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The other day, I posted on the Democratic Party origins of the fake Russian narrative used against President Donald Trump.
This post will explain further why the Democrats are opportunistic hypocrites, especially when it comes to Russia.
Last year, I summarised the Clintons’ and Podestas’ close links to Russia: the uranium deal and banking connection, respectively. The latter popped up in the Panama Papers. If you are unfamiliar with either of those topics, please read my post. You can’t get much closer to a warm, comfy relationship with the Russians than the Clintons and the Podesta brothers.
Two prominent Democrats currently braying the most about Trump’s supposed Russian connections — again, a fabrication — are Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA).
In March 2017, Schumer was intent on finding out the ‘truth’ about Trump’s notional Russian connections. Trump’s director of social media replied with pictorial evidence from 2003 of one of Schumer’s own meetings with none other than the man himself, Vladimir Putin:
Trump had tweeted the same picture that day with this comment:
We should start an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite!
Heavy reported on the tweets and Schumer’s love-in with Russia (emphases mine):
The photo originates from September 2003, when Putin visited New York to celebrate the first Lukoil gas station opening in the U.S. after it bought Getty Petroleum in 2000 and began re-branding Getty stations. According to press reports at the time, Putin did not make any public remarks and was only at the gas station convenient store for 10 minutes. That was long enough for Schumer to give Putin a Krispy Kreme doughnut. Lukoil President Vagit Alekperov was also at the meeting.
“When I showed the president of Russia a Krispy Kreme doughnut and he ate it and said it was good, that was one of the more surreal moments I’ve had in politics,” Schumer said at the time.
After Putin left the scene, Schumer told reporters that it was good for the U.S. to have a gas station owned by a company based in a non-OPEC country. “The more competition there is in oil, particularly against OPEC, the better New York will do and the better America will do,” Schumer said.
Schumer also wrote a 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed, in which he said Russia needed to take a big role in talks with Iran during the George W. Bush administration.
The back-and-forth between the president and Schumer came just a day after Attorney General Jeff Sessions agreed to recuse himself from any potential investigation into Russian ties with the Trump campaign and the election, if one was to happen.
Sessions’s recused himself because:
he met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice in 2016, before the election.
That wasn’t enough for Schumer, though. On March 2, he took the hypocritical high moral ground:
Schumer said Sessions should resign from his post as attorney general. He called on the Trump administration to agree on the creation of an independent counsel to investigate.
On May 17, the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed the independent counsel, former FBI director Robert Mueller.
As for Pelosi:
Politico reported:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday that she’s never met with the current Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak …
But a file photo from Pelosi’s 2010 meeting with Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev shows Kislyak at the table across from Pelosi — then House speaker — and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). Medvedev had been in the country for a meeting with President Barack Obama a day earlier and stopped in on Capitol Hill to meet with congressional leaders as well.
Note the semantics that Pelosi’s spokesman used:
Asked to square Pelosi’s comments with the photo of the meeting, a spokesman said Pelosi simply meant she never had a solo meeting with Kislyak.
“Of course, that’s what she meant,” said the spokesman, Drew Hammill. “She has never had a private one-on-one with him.”
It’s not wrong for either party to meet with Russian officials as part of their work.
The issue is that Democrats are denying their own meetings with them then piling on Attorney General Jeff Sessions for meeting with Ambassador Kislyak when Sessions was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee at that time in 2016.
Another reason Sessions felt duty bound to recuse himself — perhaps more pertinent — is that he was also involved with Trump’s presidential campaign at the time. Is it probable that there was overlap in those conversations with Kislyak? We don’t know, but given Sessions’s integrity, it’s doubtful. In any event, he probably did not want to put up with a lot of bloviating, hypocritical Democrats.
Politico also found out that another Democrat, Senator Claire McCaskill (MO), similarly denied meeting with Russians:
Yet, she communicated directly with them in 2013 and 2015.
She was in the same room with them in 2013:
In 2015, McCaskill discussed the situation in Iran with the ambassador:
McCaskill’s denial was an attack on Sessions:
Her claim was designed to underscore what many Democrats view as the impropriety of Sessions’ one-on-one meeting with Kislyak last year, which the Trump administration claims was a routine part of his service on the armed services panel.
Republicans returned fire:
Republican operatives quickly blasted McCaskill as misrepresenting her record, citing the Democrat’s tweets about a 2013 group meeting with Kislyak and a 2015 call with the ambassador to discuss the nuclear pact with Iran.
“Just like Hillary Clinton, Senator McCaskill has a major problem with the truth,” Scott Sloofman, spokesman for the conservative America Rising PAC, said in a statement. “In her rush to stand with Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren to score political points, McCaskill exposed herself as both a liar and a hypocrite.”
The Democrats and the media must put this absurd Russian narrative to bed.
Of course, they will not because it serves their purposes in assassinating the character and integrity of the president and members of his administration.
Low information critics of Trump will know only what they read in the papers and see on television news.
What paupers.
Get online: read and watch what Big Media refuse to report.
The other day I wrote about Seth Rich, a DNC employee who was murdered in mysterious circumstances on July 10, 2016 in Washington, DC.
