US Army Retired

US Army Retired

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Impeach the president – and he has another great week, Worst tech of the decade, Who are the biggest companies in America? Drinking coffee helps your heart, and a lot more good stuff for December 17, 2019


Impeach the president – and he has another great week
The man is covered in Teflon. The Left goes after him and their barbs fall off. Here are just a few of his accomplishments:
.An agreement on a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal.
.A new budget including more than $1.3 billion for a border wall and blocks a government shutdown.
.House approval of the U.S. Space Force, a brand-new branch of the military.
.Government family leave that will be a model for a proposal for the public.
.Tentative agreement on trade with China.
.Approval of Trump’s 50th federal appeals judge.
.Confirmation of a new Food and Drug Administration chief.
.The signing of a pro-Israel anti-Semitism executive order.
The list does not include the news that broke on Saturday, that after meeting with President Donald Trump, New Jersey Democratic Representative Jeff Van Drew is leaving the Democratic Party and joining the Republican Party.
The list also did not mention the record jump that the stock market had this week in response to Trump announcing that the U.S. and China had secured a phase I trade deal.
I don’t think the Dims will ever learn. But, let ‘em keep on this way and he’s a cinch for 2020!

Ten cool and useful gadgets all under $50
Trayvax Original 2.0 Metal Wallet for $32
Heck, I haven’t had a new wallet in more than 10 years. Why now?
Leatherman Micra Keychain Multitool for $30
Why would I give up my $5 Swiss Army knife?

Almost 16 inches of rain in 24 hours in New Zealand South island
And more than 230k lightning strikes.
And, as if that isn’t enough, they just had a volcano blow its top and kill tourists along with stranding others.
New Zealand volcano eruption surprises visitors from cruise ship Ovation of the Seas
Australia on fire, waiting for heavy rains; Sydney blanketed in smoke and ashes
Ma Nature can certainly be fickle. She slams New Zealand with rain and leave Australia high and dry.
There’s lots of rain but it’s all going to the north.

President Trump campaigns with two soldiers he gave clemency to
He was at a highly secretive Republican fundraising event in Aventura, Florida on Saturday night.
He brought on stage former US Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and former US Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn during his hour-long speech at the state Republican Party's annual Statesman's Dinner, the Herald reported, calling the move "unusual."
The Herald might think it’s “unusual” but I think we’re going to see more of it to include Navy Chief Petty Officer Gallagher.
This year's Statesman's Dinner was particularly secretive, with attendees having to check their cellphones into individual locked cases before entering the event at the JW Marriott Miami Turnberry Resort & Spa. The dinner was also closed to reporters.
He raised a total of $3.5 million for the state’s Republican Party.

Seven in 10 Americans want alternatives to public schools
RealClear Opinion Research asked 2,014 registered voters several questions about educational options for their kids, and it’s clear they want more school choice.
Nearly seven in 10 registered voters told the pollster they support school choice in concept, while roughly the same percentage would prefer to send their child somewhere
“Once again, a new round of nationwide public polling in 2019 confirms that school choice is incredibly popular with voters in every category, especially a federal tax credit proposal like the Education Freedom Scholarships,” said John Schilling, president of American Federation of Children.
“This is a unifying issue among voters and policymakers should take action. The polling clearly shows that parents want more and better educational options for their children, and as we’ve seen in states like Florida and Arizona, they will become intensely passionate about candidates who support school choice.”
I wonder what it is they’re really saying. Is it the school or the curriculum? Is it what has been slipped into school books by Leftists and progressives?
C’mon you teachers out there, share your wisdom with us. What do you see that makes so many parents prefer private to public schools?
The popularity also transcended political parties, though Republicans were more strongly in support at 76 percent than Democrats at 64 percent. Sixty-six percent of respondents who identified as independents supported school choice.
When I grew up, we had classes on American History and Civics. We were taught to be proud of America and what our forefathers did to make this country great. Yes, a lot of dark times were glossed over but those could have been covered in the higher education years. Is is also that our schools are so dedicated to academics that the trades are being neglected?
Tell us.

