Turkish President Recep Erdogan is quick to declare victory today, albeit by a narrow margin, as a national referendum to consolidate power passes during a national vote.

[…]  The 18 constitutional amendments that will come into effect after the next election, scheduled for 2019, will abolish the office of the prime minister and hand sweeping executive powers to the president. –link–

Having watched the Erdogan objectives play out over the past six to eight years the approach he has taken has been highly effective.

Erdogan essentially imported a base of support consisting of mostly Muslim Brotherhood political supporters to aid his desire to transform Turkey from a secular nation into a more Islamic dictatorial endeavor.

He may never fully achieve the goal of recreating the Ottoman Empire, but that doesn’t mean there is going to be anything less than toxic turmoil ahead for Turkey and the EU as his endeavors continue to be successful.

A decade or two from now when our children look back upon the period from 2010 to 2020 there will be a rather obvious similarity between the rise of Erdogan to power and the rise of Libya’s Muamar Qaddafi.

Both power-hungry nuts utilized immigration to construct their objectives, and both were national gatekeepers. Qaddafi held power over Europe via the North African migration gate, and Erdogan gaining power over Europe through the use of the Mid-East gate.

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Cleveland Police are urgently searching for a man named Steve Stevens who has killed at least one victim during a live Facebook broadcast, and claims to have killed more than a dozen more.

The suspect is a black male named Steve Stephens.  He is approximately 6′ 1″ and is considered armed and dangerous.  He was last seen driving a white ford Fusion and wearing a dark, striped polo shirt.

A video posted Sunday to a Facebook account apparently belonging to Stephens shows the man filming walk up to an older man and, after asking him a question, shooting him. The video, which was posted about 2 p.m. ET and was later taken down, is captioned, in part, “Easter day slaughter.”  The broadcast victims’ family has been identified and they are devastated.

(Via Fox News) […] The Sunday shooting occurred just south of Interstate 90 in the Glenville neighborhood. Stephens also posted another video of himself talking on the phone about at least 13 other alleged murders he says he’s committed. He said at one point he “messed up.”

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National Security Advisor HR McMaster has been selected by conspiracy nuts and alt-reality moonbats as a necessary evil foil to retain their pearl-clutching placement at the table of doomsday drum-beating.

Apparently, when candidate Trump, then president-elect Trump, and now President Trump said: “bomb the s**t out of ISIS“, “rebuild our military” and recreate “peace through strength” – a sketchy handful of fools perceived such statements possible without actually ‘bombing‘, ‘rebuilding‘ or ‘reasserting strength‘.

Yes, cognitive dissonance relies upon use of the Mamet Principle; and yes, it happens on the fringe elements of both sides of the circular political continuum.

In the most recent proclamations of the Moonbats any adviser to the President who would be connected with presenting ‘bombing‘, ‘rebuilding‘ or ‘reasserting‘ options of military use to the President, necessarily becomes a war-mongering pod carrier intent on lulling a 70-year-old President to sleep and exit the room converted to John McCain.

The people selling this narrative are both nuts and gnats.

Please pay attention to HR McMaster in this interview laying out a very reasonable perspective on the various regional issues, his praise for the diplomatic approach by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and his accompanying overview to include (@10:38) the answer to the question: “do you think we need more troops in Syria?“.  McMaster’s response: “I don’t think so“.

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Deputy Asst. to President Donald Trump, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, sat down with Maria Bartiromo for an interview discussing the White House global policy.

…”The President is not an interventionist commander-in-chief. Nothing has changed from November 7th to today.  He’s been explicit, we are not invading other peoples’ countries, we are not occupying them. This is not some neo-conservative Bush era administration.”…

~ Dr. Gorka.

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The LA Times is providing an update to the ground assessment from the use of the 10+ ton MOAB bomb dropped in Afghanistan.  The number of ISIS killed rises to 94.

“The bomb’s reverberations wave frightened me so badly. I have witnessed thousands of battles, but no bomb scared me like this one did.”  ~ Hanifullah (62-year-old Shodal Resident)

Afghans describe how the MOAB destroyed the ISIS camp and may have killed 100 fighters. 36 ISIS are confirmed dead. pic.twitter.com/ojAZgOWfBL

— Kevin W. (@kwilli1046) April 14, 2017

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Via LA Times –  Afghan officials said Saturday that 94 militants were killed in a massive U.S. bomb blast targeting Islamic State’s regional affiliate, nearly three times as many as was reported a day earlier. (more…)

The Afghan Ministry of Defense said Friday that 36 ISIS fighters and no civilians were killed when the U.S. dropped a massive bomb on a militant tunnel complex the day before.

