Campaign Event

I had the privilege of meeting Lara Trump tonight at Captain Ratty’s in New Bern.

LaraTrumpShe is a native of North Carolina, married to Eric Trump. She is a very personable young lady working hard to elect her father-in-law to the Presidency.  I was impressed.

One of the things that Carl Mischka, the Craven Country Republican Chairman, reminded us of was the fact that if Hillary Clinton is elected, Barack Obama and Eric Holder will sit on the Supreme Court. I shudder to think what that will do to America.

At any rate, Lara is a very impressive young lady, and I wish her well on the campaign trail. She is a great asset to the campaign.

This Is Not A Reasonable Solution

Howie Carr posted an article in the Boston Herald today about a recent remark by Secretary of State John Kerry.

The article reports Secretary Kerry’s remarks:

“…If you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what is going on.”

This is a bit of a contrast to the Sun Tzu quote:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

The article reminds us of some of Secretary Kerry’s other ideas:

Kerry said the Arab murderers at Charlie Hebdo in Paris had “a legitimacy, not legitimacy, but a rationale.” Okay, so he walked that one back a little, but he doesn’t take terrorism seriously. Why should he? He’s protected by taxpayer-paid heat until January, and after that, all the security his second wife’s first husband’s trust fund can buy.

Burying our heads in the sand will not help fight terrorism. I am in favor of newspapers not mentioning the names of terrorists and western social media taking down terrorist recruitment films and pre-suicide bombing videos. However, burying our heads in the sand leaves us in a place very similar to where we were on September 10, 2011.

There Are Those In America Who Work Against Free Speech

It isn’t news to anyone paying attention that there are people in America who are working against free speech. Up until the advent of talk radio, the mainstream media, which at that time was slightly left of center and is now seriously left of center, held a monopoly on the news. Americans saw what the mainstream media wanted them to see and heard opinions the mainstream media wanted them to hear. That changed with the advent and popularity of talk radio. The political left has been attempting to regain its monopoly ever since. The political left has maintained its monopoly of thought on almost all college campuses (which is troubling for the future of America), but they have failed to gain a foothold in the marketplace of talk radio and alternative news.

Yesterday World Net Daily posted an article about some information recently discovered by email hackers.

The article reports:

Among the 2,500 documents hacked from Soros’ Open Society Foundation are documents in which Soros’ Open Society Foundation boasts of funding a minority activist campaign against advertisers that succeeded in ousting Glenn Beck from Fox News and Pat Buchanan from MSNBC.

In a memorandum dated March 27, 2012, Bill Vandenberg, the head of Soros’ Democracy Fund, discusses a two-year grant to support the Color of Change, an online organizing group described within the document as the largest online political activist group representing African-American issues.

…Eric Boehlert, reporting in Media Matters – another Soros-funded, leftist organization – wrote on April 7, 2011, in the wake of Beck’s firing, that Color of Change “was advertising,” while neglecting to report that Soros either funded the advertiser boycott campaign or participated in funding Color of Change through his Open Society Foundation.

Another hacked Soros document, a memo from Diana Morris to the U.S. Programs Board of the Open Society Foundation, dated Jan. 30, 2012, makes clear the two-year grant discussed in Vandenberg’s memo cited above was an extension of a pre-existing funding commitment.

“It is important to recognize U.S. Programs’ primary role of granting money to other organizations,” Morris wrote.

“While we undertake our own communications and advocacy efforts, we also invest in others to advance open society in the United States. Some grantees, such as the Center or American Progress, Media Matters, and Color of Change, to name a few, are sophisticate communications machines, while other grantees scarcely engage in any communications efforts,” Morris continued. “There was broad agreement in the working group that it is important to strengthen grantee communications efforts.”

The article goes on to explain the details of the campaign to get Glenn Beck off of the air. This is disturbing. It is an assault on free speech. Worse than that, it is an assault on free speech funded by a foreign citizen with an agenda to tear down America. It would behoove all of us to remember that George Soros made his millions by collapsing currencies.
Because of media bias, which includes not reporting stories that don’t fit the required agenda, the low-information voter in America is either a person who is too busy to pay attention to what is actually happening around him or a person who depends on the mainstream media for his news. A number of months ago, I was talking with some people who are considerably better educated that I am who depend on The New York Times for their news. I shared two stories with them that they were totally unaware of. Unless voters learn to do their own research, we will continue to live in a country run by an elite political class making laws for the rest of us that they choose not to follow. That is not the future I want for America.

