As usual, our world is still in “interesting times.” We will start the session with “Current Events” led by Curt Gibby
Disclaimer: Due to the fluctuating state of our government; anything written here can be “inaccurate” by Saturday or sooner.

The 2019 Texas General Election Day is Nov 5, 2019. (17 days) It covers state and local propositions, issues and school boards, etc.  Early voting starts October 21, 2019. (2 days)
Sample Ballots, etc.  www.harrisvotes.com, Montgomery Cty: https://elections.mctx.org/ or, https://ballotpedia.org/Sample_Ballot_Lookup 

Here are 2 sources to help you understand the proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution:

Early voting in Texas’ constitutional amendment election starts Monday. Here’s what voters will decide – Texas Tribune
 by Davis Rich Oct. 15, 2019 (19 hours ago)
            Voters have 10 proposed constitutional amendments on their ballots. And in three special elections, some Texans will elect new state lawmakers.
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/10/15/texas-2019-constitutional-amendments-what-voters-need-know/

Voter guide: 10 Texas constitutional amendments on Nov. 5 ballots – Houston Chronicle Raga Justin Oct. 10, 2019 Updated: Oct. 13, 2019 6 p.m.
Texas voters heading to the polls Nov. 5 will decide on 10 constitutional amendments, which touch on issues ranging from animal retirement to disaster relief funding. A majority vote will be enough to adopt any of these propositions.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/texas/article/Voters-guide-to-10-Texas-constitutional-14505093.php#

Then turning to presidential matters:

President Donald J. Trump will have been in office for 1,002  days by Saturday.  There are 381 days to the next General Presidential Election, 3 November 2020.   Texas holds its Primary Elections on Super Tuesday, 3 March 2020 in 136 days.  First day of early voting in the Primary is 18 February 2020 (122 days)

For those who like to read ahead:

The following listing of “Current Events” usually includes just the top paragraphs from the sources.  This hopefully will get your attention and you will continue deeper by clicking the URL/Internet link (text in blue) to get more of the context.   /Curt Gibby/

The US Is Leaving Syria. Russia Is Moving In. – Defense One

By Katie Bo Williams Senior National Security Correspondent Read bio , 9:53 AM ET
            The Russian military announced Tuesday that its troops are patrolling the Syrian-Turkey border town of Manbij, immediately backfilling a vacuum left by U.S. troops who departed on Monday. 
            Russian military police were patrolling “along the line of contact between the Syrian Arab Republic and Turkey,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement, and are “interacting” with Turkey, which last week launched a ground and air assault on U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in northeastern Syria. 
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2019/10/us-leaving-syria-russia-moving/160594/?oref=d-mostread

Pentagon’s Top Lawyer to Review All Ukraine-Aid Documents

By Katie Bo Williams Senior National Security Correspondent Read bio ,
            But a DoD spokesman still won’t say when the department was told about the aid freeze at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.
            The Defense Department’s top lawyer is gathering all records and documents related to the Ukrainian aid at the heart of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, the department’s top spokesman said.
               All Pentagon offices have been instructed to send the documents to General Counsel Paul C. Ney, Jr. “for cataloguing and review,” Jonathan Hoffman told reporters on Thursday.
https://www.defenseone.com/politics/2019/10/pentagons-top-lawyer-review-all-ukraine-aid-documents/160351/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl

Democrats open debate by unanimously calling for Trump’s impeachment
8:40 p.m.
            Each of the 12 candidates on the Democratic debate stage Tuesday night were undoubtedly hoping to set themselves apart from the rest of the crowd, but there’s at least one thing they can all agree on: impeaching President Trump.
https://theweek.com/speedreads/871967/democrats-open-debate-by-unanimously-calling-trumps-impeachment

What next? (Side bar from “The White House’s impeachment blockade”) The Week, 18 October 2019
https://theweek.com/print/441093/107266/white-houses-impeachment-blockade