Yesterday, I provided the source for the beginning of the Russian narrative used against President Donald Trump.
Both are WikiLeaks related.
Today, those who do not already know will find out what Hillary Clinton’s campaign had in store for leakers.
That, too, is related to WikiLeaks.
The Podesta WikiLeaks revealed that Hillary’s campaign team and advisers wanted to make ‘an example’ out of ‘leakers’, even if nothing could be proven.
WikiLeaks released this tweet on October 30, 2016:
The source is Podesta WikiLeaks email no. 36082 from February 21, 2015.
That day, the Washington Post printed a story about Hillary Clinton’s campaign branding. Two of the people interviewed were involved with her presidential campaign in 2015:
Ahead of her campaign launch, Clinton has tapped some of the Democratic Party’s star strategists as well as two of corporate America’s branding wizards: Wendy Clark, who specializes in marketing age-old brands such as Coca-Cola to younger and more diverse customers; and Roy Spence, a decades-long Clinton friend who dreamed up the “Don’t Mess With Texas” anti-littering slogan as well as flashy ad campaigns for Southwest Airlines and Wal-Mart.
Clark took an unpaid leave in January from Coca-Cola, where she is president of brands and strategic marketing for carbonated beverages in North America, to help Clinton in what Clark called “a passion project.” Spence is co-founder and chairman of GSD&M, an Austin-based corporate ad firm, and has experience in politics, including with Clinton’s 2008 campaign.
John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, and political operative Joel Benenson discussed their displeasure with the article and with those two people for talking to the press without consulting the campaign managers first.
Podesta wrote (emphases mine below):
… we need a strategy on this that goes beyond internal discipline. This story could have been written without any of these big mouths blabbing …
Benenson agreed:
I think we have to make examples now of people who have violated the trust of HRC and the rest of the team. People going forward need to know there are stiff consequences for leaking, self-promotion, unauthorized talking with the press. No one – literally no one talked to the press in either Obama campaign without clearing it with campaign brass.
Podesta replied in a curious way:
I’m definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it.
Campaign manager Robby Mook, who was copied on the exchange, agreed:
I would love an example being made.
How far did this go in reality?
No one knows, but many suspect — rightly or wrongly — that Seth Rich’s alleged leak of 40,000+ emails to WikiLeaks — the DNC WikiLeaks — might well have led to his death in July 2016.
On Tuesday, May 16, the torchpaper was lit. As Fox News ran with the Rich story, bringing it to the attention of the general public, three new Twitter hastags were busy: #HisNameWasSethRich, #SethRichCoverUp and #SethRich.
Some leftists did take note, primarily those employed at David Brock‘s Media Matters, who now realise they’ve been paid to circulate ‘lies’ online and said so on 4chan.org/pol/. Let’s hope that they do resign now that they know the truth.
Other Americans also doubt the Russian narrative.
With all the law enforcement silence around Rich’s murder and little information to go on over the past ten months, people are naturally suspicious details are being covered up or that nothing is being done:
People following the case since last year do not believe that Rich had no involvement in the DNC WikiLeaks:
Equally, they are disappointed that so much wasted energy is being spent on the Russian narrative and James Comey:
This could be why:
Incidentally, Seth Rich was not the only man to die mysteriously in the summer of 2016:
Pray that the truth comes out about these four men, all of whom had a relationship with the Democrats.
My intention last year was to write about the WikiLeaks emails from the Democrats.
Because of all the hubbub surrounding the 2016 presidential campaign, I never got around to it. I still have all the bookmarks of the emails themselves and related analyses from The_Donald. They are a revelation.
I hope that some people will be wondering how and where the Russian narrative used against President Donald Trump started.
Look no further than Hillary Clinton’s campaign supremo John Podesta and a journalist, Brent Budowsky, who writes for The Hill.
Much of the Podesta WikiLeaks email no. 25651, dated December 21, 2015, concerns Hillary Clinton’s stance on ISIS and Syria. There is also a mention of campaign advertising and getting out the vote.
However, the key to this is the Democrats’ strategy against Trump, primarily this one from Brent Budowsky (emphases mine below):
Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin …
Budowsky was also interested in finding and releasing incriminating tapes of Trump to help Hillary, whom they knew even then was not doing well in the polls:
I suspect her negative trust ratings are locked in through election day. If there is a Trump ISIS video the campaign release it. If not, her untrustworthy numbers will remain further locked at high levels. These trust problems are self-induced and keep occurring.
Budowsky became more insistent:
Re the Trump ISIS video, if we don’t have the proof campaign should assign 100 people to look for it ASAP, there is probably something on tape somewhere.
With regard to campaign adverts, Budowsky already noted that Trump was not running them:
It is no coincidence that this year Trump runs no ads, while Jeb and Hillary run the most ads with little effect. Voter registration by contrast creates real voters and changes—and improves—the playing field itself. There is no ad on earth that will increase her trust ratings or the enthusiasm of her voters the way a mega-registration project will increase her support on election day.
They knew then that Hillary was scuppered. Based on the context, they also seemed to discern that Trump was going to be Hillary’s opponent in 2016.
