Obama was NOT a man of peace & he exploded the world into more wars

Although Obama campaigned as a man of peace and advocated for a more peaceful foreign policy, his actual 8 year record is anything but peaceful.  Obama famously gave a speech saying that he was “opposed to dumb wars”.  Well, Obama lied and many died and he apparently doesn't believe that HIS wars were dumb wars.

The Nobel Peace Prize winning president astoundingly dropped over 26,000 in 2016 alone, his last year as president, here.

Democrats and liberals may cling to the delusion that Obama's foreign policy was brilliantly peaceful but Obama geographically outperformed George W. Bush when it came to expanding military operations by bombing and intervening in even more nations.   Obama's foreign policy legacy includes operations in 7 countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.

None of these countries posed a national security threat to the US and all are Muslim majority nations.  While Republican wingnuts accuse Obama of actually being a Muslim (he's not), Obama's record on destroying Muslim lands and killing Muslims is pretty horrific. 

According to the very liberal The Atlantic, there were 3 theaters of US military operations when Obama assumed the presidency in 2009 - Afghanistan and Iraq both had troops and Pakistan was targeted with drone strikes. By 2016, Obama expanded military operations to include Syria, Libya and several nations in Africa and few Americans even knew what we were doing in Africa.

Vox ran a piece in October, 2017 on the expanding US military presence in Africa that began under George W. Bush and continued under Obama and Trump.

Why were US soldiers even in Niger? America’s shadow wars in Africa, explained.American troops are fighting in multiple African countries without anyone back home really noticing.

The Pentagon is rapidly expanding its presence in Africa and is now engaged in military operations — including active combat — in more than half a dozen African countries....

US forces have also regularly conducted raids and other missions in Chad, Cameroon, Uganda, and, of course, Niger, where there are at least 800 American troops deployed.

The missions rely on a broad array of legal authorities but have one particularly important thing in common: They have never been specifically authorized by Congress, let alone discussed and debated by the American public. Huge questions exist as to the strategic importance and relevance of all these missions, and whether they improve US national security enough to justify the high cost in blood and treasure. Since 2001, at least 36 soldiers have died conducting or supporting military operations in Africa, including Sgt. La David Johnson and the three others killed in Niger earlier this month....

.....the US has been working with governments in heavily Muslim West Africa to counter local Islamist groups since the George W. Bush administration. The US presence there ramped up considerably under the Obama administration...

Does anybody even know what the hell is going on in Africa and has been going on through 3 presidential administrations?  No!! Does anybody even know why Obama disastrously intervened in Syria or Libya while substantially destroying both nations?  NO!!

US military bases are strung around the world like an octopus.

Click the link source to enlarge: https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2013/06/fo1029_usbases12001.gif


The 2016 presidential election put the foreign policy establishment in meltdown mode as Trump continuously hammered US foreign policy.  The foreign policy elites never expected Hillary Clinton to lose but they still felt extremely exposed, and to the point that they actually began attacking each other and some of it is downright hilarious.  Foreign Policy Magazine, a rabid neocon mouthpiece owned by the Washington Post, outright attacked Ben Rhodes, an Obama Deputy National Security Advisor, with a blistering piece titled:

A stunning profile of Ben Rhodes, the asshole who is the president’s foreign policy guru

Rhodes comes off like a real asshole. This is not a matter of politics — I have voted for Obama twice. Nor do I mind Rhodes’s contempt for many political reporters: “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”  

But, as that quote indicates, he comes off like an overweening little schmuck. This quotation seems to capture his worldview: “He referred to the American foreign policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.” Blowing off Robert Gates takes nerve. 

Rhodes and others around Obama keep on talking about doing all this novel thinking, playing from a new playbook, bucking the establishment thinking. But if that is the case, why have they given so much foreign policy power to two career hacks who never have had an original thought? I mean, of course, Joe Biden and John Kerry. I guess the answer can only be that those two are puppets, and (as in Biden’s case) are given losing propositions like Iraq to handle.

LOL, that is seriously brutal and that piece was written BEFORE Trump was even elected.  These days, the entire foreign policy establishment is bipolar manic depressive and they just can't figure out why all their seemingly brilliant knuckleheads have failed miserably.

In any event, Obama and the Dems did massively ratchet up deadly foreign interventions.  Hillary ran on Obama's foreign policy, a foreign policy that she had a hand in crafting.