Who Made This Decision?

On Sunday The Wall Street Journal posted an article about some of the recent bank settlements that were supposed to help consumers. Well, I think consumers were on the list right after political entities.

The article reports:

Imagine if the president of the United States forced America’s biggest banks to funnel hundreds of millions—and potentially billions—of dollars to the corporations and lobbyists who supported his agenda, all while calling it “Main Street Relief.” The public outcry would rightly be deafening. Yet the Obama administration has used a similar strategy to enrich its political allies, advance leftist pet projects, and protect its legacy—and hardly anyone has noticed.

The administration’s multiyear campaign against the banking industry has quietly steered money to organizations and politicians who are working to ensure liberal policy and political victories at every level of government. The conduit for this funding is the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, a coalition of federal and state regulators and prosecutors created in 2012 to “identify, investigate, and prosecute instances of wrongdoing” in the residential mortgage-backed securities market. In conjunction with the Justice Department, the RMBS Working Group has reached multibillion-dollar settlements with essentially every major bank in America.

The most recent came in April when the Justice Department announced a $5.1 billion settlement with Goldman Sachs. In February Morgan Stanley agreed to a $3.2 billion settlement. Previous targets were Citigroup ($7 billion), J.P. Morgan Chase ($13 billion), and Bank of America, which in 2014 reached the largest civil settlement in American history at $16.65 billion. Smaller deals with other banks have also been announced.

You might expect that maybe some of the money would go into the U.S. Treasury to pay off some of the deficit. Silly person.

The article reports:

…a substantial portion is allocated to private, nonprofit organizations drawn from a federally approved list. Some groups on the list—Catholic Charities, for instance—are relatively nonpolitical. Others—La Raza, the National Urban League, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and more—are anything but.

…As part of their “consumer relief” penalties, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase must also pay a minimum $75 million to Community Development Financial Institutions—taxpayer-funded groups propped up by the Obama administration as an alternative to payday lenders. “Housing Counseling Agencies” also get at least $30 million. This essentially circumvents Congress’s recent decision to cut $43 million in federal funds routed to these groups through the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The politicians who negotiate the settlements as part of the RMBS Working Group have also directed money to their supporters and states. Illinois’s Democratic attorney general Lisa Madigan announced she had secured $22.5 million from February’s Morgan Stanley deal for her state’s debt-ridden pension funds—a blatant payout to public unions. The deals with J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup yielded a further $344 million for both “consumer relief” and direct payments to pension funds.

The article concludes:

Despite the best efforts of a few principled legislators late last year, Congress missed an opportunity to amend the Justice Department’s funding bill to stop further handouts. Lawmakers now have another opportunity as Congress enters budget negotiation for fiscal year 2017. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) introduced a bill in April that would prevent government officials from enforcing settlements that funnel money to third parties, and it needs to gain wider traction with his colleagues. The political shakedowns disguised as public service must end.]

Is there any doubt that we need a new paradigm in Washington? There was no “Main Street Relief” involved in any of this–there was, however, Washington corruption. It was nothing more than a legal stick-up.

My, How Times Have Changed…

This is a clip from President Clinton‘s State of the Union address in 1995. No one called him a racist, an extremist or anything of that nature. It was understood that open borders posed a problem. The media applauded his speech. The media would have applauded anything he said. How does the media react when Donald Trump makes almost identical comments? That is something to think about.

 

Parents Are Paying To Have Their Children Taught By This Man

Today Hot Air posted a story about Younus Abdullah Muhammad, a former recruiter for the al-Qaeda terrorist network, who now goes by the name Jesse Morton. Jesse Morton has now been hired to work in George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.

The article reminds quotes a report from CNN:

During his days as an extremist, Morton earned a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University.
(Program Director Seamus) Hughes said before making the hiring decision, he discussed Morton with the FBI, leaders in the security community and the lawyers that prosecuted Morton.