In June 2016 — one month before the Republican National Convention declared Trump the GOP presidential candidate — Trump Derangement Syndrome was flying high in the Democrat camp. Obama’s campaign manager from 2008, later a senior adviser, tweeted:
On November 9, 2016 — the day after the election — Hillary’s campaign heads decided to run hard with the Russian narrative:
The quote in blue comes from an investigative book about the Clinton campaign, Shattered, which came out earlier this year.
On April 21, Breitbart included the quote in their report, which began:
The blistering behind-the-scenes book, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, illustrates how Hillary Clinton furiously blamed her defeat on the FBI investigation into her private emails, Russian interference, and Trump’s supposed support from “white nationalists” …
Also:
The Clinton camp settled on a two-pronged plan — pushing the press to cover how “Russian hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign, overshadowed by the contents of stolen e-mails and Hillary’s own private-server imbroglio,” while “hammering the media for focusing so intently on the investigation into her e-mail, which had created a cloud over her candidacy,” the authors wrote.
And so the Russian narrative survives, alive and well, to this day.
The Democrats and the media have been displaying abject contempt for the people of the United States ever since.
Anyone who still thinks either camp cares about them is sorely mistaken.
Summer’s nearly here and it will be a long, hot one where Big Media and the White House are concerned.
The Russian narrative still shows no signs of abating.
On Tuesday, May 16, Dr Stephen F Cohen, a longtime academic and expert on Russia, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show:
Cohen is left-wing politically, and writes for The Nation. Therefore, he is no fan of President Donald Trump. However, he has an objective outlook. I’ve seen him on Tucker Carlson before and he speaks sense.
On May 16, he warned that the media assault is not only unwarranted, it is dangerous to the fabric of the United States. The clip below is a minute long:
The day before, Big Media stories circulated accusing Trump of giving away security secrets to the Russians. A salient comment at The_Donald explains why this is not only fake, but also dangerous news. Highlights in bold are from the original. Those in purple are mine:
Trump didn’t help ISIS or endanger lives – the media helped ISIS and endangered lives.
Day 1: Trump has a meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador. Nobody knows what is being discussed other than the people in the room.
Unknown to the outside world, Trump is supposed to have told them (disputed) that an intelligence source in a specific ISIS city has found that they are having a new focus on laptop bombs. Laptop bombs are very old news, we already have to send laptops through X-ray separately, but not everyone might do this at small airports, particularly in Russia. It’s useful information for Russia to prevent terrorists blowing up planes. In 2015 a Russian plane was blown up in the air killing 224 people.
Day 2: “Anonymous sources” tell the media that Trump endangered a source by doing this. The source could be killed, Trump is risking lives. The usefulness for preventing more Russian civilian aircraft being blown up is completely absent from reporting.
In reality, the danger to the source is very small. Why? Because only the top Russian leadership have been told. It would not get published in newspapers. Nobody knows outside of the people in the room. The “danger to the source” the media is crying about would require a complete leak. Not just about laptop bombs, because that’s old news and could have been found through digital interception. But the entire conversation from the White House between Trump and the Russian Foreign minister and ambassador would have to get leaked to ISIS.
To point out again: How would ISIS find out and kill the spy? They don’t know what was discussed in the meeting. Their only knowledge would be when in a few months airports start paying some extra attention to scanning laptops, maybe some Russian airports get X-ray machines installed. The danger to the source is extremely small.
Day 3: The media tells the entire world the full details of the conversation, from their “anonymous sources” – that Trump talked about a new ongoing programme, revealed by a spy, in a specific city. Most likely this is the only city this development is happening in – it’s quite technical, and needs an expert to disguise batteries as bombs to pass X-ray scans.
ISIS can immediately round up everyone around this programme. Because now ISIS knows both the city and the programme the spy has access to.
They didn’t before, but the media just told them everything they need to know.
Basically, the media are complete sociopaths, holy extreme boundless warriors with terrorist mindsets, out to destroy the Trump administration. They don’t give a [—-] about getting a spy killed. Thanks to Washington Post, the probability of that spy being killed increased from the 1% range to the 50%+ range.
Trump had this to say about the aforementioned article in the Washington Post:
The Gateway Pundit pointed out that Trump did not even know what city was concerned, but someone at the White House did and released the information to the Washington Post (emphasis in the original):
The real scandal is that WaPo claimed in their article that President Trump disclosed the city of where the intelligence was gathered to the Russians but the President was never even briefed on this information.
There is also the organised brigading by David Brock’s left-wing Shareblue media initiative which emerged from the Correct The Record PAC which plastered propaganda all over the web for Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign.
Two of my previous posts mentioned Brock in passing. In March 2017, I wrote that Brock’s organisation pays people to comment on pro-Trump social media. In April, I wrote about the accusations that Brock’s organisation, Media Matters, made against Fox News’s Judge Andrew Napolitano:
Napolitano has great insight into the inner workings of Washington, DC, particularly with regard to recent claims of surveillance of President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign …
On March 17, Media Matters, founded by the highly powerful Democrat operative David Brock, currently recovering from a heart attack, accused the judge of obtaining his ‘conspiracy theory’ from ‘Russian media’.
