Geezy peasy, Randy! A bit more subtlety!
Trump has ** ‘done good’ but like most of us isn’t entirely ‘good’**
The Far Left is, in fact, bad
To the degree Dems and libs actually are ‘fair and balanced’ they ‘do good’ also. Same for cons.
Cheers
Maybe not Piper’s perception, but you totally capture each other Americans’ deep passions here.
R.I.P. Julian Castro
He pulled out of the race, which is sad, because he was in the forefront of calling for more attention to be paid to trans women of color. Corey Booker once ranted that ‘we are not paying enough attention to trans women of color’ - as Mark Steyn asked today - can you even have enough attention to that particular demographic?
The Steynman makes me laugh.
I thought these words of wisdom, from an Eastern newsletter I received today - apply here:
A very simple mindfulness practice can free you from all worries and anxieties and bring smiles into your life. Plug off from autopilot mode and bring your attention to your breaths. Let your natural uncontrolled breaths be your object of meditation. Witness as sakshi how your body is breathing In and breathing Out. As you witness, feel your in-breaths are taking you “deep” and your out-breaths are “slowing” down your breaths. Your mind is becoming calmer. Now witness or feel In breaths making you “calm” and out-breaths “releasing” all anxieties and worries.
In a few minutes you are rejuvenated and ready to take on the challenge and opportunities with a smile! What a way to celebrate a happy second day of the new year!
~~Bodhi
Well, we got the General. 
And here’s an example of “fake news”:
Let me quote a bit.
The video was picked up by the world’s media and widely hailed as a futuristic and low-pollution alternative to traditional fireworks
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The media gets the terrorist story wrong again Here’s the straight skinny:
" The attacks have been building for months, including roughly a dozen attacks on U.S. assets by these militias and American retaliatory strikes against five locations in Iraq and Syria belonging to the Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah. The group represents an ongoing replication of the “Islamic revolutionary model” that Iran first “exported” to and “perfected” in Lebanon in the early 1980s.
The New York Times has labeled the attackers “mourners” responding to the U.S. strikes, while the front page of the first Washington Post edition of 2020 labeled them “protesters.” The latter is a particularly pernicious mislabeling. The media has done its best to conflate the attacks with anti-Iran protests that have been happening across Iraq for the last three months, but of course those actual protesters are pro-Iraqi sovereignty demonstrators fed up with the corruption and the broad perception that the Iraqi government is controlled by Iran.
Confirming exactly that accusation, the Iraqi government has repeatedly attacked the anti-Iran protesters, killing hundreds and wounding thousands, while giving a free pass and ready access to the Iran-backed fighters who stormed our embassy.
The media’s goal is to characterize the protests as a wholesale rejection of Trump’s policies in the region, hence the wall-to-wall disinformation about mourning and protesting. What’s actually at stake is Obama’s legacy. The Iran Deal was a bargain in which Iran would be handed control over the Middle East in exchange for some temporary limitations on nuclear activities.
As Obama said, the Saudis — by which he meant Sunnis across the region — would just have to learn to “share the neighborhood” with Iran. The attack on our embassy shows what sharing the region actually means, and the anti-Iran Iraqi protesters are saying they reject it."
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I posted this finding during the last campaign, and wonder if it remains true:
“The angriest group in America is Whites” (especially older ones), found the Esquire survey discussed on the a.m. political shows. Minorities can appear unhappy, but the poll found that Whites feel that America’s trajectory has created the most “diminishment” for them.
Trump did exactly the right thing, and for the right reasons. Just because the WaPo claimed Soleimani was a 'revered leader" (what a crock) does not change the FACTS that he was a merciless killer and for a number of good ‘substantive’ reasons, needed to be taken out.
Kudos to Trump for making the decision, a wise one, and for continuing to undo the horrid Obama doctrines concerning Iran and Iraq.
The Democrats responded predictably. As with al Baghdadi’s death, the Washington Post adopted a respectful tone, describing Soleimani not as a terrorist with American blood on his hands but as a “revered” man:
What we see here with these miserable tweets is a Congress (and in the case of Ben Rhodes, a former Obama official) that is upset about how Trump doesn’t do things the way Carter and Obama did them. They wanted appeasement. They wanted dialogue. They wanted congressional consultations. They wanted talks. You’d think that Trump’s moving of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem after all the doom-and-gloom howls would have been a clue to them that Trump plays hardball without their permission. But they’re not a particularly serious or creative bunch. All they can see now is that Trump doesn’t kowtow to them. Worse still, what have they been focused on as all the monster planning for this operation has been going on? Trump’s tweets, especially on the useless impeachment Kabuki, which they run to like cats to a laser pointer.
Some, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar, are even worse, openly cheering the terrorists. The press, too, has its share of same old blather about “instability.”
But for all of them, Trump is a master of surprise. He’s been distracting them and they have been running from Trump tweet to Trump tweet, while, like a whale under the water surface, the monster planning for these coordinated airstrikes was going on, Trump fully cognizant and commanding of them. He didn’t even tell Congress, of course, not wanting Rep. Adam Schiff to leak the matter to CNN. That’s quite a vote of no-confidence in them as they now seethe, stamp their feet and wag their fingers.
