Monthly Archives: February 2015

Avoiding Working With The People Who Actually Understand The Threat

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Fox News posted an article today stating that the United States is withholding the details of the nuclear negotiations with Iran from Israel. Since Israel is the country most threatened by an Iranian nuclear weapon and since Israel is the country with the best intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program, this approach makes very little sense.

The article reports:

In extraordinary admissions that reflect increasingly strained ties between the U.S. and Israel, the White House and State Department said they were not sharing everything from the negotiations with the Israelis and complained that Israeli officials had misrepresented what they had been told in the past. Meanwhile, senior U.S. officials privately blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself for “changing the dynamic” of previously robust information-sharing by politicizing it.

The comments came as a late March deadline to forge the outline of an Iran nuclear deal looms. Netanyahu has angered the White House by his open opposition to a deal he believes threatens Israel’s existence, and by accepting a Republican invitation to address Congress about Iran in early March without consulting the White House, a breach of diplomatic protocol.

The article further reports:

Netanyahu has insisted that Iran, whose top officials have sworn to obliterate Israel, should not be allowed to enrich any uranium. The U.S. and its partners say that stance is untenable because Iran would never accept it.

As the talks have progressed, Netanyahu’s opposition to an agreement has increased over what he believes to be extreme concessions made to Iran that would leave it as a threshold nuclear weapons power and a direct threat to Israel’s existence.

The White House and State Department maintained that the U.S. will not leave Israel threatened. They also insisted that Israel has not been completely cut out of the loop and that overall security cooperation with the Jewish state remains strong.

If Iran will not accept the prohibition of enriching uranium, doesn’t anyone think there might be a reason for that? Have we not learned from what happened with North Korea (which incidentally has played a very large role in Iran’s nuclear program and nuclear talks)? Any treaty that comes out of the current negotiations with Iran is not worth the paper it is written on. President Obama heralding a treaty with Iran is very much along the lines of Neville Chamberlain declaring, “Peace for our time” after the 1938 Munich Agreement. We know how that turned out.

Ethics Are Always A Bit Of A Challenge With The Clintons

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After Bill Clinton left office, he set up the William J. Clinton Foundation, now called the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The Foundation, under whatever name, has had some interesting challenges along the way.

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal posted an article which included the following:

The Clinton Foundation has dropped its self-imposed ban on collecting funds from foreign governments and is winning contributions at an accelerating rate, raising ethical questions as Hillary Clinton ramps up her expected bid for the presidency.

Recent donors include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Australia, Germany and a Canadian government agency promoting the Keystone XL pipeline.

In 2009, the Clinton Foundation stopped raising money from foreign governments after Mrs. Clinton became secretary of state. Former President Bill Clinton, who ran the foundation while his wife was at the State Department, agreed to the gift ban at the behest of the Obama administration, which worried about a secretary of state’s husband raising millions while she represented U.S. interests abroad.

The ban wasn’t absolute; some foreign government donations were permitted for ongoing programs approved by State Department ethics officials.

As Mrs. Clinton prepares to run for President, foreign donations are again coming in.

The foundation did not announce the foreign donations, The Wall Street Journal had to look for them:

The donations weren’t announced by the foundation and were discovered by The Wall Street Journal during a search of donations of more than $50,000 posted on the foundation’s online database. Exactly when the website was updated isn’t clear. The foundation typically updates its website with the previous year’s donations near the beginning of the year. All 2014 donations were noted with asterisks.

The dangers here are obvious–if a country wanted to curry favor with President Hillary Clinton (or gain access to the President), all they would have to do would be make a large donation to the foundation. Whether it is decided that this is legal or not, it is another example of the Clinton family being involved in financial activities that are questionable at best. Do we really want these ethically challenged people back in the White House?

A Department Of Misinformation

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The United States State Department has become a department of misinformation. As reported at red flag news, this is one of their recent statements (Marie Harf was appointed Deputy Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State in June 2013.):

MATTHEWS: How do we stop this? I don’t see it. I see the Shia militias coming out of Baghdad who are all Shia. The Sunnis hate them. The Sunnis are loyal to ISIS rather than going in with the Shia. You’ve got the Kurds, the Jordanian air force and now the Egyptian air force. But i don’t see any — If i were ISIS, I wouldn’t be afraid right now. I can figure there is no existential threat to these people. They can keep finding places where they can hold executions and putting the camera work together, getting their props ready and killing people for show. And nothing we do right now seems to be directed at stopping this.

HARF: Well, I think there’s a few stages here. Right now what we’re doing is trying to take their leaders and their fighters off the battlefield in Iraq and Syria. That’s really where they flourish.

MATTHEWS: Are we killing enough of them?

HARF: We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs, whether —

MATTHEWS: We’re not going to be able to stop that in our lifetime or fifty lifetimes. There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always going to be poor muslims, and as long as there are poor Muslims, the trumpet’s blowing and they’ll join. We can’t stop that, can we?

HARF: We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people…

Note to Ms. Harf–the 9/11 hijackers were not poor. Osama bin Laden was not poor, Yasser Arafat was not poor. This is not about economics, it is about being trained to hate. In the Gaza Strip, children are graduating from kindergarten in camo clothes carrying wooden guns, and saying that they want to kill Jews. This is the problem. If all of the Arab countries disarmed, there would be peace in the Middle East. If Israel disarmed, there would be no Israel. That tells you all you need to know.

 

 

The Purpose Of This Post Is To Stop The Constant Rewriting Of History On This Matter

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There are a lot of Americans who believe that President George W. Bush lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in order to get America into a war with Iraq. That is not only not true–to believe it may be dangerous for America’s future.

On February 8, Lawrence H. Silberman posted an article at the Wall Street Journal explaining why this misconception is dangerous for the future of America.