One thing is certain - the American people are finally fed up with neocon foreign policy and want a change.   Trump is just the guy to do it and he's got an awesome opportunity to get it right so long as he ignores the freaking neocons in his own administration. 

Why You Should Hold Your Nose and VOTE Republican for the Senate

As an independent voter, I'm hardly a fan of the Republicans whom I view as big spending, warmongering socialists and corporatists.  The Senate exception is Rand Paul who is the only constitutionalist out of a body of 100 and while some Republicans are not too horrid, most are worthless sellouts.

However, there are indeed critically important situation wherein voting R for the Senate makes a whole lot of sense EVEN if the Republican has a nasty record on a lot of issues.  Furthermore, it's highly unlikely that a Democrat would be an improvement over the worst Republican.

Let's examine 3 big reasons why voting Republican for a senator makes sense for conservatives and constitutionalists.

1. FEDERAL COURTS AND SCOTUS  The Senate alone has the power to confirm judicial nominees including Supreme Court Justices. If the Democrats control the Senate during the presidency of Donald Trump, there will be zero confirmations of any Trump Supreme Court nominees (except for a flaming Democrat approved liberal) and SCOTUS will become a 4-4 court which absolutely translates to SCOTUS becoming a lame duck court that will be incapable of rolling back unconstitutional acts of Congress and federal agencies.  Bear in mind that Obama and the Dems had 8 years to load up the federal court system with liberal jurists.  Trump's presidency holds the potential to level the ideological balance of the federal judiciary.

According to the SCOTUS website "Each Term, approximately 7,000-8,000 new cases are filed in the Supreme Court.", and "Plenary review, with oral arguments by attorneys, is currently granted in about 80 of those cases each Term, and the Court typically disposes of about 100 or more cases without plenary review.", here.

Plenary review is a legal procedure defining how higher courts review the decisions of lower courts.
In any event, SCOTUS takes very few cases and just because somebody files an appeal to SCOTUS, the probability of SCOTUS accepting the case is quite low (close to zero).

2. TREATY RATIFICATION AND US SOVEREIGNTY  The Senate alone has the power to ratify treaties and it's a difficult process requiring a super majority 2/3 ratification.  Consequently, few treaties are ratified. This is critically important because UN and global governance advocates seek to weaken and ultimately destroy US national sovereignty by ratifying UN treaties.

The Republicans have successfully stopped many nasty treaties from being ratified including the Law of the Sea Treaty also know as LOST which would have put all the oceans and seas under UN control.  The Republicans have stopped the Democrats from ratifying the UN's Small Arms Treaty which was a direct assault on gun rights.

Republican Senators generally tend to uphold US sovereignty and reject sovereignty slashing UN treaties.  The Democrats welcome outsourcing US sovereignty to supranational institutions.

3. SECOND AMENDMENT The R's are far more likely to uphold the 2nd amendment than the Democrats who have a long history of not only opposing the 2nd amendment but slowly hacking away at it.

In summary, the courts, treaty ratification and the 2nd amendment are 3 big reasons to vote Republican in Senate races, especially tight Senate races in swing states.

The Democrats gaining control of the Senate would be an abomination and Chuck Schumer as Senate Majority Leader would derail the entire Trump Agenda.  Therefore, anybody who lives in a swing state where the Senate race will be tight, hold your nose and vote Republican because the alternative is far worse.

How did Hillary Clinton really lose the 2016 election? It wasn't because of the Russians.

The Dems, the Deep State, Trump haters and the media cling to the delusion that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election delivered victory to Trump and snatched an earned victory from Hillary. Let's autopsy the election based on numerical facts. Doing the math in conjunction with understanding American voters brings the entire 2016 election into focus.

For starters, Hillary lost 6 states that Obama won TWICE and those states and their electoral votes are FL (29), PA (20), OH (18),  MI (16), WI (10) and IA (6).  That's a total of 99 Electoral Votes in an election that Trump won 306-232 (74 Electoral Votes).

Roughly, about a third of voters (up to 36-39% according to some estimates) classify themselves as Independents even if they loosely affiliate with the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Libertarian or the Green Party. Independent voters are unpredictable, fickle and tend to shun establishment candidates and embrace change.  Precisely because Independent voters are a significant voting block, they are indeed the general election kingmakers in the critical swing states, even if swing states vary from election to election.  Everybody got the swing states wrong in 2016.

