As IF Times

Source: Colin Powell Says He’ll Vote for Hillary Clinton – The New York Times

One of the oldest clichés concerning public office is that politics make strange bedfellows.  This old chestnut has never been truer than as it applies to this year’s US elections.  As we all know by now, after a bruising convention, Donald Trump wound up as the nominee for the Republican ticket beating out some well known candidates in bare knuckled fights with unexpectedly personal attacks on their characters and records.

Those hurt feelings have yet to heal (if ever) and many of the contestants have publicly disavowed their support for The Donald.  This animus has extended to other old line Republicans including such as Colin Powell, a former GOP cabinet official, that feel compelled to publicly announce their support of the Democratic candidate.  Party loyalty, at least on the GOP side has been fractured and so other considerations are at play.  While many party deserters are claiming moral conscience in dissing Trump, it is laughingly disingenuous when you consider the alternative.  Party affiliation is obviously more an issue of expediency than of principles.  In the case of Mr. Powell, he claims thusly;

“…I am voting for Hillary Clinton,” he said,  Mr. Powell went on to praise Mrs. Clinton for her skills as a leader and her experience...”

Thanks to WikiLeaks document disclosures of his candid conversations, we know these sentiments are as fake as his former party loyalties.  We don’t recall experience being a requisite when he endorsed the neophyte Obama during his run for office.  Powell should be a man and just state that he despises Trump and would rather eat a bowl of slugs than support him.  Instead, he supports Hilary’s ‘experience’.

Powell’s endorsement is just one of the massive throng of ‘public’ figures rooting for Hilary in addition to most of the major media outlets, so it’s not as if it has any more effect than peeing into the Atlantic.  But if you did not know the issue at hand and only looked at the contingent of people vociferously and publicly championing one side; luminaries such as the bj offering  Madonna, Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, Kim, Alec Baldwin, George Clooney, Mark Zuckerburg, Black Lives Matter, Joy Behar and Oprah, not to mention the political nutters including Elizabeth Warren, Tim Kaine and Al Sharpton, you’d HAVE to pull an opposite George and take the other side of the trade because that would be the rational thing to do.

As it happens, in this case, it’s politics.  The issue boils down to this:  They would rather vote for the person that has a proven record of duplicity, gotten people killed, is funded by hostile governments and is a danger to national security, than for the other guy because he said mean things.   In fact it’s the gaggle of shrill, bleating mean girls that are doing the bullying.

Source: Clinton stresses U.S. resolve in terrorism fight; warns Trump policies aid militant recruitment

Here’s a narrative being pushed so often that many idiots have accepted it and have propagated it as being true.  I’m unclear of who started this fatuous notion but it seems to have begun by those critical of the Guantanamo detention facility.  The notion is that by imprisoning terrorists at Guantanamo and by extrapolation, attacking terrorists in their home areas, contributes to the recruiting of more combatants to the fight because they are angered by their peeps’ treatment.

Although there is no rational objective study supporting this and more importantly, that it flies in the face of common sense, were this belief true, it turns much of the constructs of a civilized society on its head.

Imagine the scenario of someone robbing a bank, vandalizing a property, or committing some more serious crime against another.  The logic goes that it would be best not to arrest and detain them for fear of his relatives and buds reciprocating by committing further crimes.  This is the logic burger that the left wants us to eat.

Unless Islamic militants are totally non human ( a topic for another discussion), fear of death or incarceration have historically been disincentives for unsociable behavior.   If you think about it, the stories brought back by released detainees from Guantanamo are probably what’s driving the recruitment of militants.  The conscripts typically don’t have a lot to give up by joining the fight given that female slaves are a prize when successful and virgins are awaiting if they’re not.  In the case of capture by the Americans, there is no torture or even severe pushing around.

As told by the released prisoners, they are housed in comfortable climate controlled residences, provided with clean clothes, have access to cable TV, entertainment, ample and nutritious food, soccer fields and deferential treatment by the guards.  Compare this to home, where everything is swathed in the monotone sepia of dust, food is beans and sleeping in proximity to biblical animals is not uncommon not to mention un-bathed men. With this as the downside, it’s hardly a wonder that the lineup to join the fight requires that recruits take a number at the back of the line.