The RPI Challenge

“Anyone who cares for someone with a developmental disability, as well as for disabled people themselves [lives] every day in fear that their behavior will be misconstrued as suspicious, intoxicated or hostile by law enforcement.”—Steve Silberman, The New York Times Think twice before you call the cops to carry out a welfare check on a loved one. Especially if that person is autistic, hearing impaired, mentally ill, elderly, suffering from dementia, disabled or might have a condition that...

This is soooooo boring. For nearly a week, Washington has been consumed by reports that Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden. The furor began on Wednesday, Sept. 18, when the Washington Post disclosed that Trump had said something to an unknown foreign leader that “was so alarming that a US intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community.” Two days...

TEHRAN- Some in the mainstream western media are lamenting why US President Donald Trump is dragging its feet to march off to another open-ended military conflict in the Middle East, after days of reckless efforts to implicate Iran in the September 14 Yemeni attacks into Saudi oil installations. The MSM outlets are repeating that Iran was behind the attack, despite the fact Iranian complacency with the Yemeni strike has not yet been publicly demonstrated. They are following in the footsteps of...

The precision attack on the Saudi "jewel in the crown," crude-processing installation last week, is also a precision assault on Saudi credibility, on the believability of the US security "umbrella,' and a humiliation for Trump, and particularly to America’s image as a competent military and intelligence power. Gulf States will be pursing their lips as they consider now their own vulnerabilities and question their reliance on that US umbrella. Even the Pentagon might be questioning, "what then...

Kamala Harris wants you to join her cult. But don’t worry: membership is voluntary — that is, unless a plurality of your fellow voters wants to join, in which case you’ll be automatically enrolled. You see, Harris’ cult is the “cult of the Presidency.” Coined by Gene Healy, the phrase describes the worship that so often accompanies what many Americans consider to be a grand, magisterial office from which all good things flow, and all evil seeks to corrupt. In their peculiar astronomy of this...

President Trump deserves credit for resisting the war cries from neocons like Sen. Lindsey Graham and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after last week’s attack on two Saudi oil facilities. Pompeo was eager to blame Iran because he wants war with Iran and anything that can trigger such a war is fine with him. So he put the president in a difficult spot by declaring Iran the culprit: suddenly the president’s options in the media and in Washington were limited to “how to punish Iran.”A week has now...

As Joe Biden plummets in the popularity, Democratic lawmakers and the MSM have gone into panic mode after a whistleblower report of political malfeasance during a July phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about the Biden family's dealings turned out to be fake news. Since the initial report, the Trump-Zelensky call has been downgraded to remove implications of a quid pro quo - and attention is now turning to what the Bidens actually did. “The real story...

A series of interviews of Democratic presidential candidates opposing President Trump in the 2020 election by the Council of Foreign Relations in New York reveal that the perceptions regarding US-Saudi ties have dramatically changed in the Washington beltway. Two issues during the past one-year period made all the difference — the brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi and the war in Yemen where Saudi atrocities have come into focus. Trump’s argument to remain committed to the Saudi ally had boiled...

From the abstract of a (paywalled) piece about the never ending US war on Afghanistan: Slow failure: Understanding America’s quagmire in Afghanistan The United States government has no organised way of thinking about war termination other than seeking decisive military victory. This implicit assumption is inducing three major errors. First, the United States tends to select military-centric strategies that have low probabilities of success. Second, the United States is slow to modify losing or...

The Mideast has its own variety of crazy humor. The Saudis have been blasting and bombing wretched Yemen, one of this world’s poorest nations, since 2015. These US-supported attacks and a naval blockade of Yemen imposed by Saudi Arabia and its sidekick ally, the United Arab Emirates, have caused mass starvation. No one knows how many Yemenis have died or are currently starving. Estimates run from 250,000 to one million. The black humor? The Saudis just claimed they were victims of Iranian...

Like a Japanese Kabuki dance Washington is in the grasp of War theater. Many pundits and members of Congress are filling the airwaves and offering up quotes demanding action. Demanding retaliation. We have to stand up to Iran. Only one little problem, the intel on the attack on the Saudi oil installations remains sketchy and hidden. If the missiles were fired from Iranian territory then our intel collection certainly captured the launch or tracked the origin of the drones or missiles used in...

As we marked the 232nd anniversary of the signing of America’s governing charter in 1787, we have ample evidence that it continues to be violated by the federal officials charged with upholding it. Last month, The Young Turks (TYT) news and talk network obtained the FBI’s 2018-2020 “Consolidated Strategy Guide,” which not only referenced the targeting of so-called “Black Identity Extremists” (BIE’s) but also those designated as engaged in “Anti-Government/Anti-Authority Extremism,” “Abortion...

During Dr. Ron Paul’s 2012 Presidential campaign, as we were quietly sitting in a car, Dr. Paul suddenly asked me, “John, do detectives look for the motives of criminals?” I replied, “Well sir, the good ones certainly do. Knowledge of the motive can help prevent future crimes.” This very brief interaction stuck with me through the years. I knew Dr. Paul was right. Knowledge of motive was crucial to understanding the deterrence of criminal, terror, and military attacks. I came to understand...

A new spy story has been making the rounds in Washington, but this time it involved a brave Russian official who allegedly was allegedly recruited while in the Russian Embassy in Washington in 2007 and then worked secretly for the CIA until he was exfiltrated safely in 2017 lest he be discovered and caught. The tale was clearly leaked by the Agency itself to CNN by way of “multiple Trump administration officials.” The CNN headline Exclusive: US extracted top spy from inside Russia in 2017...