In January, Brock’s team issued a blueprint about bombarding social media with more anti-Trump, pro-Left propaganda, including leaks:
On May 16, the Seth Rich story entered the mainstream. Rich was murdered in mysterious circumstances in Washington, DC on July 10, 2016. He worked for the DNC (Democratic National Committee) at the time. It is thought that he might have been involved in leaking more than 44,000 incriminating DNC emails to WikiLeaks. However, at this time, no one really knows for certain.
In any event, the contents of those emails clearly showed that the DNC were determined to take down Bernie Sanders’s candidacy. The DNC convention took place at the end of July 2016. Before then, because of the strength of the leaked emails, the then-chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to resign.
For those unfamiliar with Seth Rich, WikiLeaks tweeted that the best and most concise source of information so far is a Fox 25 (Washington DC Fox affiliate) article. On May 16, Fox News ran with the story. (Also see this Fox 25 article from May 17.)
The bigger print media outlets immediately came up with the aforementioned Trump-Russia story about the president giving Russia state secrets. Those articles took Rich’s story off the front pages.
There is a reason for that.
The Rich story could be a huge link to goings-on in the US capital. The DC police are not commenting on his murder.
Furthermore:
Fox 5 is standing by the story, but several federal and local law enforcement sources told the Washington Post they were unaware of Rich sending any DNC information to WikiLeaks. Nothing in their examination of Rich’s computer and email activity connected him to WikiLeaks.
“There is nothing that we can find that any of this is accurate,” police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck told the [Washington] Post.
Those who have been following the Seth Rich murder for the past ten months think there is a cover-up, because, to quote a contributor to The_Donald:
Seth Rich is a domino. Once this is exposed the rest will fall one by one.
The Fox 25 article states:
If true, Rich being WikiLeaks’ source would undercut the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia hacked email accounts linked to Clinton to hurt her campaign. It would also refute Democrats’ allegations that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to release and promote this information.
Once the Russian narrative dies — it’s sure to continue throughout the summer — then Trump’s Department of Justice will become front and centre news.
James Comey, a big source of protection for politicians and media, is gone. It is almost certain that many of these people are panicking. They, along with the possible collusion of law enforcement agencies, know about big, undercover crimes going on. Some of them could well be put on trial, with a number of them facing prison sentences.
Why else have there been constant calls this month for Trump’s impeachment? Why else have there been accusations that if Trump isn’t insane, he at least has Alzheimer’s and is, therefore, unfit for office?
This comment from 4chan.org/pol/ — posted at The_Donald — says it all:
It seems very likely that an incorruptible FBI director and the Department of Justice can make tremendous inroads in draining the Swamp, just as Trump pledged.
A few weeks ago, President Donald Trump and Julian Assange connected on Twitter.
Throwing out a question, as he does, Trump received the following reply from Assange shortly afterwards.
The exchange took place on Monday, April 3, 2017. It concerns whether Hillary Clinton received a set of debate questions during the Democratic primary season from DNC operative Donna Brazile, who also worked for CNN at the time:
At that time, I thought that was excellent, hoping there will be more of those exchanges in future.
Since then, things have changed. CIA director Mike Pompeo strongly criticised WikiLeaks. President Donald Trump — who owes his victory in large part to WikiLeaks — followed suit.
On April 17, Roger Stone, a longtime friend of Trump and, briefly, his first presidential campaign manager, wrote (emphases mine):
Sadly, Donald Trump’s appointee of Director of Central Intelligence has clearly been conned by the Neo Con careerists at the CIA. Former Congressman Mike Pompeo was appointed at the behest of Vice President Pence who was friendly with Pompeo in the House. While Mr. Pompeo is a Harvard lawyer, his training at West Point was in mechanical engineering. Although he served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence at no time has he expressed any concern about the CIA’s sorry track record of insisting that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that prisoners of war are not being tortured at Abu Ghraib prison, that the United States was farming terrorists out to 3rd party countries which utilized torture in a practice called rendition, that our mission in Benghazi was attacked by a mob whipped into a frenzy by an anti-Islamic video shown in Turkey, as well as the Intelligence agencies role in the collection of metadata on millions of Americans in violation of the US Constitution.
President Donald Trump said on Oct, 10, 2016 “I love Wikileaks” and Pompeo who previously had praised the whistleblowing operation now called Wikileaks “a non-state hostile Intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia”. Mr. Pompeo must be pressed to immediately release any evidence he has that proves these statements. If he cannot do so ,the President should discharge him.
Julian Assange issued the following statement:
Stone had more in his post:
After some soul searching I have elected to support the President’s limited incursion into Syria because of the strong geo-political message it sends the North Koreans, Iranians and Chinese. It also underlined the foolish of the entire “Russians helped Trump” narrative.