Mr. Silberman writes:

In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq.”

I found this shocking. I took a leave of absence from the bench in 2004-05 to serve as co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction—a bipartisan body, sometimes referred to as the Robb-Silberman Commission. It was directed in 2004 to evaluate the intelligence community’s determination that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—I am, therefore, keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli. It is astonishing to see the “Bush lied” allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact.

Please read the entire article to understand the dangers of letting this lie go unchecked.

Meanwhile, John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article yesterday providing more information on the subject. Mr. Hinderaker cites a New York Times article from February 15th which stated the following:

The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.

Defending America and American allies should not be a partisan matter. Unfortunately, there are those in Washington who have chosen to make it so. The fact that some Democrats are boycotting the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a disgrace. Israel (and Prime Minister Netanyahu) have a history of successfully dealing with terrorism and of understanding how it works. Israel is willing to share that knowledge. America needs to listen.

An Interesting New Wrinkle In The Immigration Fight

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The Washington Examiner is reporting today that U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen has issued a temporary injunction blocking President Obama’s executive action to shield up to 5 million immigrants from deportation. The injunctions at least temporarily blocks those immigrants from applying for social security numbers and work permits (see previous articles about many of these people voting and receiving earned income tax refunds for years when they were here working illegally).

The article reports:

However, uncertainty persists at a time when the Obama administration was banking on clarity.

The judicial fight also comes as the White House and Senate Democrats engage in a standoff with Republican lawmakers over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Conservatives insist the court ruling gives them ammunition to roll back the president’s executive action on immigration, but they still don’t have the 60 votes in the Senate to get such legislation through the upper chamber.

Hanen, the South Texas judge, did not rule on the legality of the executive action taken by Obama in November. He simply said the president’s blueprint should be put on hold while 26 states pursue a lawsuit arguing that Obama lacked the authority to make such a decree to governors already dealing with budget shortfalls.

The Fifth Circuit Court is now the gatekeeper for whether Obama’s power play on immigration will proceed. It will have to decide whether to grant the Justice Department’s expected request for a stay on the district court ruling.

President Obama has admitted numerous times that he does not have the authority to issue the executive order that he issued. However, there has not been anyone in Congress with the backbone to stop the runaway executive branch. Unfortunately, the court ruling in this case, while needed to stop the runaway train, may actually give the Republicans in Congress permission to cave. That would not be a good thing. There is a reason we have three branches of government. Legislation is supposed to come from Congress–the President is supposed to uphold the laws–not write them!

Make no mistake–executive amnesty is about future Democrat voters. While I have no problem with expanding immigration, I am not convinced America can assimilate 5 million people all at once in the current economy. We do need to overhaul our immigration policy, but 5 million people at a time is not the way to do it.

Why Are We Doing This To The Girl Scouts?

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I was a Girl Scout. When we moved north, there was no troop, but in my younger years, I was a Girl Scout. I earned a roller skating badge, a cooking badge, and various other badges. It was a lot of fun. Well, I guess things have changed.

Life News is reporting that the In May 2013, WAGGGS (World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts)  participated in Women Deliver, a global conference with the purpose of “calling for action to improve the health and well-being of girls and women.”

The article reports:

The conference featured speakers such as late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart, philosopher Peter Singer, who supports infanticide and euthanasia, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Some of the breakout sessions were entitled “Outing and Addressing Abortion Stigma” and “Why I Perform Abortions.” Exhibitors included many abortion and population control advocates such as Amnesty International, Guttmacher Institute, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Marie Stopes International, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, United Nations Population Fund, and WAGGGS.

Equally concerning is WAGGGS’ participation, along with International Planned Parenthood Federation and Planned Parenthood Global (PPFA global), in the Youth Advisory Group for the Women Deliver Conference. It seems to me that the Girl Scouts have some interesting, you might even say radical friends.

Abortion in America is not about women’s health–it is about the amount of money abortionists make and the lobby that protects them. I believe that abortion should be legal in cases where it is medically needed to protect the life of a woman–period. Abortion generally has as many risks (if not more) than pregnancy. Particularly when you consider that even in America, abortions are not always performed in the best of medical facilities with emergency equipment.

The Girl Scouts need to stay out of politics. There is enough for them to learn about simply being strong, successful women without having to support abortion.

I Can’t Believe He Said That

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CNS News is reporting today that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), speaking recently at the U.S. Vote Foundation’s Voting and Elections Summit, said “we need to make voting easier,” and “I’ve often asked myself why you should have to register to vote.”

Voter fraud is a problem in America. I have heard stories from poll watchers, stories of older teenagers sent in to vote multiple times (by their parents) to vote in northeastern cities, and posted stories about True the Vote and other organizations that have uncovered significant voter fraud. If we do not protect the integrity of our elections, we will have a country run by criminals.

Representative Ellison also criticized voter id laws as restricting the right to vote. The statistics do not uphold that claim. In states that have instituted voter id laws, the turnout of voters has not decreased. I support restricting the right to vote of the people not eligible to vote. Ending voter registration will create a free for all of voter fraud.

Based On Past History, There Won’t Be A Deal On Homeland Security

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The Daily Signal today posted an article about President Obama’s negotiating style–he doesn’t.

The article reminds us:

Obama rejected the convention of reaching across the aisle from the very start. In his first two years in office this White House never moved an inch in the GOP’s direction and passed his major bills on stimulus and Obamacare without a single Republican vote. Those bills were written with zero input from Republicans and when asked why, he haughtily lectured “we won the election.” Then he pouts the Republicans were no help.

Obamacare could have been a really good thing–there were three or four things that could have been included which would have make it less expensive and more efficient. Unfortunately, those things were not on President Obama’s radar (insurance able to be sold across state lines, tort reform, insurance that was portable from job to job, etc.). Any one of those things probably would have brought in some Republican votes.

