happened in our nation. We ought to be judged by who we were in the world as it stood then, and what we have done in the meantime. So many want to judge us based on some impossible perfection standard, or judge the United States of 1800 by the standards of 2000.
As though the United States, alone, has not fought more, bled more, spent more, to free more people from tyranny than any other nation in the history of mankind. No nation as powerful as the United States has ever, from the outskirts of Eden to now, spent its treasure, and blood, and young men to free other nations from tyranny, and taken possession of only the amount of ground necessary to bury our 10,000 dead in French soil. French soil. Not occupied France. Not the American zone. French. French soil holds the blood and bodies of the men of the 29th Infantry Division, just above the beach on which they died. It was named Omaha, for a city in America, but it was, and remained, a French beach.
The United States has given more to the world than any other nation, ever. The British Empire can make a claim for a near second, yet the United States has done more to lift more people, both our own citizens and others, out of poverty than any other nation in history. The United States has fed more of the world than any other nation, ever. The United States has given the world light bulbs, (thanks Tom Edison), electricity, education, literature, the Panama Canal, eradicated polio, nearly eradicated malaria (until one of the “aint it awful crowd” pulled DDT from the shelves and signed a death warrant for 100 million). Absent the United States, totalitarian empires would have plunged the world into a dark age from which it might never emerge.
Who would give the world advances in food production, medicine, balance the power of despots and tyrants, raise the standard of living of the world to a higher level than it has ever seen, serve as the example and shining city on the hill to which millions aspire if not the United States? To which other country would so many risk life and limb and imprisonment to come? They know, unlike the horse kissers who refuse to appreciate what we have been blessed with, how truly superior in so many ways are the United States of America.
So many of the Occupy Antarctica Snowflake Brigade focus on every fault, and deny every virtue of this, the greatest nation in the history of mankind. They roll their eyes, and look down their sniffing little noses at “flag waving” and patriotism.
Well, I am a patriot, and I have a flag flying on the back of my home. I served in the uniform of my country, and saluted that flag every day for years. I learned the history and tradition of the Navy whose uniform I wore, and of the Sailors and Marines who fought and died for this country with that flag as their symbol and rallying point. I served in a difficult, demanding, dangerous job, which required us to be the deadliest force imaginable. If we were ordered to do so, we would have killed thousands. If caught, we would have been sunk and killed. We did the job because we believed in it, and the country. Value judgement: It is worth my life to protect this country; it is worth causing the deaths of thousands I would never see if so ordered to keep the country safe. We took an oath which said “I promise to protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. “I did not see any expiration date when I took it.
I love this country, and while recognizing its faults, still believe it is the greatest country ever. I am unashamedly a fan and supporter of the United States, and her friends and allies, and all others take a back seat.
If it comes to the interests of the United States or any other country, this country, which houses my children, and the ideas which let them live as they wish comes first.
Always. Forever. And without apology.
Associated Press: Bit by bit, Trump methodically undoing Obama policies
3 AprSource: Associated Press
Mark Caserta: Obamacare repeal and replace simply delayed
1 Apr
Mark Caserta: Free State Patriot editor
Mar 31, 2017
Last week’s charade in the House of Representatives confirmed the level of ineptitude on Capitol Hill. For the GOP to have had eight years to reach consensus on a viable healthcare alternative to Obamacare and to be so unprepared is embarrassing.
But “let not your heart be troubled.” Obamacare will eventually be eliminated and replaced with a sustainable healthcare bill that will be affordable for all Americans.
However, what we saw legislatively last week was exactly what we “didn’t” see during the Obama administration – legitimate legislative debate on the content of a proposed healthcare initiative.
Remember, in 2010, when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke at a legislative conference and said, “We have to pass the bill,” speaking of the Affordable Care Act, “so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”
Well, it turns out the intended lack of transparency shrouded the multitude of liberal lies about Obama’s signature healthcare law and facilitated its passage.
The GOP establishment, while debilitatingly dimwitted along the way, debated, argued and disagreed on provisions of the American Healthcare Act and ultimately couldn’t agree on the initial piece of legislation. I’m truly encouraged that true conservatives ultimately blocked a potentially flawed bill.
Finally, Americans receive some representation.
But that’s not what you’ll hear from liberal Democrats or the mainstream media. And frankly, the Democrat’s lack of genuine concern for the uninsured is very telling. Obamacare is in a death spiral and liberals seemingly couldn’t care less what happens to the average American, as long as they “win one for Obama.”
So, here’s what we can expect moving forward.
Successfully rewriting one-fifth of the economy will take time, but I assure you the House will eventually have the votes needed to pass a viable healthcare bill, probably in 2017. They don’t want to be unemployed the next election cycle. Subsequently, it will move on to the Senate, where it could be further amended.
But Republican Senators lack the 60 votes needed to pass any sort of healthcare legislation, no matter how good it is. They must resort to a process known as “reconciliation,” which requires only a majority vote and negates a Democrat filibuster. This is the legislative procedure Democrats used to pass portions of Obamacare.
An additional hurdle the GOP must clear is the “Byrd Rule,” named after our beloved Robert C. Byrd. As part of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the Byrd Rule states that reconciliation can only be used on legislation that impacts the federal deficit.
Now, clearly this is budgetary in nature, but if it rises to the level of debate in the Senate that I expect, the presiding officer of the Senate, the vice president of the United States, has the final word on what’s permissible on reconciliation and what’s not.
So, despite liberal Democrats presenting this as an Obamacare victory, it necessarily delayed the inevitable.
As part of making America great again, Donald Trump will ensure every American has access to affordable healthcare.
Just as he promised.
Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.
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