Independent voters also tend to be economic voters who care about jobs and  growth.  Obama did well with Independents in 2008 but lost support in 2012 because they soured on his economic policies.  Romney did well with Independent voters but not well enough to win.

Hillary was basically running on Obama economic policies.  However, other factors came into play.  The Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, appealed to antiwar voters and folks with strong environmental concerns.  In Wisconsin and Michigan, votes for Stein exceeded Trump's victory margins so it can be accurately stated that Stein cost Clinton Wisconsin and Michigan, here.

Wisconsin:
Overall Trump margin of victory: 27,257 votes
Jill Stein vote total: 30,980
Gary Johnson vote total: 106,442

Michigan
Overall Trump margin of victory: 13,107 votes
Jill Stein vote total: 51,427
Gary Johnson vote total: 172,726

Gary Johnson voters were highly unlikely to vote for Clinton because the Libertarian Party runs on less government, less wars and less spending.  If anything, Gary Johnson voters took votes away from Trump.  Anyway, Stein voters causing Clinton to lose WI and MI had nothing whatsoever to do with Russia or Putin but were merely the ideological choices of voters who didn't like or trust Clinton on foreign policy and the environment.

OH and PA  are viewed as rust belt states and both have suffered greatly from the loss of manufacturing and factory jobs. Trump won them as a revolt against the Obama economy. In OH, Trump clobbered Clinton by 455,000 votes despite Stein getting 44,000 and Johnson getting 169,000 votes.  PA was tighter because blue cities like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg tend to outvote the rural population to carry the state to Democrat victories.

Pennsylvania
Overall Trump margin of victory: 71,794
Jill Stein vote total: 48,657
Gary Johnson vote total: 142,334

PA was damn close and could have gone either way.  I actually know somebody who travels extensively for his job through western and rural PA.  He said it was wallpapered with Trump signs and he saw no Clinton signs.  At the end of the day, the economic rural voters did manage to outvote Pennsylvania's big population centers with an awesome voter turnout.

Again, the PA and OH voters were economic, working class voters - the folks who suffered the most under 8 years of Obama and Democrat economic rule.  They were hungry for change.  These economic voters were never impacted by Russia or Putin.  In fact, they could care less what Russia thinks of them or their voting habits.

FL was also close despite having a decent economy unlike rustbelt OH and PA.  FL however is a classic purple state that can go either way - its a GOTV game.  Big blue liberal cities like Miami are balanced the deeply red panhandle. During the Bush-Gore fiasco, the dastardly media called the election for Gore based on FL results despite the fact that folks in the panhandle who are in a different time zone had not finished voting.  When the election was deliberately called for Gore to swing the election, many folks in the panhandle didn't bother to vote.  They NEVER made that mistake again.

Florida also has vibrant and substantial 3rd party movements that do impact general elections and help to make them 'squeakers'.

Florida
Overall Trump margin of victory: 119,489
Jill Stein vote total: 64,060
Gary Johnson vote total: 206,189

Morever, it's true that while 3rd parties do not win elections, they are indeed the general election kingmakers in tight races in tight states.

To believe that Putin or Russia somehow function as Russian Election Bots that permeate the brains of American voters is insane.

Clinton lost for 2 big reasons:  1. her overt warmongering interventionist foreign policy cost her the antiwar vote and those voters were furious with the mass genocide that resulted from Obama-Clinton interventions in Syria and Libya (a big reason why Stein did well enough in MI and WI to keep Clinton from winning) and 2. the economy.  The economy is always the biggie and it was Bill Clinton who coined the phrase 'it's the economy stupid', something his wife never understood.

Finally, American voters are NOT under the influence of Russia or Putin DESPITE the creepy media and the Democrats REFUSING to believe that the American people rejected Clinton for reasons that are incredibly obvious to anybody who isn't deranged or delusional or a total moron.

Clinton was a terrible candidate who failed connect with the concerns of the voters, many of whom were seriously listening to Trump who had an outstanding talent for tapping into voter concerns, especially working class voter concerns.  When Clinton called Trump supporters deplorables, racists, sexists, homophobes, zenophobes and Islamophobes, that insult helped to seal her fate among undecided voters.  Being distant from voter concerns, a Mitt Romney affliction, is one thing but flatout humiliating and degrading voters you are trying to romance was profoundly stupid and arrogant.  Clinton thought she was being funny and cute in an election she thought she had already bagged but fate has a funny way of upsetting the best laid plans.

Clinton sunk herself and all without the help of Russia or Putin.