The article continues:

Now Republicans are learning another harsh lesson about this White House: on those rare occasions when a deal is reached, Obama routinely breaches it. Consider the recent evidence:

• Death tax. One of the few bipartisan of recent years was to set the death tax at 40 percent. Now two years later, he says in his State of the Union he wants to raise taxes at death to closer to 60 percent. This would be nearly the highest tax penalty at death in the world.
• Capital gains taxes. Obama entered office with these rates at 15 percent. Then he said repeatedly he would “only raise them to the rate of the Clinton years.” That was a lie from the start because the rate under Clinton was 20 percent, but he raised it to 23.8 percent including the surcharge imposed under Obamacare. Now he says he wants to raise the rate to 28 percent, which he says was the Reagan-era rate. And if he gets that he will no doubt say he only wants to raise it to the Nixon rates–of more than 36 percent.
• Taxing college savings plans. Obama said he would only raise taxes on the rich. But then he proposed taxing the build up of money in college savings plans and that would club the middle class. The plan was so unpopular, the White House dropped it, but anyone with a Roth IRA or build up in a pension plan better be on guard. You’re next.
• Budget caps. The 2011 Budget Control Act set strict caps on discretionary spending. But Obama keeps proposing piercing those caps–which he himself proposed in the first place. His new budget for 2016 wants to crash through the spending ceilings to the tune of $74 billion this year.
• Paid family leave. When liberals sold the idea of parental leave back in the 1990s, they stressed over and over that this was only “unpaid” leave and so employers wouldn’t face undue costs. Now Obama and the Democrats want paid leave. Give an inch, they want a subsidized mile.
• Keystone XL Pipeline. Obama first said he was holding up Keystone because of environmental concerns in Nebraska with respect to water issues. But those issues have finally been resolved by the courts. Obama is now inventing new excuses for getting to “no.”
• Immigration. Obama’s executive actions–of questionable legality–legalizing millions of illegal immigrants seems to Republicans to be intentionally designed as a poison pill for immigration reform.

At some point, Congress has to stand up against executive overreach. I hope they do it soon.

Something To Ponder As The Cry For War Gets Louder

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ISIS is a horrible organization. They kill innocent people, and they are barbarians. I don’t think too many people will argue that. However, the American public is being manipulated, and we need to look past the obvious.

If America begins to fight ISIS, we will be (intentionally or otherwise) aligning ourselves with Iran. Remember them. They are the people who routinely take Americans prisoner (Pastor Saeed Abedini is an American citizen). Iran kills homosexuals, imprisons Christians, and has been responsible for much of the unrest in the Middle East. Iran’s goal is to set up a Shiite caliphate in the Middle East under their control. The goal of ISIS is to set up a Sunni caliphate in the Middle East under their control.

President Obama is becoming concerned about his legacy (that usually does happen in the last two years of any president’s term). ObamaCare is looking a little shaky, and the rest of the world doesn’t look too stable either. A treaty with Iran would at least be something he could point to as an achievement (it wouldn’t be, but he could point to it). There are some obstacles–how do you get said treaty past Congress (the Senate is supposed to approve treaties, and even Democrats don’t like some of the things already revealed about this one), and how do you sell a treaty that allows Iran to go nuclear to the American public (who are not total idiots)? This is the way you do this. The media begins to play up the atrocities of ISIS and how horrible they are (they are, but that is not the point right now). The media conveniently overlooks the atrocities committed by Iran and convinces the American people that Iran is not the same country that took over the American Embassy in 1978. It’s a stretch, but the media is good at creating and rehabilitating images.

You need to prevent Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu from coming to America and telling Congress the truth about Iran. If you can’t prevent that from happening, you at least need to get enough Democrats out of the Capitol at the time so that they will not know what he said (and will vote for a treaty allowing Iran to go nuclear).

This is where we are. To fight ISIS is to support Iran. To support Iran is to ignore our relationship with Israel, our strongest and most reliable ally in the Middle East. It will be interesting to see if the media campaign around this war on ISIS works.

There Will Be More Of This To Come

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The Weekly Standard posted an article today with the following headline, “NYT Columnist Blames Scott Walker for Teacher Layoffs That Occurred Before He Was Governor.” Details, details, details.

The attack on Scott Walker is moving full speed ahead. It is up to Americans to do their homework and figure out how many of the horrible things this man is being accused of actually happened.

The article at The Weekly Standard quotes a New York Times article by Gail Collins. Ms. Collins describes a recent speech given by Scott Walker in Iowa:

Mainly, though, The Speech was about waging war on public employee unions, particularly the ones for teachers. “In 2010, there was a young woman named Megan Sampson who was honored as the outstanding teacher of the year in my state. And not long after she got that distinction, she was laid off by her school district,” said Walker, lacing into teacher contracts that require layoffs be done by seniority.

Well, there are some problems with that description.

The Weekly Standard reports:

There are two problems in this section of Collins’s column: First, she accuses Walker of dishonesty, but she’s just quibbling over semantics. Is it really inaccurate to describe someone named an “outstanding first-year teacher” by the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English as a “teacher of the year” for short? I’ve never seen much of a difference: In the headline of this 2011 piece, I described Sampson as a “teacher of the year,” but in the body of the piece I precisely described her award. Walker has been telling this story for four years, and no one thought his description of Sampson was dishonest until Gail Collins heard about it.

But the big error in Collins’s piece is her claim that “those layoffs happened because Walker cut state aid to education.” As you can see in the excerpt above, Collins is talking about teacher layoffs that occurred in 2010. Walker did not become governor until 2011. 

