1.) We left a stockpile of nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey:
The Air Force on Monday said it has made no changes to daily operations at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey even as Turkish forces continue to push into Syrian territory, which has prompted U.S. forces to pull back.
But concerns are growing over the reported presence of U.S. nuclear weapons at Incirlik, believed to be about 50 B61 gravity bombs. The New York Times on Monday reported that officials from the State and Energy departments over the weekend reviewed plans for evacuating the nuclear weapons there.
Not surprisingly, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek would not answer questions about possible nuclear weapons at Incirlik and whether they would be moved in a Monday email.
“The mission of the 39th [Air Base Wing at Incirlik] is to provide persistent surety and continuous air operations for the U.S., our allies and our partners and helps protect U.S. and NATO interests in the Southern Region by providing a responsive and operational air base ready to project integrated, forward-based airpower,” Stefanek said. But she stated there have been no daily operations changes at the base.
A senior official reportedly told the Times that the weapons “were now essentially [Turkish President Recep] Erdogan’s hostages” since removing the weapons would effectively spell the end of America’s alliance with Turkey, but keeping them there would leave them vulnerable.
What could possibly go wrong?
2.) John Bolton, the charismatic favorite of the U.N., who warms his vocal chords by screaming and yelling at subordinates, and who never met a conflict in the Middle East that he didn’t like, turns out to be the guy with scruples in the Ukrainian fiasco:
Former national security adviser John Bolton was so disturbed by the efforts to get the Ukrainians to investigate President Donald Trump’s political opponents that he called it a “drug deal,” former White House official Fiona Hill reportedly told Congress on Monday.
Hill, the former top Europe expert in Trump’s White House, testified that Bolton told her he wanted no part of the effort that involved acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, a person in the room for Hill’s testimony told NBC News. Bolton also was said to have referred to Rudy Giuliani as a “hand grenade.”
Lol! The idea that John “hand held rocket launcher” Bolton is calling Giuliani a “hand grenade” is ridiculously funny. But point taken, he didn’t want to get involved in Pinky and The Brain’s latest plan to take over the world.
He also apparently told Fiona Hill to report what she knew to White House lawyers. It sounds like Bolton might have been one of the whistleblower’s sources.
Never thought I’d be respecting John Bolton. We live in interesting times.
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Walk to work music:
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
One would never have thought that all of America’s hard-earned alliances and protections could be dismantled in a few years, even by a totally inept president, but he is doing it. As awful as GW Bush was, he was at least bound by being part of a history of accepted principles regarding treaties and alliances. What we have with Trump is a mobster whose only interests are his financial gains, which he pursues in conjunction with tyrants running other countries. What hold Putin has over him can be debated; it may be several holds, and it may just be that Russia has funded him for decades, holds his debt, and that Trump loves powerful dictators, and yearns to be HItler himself.
It’s a hopeless matter to look back and recall that Hillary Clinton was an activist First Lady for a highly successful eight year Presidential term of her husband; that she was a very popular Senator from New York for eight years; and a Secretary of State who left that position with very high favorable ratings among Americans. The choice between her and Trump was at worst a choice between having whitefish for dinner or tacks dipped in strychnine. That tens of millions of Americans somehow chose the poisoned tacks is a perverse testament to ignorance, stupidity, responding to a brainwashed hatred of someone who was squarely within the respectable boundaries of American political theory and history, and instead choosing an evil, soulless person who cares nothing about this country, its citizens, or anything outside his personal appetites and hatreds. And we are here because of that. It reminds me of that very unpleasant fairy tale about the spoiled girl who put her coat on the muddy water because she didn’t want to step in it, and ended up sucked into a miasma with horrible creatures. That girl did not deserve such a fate, and it bothered me. The people who voted for Trump deserve it more, but not all of the other people in this country and outside it, who didn’t vote for him, and knew what he was, and hated him, and yet are still sucked into the same dreadful morass.
Well said, William. And I’m so very tired of pundits saying that Hillary was a “poor candidate.” We know she was a briliant candidate who had to fight Trump, James Comey, Russia and the Media. She still won millions of more votes.
Thank you, Sue. Yes, Hillary was and is loved by many. Funny that no one says that Kerry was a terrible candidate just because the media kept following the lies of the utterly corrupt “swiftboaters.” Hillary destroyed Trump in all three debates, and she would go up in the polls, and then the media would go back to the emails. And then Comey sabotaged her, and he is either the most obtuse person in the country, or he did it deliberately, because how could he not know the effect of writing that inaccurate letter?
I really wish she would run again, because she is the surest bet to defeat Trump. but of course she has determined not to run.
IMO this proves the power of today’s marketing. The confluence of marketing science and the internet has created the perfect storm for evil.
So many of the people who consider themselves hip and savvy, and immune to the techniques of marketing, are not. Combined with a general decline in education and knowledge, they are very susceptible to being lied to and manipulated.
Exactly… How else could we possibly explain the allure of Facebook and other social media
I got started with this sometime back in the mid 70s when I read Subliminal Seduction, and things have gotten worse (exponentially) since then