Nadler said he “Will Do Everything He Can To Make It Not A Fair Election”
If Trump Is Not Removed From Office.
Have you got that?
No beating around the bush. No hiding behind platitudes. No charades. Outright hatred and a declaration that they care nothing about fair and free elections.
The Democrats are absolutely obsessed with impeaching Trump, and they are definitely making this their top priority.
And if you listen to Nadler, he makes it sound like it could be the end of our political system if Trump is not impeached and removed from office.  Here is more from what Nadler told “Meet the Press” on Sunday…
When asked whether the 2020 election would be conducted fairly if Trump was ultimately acquitted, Nadler replied, “I don’t know.”
“The president, based on his past performance, will do everything he can to make it not a fair election.”
I usually don’t paste and copy too much of an article, but this is worthwhile repeating:
Anyone that messes with the integrity of our elections is committing a crime against all of us. It is an incredibly serious thing for a sitting member of Congress to make this sort of a charge against the president of the United States, but we live at a time when things that were once unthinkable are now becoming commonplace.
And Democrats are already planting seeds of doubt regarding the outcome of the 2020 election. If Trump ends up winning in 2020, they will already have convinced millions upon millions of their fellow Americans that the process was “rigged”.
Of course that could ultimately fuel tremendous civil unrest, because if people truly believe that their ability to choose their own leaders has been compromised, a lot of them are likely to take to the streets.

The Supreme Court Temporarily Blocked Trump’s Bid To Restart Federal Executions
“We expect that the Court of Appeals will render its decision with appropriate dispatch,” Friday’s order reads. Justice Samuel Alito put a finer point on that directive in a statement accompanying the decision, which Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined.
“The Court has expressed the hope that the Court of Appeals will proceed with ‘appropriate dispatch,’ and I see no reason why the Court of Appeals should not be able to decide this case, one way or the other, within the next 60 days,” Alito’s opinion reads. “The question, though important, is straightforward and has already been very ably briefed in considerable detail by both the Solicitor General and by the prisoners’ 17-attorney legal team.”
All of this was to be expected when AG Barr announced last July that the Bureau of Prisons would resume executions after nearly 20 years. 4 inmates quickly filed suit on something really picky, how the catheter was to be inserted. And a federal judge sided with them.
All four were convicted of murdering children.

Rudy Giuliani Knows What He's Doing
You better believe he does. From his days as a prosecutor, Rudy’s been right there where it matters. And he’s made a comfortable life or himself, along with becoming a very successful member of several law firms. He routinely interacts with foreign government. Now, he’s President Trump’s personal lawyer with working on the Ukraine corruption situation since May 2019.
In the pages of Adam Schiff’s impeachment report, however, an entirely different character emerges. That Giuliani is a savvy operator who rolls his bureaucratic opponents with ruthlessness and ease. He is the master of what Ambassador William Taylor branded the “irregular channel,” which appears to have been a very profitable piece of turf. Giuliani’s unofficial perch in the Trump administration seems to be the basis for a booming business. Butt-dials aside, he should be regarded as one of the most outrageously effective influence peddlers of all time.
But what makes Giuliani such a dangerous figure is that one can never be sure who he is representing. Is he advocating on behalf of the president, or an unnamed client? This is a blurry line that he actively exploits, such as the time he solicited the business of the king of Bahrain—now a client. When he first arrived in the country, state media described him as leading a “high-level United States delegation.”
Giuliani Uncovers Treasure Trove Of Ukrainian Documents, “Biden Money Laundering And Perjury” @ https://rightwingtribune.com/2019/12/09/giuliani-uncovers-treasure/
The president then said he believes Giuliani wants to present a report to the Attorney General William Barr and to Congress.
Will anything be done?