If you are a casual reader of the New York Times, the newspaper of record has just misled you. I seriously doubt they will bother to correct their mistake, so you are left with the impression that Scott Walker cut education funding and laid off teachers. What a horrible person! Only, what you have been told is a lie.

The article at The Weekly Standard also points out:

The truth is that Walker’s reforms actually saved teachers’ jobs. Right before the 2012 Wisconsin recall election, Walker’s Democratic opponent Tom Barrett couldn’t name a single school that had been hurt by Walker’s policies. When Walker’s 2014 Democratic opponent Mary Burke was asked to name any schools hurt by Walker’s collective bargaining reform, she relayed an anecdote she’d heard secondhand about one school. Burke’s story didn’t check out, and the superintendent of that school wrote a letter telling Burke she didn’t know what she was talking about. 

The message here is clear–do your own research.

 

The Media And Scott Walker

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The attack on Scott Walker from the mainstream media has been going on for a few weeks now. Recently the media found something they thought might work–Scott Walker did not finish college. We need to know more about his college years and why he did not finish. What about his transcripts? Excuse me. Where were these people when it came time to inquire into President Obama’s college years, transcripts, etc. Somehow, when it came to candidate Obama, this information was simply not available and not important. Hmmm.

The National Review Online posted an article today about all this curiosity regarding Scott Walker’s college experience.

The author of the article clearly understands what is happening. He reports:

The Left is now in a full-out attack on Scott Walker. The homepage today has good pieces by Jonah, Kevin, and Charles on the latest brouhaha, Walker’s supposed opposition to evolution, linked to his supposedly mysterious dropping out of college. This is just the next step in a growing campaign. I wrote a few weeks ago on how the progressives would try to defeat Walker, by fear-mongering that he was a “divider” and a threat to minority groups. 

But what we see now is the “full Alinsky.” The Left is throwing just about everything in the book at Walker early on, trying to Romneyize him: define him and put him so far back on the defensive that he can never recover. With support from the MSM, which is now thrashing about trying to figure out why he left college, the progressive Left is perfectly following Alinky’s Rule for Radicals No. 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” This is exactly what is happening today.

The problem with Scott Walker (in the eyes of the political left) is that they have been trying to get him out of office ever since he has been there. His policies have worked, and generally speaking, the voters in Wisconsin like what he has done. That makes him extremely dangerous.

The article concludes:

The bad news is that if Walker’s people don’t fight back twice as hard early on, they may be playing defense the entire game. It’s hard since they can’t fire back at a political opponent as they could in a campaign. That is the truly insidious part of the progressive media’s strategy. Whom do you go after, the Washington Post or Slate? But, Walker’s camp can respond in general by employing Alinsky’s Rule No. 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Ridicule back those who fear someone without a college degree, or someone who takes on bloodsucking unions. Don’t let up.

The good news is, the progressive Left may be Alinskying Walker too early. The risk that Walker will be defined by his enemies is high, but so is the chance that the progressive message will get dulled over the next nearly two years by its sheer repetition, its patent bad faith, and its desperation. But if Scott Walker is serious about running for the presidency, he won’t take being Alinskied lying down.  

Unfortunately, this is the way the left does politics in America right now. They will continue doing politics this way until it no longer works. If you want to see this sort of garbage cease, ignore it. As soon as it doesn’t work, the political left will move on to something else.

Corrupting The Election Process In America

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Because many Americans realize that voter fraud is a problem in American elections, some states (including North Carolina) are moving toward voter identification laws. Some groups, claiming the identification laws are discriminatory, are fighting these laws. However, President Obama’s executive amnesty may provide a new wrinkle in this discussion.

Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article with the headline, “Obama amnesty creates loophole for illegal immigrants to vote in elections.” Does this leave any doubt as to what this entire discussion is actually about?

The article reports:

While stressing that it remains illegal for noncitizens to vote, secretaries of state from Ohio and Kansas said they won’t have the tools to sniff out illegal immigrants who register anyway, ignoring stiff penalties to fill out the registration forms that are easily available at shopping malls, motor vehicle bureaus and in curbside registration drives.

Anyone registering to vote attests that he or she is a citizen, but Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said mass registration drives often aren’t able to give due attention to that part, and so illegal immigrants will still get through.

…Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting member of Congress, accused Republicans of an effort at voter suppression.

“The president’s executive order gives immigrants the right to stay — immigrants who have been here for years, immigrants who have been working hard and whose labor we have needed,” Ms. Norton said. “The Republicans may want to go down in history as the party who tried once again 100 years later to nullify the right to vote. Well, I am here to say they shall not succeed.”

Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Democrat, said he doubted illegal immigrants would risk running afoul of the law — which could get them deported — just to be an insignificant part of an election.

The hearing was the latest GOP effort to dent Mr. Obama’s executive action, announced in November, which grants tentative legal status and work permits to as many as 4 million illegal immigrant parents whose children are either U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. The president also expanded a 2012 policy for so-called Dreamers, or illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, granting them tentative legal status and work permits as well.

If I understand the above quote correctly, it is now considered voter suppression to want to keep illegal immigrants from voting. If you love America and treasure to right to vote as an American citizen, you might begin to think about supporting those in Congress who are trying to block the executive order on amnesty that President Obama is trying to force to become law.

Overregulation And The Little Guy

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The Wall Street Journal posted an editorial this morning about the 2010 Dodd Frank law. The law is a mass of overregulation put in place after the financial crisis of 2008 that actually does nothing related to the cause of the financial crisis of 2008. (If you still believe the mainstream media about the financial meltdown of 2008, I suggest you watch the this video.) Dodd Frank is sheer legislative mush that accomplished nothing, written and sponsored by some of the people who caused the problem in the first place. Well, wait a minute, it actually did accomplish something.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Liberals like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) are treating the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law as holy writ because she says it punishes the big banks. But then why is Lloyd Blankfein so content? On Tuesday at an investor conference, the Goldman Sachs CEO explained how higher regulatory costs are crushing the competition.