He said he’s sure Morton is completely reformed from the days he served time in federal prison after inciting people to join a terrorist organization.

“I trust him,” he said. “We did our due diligence.”

Mr. Hughes needs to familiarize himself with the Islamic concept of taqiyya. This concept in Islam is loosely defined as lying for the sake of Islam–particularly to infidels. Islamic judicial commentaries describe it as permitting and encouraging precautionary dissimulation as a means for hiding true faith in times of persecution or deception when penetrating the enemy camp. Please understand that in the eyes of Islam western civilization is the enemy camp.

The article highlights Mr. Morton’s past activities:

Morton, also known as Younus Abdullah Mohammad, was taken into U.S. custody in Rabat, Morocco, on October 28, according to court documents. He was first arrested by Moroccan authorities in May after being indicted in the United States. By October 31, he was back on U.S. soil, the official said.

In a detention hearing at federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on November 4, Morton was ordered detained until trial, according to court documents. He has yet to enter a plea. In May, Morton, a former resident of Brooklyn, New York, became the second person charged in the “South Park” case.

Earlier this year, Zachary Adam Chesser, 21, who admitted to posting online threats, was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Chesser, a Muslim convert, encouraged violent jihadists to attack “South Park” writers for an episode that depicted the Prophet Mohammed in a bear suit, court documents said. Chesser posted online messages that included the writers’ home addresses and urged online readers to “pay them a visit,” the documents said. In an affidavit accompanying the complaint against Morton, FBI special agent Paula R. Menges said Morton, co-founder of the group called Revolution Muslim, worked with Chesser on a “clarification statement” after Chesser’s postings.

The story continues:

A federal judge in 2012 agreed that Morton deserved a harsh punishment, sentencing him to 11 1/2 years in prison. But less than three years later, the 37-year-old is out and being paid by the FBI, according to government records and an attorney who says Morton helped federal officials build a case against a client accused of trying to join the Islamic State.

Though police cooperators receiving sentencing breaks is hardly a novel practice, Morton’s release is unusual in that, at least when he pleaded guilty, federal authorities billed him as particularly malevolent.

“We may never know all of those who were inspired to engage in terrorism because of Revolution Muslim, but the string of recent terrorism cases with ties to Morton’s organization demonstrates the threat it posed to our national security,” then-U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride said in a statement at the time.

This man is teaching college students in a school less than a mile from the White House. Wow.

 

 

 

Was This Part Of The Deal?

Townhall.com posted a story today about some changes Iran is making to its Fordo  nuclear facility.

The article reports:

Earlier in 2016, Russia delivered several divisions of S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran and now Tehran is deploying those same systems to the Fordo nuclear facility according to state television.  

“Protecting nuclear facilities is paramount in all circumstances,” said General Farzad Esmaili, commander of Iran’s air defenses.  “Today, Iran’s sky is one of the most secure in the region.”

He added that “continued opposition and hype on the S-300 or the Fordo site are examples of the viciousness of the enemy.”

The Fordo site, hidden into a mountain near the city of Qom, is one of Iran’s numerous nuclear enrichment plants.

Within 24 hours after transferring the missiles, Iran’s military detected a U.S. drone entering Iranian airspace on Monday and issued a warning for it to leave.  The drone immediately retreated from its course according to Iran’s Tasnim news agency

It seems to me that if you intended to follow the requirements of the nuclear treaty you just signed, you wouldn’t arm your nuclear facilities with air defense missiles. Unfortunately, the installation of these missiles means that western countries will now not be able to stop Iran’s further development of nuclear weapons. Make no mistake–this is about Iran developing nuclear weapons for the purpose of destroying Israel and eventually the United States. This is not good news.

Why Should We All Have To Play By The Same Rules?

On Friday The Washington Free Beacon posted a story about a group in Colorado that was working toward a $12 an hour minimum wage.

The article reports:

Colorado Families for a Fair Wage, which obtained the signatures needed to place a measure requiring a $12 minimum wage on the November ballot, paid many of its petition handlers less than $12 an hour, according to paperwork filed with the state and obtained by in the Washington Times.

