Below the fold on the April 25 and 26 (Weekend) edition are these two headlines side by side:

“World Awash In Too Much Of Almost Everything.” and “U.S. Commandos Span The Globe.” Subheading: “American special operators landed in 81 countries last year, as the U.S. seeks new ways to project power.”

“World Awash In Too Much Of Almost Everything.” (This refers to the commodities bubble and what the banksters call the dreaded deflation. They hate deflation because it makes the things they want to sell cheaper with less expectation of price increases. People will save for retirement making investment money available instead of spending every penny trying to snatch up those bargains before the price inflates. The banksters want the illusion of prosperity that inflation creates so their cronies in government can claim good times and stay in power so they can grant more of your favors to the status quo.

The second headline: “U.S. Commandos Span The Globe.” Subheading: “American special operators landed in 81 countries last year, as the U.S. seeks new ways to project power.”

Put these two headlines together and it is self explanatory why we have to have a military as large as the rest of the whole world combined. Each of those 81 countries has the good guys and the bad guys. No matter which side we take, the other side is then our enemy. We now have enemies in 81 countries, guaranteed. Follow the campaign donations for the hawkish contributors and it becomes evident we don’t really intend to make the world a better place, we just like the taxpayers to buy men and military hardware to enrich industry that would otherwise not exist. That money would buy swing sets and cancer cures instead, for example.

The pot calling the kettle black. Get it?

The fact that most people fall for the story that there is much difference and an election is going to turn around a country based of international arrogance and a widespread entitlement mentality is the most concerning story in the upcoming election.
The welfare / warfare state’s existence is not in question, only to what degree we are ripped off to support it.
BTW. Hillary is toast already. The media and establishment Democrats are seeing her baggage and searching desperately for someone just like her but with a better public image.

Continuing on the Hillary kick, I don’t know why I didn’t make the connection before but…

The murder of Chris Stevens, our arms dealer to the Syrian rebels, has been a great rallying cry for Republicans. They really hate it when our intrusions reap what they sow. Of course they blame Hillary for the death of Stevens and his cohorts in Benghazi even though they shoulda been doing a backyard barbecue somewhere in our defense department’s legal jurisdiction (USA).

Now, with the drowning deaths of those poor souls trying to escape Libya, where is the conversation about why these people need to leave? The Republicans could blame Hillary for that but then they just love sending all that hardware and “help” all over the world. So the blame really lies at the feet of those interventionists at the root. And a bunch of dark, poverty stricken refugees aren’t worth mentioning compared to a diplomat and some Navy Seals.

Anyway, this cartoon is a good illustration of where serious thought resides in America. The focus on Hillary is easy but who can tell the difference between her and the others in the big scheme of things? “Blowback” is never mentioned in conservative circles, is it?

So said Hillary, Secretary of State, upon the US assassination of Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi had relinquished his WMDs in order to get along with the world. He was a ruthless dictator and we now know Middle Eastern peace only exists under such governments.

I don’t know the total (who does?) but hundreds of refugees have drowned in desperate attempts to flee the chaos we created in Libya. Amazing that someone responsible for so much mayhem has the balls to run for president. It doesn’t serve to compliment the US voters. We should be ashamed.

Rand Paul’s pal Mitch McConnell has introduced legislation extending the Patriot Act. What if he just boarded a plane to East Germany with Steve King? Oh. That wouldn’t work. Their government failed. Like ours should if we keep letting them steal our raisins and spying on us.

The story:http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/04/22/Patriot-Act-extension-bill-introduced-by-Sen-McConnell/4101429704359/

Raisin story: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-court-california-raisins-20150422-story.html

Things are getting pretty scary out here. We could get Ted Cruz, who is anti-(gasp)ethanol. Bobby Jindal who looks like a techy. Rand Paul, who called McCain and Lindsey Graham lap-dogs for Obama’s foreign policy (who really knows what he thinks but I like the direction here). Chris Christie (middle name Christ?), of the neighborhood where a horse’s head is used for communication. Scott Walker (union buster), well alright. Jeb Bush (oil instead of scotch). Donald Trump.

But the funnest one of all is Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend’s wife: (thanks Ed Steer)

I’m in a discussion group once a month. Last night we talked about college and debt and decisions for high school grads to make concerning their future. Dawn looks for jokes to tell at her musical performances and had to tell me this one this morning. (Usually she saves them for the events.)

First Day at Work
Sent Monday, April 20, 2015
A young man hired by a supermarket reported for his first day of work. The manager greeted him with a warm handshake and a smile, gave him a broom and said, “Your first job will be to sweep out the store.”

“But I’m a college graduate,” the young man replied indignantly.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that,” said the manager. “Here, give me the broom — I’ll show you how.”

Received from FranCMT2. on GCFL.net

I thought this (from the War Street Journal) needed to be posted as we find all these scumbag cops surfacing. I wonder if it is more exposure because of smart phones or if we are scraping the bottom of the pool of potential officer hires because of the increasingly ridiculous laws they have to enforce and the regulations they are burdened with.

Notable & Quotable: Bob Schieffer
Day in and day out, the great majority of cops do their job the right way.
April 19, 2015 5:17 p.m. ET14 COMMENTS
From host Bob Schieffer’s weekly commentary for CBS’s “Face the Nation,” April 19:

The best training to be a reporter or anything else is to work the police beat, because every story you cover is the worst moment in someone’s life. If you can learn to get the right information under those circumstances, you won’t be fazed by the high and mighty and certainly not by the on-the-make politicians and spin doctors.

Which is why I want to add a paragraph or two to the rash of stories lately about cops gone wrong. This is not about them. This about all the cops you don’t read about. They deal much of the time with the dregs of our society. The schemers, the murderers, those who prey on the weak. And most of the time, the police deal with them humanely, and as they should.