Acting on faulty intelligence endorsed by Director Pompeo, the President has now violated international law, the UN Charter and the War Powers Agreement with Congress. While he has won praise from hawks on both sides of the aisle, who have denounced him in the past, and has been lauded by the mainstream media, which holds him in contempt. A further expansion of the war in Syria would mean violation of end of the non-interventionism, the very concept that won Donald Trump the presidency. It would be the functional end of “Trumpism”.
The competence of Wikileaks, which has yet to release even one inauthentic email, compares very favorably with the performance of the CIA, which neither anticipated the collapse of the Soviet Union or the “terrorist attack” of 9/11. But not only is the public shortchanged by an agency that all-too-often misses either the boat or gets things wrong, its operations around the world have gone far beyond the scope of its charter. The agency is out of control.( See “The CIA’s Record of Duplicity” on the StoneCold Truth.com ) …
Assange is a hero who has rendered valuable service to the American people. Mr. Pompeo has demonstrated that he is far too gullible to serve as the CIA Director and will pretty much swallow anything that the spooks in Langley dish out to him despite the obvious lack of any hard evidence whatsoever. Clearly Mr. Pompeo should resign.
The folks at The_Donald, where a forensic examination of every Podesta WikiLeaks dump can be found, are equally disappointed in Pompeo. They think Trump should ask him to resign.
Trump won over a lot of twenty- and thirty-somethings who read The_Donald and their WikiLeaks analyses. Many of these people were Obama voters or Bernie supporters. Trump should be offering Assange residence in the United States — with no charges against him.
No, Assange isn’t perfect. Nor is Trump. Nor is Pompeo (obviously). However, let’s give credit where credit is due.
If Pompeo doesn’t like WikiLeaks’ Vault 7 releases over the past few weeks, he shouldn’t blame the messenger. He needs to look inside his own agency. They’re the ones who made that software available to all and sundry, for nefarious means.
Now Attorney General Jeff Sessions is getting in on the act.
I was disappointed to see the following in Trump’s interview with the AP of April 23:
AP: If I could fit a couple of more topics. Jeff Sessions, your attorney general, is taking a tougher line suddenly on Julian Assange, saying that arresting him is a priority. You were supportive of what WikiLeaks was doing during the campaign with the release of the Clinton emails. Do you think that arresting Assange is a priority for the United States?
TRUMP: When Wikileaks came out … never heard of Wikileaks, never heard of it. When Wikileaks came out, all I was just saying is, “Well, look at all this information here, this is pretty good stuff” …
AP: Can I just ask you, though — do you believe it is a priority for the United States, or it should be a priority, to arrest Julian Assange?
TRUMP: I am not involved in that decision, but if Jeff Sessions wants to do it, it’s OK with me. I didn’t know about that decision, but if they want to do it, it’s OK with me.
I do not think that Trump has the full information on all of this.
I do hope that someone fills him in. Steve Bannon must surely know. So must others within close proximity to the Oval Office.
The other day, I responded to a comment on a conservative American website with regard to diet.
The context was in regard to the reform of Obamacare in the Trump administration. The initial comment referred to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisconsin) possible approval of a health auditor, a stranger, to visit someone’s house to assess a family’s lifestyle prior to their obtaining health insurance. Apparently, this is one health insurance idea that has been discussed before.
Ryan’s father died at an unexpectedly early age from heart disease. Consequently, Ryan focussed on diet and exercise to ensure he himself didn’t end up that way. It is thought that he also might well consider that a stranger going into someone’s home to assess their lifestyle — perhaps to check cupboards for snacks or alcohol and sniff walls for evidence of smoking — is entirely acceptable.
That is every bit as frightening as the Vault 7 Year Zero CIA document dump by WikiLeaks on March 7.
There are two things here.
The first is that, as a legislator, Paul Ryan will never have to be part of Obamacare or Trumpcare. He and his colleagues get a traditional health insurance plan.
The next thing is obesity, which Paul Ryan — a thin man — desperately opposes.
As I told the person on this particular conservative website, this notion of a healthcare audit is a plan for the ‘little people’. (They, in Ryan’s estimation, do not understand what their betters do. This, by the way, is Ryan’s ‘magnificent home’ in Janesville, Wisconsin. It has an extensive border fence around it.)
I further commented (same link):
To counter Ryan’s dictating to Americans on their health: my father also died of heart disease at an early age. So did his father, whom I never met. So have some of my friends in the present day. That doesn’t give the right to go around snooping in people’s homes as a precursor to getting health insurance!
Then, I discussed obesity:
Re obesity: severely limit or stop eating starch and sugar, eat more fat (including animal fat) and less protein. Watch the pounds roll off. It’s called the ketogenic diet, which is a permanent eating plan, not a fad diet. I’ve been on it for three years. I lost weight and stabilised. Cholesterol and triglycerides go down with keto.
As we know, there is a particular association between Americans and obesity. It is unclear whether this can be connected with the increase of obesity in other Western countries, because who knows how much corn syrup — rather than sugar — is in their food? Emphases mine below, not in the original comment:
Someone on here was talking about corn. It’s all the corn syrup used in place of sugar which also leads to obesity. Sugar makes you feel more sated than corn syrup. We owe the proliferation of corn syrup to the Nixon administration in the 1970s. Corn farmers, IIRC, had a glut of crop then, so were bailed out with companies producing corn syrup for commercial cake, cookie and candy manufacturers.