“More intense regulatory and technology requirements have raised the barriers to entry higher than at any other time in modern history,” said Mr. Blankfein. “This is an expensive business to be in, if you don’t have the market share in scale. Consider the numerous business exits that have been announced by our peers as they reassessed their competitive positioning and relative returns.”

The real problem with overregulation is that it leads to crony capitalism. Dodd Frank is another example of the government passing laws that make it harder for the average American to create and run a business.

Something To Ponder

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Whether you agree with the following or not, consider the following as a plausible explanation for a foreign policy that seems to have no rhyme or reason.

On February 4, Newsvids posted an interview with Clare Lopez, a former CIA agent. I  have met Clare personally and consider her a very good source of honest information.

The article reports:

Clare Lopez who is a Former CIA Operations Officer and member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi tells Steve Malzberg on Newsmax TV that the release of recordings from 2011 in which Pentagon officials criticize Hillary Clinton reveal she was not trusted.

Lopez also pointed out that in these released tapes “Gadhafi made very clear that he was willing to enter into a white flag of truce [and] set up talks to discuss his abdication and exile.” and she said that “The war never had to happen, except that certain people in the highest ranks of the Obama administration, including … Clinton, wanted to be sure not only that Gadhafi was gone, but that their favorite opposition militias, the rebel militias belonging to al-Qaida, would take over.”

 Lopez said the Obama administration’s goal was clear from 2009 — to change U.S. policy toward Islam and the Islamic world and as the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi interim report of April 2013 pointed out, our administration has switched sides and that’s not widely understood.

“Our administration is not on the side of our traditional allies and those like Gadhafi, who was fighting against al-Qaida.

“Our administration has switched sides in the global jihad wars in order to support the rise to power of Islamic jihadis, Sunnis in North Africa, Iran, and the Shiites in the Persian Gulf region” Lopez said.

Deposing Gadhafi made no sense–he was cooperating with western countries and had given up most (if not all) of his weapons of mass destruction after the invasion of Iraq. Deposing Mubarak made no sense–Egypt was stable and to some extent protected minorities. There was no reason to support the unrest stirred up by the Muslim Brotherhood. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the Obama Administration has often been on the wrong side of history. Two clues as to the reason for this might be the Muslim Brotherhood connections of Hillary Clinton’s top aide, and the background of Valerie Jarrett. Unfortunately, we have put the foxes in charge of the chicken coop.

Where Is Winston Churchill?

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On Tuesday, High Frontier posted an article about recent comments by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.

The article quotes Ambassador Rice:

“[W]hat’s missing here in Washington is a sense of perspective. Yes, there’s a lot going on. Still, while the dangers we face may be more numerous and varied, they are not of the existential nature we confronted during World War II or the Cold War.” ~ Ambassador Susan Rice, National Security Advisor

 I think someone needs to tell Ms. Rice that Iran is not only building nuclear weapons, but the missiles to transport them with.

The article reports:

In my opinion, Iran, its surrogate terrorists, Shia allies and even Sunni adversaries are in fact—and contrary to Ambassador Rice’s assertion—an existential threat to America, indeed to all of Western Civilization . . . just as were our enemies during World War II and the Cold War. (By the way, some believe that our policies in dealing with Russia’s creeping invasion of Ukraine could indeed lead to another Cold War – potentially a Hot War.)

Consider that just last week, Iran launched successfully its fourth satellite, reportedly weighing 110 pounds, in an orbit tilted at 55.5-degrees with the equator and at an altitude varying between 139 and 285 miles above the earth. Last week’s launch occurred during national ceremonies marking the 36th anniversary of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and employed a 72-foot-tall Safir rocket based on the Shahab 3 booster—Iran’s most advanced ballistic missile.

 As I have previously written, Iranian satellites, successfully launched in 2009, 2011 and 2012, demonstrated Iran’s capability to launch satellites carrying up to 4400 pounds into orbits that approach the United States from the South at altitudes just right for bathing the entire nation in an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).  Consequently, our electric power grid could collapse indefinitely, and within a year without electricity up to 90-percent of all Americans could perish from the consequent starvation, chaos, and societal collapse.

Isn’t this an existential threat????  You bet!

Today, we have little or no defense against this threat—and no apparent program to provide one.

Meanwhile, our diplomats are seeking an agreement with Iran that does little or nothing to prevent it from gaining a nuclear weapon as a satellite payload to send the “Great Satan” America back to the 18th century without the agrarian society that then enabled a much smaller population to prosper. Most would perish today.

Meanwhile, the debate in Washington is focused on whether sanctions should or should not be used to strengthen the leverage of our negotiators—who as best as I can tell are only seeking to delay (by a few months) Iran in obtaining nuclear weapons.   

It will be interesting, and no doubt sobering, to hear Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s views when he addresses a Joint Session of Congress in March. He is very concerned about Iran’s existential threat to the “Little Satan” Israel – we seem oblivious to Iran’s existential threat to the “Great Satan” America.

Clearly, a negotiated outcome that permits Iran to obtain so quickly nuclear weapons that can be deployed on existing and tested ballistic missile launchers is not in Israel’s interest—or ours.

This is the true picture of where we are. President Obama is no friend of Israel and does not want Prime Minister Netanyahu to explain the danger that we face. The White House is trying to undermine what he says before he says it. If there were a way to block the visit, they would.

Expect to see an agreement with Iran in the near future (President Obama needs it for his legacy). The agreement will give Iran everything it wants. Sanctions coming from Congress will be blocked, and somehow the treaty signed will not need Congressional approval (unconstitutional move, but what’s new?). Until Congress develops a spine and begins to limit President Obama, this sort of executive overreach will continue. Unfortunately, in this case, it represents a danger to America.