(Via AP) A strike by the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat by the U.S. military killed 36 Islamic State group militants and left no civilian casualties, hitting a tunnel complex in the remote mountains of eastern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Friday.

The massive bomb terrified villagers 20 miles away across the border in Pakistan with a blast they described as earsplitting.

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A background briefing transcript from yesterday might aid in larger understanding of White House policy and strategic objectives toward Syria, Russia, North Korea and China.

[Transcript] – SENIOR ADMINISTRATON OFFICIAL:  (In progress) — on the relationship between the leaders of the United States, our President and Premier Xi, and then applying that newly formed relationship to complex problem sets from the Middle East to Northeast Asia, and then a result in the United Nations, it helps advance our mutual interests and the interests of all civilized people.

So I think it’s difficult to portray this as anything but a really great week for our citizens and the United States.

♦  Q    Thanks so much.  Japanese media is reporting that the USS Carl Vinson is in operations with the Japanese naval forces.  As you know, they have a (inaudible.)  What happens if there is a confrontation this week between North Korean forces and Japanese and U.S. forces?  And how will you prevent this from spiraling into a broader military conflict?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATON OFFICIAL:  Well, as you heard from the President many times, we’re not in the business of trying to predict with a high degree of certainty precisely what our response is going to be.

I think what we demonstrated last week was the ability of the President’s national security team to come together, convened by the National Security Council, to look at events such as those that might occur on the Korean Peninsula, quickly analyze those events, place them in context with U.S. vital interests, establish objectives that protect American citizens and advance our interests, and then develop and present the President with options.

So we have a team that is, I think, particularly adept at doing that.  And if there were to be continued destabilizing and aggressive behavior by the North Korean regime, that’s how the national security team would respond. (more…)

Today the U.S. Military carried out a precision-guided pin-prick bomb drop in Eastern Afghanistan carefully avoiding collateral damage…. LOL, JUST KIDDING..

…Trump just bombed the shit out of ISIS!

For the first time in combat, the U.S. Military dropped a 21,000 lb MOAB (Mother of All Bombs).  The official name of the weapon is the Massive Ordinance Air Blast Bomb, and it has never been used before in combat. It was tested by the U.S. in 2003.

The caves and tunnels in the Afghanistan province of Nangarhar have been particularly dangerous as ISIS fighters use them to nest their activity and launch attacks.  The 30 foot long, 10-ton MOAB detonates in the air and creates a concussive shock wave that blasts the ground and travels through the caves. (more…)

This speech was delivered March 21st 2016. With many people confused about President Trump and Syria, this reminder is worth the time and attention. Again, this was March 21st 2016:

[Transcript] Candidate Donald J Trump remarks to the AIPAC audience on March 21st 2016.

Good evening. I speak to you today as a lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel. I am a newcomer to politics but not to backing the Jewish state.

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On September 30th 2016 the New York Times quietly released a leaked audio recording of Secretary John Kerry meeting with multiple factions associated within Syria.

The 40-minute discussion took place on the sidelines of a United Nations General Assembly in New York. The meeting took place at the Dutch Mission to the United Nations on Sept. 22nd 2016:

[…]  Kerry’s off-record conversation was apparently with two dozen ‘Syrian civilians’, all from US backed opposition-linked NGO’s in education and medical groups supposedly working in ‘rebel-held’ (aka terrorist-held) areas in Syria.

This opposition conclave also included ‘rescue workers’ which can only be ambassadors from the White Helmets, a pseudo NGO which serves as Washington and London’s primary PR front in pursuit of a “No Fly Zone’ in Syria, and it’s being bankrolled by the US, UK, EU and other coalition states to the tune of well over $100 million (so far). (link)

When you listen to the audio recording (embedded below) it becomes immediately obvious what was going on in 2014, 2015 and 2016 as an outcome of policy from the White House.  In addition, you discover why this jaw-dropping 2016 leak/story was buried by the U.S. media and how it connects to the prior 4 years of perplexing U.S. mid-east policy.

This evidence within this single story would/should forever remove any credibility toward the U.S. foreign policy under President Obama.  It also destroys the credibility of a large number of well known republicans, and explains how the prior action has placed President Trump into a precarious position requiring a careful approach.

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