Note when obesity started to climb: the late 1970s to early 1980s. It was no big deal at the time. Most people attributed it to Americans giving up smoking. Although that was a factor, I would posit that the increase of sweet snacks and cakes made with corn syrup were a greater contributor — and continue to be today.
Yes, I know I should have said ‘was’ instead of ‘were’ in the last sentence, but only caught it now.
Regardless, that message got through. My sincere thanks to the moderators. I didn’t think anything of it until later. Now read on.
The commenter, with whom I was corresponding, replied:
Salty snacks like crackers and chips also contribute, along with soft drinks and the rest of our favorites (fast food, etc). Eat at home family meals with vegetables and salads have diminished with women working, divorces, unwed mothers with no Dad in the home, increase of addictions, etc.
I’m not in favor of a one-food group diet (animal fat/low carb) diet. Whole grains and vegetables/fruit contain important phytonutrients. Did you know heart attacks diminished in Britain, in WWII, despite the stress of the bombings, when sugar was rationed?
So, appreciating this reply, but differing because of my keto experience — and that of thousands of others — wrote back.
I retyped my reply twice. Both immediately went into spam. A subsequent message, on a different topic, went through, by the way.
The text below is similar to what was spammed. Once again, emphases mine below, not in the original comment. For the overweight:
All starch — whether salty or sweet, from carbohydrate to sugar — should be sharply curtailed or eliminated.
It should be noted that the ketogenic diet — a way of eating and not a fad diet — is not a one-food group diet. It works with a proportion (depending on the individual) of 50% fat, 35% protein and 15% carbohydrate per day. Vegetables should provide most of the 15% carbohydrate. The more you weigh, the more you lose.
Starch comprises bread, cereal, cakes, oatmeal, salty snacks (etc.). Sugars, including those in fruit, are also starches.
Corn syrup has replaced sugar in most sweet snacks. Corn syrup is less satisfying than pure sugar. Americans are eating more corn syrup in cakes, cookies and candies. Therefore, they are getting fatter because the corn syrup is less satisfying.
Eating more fat — including fat from cheese, eggs and dairy products, especially butter — will be more satisfying than eating starches or sugar.
I agree very much with your point on ready-made meals, however, another problem is that Americans — along with many other Westerners — eat five times a day.
I take your point that, during the Second World War, Britons got their nutrients from whole grain bread. However, they needed all the sustenance they could receive. They also had no central heating. They had to walk or ride bicycles to and from work. Rationing in the UK did not end until 1954.
Westerners live an entirely different lifestyle in the 21st century. They eat too many carbohydrates, including sugars — especially corn syrup products, which leave them less full than sugar would. They have heated homes and offices. They drive nearly everywhere.
Low fat foods are another problem. For a decent flavour profile, low fat needs to be offset with high sugar content, most often corn syrup.
My message must have had wording or syntax that instantly caused it to end up in spam — twice.
There is a political point about corn syrup that I want to make concerning the law of unintended consequences. No one could foresee in the Nixon administration that corn syrup would result in a national weight problem.
I know from experience. In the early 1960s, when I was five years old, I was a guest of a young friend at her house for Saturday dinner — pancake night. My mother always bought maple-flavoured syrup made with sugar. This family always bought corn syrup. I still remember eating a plateful of pancakes with syrup and feeling hungry before I went to bed that night. The hosts even told my parents that I had an incredible appetite for such a little tyke. Yet, that was the only time I was ever hungry after eating twice as many pancakes as I would have done at home. The only difference was the type of syrup.
Conclusion
If Americans were still eating sweets of any kind made with sugar, they would be of normal weight.
Corn syrup is making people fat. So are other starches. Anyone who wants to lose weight should try a low-carb high-fat — LCHF — eating plan.
For more information on the ketogenic diet, please read the following. If you are in any doubt or under regular care of a physician, seek medical advice first:
Does low animal fat intake increase hostility or depression? (a hypothesis)
Fat and a balanced mind (low-fat diets can imbalance serotonin and nerves)
Depression and anxiety: the perils of a low-fat, high-carb diet
High carbohydrate intake and depression
Depression and cancer: more evidence against a low-fat diet
High carbohydrate intake and depression (also epilepsy related [Dr Richard A Kunin’s paper])
High-carb, low-fat diets might cause Western diseases (cancer related)
Low-carb diet a migraine remedy
Low-carb, high-fat diets regulate testosterone, cholesterol levels
Ketogenic diet and gout risk — tips for success
Resources for the ketogenic diet
Dietary advice: the old ways are the best (my own story on the ketogenic diet)
High carb, low fat diets bad for brain health — and moods? (more testimonials for the ketogenic diet)
Whilst I cannot guarantee that my original correspondent on the conservative website will see this, I hope that others might find this of interest.
On Monday, March 6, 2017, Fox News host Tucker Carlson was one of the speakers who addressed the International Association of Fire Fighters at their annual legislative conference in Washington, DC.