 

 

 

Truth Doesn’t Change–Even When Society Does

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Today’s Wall Street Journal posted an article about next month’s 50-year anniversary of Daniel Patrick Moynihan‘s report on the black family. At the time the future Senator was serving as assistant secretary in Lyndon Johnson‘s Labor Department. Senator Moynihan (he was first elected to the Senate in 1976) was concerned about the increasing number of fatherless homes in the black community.

The article in the Wall Street Journal reports:

“The fundamental problem is that of family structure,” wrote Moynihan, who had a doctorate in sociology. “The evidence—not final but powerfully persuasive—is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling.”

For his troubles, Moynihan was denounced as a victim-blaming racist bent on undermining the civil-rights movement. Even worse, writes Harvard’s Paul Peterson in the current issue of the journal Education Next, Moynihan’s “findings were totally ignored by those who designed public policies at the time.” The Great Society architects would go on to expand old programs or formulate new ones that exacerbated the problems Moynihan identified. Marriage was penalized and single parenting was subsidized. In effect, the government paid mothers to keep fathers out of the home—and paid them well.

This, of course, made the problem of fatherless families worse–not better.

The article reminds us that we are also approaching the 50-year anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which ensured that the black minorities were able to vote.

The article points out:

With a twice-elected black man now occupying the White House, it might be difficult for younger Americans to appreciate this milestone. However, in 1964, three years after Barack Obama was born, black voter registration in Mississippi was less than 7%, the lowest in the South. By 1966 it had grown to 60%, the highest in the South.

Today black voter-registration rates in the South, where most blacks still live, are higher than in other regions of the country, and for the first time on record the black voter-turnout rate in 2012 exceeded white turnout.

So what have The Great Society and the Voting Rights Act accomplished?

The article concludes:

But even as we note this progress, the political gains have not redounded to the black underclass, which by several important measures—including income, academic achievement and employment—has stagnated or lost ground over the past half-century. And while the civil-rights establishment and black political leaders continue to deny it, family structure offers a much more plausible explanation of these outcomes than does residual white racism.

In 2012 the poverty rate for all blacks was more than 28%, but for married black couples it was 8.4% and has been in the single digits for two decades. Just 8% of children raised by married couples live in poverty, compared with 40% of children raised by single mothers.

One important lesson of the past half-century is that counterproductive cultural traits can hurt a group more than political clout can help it. Moynihan was right about that, too.

The country needs voters of every ethnic group–but they need smart voters–voters who will vote for things that will strengthen the family and foundations of society–not voters who support the undermining of those things.

Unintended Consequences of Executive Amnesty

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On Monday, the Daily Signal posted an article about the current battle in Congress about funding the Department of Homeland Security. The House of Representatives has passed a bill to fund the Department, but the Democrats in the Senate have begun a filibuster to prevent the bill from being voted on. So what is the problem?

The article reports:

But last week as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried for a third time to open debate and allow for amendments on the bill, Democrats in the Senate continued to vehemently oppose the bill’s consideration. Before the Senate can move to consideration of the bill, 60 senators are needed.

“I don’t understand why they’d want to block the Senate from even debating a bill to fund homeland security,” McConnell said on the Senate floor last week. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

“You’d think Democrats would at least want to give the Senate an opportunity to make improvements to the bill, if it needs them,” he continued. “Why would Democrats want to stand tall for the ability of politicians to do things President Obama himself has described as ‘unwise and unfair’?”

It’s true that if the bill funding the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t pass, it won’t be the end of the world: 86 percent of the Department will continue to operate without the bill.

But with funding set to expire on Feb. 27, why are so many Democrats unwilling to consider a bill that would fund the Department—and keep all operations going?

The thing to remember here is that the Democrats are blocking even a discussion of the bill. They are playing the games they have long accused the Republicans of playing.

There is another aspect of Presidential amnesty that needs to be considered. In November of 2014, I posted an article (rightwinggranny.com) about the fact that illegals granted amnesty under President Obama’s executive amnesty will be able to file tax returns with their newly minted social security numbers and claim the Earned Income Tax Credit for the years they worked here illegally. The Earned Income Tax Credit is one aspect of the Income Tax that is noted for fraud, and amnesty could result in each illegal immigrant family receiving thousands of dollars courtesy of the American taxpayer. This is obscene.

It is quite possible that the financially rewarded new immigrants will become permanent Democrat voters–that may be the reason the Democrats in the Senate are fighting to protect executive amnesty.

I have no source for this quote, but I believe it applies (these are two of the variations):

The American Republic will endure until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.

Less Government Is Always Better Than More Government

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Investors.com posted an article yesterday about the move to adopt ‘net neutrality.’

The article reports:

The Federal Communications Commission, which wants to regulate the Internet heavily to make it more “open,” is refusing to let the public see its proposed rules before the commissioners vote on them in two weeks.

Perhaps it’s because, while talking publicly in reassuring tones about how the FCC merely wants to secure “net neutrality,” it’s planning to do much, much more.

That, at least, is what Ajit Pai, one of the FCC’s two Republican commissioners, is claiming.

He says FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has a “secret plan to regulate the Internet” that “opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes” on broadband services.

“I have studied the 332-page plan in detail, and it is worse than I imagined,” he said, adding that “the public has a right to know what its government is doing, particularly when it comes to something as important as Internet regulation.”

Whether you support the move to regulate the internet or not, it is telling that the FCC is unwilling to release the details of what they plan to do in advance. This sounds like ObamaCare all over again–they have to pass the bill so that we can find out what is in it.