French mayor tells people they can’t die on weekends and holidays because there aren’t enough doctors
A bit of absurdity in a time of turmoil.
La Gresle is community of roughly 850 people on the outskirts of Lyon which, like many rural communities across France, suffers an acute dearth of doctors, nurses and other medical practitioners.
The problem came to a head early this December after no doctor could be found to record official medical details following the death of an elderly nursing home resident.
Let the local morticians do the doctors’ job.

Secret documents show US officials lied for decades about victory in Afghanistan as troops continued to die
I saw a piece about this on Tucker Carlson so this doesn’t surprise me.
The Washington Post has obtained confidential documents showing that top U.S. military officials have repeatedly lied to the American public about the war in Afghanistan, despite many having clear knowledge the effort is unwinnable.
Here are just 2 of the comments in the article:
The interviews show that U.S. military officials had no confidence in Afghan troops and police. One unnamed military official estimated that one-third of police recruits were "drug addicts or Taliban." Meanwhile, the United States wasted $133 billion in aid to Afghanistan and counter-narcotics efforts have been a total failure.
"Our biggest single project, sadly and inadvertently, of course, may have been the development of mass corruption," said Ryan Crocker, who served as ambassador to Afghanistan in 2002 and then again from 2011 to 2012. "Once it gets to the level I saw, when I was out there, it's somewhere between unbelievably hard and outright impossible to fix it."
The guy on Carlson reminded him how President Trump was all for pulling our troops out of Afghanistan. But, when he presented it to his staff, every single general and senior advisor told him things were going fine and pulling out would be a huge mistake.
The same military leaders who got us screwed in Iraq and Syria.
I sure hope the president is playing close attention to this.
And everyone in charge insisted we were winning.

Another Bright Shining Lie
The Afghanistan Papers reflect what we soldiers knew on the ground: "Victory" was always an empty talking point.
There are numerous articles about the secet papers uncovered that shows we have never “won the war” in Afghanistan. Most are dry and dusty.
This is about the actual realities from a soldier who was there several times and is well-worth reading. Nitty-gritty, it tells what the generals and politicians don’t want you to know.
“I have no visibility into who the bad guys are,” Donald Rumsfeld writes in one of the Afghanistan Papers’ collected “snowflake memos” from 2004, three years into the U.S.’s longest war—not long before I finished Ranger School and reconnaissance school to head to Paktika province as the executive officer of a rifle company with the 173rd, and a full four years before I would return as a company commander to Kunduz province. On the first deployment, our brigade lost 43 soldiers killed, and I couldn’t guess how many wounded, in one of the more difficult deployments endured by a conventional unit. On the second, our brigade lost three soldiers killed and many more wounded; I personally gave out two dozen Purple Hearts to my company. We were fighting and dying to achieve objectives that no elected leader could fully articulate. Army officers like to toss around an old saw by the Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz: “No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war, and how he intends to conduct it.” By that standard, there never should have been an Afghanistan war.
And here’s the nut of the whole thing:
There is probably another story yet to be written about how this is the type of war one gets when elite special operations units lead the fight—numerous high-value targets killed, with the occasional wedding party thrown in for good measure. For now, though, let’s lay a great share of the blame on those who earned it most: the political and military leadership at the top, across our divided political spectrum, who together steadfastly refused to define an achievable victory in Afghanistan and refused to do the difficult, honorable thing and bring the soldiers home—leaving us to kill and die downrange, while thanking us for our indefinite service with boisterous platitudes.
We Have Just Been Handed the Pentagon Papers of Our Generation
The Afghanistan Papers are a devastating indictment of our military and political leaders. The question is: Will anyone notice?
Military Officials Sent Us to Fight, Kill, and Die in an Unwinnable War
The Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers framed in stark terms the incompetence and immorality of the officials under whom I served.
Where Is the Outrage Over the War in Afghanistan?
A new Washington Post report proving the longest war in American history has been sold on lies for 20 years causes barely a ripple.
And the Dims are screaming because President Trump wants to pull out 4,000 of the 12,000+ we have there