“According to a circulator and wage report filed with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office by proponents of increasing the minimum wage, 24 of the workers collecting signatures to get on the ballot were paid less than $12 an hour,” the Times reported. “The report was obtained Keep Colorado Working, the opposition campaign, in an open records request.”

Colorado Families for a Fair Wage is a coalition of liberal groups, including prominent labor unions, such as the AFL-CIO and American Federation of Teachers. The group denied the allegations that it failed to pay its employees adequate wages following the Washington Times report, blaming “clerical errors” in campaign filings for the gap in pay.

“Every person working on the minimum wage ‘$12 by 2020’ ballot initiative has earned a minimum of $12 an hour and more because it’s crucial that the paychecks of Colorado working families can cover housing, food and other basics, campaign manager Patty Kupfer said in a release. “We included pay policy language in our office policy document to specifically ensure that every worker would earn at least $12 an hour.”

The group said it will file amended paperwork with the secretary of state’s office to reflect that it paid all of its workers at least $12 an hour.

How embarrassing. Either they paid their workers less than the minimum wage they were working toward or the people they paid the proposed minimum wage were not competent enough to do their job right. Either way it’s embarrassing.

There is something being overlooked here, and I don’t know why. The minimum wage was never intended to support a family or an individual living on their own–it was intended to provide a gateway into the workforce to enable people to learn the real basic job skills–showing up on time, respecting authority, being curteous, and other basic fundementals. So what happened? Unions discovered that if the minimum wage increased, the unions could bargain for higher wages for their members. Note that the Colorado Families for a Fair Wage includes prominent labor unions. Because much of the American public does not understand the purpose of the minimum wage, the fact that raising the minimum wage significantly will put small businesses out of business and cause employees to lose hours or jobs is not considered by most people.

There is also the aspect of illegal immigration. As long as America has thousands of illegal immigrants who are willing to work under the table for below minimum wage, raising the minimum wage is going to do more harm than good. One of the problems in the battle to close our borders to illegal immigration is that the U. S. Chamber of Commerce is a major campaign contributor to politicians (particularly Republicans). The Chamber of Commerce is an organization of businessmen. These businessmen like the fact that illegal immigration is a source of cheap labor. As long as the Chamber of Commerce continues to pour money into political campaigns, our illegal immigration problem will continue. That is the way Washington currently works. Until people are elected to office at all levels who are not part of the current system and not interested in becoming part of the current system, illegal immigration will continue and because unions contribute heavily to Democratic campaigns, the minimum wage will probably be raised past the point where it makes economic sense. That is where we are.

This Might Be Part Of The Problem

Last Monday The New York Post posted an article about some of the required reading required of college freshman in a number of American colleges this year. The students are required to read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me.” The book deals with the author’s fear and hatred of police and white political power structures. This is not a book that will encourage law-abiding, successful college graduates. This is a book that will encourage racial division, class envy, and a skewed view of America and how it works.

The article reports:

Coates promotes the view that blacks are helpless to improve their situation given the white supremacy they face. In Coates’ world, whites cannot erase the stain of racism and instead many strive to control black bodies through violence. Coates’ book gives intellectual weight to the just-released platform by a Black Lives Matter-affiliated group, which stresses how “the interlinked systems of white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy shape the violence we face.” (It also claims the United States “is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.”)

The first problem with seeing the world through this lens is that it isn’t true. As liberal political analyst Nate Cohn has pointed out, outside the South, President Obama received a larger share of the white vote in 2012 than either of the two previous Democratic presidential nominees.

But Coates’ thesis is contradicted by Coates himself. In his previous book, “The Beautiful Struggle,” he chronicled his life growing up in Baltimore. It documented the senselessness of black-on-black crime, the lack of proper parenting. There are no racist police or teachers in sight.

“Lexington Terrace was hot with gonorrhea. Teen pregnancy was the fashion,” he wrote. “Husbands were outties. Fathers were ghosts.”

“The Beautiful Struggle” fit into a narrative of “culture of despair” that, at that time, liberal sociologists Melissa Kearney and Kathryn Edin used to explain the continued prevalence of high black teen birth rates. But times have changed, and that sort of analysis is considered akin to blaming the victim. Better to highlight, if not exaggerate, black victimization. And with the proper lens, a modest number of police killings of black men serves this purpose.