 

Net Neutrality

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I haven’t written much about net neutrality because I haven’t understood it, but last night Hugh Hewitt explained it in a way that made sense (Hugh Hewitt, Salem Radio, 6-9 pm on the east coast).

The bottom line is simple–because the government has not yet regulated the internet, it has been free to grow and prosper. If the government is successful in its effort to treat the internet as simply another utility, we will all suffer–higher prices, censorship, crony capitalism, etc.

The Wall Street Journal posted an article yesterday explaining what is going on:

Last week Washington abandoned open innovation when the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission yielded to President Obama ’s demands and moved to regulate the freewheeling Internet under the same laws that applied to the Ma Bell monopoly. Unless these reactionary regulations are stopped, they spell the end of the permissionless innovation that built today’s Internet.

Until now, anyone could launch new websites, apps and mobile devices without having to lobby a regulator for permission. That was thanks to a Clinton-era bipartisan consensus that the Internet shouldn’t be treated as a public utility. Congress and the White House under both parties kept the FCC from applying the hoary regulations that micromanaged the phone system, which would have frozen innovation online.

Last week’s announcement from FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler rejects 20 years of open innovation by submitting the Internet to Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Once Mr. Wheeler and the commission’s Democratic majority vote this month to apply Title II, the regulations will give them staggering control. Any Internet “charges” and “practices” that the bureaucrats find “unjust or unreasonable is declared to be unlawful.”

So what would ‘net neutrality’ mean to you and me? It could mean regulators micromanaging Google searches, regulating blog content (I take that one personally), the government overseeing Facebook, etc. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

There is a way to stop this. As soon as the Republicans pass a budget, they can begin working on appropriations. They have the power to block the Net Neutrality power grab in the appropriations process. If you want to be part of stopping this nightmare, I suggest you call your Representative and Senator and recommend a speedy passage of the budget and appropriations.

They Are Already Here

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The Center for Security Policy posted an article today about six Bosnian immigrants who have been accused of sending money and equipment to Islamic State and Al-Qaeda fighters overseas. The indictment of the six was released Friday.

The article reports:

All six individuals’ names have been released; Mediha Medy Salkicevic from Chicago, 34, Ramiz Zijad Hodzic, 40, Sedina Unkic Hodzic, 35, Armin Harcevic, 37, all three from St. Louis, Nihad Rosic, 26, of Utica, New York, and Jasminka Ramic, 42, of Rockford Illinois. The indictment states that all knew where the funding was going and that all are Bosnian natives who either legally immigrated to the United States or had refugee status. Five of the six have been already arrested; Ramic has fled the country but the Justice Department has not yet disclosed her location. According to the indictment, Rosic tried to go to Syria to join Islamic State last July.

The suspects used social media such as Facebook to communicate and sent their funding online via PayPal and Western Union. In order to conceal their intentions from any investigation, coded terms were used such as “the beach” for Iraq and Syria as well as “brothers” for Islamic militants. The US Postal Service was used to ship the equipment purchased.

The article concludes:

These most recent arrests show continues to show that the Islamic State continues to possess a powerfully draw on potential supporters, and while this is traditionally understood through the lens of foreign fighters, law enforcement must remain on watch to break up logistic and funding cells such as the one in St. Louis.

If we are to remain safe as Americans, we need to be aware of the threats against us. Susan Rice recently stated that ISIS is not an existential threat to the United States. ISIS specifically may or may not be, but the splinter groups and people inspired by ISIS represent a real threat to America because those groups and people are already here. We accomplish nothing by burying our heads in the sand and ignoring the fact that there are people in America who are currently supporting those who want to end freedom in America.

If The People Negotiating Are Not Being Honest With Americans, Who Can We Trust?

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CNS News posted a story today about claims made by the Obama Administration about the interim agreement with Iran. During the State of the Union Address, the President stated, we have “halted the progress of its nuclear program.” President Obama repeated the claim in his National Security Strategy Report issued on Friday. I would love for that statement to be true, but it seems that I am not the only one with doubts.

The article reports:

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker column examined Obama’s SOTU claim, and determined that it earned him “three Pinocchios.” (On a scale of one to four Pinocchios, three are handed out for statements deemed to entail “significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.”)

Obama claimed that progress in Iran’s program had been “halted” as a result of the JPOA. But Post columnist Glenn Kessler, citing non-proliferation experts, said that the amount of nuclear material in Iran’s possession that could eventually be converted for bomb-making had in fact continued to increase over the 2013-2014 period.

It gets worse.

The article reports:

Instead of his SOTU address claim that “we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material,” Kessler concluded that Obama could have said, “We’ve slowed the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of the most dangerous nuclear material.”

“But instead he choose to make sweeping claims for which there is little basis. Thus he earns Three Pinocchios.”

Hours after the White House released the NSS on Friday, National Security Adviser Susan Rice repeated the claim in a speech at the Brookings Institution.

A little honesty would be nice.

The Biggest Science Scandal Ever

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The U.K. Telegraph posted an article yesterday calling the adjusting of global temperature records to support the theory of global warming ‘the biggest science scandal ever.’

The article reports:

Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I (Christopher Booker) wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.

This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world – one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.

Following my last article, Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”. First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in “global warming”.

What ever happened to the Scientific Method?

We need to look at the reasons behind supporting the science of global warming. The poorer nations of the world (generally the ones run by tyrants who do not have equal rights for all people under their laws or property rights) have charged that the richer nations of the world have caused global warming and therefore should pay the poorer nations for the damage they have done. There is no reason to believe that any of the money paid would be used to alleviate poverty in the poorer nations, but their dictators could build more palaces. Global warming is a shakedown. It is an attempt to take money away from nations that have prospered and worked hard and give it to poor nations. I don’t object to helping poor nations, but we need to make sure any help we give goes to the people who need it–not to build more palaces for the leaders of those nations.