What next?
The deluge of damaging revelations “appears to be sticking” to Trump, said Philip Bump in The Washington Post. A new poll shows that 58 percent of Americans now support the impeachment inquiry, while 49 percent think Congress should remove him from office. Most alarming for Trump, his Republican support appears to be eroding. Roughly 28 percent of GOP voters now support the impeachment investigation—a 21-point increase since July—while 18 percent say he should be removed from office. “The Republican Senate, resting on the bedrock of Donald Trump’s base, has been viewed as an unbreachable wall,” said Gabriel Sherman in VanityFair.com. But there are signs it’s beginning to crack. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who publicly called Trump’s entreaties to Ukraine and China “wrong and appalling,” has reportedly been privately sounding out other moderate Republicans about voting to convict Trump in an impeachment trial in the Senate. “Romney is the one guy who could bring along Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Ben Sasse,” a GOP adviser said. “That’s why the things he’s saying are freaking Republicans out.”

“Noted”
The House Oversight Committee is investigating allegations that a foreign government and a trade association booked large blocks of rooms at President Trump’s hotels without actually using them. “We’re looking at near raw bribery,” said committee member Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). “It’s an obvious attempt to curry favor with him.”
Politico.com  (Quoted in The Week, 18 Oct 2019)

3 devastating quotes about Trump’s Kurdish betrayal, by U.S. Special Forces
The Week, Fastreads, October 14, 2019
            President Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria, which has given Turkey an opening to invade and launch an offensive against Kurdish forces in the region, has garnered a lot of criticism. Those critics include some members of the U.S. Special Forces who have worked closely with Kurdish soldiers over the years in a joint fight against the Islamic State.
            Now, as the U.S. withdraws, Kurdish forces have struck an agreement with the Syrian government in the hopes of staving off Turkish forces. Here are three recent quotes from U.S. troops who are struggling to understand how things wound up the way they did.

1. “It’s a stain on the American conscience,” said one Army officerspeaking on the condition of anonymitytold The New York Times, referring to the U.S.’s Kurdish allies. “They trusted us and we broke that trust.”
   2. One U.S. Special Forces soldier criticized Trump directly in a phone call with Fox News last week.
   3. “I’m ashamed,” another officer told the Times. The officer echoed retired four-star Marine Gen. John Allen, who told CNN “There is blood on Trump’s hands for abandoning our Kurdish allies.”
   Read more at The New York Times and Mediaite. Tim O’Donnell

How did the Taliban come about? (From last month)
The Taliban was formed in the early 1990s by an Afghan faction of mujahedeen, Islamic fighters who had resisted the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979–89) with the covert backing of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and its Pakistani counterpart, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI).Jul 4, 2014
The Taliban in Afghanistan | Council on Foreign Relations https://www.cfr.org › backgrounder › taliban-afghanistan
Also, read “The Brzezinski Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur (1998)”
 https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview
and,“Our terrorists”https://newint.org/features/2009/10/01/blowback-extended-version

We’ll talk more about it in class.

Bring your insights and your concerns to Third Saturday Seminar and we will share.

Room B-102, LSC-Montgomery
3200 College Park Drive, Conroe, TX 77384

Academy for Lifelong Learning: LSC-Montgomery , http://www.lonestar.edu/all-montgomery.htm
Registration: Download the form and submit it to ALL
In person: LSC-Montgomery (3200 College Park Dr., Conroe, TX 77384), Continuing Education/ALL Office Building E (Room 205)

• Phone: 936.273.7446
• Fax: 936.273.7262
• Steve Gorman is the ALL Director (936) 273-7259),

Third Saturday Seminars – Fall 2019  –  3 Sessions

Each Session normally starts with a review of current events often followed by a noteworthy topic often presented by guest speaker.  Class discussion is encouraged. The Third Saturday Seminar is about demystifying what is going on around us.Topics have included health care, internet safety, and, providing medical care to civilians in Iraq. Meets the third Saturday of September, October, and November: 9/21, 10/19, 11/16.

16647         3rd SA     9/21-11/16       9:30 AM-12 PM      B102              Gibby

 Click for Campus Map

“Some part of our being knows this (the universe) is where we came from. We long to return. And we can. Because the cosmos is also within us; We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. ”  Carl Sagan

2019 continues to be an “INTERESTING” year!  We will keep you informed to the best of our ability. See you on Saturday.  Curt Gibby 

Next Meeting 16 November 2019 (3d Saturday).  No Meeting in December.  We restart in January 2020