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The Trump administration on Thursday announced a sharp refocus of its Africa strategy to counter what it called the “predatory” practices of China and Russia, moves which National Security Adviser John Bolton said “deliberately and aggressively targeting their investments in the region to gain a competitive advantage.” Speaking at the conservative Heritage Foundation,Mr. Bolton said that curbing Moscow and Beijing’s growing influence in Africa will be the White House’s top objective in the region. “Great-power competitors, namely China and Russia, are rapidly expanding their financial and political influence across Africa,” Mr. Bolton said Thursday. “They are deliberately and aggressively targeting...

Conservatives must also take the political game as seriously as the leftists do. In this country, conservatives still outnumber liberals, but you would never know it by the voting tallies As Special Counsel Robert Mueller racks up the guilty pleas for minor infractions by supporters of President Trump unrelated to Russian Collusion and ignores the crimes committed by members of the FBI, DOJ, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it should come as no surprise that Conservatives are playing in the wrong game. Even after Republicans won the White House, Senate and House of Representatives they acted as if...

Never before in our lives have we seen such corrupt calumny and hatred on spittle-flecked display Americans and their freedom-loving friends worldwide won’t be sleeping well between now and November 6 Midterms. While far too many already asleep at the switch see these Midterms as just another election, millions of patriots tossing restlessly in their sleep, see these Midterms for what they really are: a chance for Democrats in exile to regain power by getting even with the 63 million-plus people who cast their votes for Donald Trump—and not Hillary Clinton.

RUSH: So, look at this headline from the Daily Beast. It’s a left-wing publication. Headline: “Trump: Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh Want Government Shutdown Before Midterms … During yet another long, rambling rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania that was ostensibly meant to bolster Republican Lou Barletta’s attempt to unseat two-term Democratic Senator Bob Casey, President Donald Trump again brought up the idea of shutting down the government over the issue of ‘border security.’ And he made it clear which advisers he was listening to as he publicly flirts with that idea.” THE PRESIDENT: We need more Republicans, but there are friends of...

The Pentagon released a new nuclear arms policy Friday that calls for the introduction of two new types of weapons, effectively ending Obama-era efforts to reduce the size and scope of the U.S. arsenal and minimize the role of nuclear weapons in defense planning.  Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in an introductory note to the new policy — the first update to the military’s nuclear strategy since 2010 — that the changes reflect a need to “look reality in the eye” and “see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”  The previous administration’s policy hinged on what...

Back around Thanksgiving time, we looked at some groundbreaking reporting from the Washington Free Beacon where they exposed some less than media-neutral activities by one member of the press. Janell Ross, a political reporter for the Washington Post, was found to have participated in a highly secretive, big dollar fundraising and strategy conference for the Democrats. To be clear, Ross was not there reporting on the conference as part of her job. She wrote no articles about it and the WaPo said they didn’t even know that she had gone. She was a participant in the event, even sitting in...

The mainstream media's usual hand-wringing about President Trump's Twitter habit morphed into hyperventilation last week after he shared several "unverified" tweets about terrorism, but the director of the Central Intelligence Agency surprisingly doesn't have a problem with it. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said at a national security event in Simi Valley, California, over the weekend that Trump's tweeting has actually yielded helpful intelligence. The current CIA director sat down with former CIA director Leon Panetta and Fox News host Brett Baier for an hour of discussion on world events from a security perspective at The Reagan National Defense Forum on...

With the seventh season of HBO's Game of Thrones at its halfway point, Westeros is at war yet again. In the last two episodes (episodes 3 and 4), the forces aligned with Daenerys Targaryen and Cersei Lannister have met upon the fields (and seas) of battle at last. Things have not gone entirely according to plan for either side. In fact things have gone so wrong, so fast that I thought it might be time to convene the Ars Technica Board of Fictional Military Historic Analysis—with its charter members, Jon Nichols and Steve Skaggs, two special operations professionals now in...

"For those who see the obvious, but just can’t figure it out; for those who see the obvious but have to pretend they just can’t figure it out; for those who were never paying close attention; for those who have forgotten or those who perhaps never knew; and for the tender gnats who need a constant reminder:"

Cruz, up for reelection in 2018, is back home in Texas on a “two-week listening tour” with voters. In an interview with NBC 5 reporter Julie Fine, he explained the problem with pursuing regime change in Syria without a clear strategy or end game. "We are trapped between impossible options. On one hand, Bashar al-Assad is a monster. He has repeatedly used chemical weapons against his own citizens, against innocent men women and children. He is a bad, bad guy,” Cruz said. [cut] “But on the other hand, the opposition – many of the rebels fighting against him – are...