It is truly sad that this book won the National Book Award for nonfiction.

The article further reports:

Besides providing a diversion, the use of Coates’ venomous book as freshman reading, taught by English instructors, is dangerous. First, it gives the book’s claims credibility. This in a campus atmosphere where, as Nicholas Kristof lamented in his New York Times essay “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance,” criticisms of Coates’ perspective inevitably will be dismissed as the complaints of ignorant racist apologists.

How much are parents paying for their children to be taught this trash? America is far from perfect, but there are many people of all races who have risen to leadership positions in both the public and private sector. To focus on the problems in America without celebrating the successes does not give the students a balanced picture of the country. That focus also encourages a victim mentality that will prevent the students from reaching their full potential when they graduate.

 

Time To Rethink The Ethanol Thing

On Friday WattsUpWithThat posted an article about biofuels. It seems that the use of biofuels instead of carbon fuels is not as kind to the environment as originally thought.

The article reports:

Statements about biofuels being carbon neutral should be taken with a grain of salt. This is according to researchers at the University of Michigan Energy Institute after completing a retrospective, national-scale evaluation of the environmental effect of substituting petroleum fuels with biofuels in the US. America’s biofuel use to date has in fact led to a net increase in carbon dioxide emissions, says lead author John DeCicco in Springer’s journal Climatic Change.

The use of liquid biofuels in the transport sector has expanded over the past decade in response to policies such as the US Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and California’s Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). These policies are based on the belief that biofuels are inherently carbon neutral, meaning that only production-related greenhouse gas emissions need to be tallied when comparing them to fossil fuels.

This assumption is embedded in the lifecycle analysis modelling approach used to justify and administer such policies. Simply put, because plants absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, crops grown for biofuels should absorb the carbon dioxide that comes from burning the fuels they produce. Using this approach, it is often found that crop-based biofuels such as corn ethanol and biodiesel offer at least modest net greenhouse gas reductions relative to petroleum fuels.

There is also research showing that ethanol damages engines. As the government attempts to increase the amount of ethanol in gasoline, the potential damage to car, boat, motorcycle and other engines should be considered. It would also be wise to consider the fact that biofuels are not carbon neutral.

Meanwhile, Power Line reported today that the reports of the ‘warmest month ever’ that periodically show up in the media are not based on sound science.

Power Line reports:

We are living in a relatively cool era. Temperatures today are lower than they have been something like 90% of the time since the last Ice Age ended 12,000 or so years ago. In fact, “ever” means since approximately the 1880s, when thermometer records became widespread. As it happens, that was also around the time when the Little Ice Age ended, so–happily!–the Earth is a bit warmer now than it was then.

One of the many problems with global warming hysteria is that it is based on the surface temperature record since the 1880s, which is deeply flawed when it is not outright falsified by alarmists who control the historical records. This happens often, as we and others have documented.

The article at Power Line explains why the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is using faulty data in its reports:

Actually, the explanation is political. The IPCC was explicitly established by the U.N. for one purpose only, to “study” the impact of human-emitted CO2 on global temperatures. This was for the purpose of justifying government control over industry worldwide. Anyone who is interested in science rather than left-wing politics relies on the satellite data, which are transparent and have not been “adjusted” by political activists.

The United Nations has forgotten that its original mission was to encourage democracy and world peace. It has morphed into an organization run by a cadre of dictators who would like to extort money from countries who have prospered because of their freedom. The climate change information that is coming from the United Nations is part of that effort.

A Few Random Notes About The Alt-Right

I guess I am a member of the alt-right. I left the Republican Party last Spring because I felt that the party was disingenuous in its treatment of Donald Trump and the duly-elected Chairman of the North Carolina Republican party. Donald Trump was not my choice in the Republican Primary (in North Carolina unaffiliated voters get to vote in whichever party primary they choose); however, I felt that the Republican Party should accept the choice of the voters. I watched the party do everything in its power to prevent the voice of the voters from being heard. The voice of the voters represented a serious threat to the party establishment and the powers that be. The Republican Party has still not fully supported Donald Trump, and I doubt they will. The Republican establishment would rather see Hillary Clinton elected and attempt to put an establishment Republican in the White House in four years.