There is nothing wrong with moving toward ‘green’ energy. That will happen naturally when the science develops to make that move practical. Right now carbon-based energy is needed as a back-up for almost all forms of green energy because sun and wind are not constant or consistent. Until we find a way to store energy from green sources in order the keep the energy flowing at a constant rate, we will still need carbon-based fuel.

If you are interested in reading more about the science (or lack of) in global warming, I suggest two articles–one on surface stations, and one showing the actual facts about global warming in America. When you look at where some of the surface stations used to monitor temperatures were placed, you begin to wonder at the intentions of the scientists involved.

 

 

A Documentary Worth Seeing

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Yesterday I watched the documentary “Night Will Fall” on HBO. The documentary is the film history of the concentration camps during World War II. It is a compilation of military films taken when the camps were liberated. There were people in England and America who had the idea of putting together a film of what happened in those camps so that people would never forget. Unfortunately, that film collided with the politics of the late 1940’s and was never made. Alfred Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein were involved in putting together the film, but it was not finished or released.

According to the HBO Documentaries page:

When British, Soviet and American forces liberated Nazi concentration camps in 1945, army and newsreel cameramen recorded the terrible discoveries they made. Later, Sidney Bernstein of the British government’s Ministry of Information and his team, including supervising director Alfred Hitchcock, drew on this footage, shot at Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Auschwitz, to create a harrowing film titled “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey.”

NIGHT WILL FALL reveals the previously untold story of this deeply moving documentary when it debuts exclusively on HBO. Narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, directed by André Singer (executive producer of “The Act of Killing”) and produced by Sally Angel and Brett Ratner (the “Rush Hour” series, “X Men: The Last Stand,” “Hercules”), the film juxtaposes horrific raw footage and scenes from the 1945 documentary with insights from the survivors, the soldiers who liberated them and the filmmakers who recorded these appalling images. Marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, NIGHT WILL FALL will have an encore presentation Tuesday, Jan. 27 on HBO2, when networks around the globe will also present it.

Despite the 1945 documentary’s artistic pedigree, the initial support it received, and the use of some of the most riveting concentration-camp footage ever shot, Bernstein’s project has not been widely seen. NIGHT WILL FALL tells the incredible story behind the film, featuring interviews with concentration-camp survivors, several of whom identify younger versions of themselves in the footage, as well as archival interviews with Bernstein (who later founded Granada Television), Hitchcock and director Billy Wilder.

In the 1980s, original reels and notes from the documentary, which had been stored since 1952 in the archives at the Imperial War Museums (IWM) in London, were combined with a commentary read by actor Trevor Howard. However, the final reel was missing.

Four years ago, the IWM began an ambitious project to digitize, restore and complete “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey,” including the never-before-seen sixth reel. The finished film features heartbreaking interviews with survivors, soldiers, historians and archivists, which are presented along with unflinching, restored, rarely-seen archival footage and eyewitness testimony. NIGHT WILL FALL provides a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at how this forgotten documentary was made, and how it has finally been completed after 70 years.

NIGHT WILL FALL is directed by Andre Singer; produced by Sally Angel and Brett Ratner for a RatPac Documentary Films Presentation; narrator, Helena Bonham Carter; narrator for “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey,” Jasper Britton; executive producers, Richard Melman, James Packer and Stephen Frears; written by Lynette Singer; director of photography, Richard Blanshard; editors, Arik Lahav-Leibovich and Stephen Miller; composer, Nicholas Singer.

This is not a movie to sit down and watch casually over coffee, nor is it a movie I would recommend for children under sixteen, but it is a movie worth watching. If you have HBO or HBO on demand, I would strongly recommend taking the time to watch this movie.

I Hadn’t Really Considered This Angle

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PJ Media posted a story today that I think ads an interesting dimension to President Obama’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast. As you remember, the President reminded us that we should get up on our ‘high horse’ about what the Islamic terrorists are doing because some of the history of Christianity is not so pure–the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, support of slavery, etc. First of all, the Crusades were a response to Muslim aggression, and the Christians were the ones who fought slavery.

As far as the Spanish Inquisition, PJ Media says it better than I can:

But perhaps it is Obama who should avoid getting on his high horse, since according to recently published statistics, Obama’s drone campaign has killed more people during the six years of his presidency than were killed the 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition.

…At least 2,464 people have now been killed by US drone strikes outside the country’s declared war zones since President Barack Obama’s inauguration six years ago, the Bureau’s latest monthly report reveals.

Of the total killed since Obama took his oath of office on January 20 2009, at least 314 have been civilians, while the number of confirmed strikes under his administration now stands at 456.

Research by the Bureau (Bureau of Investigative Journalism) also shows there have now been nearly nine times more strikes under Obama in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than there were under his predecessor, George W Bush.

And the covert Obama strikes, the first of which hit Pakistan just three days after his inauguration, have killed almost six times more people and twice as many civilians than those ordered in the Bush years, the data shows.

The figures have been compiled as part of the Bureau’s monthly report into covert US drone attacks, which are run in two separate missions – one by the CIA and one for the Pentagon by its secretive special forces outfit, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

The research centers on countries outside the US’s declared war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

‘Nuff said.

Even The New York Times Needs An Editor Sometimes

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John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line today about a New York Times editorial dealing with Scott Walker. Because Scott Walker is getting noticed by Republican voters, and because making him run for re-election in Wisconsin every year or so has not destroyed him, it is not a surprise that the New York Times would take a shot. However, the editorial might have been more effective if they had called him Mr. Walker instead of Mr. Scott.

This is an excerpt from the article:

ScottWalkerEditorialSomehow I really think this weakens their case against him–but it is funny. Evidently the error has been corrected (with no mention of it being made in the first place).