Exactly two weeks ago, this author predicted the defeat of the American Health Care Act — and explained that it was a step towards the final, actual deal that will repeal and replace Obamacare. President Donald Trump faces three irreconcilable factions: the GOP establishment, conservatives, and Democrats. He must bring them together — to “deliver the goods,” a key rule in The Art of the Deal. But first he must show them “the downside” — and convince them they will fail on their own. The most difficult faction to deal with is the Republican establishment — not because they are...

Good evening, I’m still reporting on Trump Brings the Strongest Republican Party in History! Good afternoon, I’m still reporting on Trump. Newt Gingrich’s assessment of Donald Trump’s coattails is that Trump brings the strongest Republican party ever to Washington. [insert] However, Gingrich says he does not want to join the administration: [insert] I’m still reporting from Washington. Good day. Bill Still is a former newspaper editor and publisher. He has written for USA Today, The Saturday Evening Post, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, OMNI magazine, and has also produced the syndicated radio program, Health News. He has written 22 books...

Anyone who is surprised at the appointment of right-wing guru Steve Bannon as the Donald Trump administration's chief strategist and counselor has been living in an alternate universe, the universe in which President-elect Trump would "pivot" into something resembling a mainline GOP conservative. And anyone who is amazed at Trump's temerity in putting a white nationalist into the White House has gravely misunderstood the power of racism in fueling his campaign, and the desire to "turn back the clock" to a time when white men supposedly ruled supreme. Above all, they've forgotten the cardinal rule of Trumpworld: attachment to profit...

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump plans to fight fire with fire, as he sees it, in the last 25 days of his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Facing a barrage of separate sexual assault allegations, Trump has responded by waging an intense war against the media, the “power structure” and the Clintons. In a pair of interviews with Yahoo News, a high-level Trump campaign source detailed the aggressive strategy, including the “suppression of votes” by Democratic-leaning groups, for the home stretch of the presidential race. “We’re bringing out tactical nukes now, with thermo nukes later,” the source said. Trump’s epic...

Moscow — Leaders of Turkey and Russia signed a long-delayed deal Monday to build the TurkStream gas pipeline under the Black Sea to deliver Russian gas to Europe's doorstep within three years. The rapid warming trend in Russo-Turkish relations holds deep implications for Syria's immediate crisis, which dominated the talks and the subsequent headlines, but the fallout from that pipeline deal is a potentially crushing blow to struggling pro-Western Ukraine and may be rearranging strategic realities around the region for many years to come. Analysts say that if TurkStream goes ahead it will enable Moscow to cut its former main...

LOUIS — Donald Trump adopted a base-first strategy at the second presidential debate, tossing red meat to his most fervent supporters in an effort to save his campaign from imploding. Trump might have had little choice after an extraordinary weekend that saw Republicans fleeing his campaign.

Snip... Our men and women in uniform have been heroic. Many have signed up to serve again even after being wounded. Our tactical units remain the best in the world. Our intelligence officers and diplomats have risked their lives in service to the country. The problem is not with the sincerity, the courage, the energy or the effort of individual Americans. The problem has been the approach of a bipartisan Washington political elite that has squandered 15 years, thousands of lives, many thousands wounded, and trillions of dollars with no coherent strategy, no honest assessment of the challenge, and no...

“Maybe Trump is onto something...” a friend averred on Monday as we watched Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech unfold in Youngstown, Ohio. This November, for the first time, my self-proclaimed “apathetic liberal-type” friend will consider voting Republican. For her, as for many young people over the past few months, the terrorist attacks in Orlando, San Bernardino and Nice roused her from her Bernie slumber to see that we live in a real world, with real enemies, and real consequences for inaction when it comes to standing up for our values. The inaction is that our leaders fail to assign blame...

After 15 years, the US's counter-terror strategy has 'unequivocally failed' Apple and Google, two of the country’s biggest employers, don’t mess around with failure. Leaders either produce or they’re gone. Major League Baseball and National Football League teams have one standard for their leaders: get us into the playoffs or you’re fired. The government’s foreign policy elites, however, don’t have to succeed to keep their jobs. Unlike the rest of America, when U.S. leaders in foreign policy fail, they are rewarded or promoted, while the 330 million Americans living outside the Washington beltway foot the bill.