The best budget printers
All sell for less than $100
With its plentiful features, great print quality, and very low price, our pick for the best cheap printer is the Canon Pixma TR4520. Following close behind is our second favorite, the Epson Expression Premium XP-7100.
The remaining are:
Best budget compact printer: HP DeskJet 3755
Best budget laser printer: Brother HLL2320D
Best budget color laser alternative: Epson WorkForce Pro WF-3730

Worst tech of the decade
They start off ripping hoverboards to shreds
The 2010s had its fair share of bad tech — including Google Glass, Snapchat Spectacles, and butterfly keyboards.
Exploding batteries, unusable keyboards, and poor overall design are some of the things that put products on the "Worst" list. 

Babylon Bee
'I Am Being Held Hostage By The Squad And Am Impeaching Trump Against My Will,' Nancy Pelosi Frantically Blinks Out In Morse Code @ https://babylonbee.com/news/nancy-pelosi-blinks-out-message-in-morse-code-that-shes-being-held-hostage-by-the-squad-and-to-please-send-help

Historians Now Believe King Solomon Gave Each Of His Wives, Concubines A Peloton Exercise Bike @ https://babylonbee.com/news/historians-claim-solomon-presented-each-of-his-concubines-with-peloton-exercise-bike

Linus Appears At Hearings To Explain True Meaning Of Impeachment @ https://babylonbee.com/news/linus-appears-at-hearings-to-explain-true-meaning-of-impeachment
And the Dimocruds hang on to every word.

Students’ Test Scores Unchanged After Decades of Federal Intervention in Education
If someone wants to take the time and effort, the budget for the department since 1980 is @ https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/history/edhistory.pdf
I’m just wondering if all those trillions spent at the local level might not have been a better idea. One of the lines to check out is “Program Administration. That’s the personnel and buildings in Washington.
Federal “Highly Qualified Teacher” mandates. Adequate Yearly Progress requirements. Smaller learning communities. Improving Teacher Quality State Grants. Reading First. Early Reading First. The dozens of other federal programs authorized via No Child Left Behind. School Improvement Grants. Race to the Top. Common Core.
All of that has been just since 2000. Over those past two decades, while federal policymakers were busy enacting new federal laws, creating mandates for local school leaders, and increasing the Department of Education’s budget from $38 billion in 2000 (unadjusted for inflation) to roughly $70 billion today, the math and reading performance of American high school students remained completely flat. That is to say, stagnant.
In other words, what have we gotten for our money?

Who are the biggest companies in America?
Google?
Amazon?
ExxonMobil?
Citi bank?
Would you believe that 3 of the top ten are UnitedHealth, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen?
Never heard of them?
Add CVS-Caremark at #8 and 4 of the biggest 10 are all healthcare oriented and constitute 18% of our gross domestic product.
Nobody should be shocked to learn that the health care industry is enormously profitable and generates mountains of paperwork for middlemen to process. Americans know that intuitively from experience. The amazing thing is the sheer size of the middleman industry and the commanding position these firms now hold in our economy. UnitedHealth is just a hair smaller than Amazon; McKesson is bigger than Wells Fargo and Boeing combined. And these companies enjoy all the outsize political clout that goes with their status as big business—one among scores of reasons that meaningful health care reform gets virtually no traction in Washington.
Got that? They don’t provide healthcare of even produce the medicines used to treat patients. They’re middlemen.
So, the mext time you look at your medical bill, try to figure out how much is the doctor charging for his individual skills as opposed to all the paperwork and other stuff. For some details, go to https://newrepublic.com/article/155915/fortune-500-amerisourcebergen-unitedhealth-health-care-bureaucracy-middlemen

22 burning questions for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
I’m not going to repeat them all here. I’ll let you go through them for yourselves. But, I will give a couple of teasers:
Remember Emperor Palpatine going down that nuclear shaft? He may not have died after all.
What about Rey’s parents? Did they die or were they even her real parents?
Ready for The Knights of Ren?
And, is there a mysterious truth about Finn?
Enough!