It wasn’t just Qassem Soleimani, the mastermind of Iranian terror for decades, or the beast’s creepy sidekicks, or that terrorist in Lebanon, who were put out of their misery. Looks like Trump’s domestic enemies are taking a hit, too. The more they talk about their longing for the status quo, the stranger they sound. Iranians and Iraqis, after all, are dancing in the streets in thanksgiving for Trump.
In 2011, Trump declared, “In order to get re-elected, Barack Obama will start a war with Iran.”
I hope his instinct wasn’t prescient. Our last comparable action was Reagan ordering an airstrike to kill Libya’s Kadafi in 1986.
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Universalist philosopher Eric Reitan just posted these perceptions:
"In terms of is global implications, there is a huge difference between the targeted execution of a terrorist leader who is not a national leader and the targeted execution of a high-ranking government official, even if the US rightly regards that person as a terrorist. The latter will be treated as an act of war. So in that sense, Trump’s act amounted to declaring war on Iran. No nation responds to that with a shrug. They generally respond by escalating their commitment to the violent killing of human beings.
This leads me to expect that the result will be action that results in the death of Americans and/or American allies. Those deaths will then be invoked as a reason for the US to escalate its violence against Iran. How far it will escalate remains to be seen, but the world feels more frightening to me today than it did yesterday."
Our repeated pattern in the Middle East has been justifiably taking out a perverse leader, only to have him replaced by another, entrenching ourselves in a deepening quagmire for decades.
Iran has been having parades with marchers chanting “death to America” and also “death to Israel” for many years so one can rest assured that whether we are passive or aggressive has no impact on their leadership’s desire to annihilate us. It is part of their religious beliefs, it makes not an ounce of difference what we do, so we should do what we need to do to protect our people and allies.
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This was from today’s Patheos’ Catholic newsletter.
The more I hear, the better I feel about his decision. Because he’s Trump, you will hear a whole load of bs that other presidents got away with for the same thing. But he’s made the world safer, and stood up for you and me.
The best Pres we have had in a long long time.
LEt’s see- those media outlets that have been 88-96% negative on Trump for years, I’ll bet - are negative now? And those of you against Trump, are against this too? What a surprise. I watch what the man does, and I like it.
"The killing of Iranian terror-meister Qassem Suleymani in a targeted U.S. air strike in Baghdad on Thursday will have a dramatic impact on Iran’s ability to conduct oversea terrorist operations and the stability of the Iranian regime.
But the real impact, one can legitimately wager, will be quite different from what you’ve been hearing so far from most of the U.S. and international media.
Rather than engendering some massive Iranian “retaliation,” as many talking heads have been warning, I believe this strike will throw the Iranian regime back on its heels, as wannabe successors contemplate their careers vaporizing in a U.S. drone strike and Iran’s civilian leaders fret that they have been exposed as emperors without clothes.
Put simply, the aura of the Iranian regime’s invincibility is over.
They have pushed us and our allies repeatedly, and have been encouraged by the modest response from U.S. political and military leaders until now.
But with this strike, the gloves are off. And the leadership in Tehran – and more importantly, the people of Iran – can see it.
Suleymani was not some run-of-the-mill terrorist. He was worst of the worst; a man with more blood on his hands than even Osama bin Laden. Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, 9/11, Benghazi: all of them were his doing.
But he was also the most respected and the only charismatic military leader to have emerged since the 1979 Islamist revolution in Iran."
Exactly! I hope he’s wrong, but that, if anything, understates Reitan’s precise perception. Indeed, he thinks these fanatics will multiply their efforts to kill Americans, and make it even less tenable to protect our young people if we can still even keep them in Iraq. Time will tell if it’s effective. Let’s pray it helps!
Shocking wonders never cease!
Plenty of hypocrites around:
" it’s worth noting that given the choice of siding with the Chief Executive of the United States, a great many over on the Blue side of the aisle would prefer to stick up for a man who organized the killing and maiming of thousands of American soldiers — not to mention political dissidents in Iran — and for the unholy regime that signed his paychecks. I don’t recall hearing any such fuss from them when Barack Obama vaporized a U.S. citizen , Anwar al-Awlaki, in similar fashion."
But some good words too:
" Fifth, this may well be an importantly destabilizing event as far as the internal affairs of Iran are concerned. That would be just fine with just about everybody, except perhaps Valerie Jarrett and a few others I could think of.
Sixth, it’s refreshing to see a U.S. Commander in Chief treating our mortal enemies like mortal enemies, instead of sending them pallets of Benjamins in the dead of night in the hope that they’ll make nice.
Seventh, I doubt very much that this will lead to war. I’m hoping for a Mideast foreign policy in which we no longer attempt to convert seething Islamic snakepits into little Denmarks, but are resolved to make sure they understand that we are prepared at all times to cause excruciating pain if they try to harm us.
If I were Donald Trump, I’d have two words for Iran right now:
“Any questions?”
Entire piece: http://malcolmpollack.com/2020/01/03/pop-goes-the-weasel/
Here are some neutral and hopefully objective, BBC article.
And here’s an Elvis Presley song, for Trump and everyone here.
Hum! If I lived in the Middle Ages and were a king’s son, this TBS fellow would be me!
I don’t see “many” Democrats “sticking up” for this barbarian. My perception is that we all say, good riddance to such malevolence. This total caricature seems like fake news about sincere concerns that we have a long-term strategy. Both liberals and conservatives need to discuss what policies make sense in Iraq and the Middle East.