Fox 10 Phoenix has the entire 34 minute video — recommended viewing:
For decades, average Americans have wondered why there is such a gulf between Washington and most of the United States.
Carlson explains the DC disconnect.
Starting with Trump’s surprise win in 2016, Carlson said that the middle class was simply fed up with the DC elite ignoring their cries for help regarding immigration and trade.
He said that the DC elite are oblivious to average Americans. Washington DC has full employment and more people working as housekeepers than ever before. Conversation revolves around the theoretical, e.g. economic theory, rather than reality.
He explained that two things that people in DC love are immigration and free trade. Immigration is great because DC residents can get servants very cheaply. In some cases, he said, they are paid a child’s allowance as a salary. DC residents then feel they are being virtuous towards the less fortunate.
However, what works for DC doesn’t work for the rest of the nation. The middle class tried time and time again to point that out to the elite, who dismissed them as being racist and stupid.
The same scenario occurred with trade. The middle class are losing their jobs. The elite in DC do not care.
This broad swathe of dissatisfied Americans took to the ballot box in November 2016. They mounted a peaceful revolution by electing Donald Trump to the White House.
Carlson talked about the rabid hate of Trump in Washington, where 90%+ of voters plumped for Hillary Clinton. Carlson said that, out of three million government employees, only 50 actually like Trump. Whether that is numerically accurate is beside the point. Trump faces an uphill climb.
Furthermore, as much as Democrats loathe Trump, it’s even more entrenched on the Republican side.
He said that Trump can come up with the most sensible policies — buying cheaper drugs from Canada — and politicians simply shut him out. They cannot hear what he is saying. I call that Trump Derangement Syndrome. The term was used about Bush and Obama’s opponents in their time.
Carlson said that nothing in this world is 100% good. Immigration and market-driven trade are two of these things. They work well for the top one per cent but are disastrous for everyone else. He pointed to other examples of where people have noticed and vote accordingly: the UK, with Brexit, and France, with Marine LePen (doing well in the polls).
Carlson spoke about the disaster coming from mass unemployment, particularly among men. Unemployment, he said, drives men crazy. Men need to work in order to feel that they have value and purpose in life.
He said that the current immigration model — and this is true for other Western countries — is predicated on a large manufacturing base. Unfortunately, that manufacturing base no longer exists. Therefore, immigration policy must change accordingly to fit reality.
This also holds true with regard to war and trade. Trump opposes needless American intervention in other nation’s affairs. Trump supports trade deals that will help, not hinder, America.
Carlson also warned about driverless vehicles. Once again, all of Washington waxes lyrical about how ‘cool’ these are. Yet, they will put 8 million people out of jobs overnight if they become reality on the nation’s roads. Carlson pointed out that the most popular occupation among recent high school graduates is driving a truck.
If truck drivers — and taxi drivers — become obsolete, what are they going to do for work? Carlson correctly surmised that they won’t be retraining to become computer programmers. He said that the Trump administration should ban them outright. I agree, in part. They should be banned for commercial use, at least.
He also talked about the Tea Party, which failed, in his estimation, because it lacked a leader. The Tea Party, he explained, was a way for conservative Republicans to express their dissatisfaction with the Republican Party, which clearly does not share their interests.
Then along came Donald Trump. Carlson found it interesting that Trump has never really issued a concise statement about what his movement or ideology stands for. Yet, he struck a chord with millions of Americans who felt he spoke for them.
I’ll conclude with something that Carlson opened with. He said that Republicans and Democrats must really take in and understand what upsets Americans and why they voted for Trump. He said that serious soul searching must take place in the two main political parties. Unfortunately, he noted, that has not yet begun.
As for what Trump’s ideology is with regard for America, I predict we will all be able to articulate it by 2020.
I nearly forgot to mention Carlson’s opinion of the media: ‘dumb’, except for his colleagues at Fox. He told the fire fighters that he has worked for every cable news network and knows whereof he speaks. He said that no one with an ounce of intelligence goes into media. (That should tell us something about students in Media Studies.)
Carlson’s speech was great. He spoke for 13 minutes then took three questions from the audience, for the next 20. He’s much livelier giving a speech than he is in interviews on Tucker Carlson Tonight. And rightly so. This address shows a different side to his personality.
Two days after the Governors Dinner at the White House — a great success — President Donald Trump hit it out of the park on Tuesday, February 28, 2017 with his Presidential Address to Congress.
Reading the transcript is one thing, but seeing and hearing Trump give the speech, akin to a State of the Union Address, is quite another. The video below is subtitled, by the way:
Trump advisor Stephen Miller, a dynamic speaker who appeared at several speeches during the 2016 campaign season, wrote the speech, aided by Ivanka Trump and Hope Hicks, Ivanka’s talented former employee. Trump poached her last year for his campaign.
As is customary, the president and first lady invited special guests mentioned in Trump’s address.
Trump is already looking ahead to 2026:
Hopefully, the 250th year for America will see a world that is more peaceful, more just and more free.
On our 100th anniversary, in 1876, citizens from across our Nation came to Philadelphia to celebrate America’s centennial. At that celebration, the country’s builders and artists and inventors showed off their creations.