Nadler loses it during hearings
And this is one of the leaders of the impeachment process.

Senate confirms Trump's 50th circuit judge, despite 'not qualified' rating
Another conservative to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
One really has to dig to find out why the American Bar Association gave him a “not qualified” rating.
The ABA acknowledged that the lead ABA evaluator assigned to VanDyke, Montana attorney Marcia Davenport, contributed $150 to VanDyke's opponent in a 2014 Montana Supreme Court election.[18]
Does one wonder just how unbiased the ABA is when it comes to the president’s selection for federal judges.
He should be sworn in in the next few days.

Drinking coffee helps your heart
It’s enough to make a tea drinker buy an espresso machine. In a 2018 study scientists in Germany report they were able to modify a common age-related defect in the hearts of mice with doses of caffeine equivalent to four to five cups of coffee a day for a human. The paper—the latest addition to a growing body of research that supports the health benefits of drinking coffee—describes how the molecular action of caffeine appears to enhance the function of heart cells and protect them from damage.
It’s enough to make me smile all day. As I drink my 5th cu of coffee of the morning, I learn just how healthy it is for me. Of course, three days from now there’ll be anoher piece discussing just how drinking coffee is unhealthy.

The first-time Latino voters
The 2020 election marks the first time in history that Latinos will be the largest minority ethnic or racial group in the electorate, with 32 million eligible voters.
So what?
Articles like this talk about Latinos as being a single entity when that it very far from the truth. There are Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Central Americans ((each with its own culture) and others. None of them vote as a bloc and many just don’t pay attention to politics – except what’s reported on Spanish language channels such as Univision and Telemundo – both very leftist media outlets.
"The perpetual problem for Democrats in regards to Hispanic voters remains: converting potential votes into actual votes," said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
By the numbers: There are an estimated 15–18 million Latino people in the U.S. who are not registered to vote. Roughly 4 million turned 18 after the 2016 election.

How Trump wins in 2020
Money. Staff. Organization.
Simple.
Here’s what he people plan on doing:
1. Crush the never-Trumpers
2. New match – work with tiny counties.
3. The DJT Disengager
4. Making the best of his unpopularity
5. The Machine (They say they already have 300,000 volunteers, and that their list of supporters has grown by nearly 200 percent since 2016.)

Bloomberg: UK elections are the "canary in the coal mine" to 2020 Democrats
If you don’t have a strong, unified front, it’s impossible to win.
"The public clearly wanted change in the U.K. and change that is much more rapid and greater magnitude than anyone predicted," he said.
"I think it's sort of a catastrophic warning to the Democratic Party to have somebody that can beat Donald Trump and that is not going to be easy. Americans want to change, but I think they don't want revolutionary change — they want evolutionary change."
So, who do the Dims have. Creepy Joe and Socialist Bernie. (We can leave Fauxahauntus out of it as she’s going nowhere.)

Dims attend President Trump’s holiday party
Interesting to see these Dims show up. Wonder what, if anything, they shared with
WH staffers.
Antonio Delgado (NY-19)
Susie Lee (NV-3) [I can’t figure why she’s there. She’s got Las Vegas, The Strip in her area – all strong Dim.]
Elaine Luria (VA-2)
Jim Costa (CA-16
Josh Harder (CA-10)
Gil Cisneros (CA-39)
Independent Justin Amash (MI-3)
Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.)
No real word why they were there.

Citizenship Amendment Act: Unrest erupts in Delhi
The new law entitles non-Muslim migrants from three Muslim-majority countries to citizenship if they are facing religious persecution.
But not Muslims!
China, Myranmar, Japan, and other countries are tightening the ability of Muslims to enter their countries. There’s a similar move in Europe.


Posted by Dale Day at 1:53 AM
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