What we overlook is just how difficult that can be sometimes. It’s not easy to remain passive when a child-beater looks you in the eye and tells you—you have to understand, the kid was keeping him awake. It takes a lot of professional training and strong character not to respond in anger. I know, because I spent my early years listening to some of these awful people. Sometimes I wanted to hit them myself. I didn’t, but it helped me understand how hard it is to do a cop’s job right. As hard as it is, the great majority of our cops still do just that.

… sell $1 billion worth of sophisticated attack helicopters to Pakistan. After all, they have the nuclear weapons Iran does not and their government is extremely unstable. This bodes well for further profits for our beloved defense (sic) industry. More weapons will soon be in demand. Google defense industry stocks and get out your checkbooks. Alfred Nobel would be so proud!

War Street Journal

OPINION COMMENTARY
Why Are We Sending This Attack Helicopter to Pakistan?
Past behavior indicates Islamabad won’t use the Viper and other U.S. weapons against jhadists.
By HUSAIN HAQQANI
April 19, 2015 5:51 p.m. ET
The Obama administration’s decision this month to sell almost $1 billion in U.S.-made attack helicopters, missiles and other equipment to Pakistan will fuel conflict in South Asia without fulfilling the objective of helping the country fight Islamist extremists. Pakistan’s failure to tackle its jihadist challenge is not the result of a lack of arms but reflects an absence of will. Unless Pakistan changes its worldview, American weapons will end up being used to fight or menace India and perceived domestic enemies instead of being deployed against jihadists.

Competition with India remains the overriding consideration in Pakistan’s foreign and domestic policies. By aiding Pakistan over the years—some $40 billion since 1950, according to the Congressional Research Service—the U.S. has fed Pakistan’s delusion of being India’s regional military equal. Seeking security against a much larger neighbor is a rational objective but seeking parity with it on a constant basis is not.

The AH-1Z Viper. ENLARGE
The AH-1Z Viper. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
Instead of selling more military equipment to Pakistan, U.S. officials should convince Pakistan that its ambitions of rivaling India are akin to Belgium trying to rival France or Germany. India’s population is six times as large as Pakistan’s while India’s economy is 10 times bigger, and India’s $2 trillion economy has managed consistent growth whereas Pakistan’s $245 billion economy has grown sporadically and is undermined by jihadist terrorism and domestic political chaos. Pakistan also continues to depend on Islamist ideology—through its school curricula, propaganda and Islamic legislation—to maintain internal nationalist cohesion, which inevitably encourages extremism and religious intolerance.

Clearly, with the latest military package, the Obama administration expects to continue the same policies adopted by several of its predecessors—and somehow get different results. It’s a mystery why the president suddenly trusts Pakistan’s military—after mistrusting it at the time of the Navy SEAL operation in May 2011 that found and killed Osama bin Laden living safely until then in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.

One explanation is that selling helicopters and missiles is easier than thinking of alternative strategies to compel an errant ally to change its behavior. This is a pattern in U.S.-Pakistan relations going back to the 1950s. Between 1950 and 1969, the U.S. gave $4.5 billion in aid to Pakistan partly in the hope of using Pakistani troops in anticommunist wars, according to declassified U.S. government documents. Pakistan did not contribute a single soldier for the wars in Korea or Vietnam but went to war with India over the disputed border state of Kashmir instead in 1965.

During the 1980s, Pakistan served as the staging ground for the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and received another $4.5 billion in aid, as reported by the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations to Congress. Pakistan diverted U.S. assistance again toward its obsessive rivalry with India, and trained insurgents to fight in the Indian part of Kashmir as well as in India’s Punjab state. It also violated promises to the U.S. and its own public statements not to acquire nuclear weapons, which it first tested openly in 1998—arguing that it could not afford to remain nonnuclear while India’s nuclear program surged ahead.

Since the 1990s, Pakistan has supported various jihadist groups, including the Afghan Taliban. After 9/11, the country’s military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, promised to end support for the Islamic radicals. Based on that promise, Pakistan received $15.1 billion in civil and military aid from the U.S. until 2009. In February, Gen. Musharraf admitted in an interview with the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper that he continued to support the Afghan Taliban even after 9/11 because of concerns over close relations between Afghanistan and India. Thus the U.S. was effectively arming a country that was, in turn, arming insurgents fighting and killing American troops in Afghanistan.

After the Dec. 16, 2014, attack on a Peshawar school, where the Taliban massacred 160 people, including many schoolchildren, Pakistan claimed it had changed its policy toward terrorist groups and would no longer distinguish between “good” and “bad” Taliban. The Pakistani military has since sped up military action against terrorist groups responsible for mayhem inside Pakistan. But the destruction, demobilization, disarmament or dismantling of Afghan Taliban and other radical groups is clearly not on the Pakistani state’s agenda. There has been no move against Kashmir-oriented jihadist groups.

Given Pakistan’s history, it is likely that the 15 AH-1Z Viper helicopters and 1,000 Hellfire missiles—as well as communications and training equipment being offered to it—will be used against secular insurgents in southwest Baluchistan province, bordering Iran, and along the disputed border in Kashmir rather than against the jihadists in the northwest bordering Afghanistan.

If the Obama administration believes Pakistan’s military has really changed its priorities, it should consider leasing helicopters to Pakistan and verify where they are deployed before going through with outright sales.

With nuclear weapons, Pakistan no longer has any reason to feel insecure about being overrun by a larger Indian conventional force. For the U.S. to continue supplying a Pakistani military that is much larger than the country can afford will only invigorate Pakistani militancy and militarism at the expense of its 200 million people, one-third of whom continue to live at less than a dollar a day per household.

Mr. Haqqani, the director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., 2008-11.