Alexander Graham Bell displayed his telephone for the first time.
Remington unveiled the first typewriter. An early attempt was made at electric light.
Thomas Edison showed an automatic telegraph and an electric pen.
Imagine the wonders our country could know in America’s 250th year.
Think of the marvels we can achieve if we simply set free the dreams of our people.
Cures to illnesses that have always plagued us are not too much to hope.
American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream.
Millions lifted from welfare to work is not too much to expect.
And streets where mothers are safe from fear — schools where children learn in peace — and jobs where Americans prosper and grow — are not too much to ask.
When we have all of this, we will have made America greater than ever before. For all Americans.
This is our vision. This is our mission.
He followed with a call for national unity:
But we can only get there together.
We are one people, with one destiny.
Because:
We all bleed the same blood.
We all salute the same flag.
And we are all made by the same God.
He concluded:
The time for small thinking is over. The time for trivial fights is behind us.
We just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts.
The bravery to express the hopes that stir our souls.
And the confidence to turn those hopes and dreams to action.
From now on, America will be empowered by our aspirations, not burdened by our fears —
inspired by the future, not bound by the failures of the past —
and guided by our vision, not blinded by our doubts.
I am asking all citizens to embrace this Renewal of the American Spirit. I am asking all members of Congress to join me in dreaming big, and bold and daring things for our country. And I am asking everyone watching tonight to seize this moment and —
Believe in yourselves.
Believe in your future.
And believe, once more, in America.
Thank you, God bless you, and God Bless these United States.
I stayed up late to watch Trump and am glad I did.
The first part of the speech dealt with Trump’s programmes and policies. After each one, he mentioned a special guest and, in some cases, one of their relatives who was killed.
The most moving was the mention of Ryan Owens, the Navy SEAL killed in the recent Yemen operation. Carryn Owens, his widow, cried and received a very long standing ovation. Ivanka Trump is on the right of this photo:
The moment was so powerful that Van Jones, hardline Democrat and former Obama advisor, had praise for Trump. Even CNN had to acknowledge it:
That was one of the most extraordinary moments you have ever seen in American politics.
Although Jones said he still disagrees with a number of Trump’s policy positions:
If he finds a way to do that over and over again, he’s going to be there for eight years.
Jones’s verdict elicited this response from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell:
(Message to Mitch McConnell: Right, so quit stalling on getting the remainder of Trump’s cabinet approved!)
The way Trump deftly wove real Americans into every aspect of his policy announcements also struck a chord with 43m viewers who watched on television at home. It is unknown how many watched online.
CBS’s poll showed that 76% of Americans who saw the speech approved of it. CNN’s poll resulted in a 57% approval.
Commenters at The_Donald were quick to pick up on this pitch-perfect approach:
mercynurse: So subtle, yet right in your face.
Disabled woman with rare disease in a wheelchair.
Black woman who flunked third grade twice and then got scholarship and opportunity to change schools.
Women related to police officers who were killed by illegal aliens.
Black man whose promising son was killed by illegal alien.
Ryan Owens’ family.
TennisEnnis19: Trump using the democrat “emotional appeal” tactic like a pro
BenTide: He knows them inside and out more than any Republican since probably Ronald Reagan (also a former registered democrat).
On another thread at The_Donald people were similarly blown away:
grumpyjacket: You don’t hear that kind of power in speeches anymore. The greats like Reagan and Churchill used powerful language; all the politicians I’ve seen in my lifetime use words like wet noodles; they could talk for an hour and still say nothing. Trump’s vision was ambitious and his language powerful. Darn good speech.
fablong: That’s the problem I had with Obummer. He made some good speeches, especially in his 2008 campaign, but when he became president he dropped the ball bigly. His words sounded good, but he never expressed a VISION for the country. Trump clearly has an idea of where he wants America to go, what he expects from all of us as our leader, and the sacrifices he’s willing to make in return. And by God he’s going to force that vision of greatness into reality, even if he has to drag half the country along kicking and screaming. You can feel it in your bones. What a great time to be alive.
The Democrats — with the notable exception of Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia — remained seated for the many standing ovations.
They booed when Trump announced the creation of a new agency: VOICE — Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement — which will help families of victims of crimes by illegal immigrants. However, these crimes are real, and Jamiel Shaw Sr’s son was but one fatal murder victim of an illegal immigrant, a gang member. The Shaws are black. This runs counter to Democrat mindsets.
Some female Democrat congressional representatives wore white in honour of the suffragettes, but that was probably a protest against Trump’s defunding of Planned Parenthood. Democrat senators — male and female — wore buttons that said ‘#Protect and #Care’ to express the same disapproval. None of them obviously cares about or wants to protect unborn children in the womb.
On wearing white, this reminded Trump supporters of the 2016 presidential campaign, best represented by the following headlines from philly.com (image courtesy of The_Donald):
Apparently, only Democrats are allowed to wear white.
You can read and see more about this historic presidential address — the best for decades — at the Daily Mail site here and here.
I’ll close with this comment and clip from Representative Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana):
