Saturday Learning Series - Iran, The Nuclear Deal and Road Forward

Stratfor's analysis on the Iran nuclear deal and the road forward. Stratfor does some great geopolitical in-depth analysis on a variety of issues. They are worth checking out.

Friday Musical Interlude - Let's Stick Together

I've shared this Wilbert Harrison song (Let's Stick Together), recently but you gotta love this dance competition entry that's worth the revisit to the song.

Washington Post slanders Steve Bannon for supposed flip flop

In an article today, Washington Post highlights Steve Bannon's disavowal of white supremacists in a seemingly impromptu interview with progressive magazine The American Prospect. In the article, well below the topics of China and North Korea, came this;

“Ethno-nationalism — it’s losers. It’s a fringe element,” Bannon told the magazine. “I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, eh, help crush it more.”

“These guys are a collection of clowns,” he added.

The remarks were startling coming from Bannon, who spent more than four years running the far-right website Breitbart News before he was tapped to join Trump’s campaign.

Bannon, the site’s former executive chair, has called the Breitbart “a platform of the alt-right.”

The alt-right, by some definitions, is a small, deeply conservative movement that seeks a whites-only state. It was his strategy to use the site to channel white supremacist support for Trump and provide a mouthpiece for his populist message during the 2016 election, a move that helped secure him a senior role in the administration.

Bannon states exactly how he, and most conservatives feel about white supremacists. It's  not a flip flop, it's positionally consistent.  It's the last paragraph above that irks. They have taken the alt-right definition (they even 'say by some definitions') that suits their narrative. Breitbart has never espoused a whites-only state. To be clear - the alt-right is not equal to white supremacists. That is outright slander. Bannon is exactly correct - it's a fringe element and the media has played it up to make it seem that it's only racists who support Republicans. In doing so they have completely alienated half the country who mostly vote conservative values for economic or value or social sorts of reasons. It's a self defeating approach for the left and for the country.

So it's not only Bannon that gets slandered, it's half the country's voters. But Bannon is the focal point of the article and the Washington Post article and it's Bannon who should take the WaPo to task and set the record straight on the alt-right label on behalf of everyone who has been slandered. 

Just as there are communists in the alt-Left, there are white supremacists in the alt-right (and possibly the alt-Left too). More importantly what many on the right would consider the alt-right are conservatives who do not espouse the go-along-to-get-along, country club, establishment Republican niceties. They prefer to fight back and are not afraid to get rough and tumble rather than sit back and take it. It's Bannon or The Rebel, or Breitbart or Milo Yiannopolis rather than Mitch McConnell or Charles Krauthammer or even razor sharp Ben Shapiro (some of whom still have our admiration and respect). That's the real alt-right, not white-supremacists or Neanderthals. But the left and the media will not relent on their narrative. In the end they are likely doing themselves a disservice, but only time will tell. Meanwhile stories with slants like this one need to be called out for what they are - misleading at a minimum or possibly even slander.

Congratulations Me

Over the last couple of days, I'm not exactly sure when as I had not been paying attention, I passed 1.5 million page views on this blog.  I never thought I'd reach a mark like that.  And thanks to Google, over the last almost 9 years, I've made dozens of advertising dollars in that time.  The internet clearly is willing to reward conservative bloggers. All is good. Yay me. 

CNN bias unabated, despite president Trump's correct prediction.

CNN's Jim Acosta's rant about president Trump's incorrect extrapolation of events is sadly ironic;

...Acosta said, “The president has an issue…when he is challenged on something that he feels deeply personal about. He doesn’t seem to have the ability to reign things in. … And president trump demonstrated here in the lobby of his own building. He couldn’t feel more at home than he could feel here at Trump Tower. He has talked about it time and time again, that this is his home. And yet, he felt very comfortable espousing some views that are — very, I mean, I would say they’re almost white nationalist-lite, in that, he was complaining, bemoaning the removal of Confederate statues across the country and asking whether or not George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are next.”

He continued, “You could go to just about any history professor at any college in America, you could go to any history teacher at any high school in America, and they will tell you the reason why these Confederate statues are coming down across the country, Wolf –, and remember, Nikki Haley took down the — his UN Ambassador took down the Confederate flag at the State House in Columbia, South Carolina. Those symbols of the Confederacy cause so much hurt, cause so much pain for so many Americans across the country, that it is really understandable to most level-headed, rational Americans that these kinds of monuments, these kinds of symbols eventually just need to come down.

Why?  Because Teddy Roosevelt is next apparently.

Leftist Activists Demand New York Museum Take Down Statue of ‘Racist’ Theodore Roosevelt https://t.co/T3Ta0QWGGM

— Kevin Gutzman (@KevinGutzman) August 15, 2017

Left hysteria and fake news on Charlottesville

The left-leaning media has tried to rip the president over the unfortunate violent events at Charlottesville. Let's be clear on a few things

(1) President Trump is no more to blame for the violence than Bernie Sanders was to blame for the nut job who was a Sanders supporter and tried to shoot multiple Republican congressmen recently.

(2) President Trump condemned the violence on all sides.  When the media went crazy for him not only condemning one side his response was brilliant in it's accuracy and simplicity:

(3) Those on the ridiculously named Antifa ALT-Left were responsible for instigating the violence and indeed, their agenda is a fascist one.

Tucker Carlson's question about what statue will be demanded next is exactly correct.