So who is the alt-right? The alt-right are Americans who want to see the current government establishment change. Historically the Republican Party was the party of lower taxes and smaller government. Somewhere in recent years, the party has forgotten their roots. The Republican Party is now the party of bloated government as long as they get to control it. There are a few exceptions to this, but they are few and far between. In an effort to discredit those people who hold to the values of the former Republican Party, the establishment of both parties have begun labeling them alt-right with the implication that they are racists, bigots, and whatever other derogatory term comes to mind. I resent that. This is another example of pitting one American against another American for political purposes. If you oppose the political cronyism and favoritism that is currently a part of Washington polities, you must be a racist, bigot, etc. That is beyond ridiculous.

The slogan of Donald Trump that he ‘wants to take America back’ is not unrealistic. Right now Washington does not really care what the voters think. I am not sure that elections are not rigged–either through voter fraud or the rigging of electronic voting machines. The only way that Donald Trump wins this election is if it is an honest election or if his margin of victory is so large that cheating does not work. That fact alone should wake up voters to the fact that we have a serious problem. I won’t make any predictions about November–a lot can happen between now and then, but I will say that this new concept of labeling anyone who does not support either the Republican or Democratic establishment as alt-right is nothing more than a way to divide Americans so that they will not unite to take their country back.

My husband has added a few ideas to this article. He points out that the Republican platform is true to traditional Republican ideas and that there are people within the party that are working to restore those ideas. The problem is the establishment of both parties.

The Numbers Keep Going Down

This is an election season so all news reporting has to take that into consideration. Anything you read has to be checked against another source and then sorted through to figure out what you weren’t told. Sometimes it gets very frustrating. One of the items that has come up in this campaign is the U.S. economy. President Obama and Hillary Clinton say that it is great, and Donald Trump says it is not doing well. What do the numbers say?

The Washington Free Beacon posted an article yesterday that has some answers.

The article reports:

The U.S. economy expanded in the second quarter of 2016 with real GDP growing 1.1 percent, a lower rate than previously estimated, according to the second estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

“The downward revision to the percent change in real GDP primarily reflected downward revisions to state and local government spending and to private inventory investment and an upward revision to imports,” the bureau said.

Real GDP represents the inflation-adjusted value of goods and services produced in the economy. The second quarter growth of 1.1 percent, which includes performance from April, May, and June, was an increase from the 0.8 percent growth recorded in the first quarter of 2016.

Second quarter growth this year was lower than second quarter growth in 2015, when GDP expanded at 3.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

“Today’s disappointing news that the economy expanded even slower than reported is another reminder that we cannot continue President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s failed economic policies for another four years,” said Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee. “Economists say Hillary Clinton’s tax plan alone will slow economic growth, reduce wages, and kill jobs.”

We have had eight years of Democratic policies running the economy. The excuse given by most Democrats is that President Obama started with a mess because the housing bubble had burst. However, when you look at the roots of the housing bubble, you are a little less likely to blame President Bush for the collapse (see Burning Down The House. If in the future YouTube takes down the video, I have embedded it in various articles in this blog–use the blog search engine to find it and watch it.) It is time to let an experienced businessman try his hand at running the American economy. That is the only hope the American workers have.

When The Government Overrides The Free Market

On Wednesday The Wall Street Journal posted an article about the current controversy about the cost of an EpiPen. Anyone who understands free market economics has been scratching their head trying to figure out why there was no competition to manufacture this product (and thus a more reasonable price). Well, The Wall Street Journal article provides an explanation. For the moment, I am going to overlook the fact that the company involved made a large donation to the Clinton Foundation and that the person in charge of the company is the daughter of Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.

The article at The Wall Street Journal explains:

In a statement, the Democrat (Hillary Clinton) assailed the “outrageous” cost of EpiPen, an emergency treatment for allergic reactions known as anaphylaxis, and she demanded that drug maker Mylan “immediately reduce the price.” Federal and Senate investigations are pending into these spring-loaded syringes filled with epinephrine (adrenaline) used primarily by children with life-threatening sensitivities to food or insect stings.

Mylan has raised the price of EpiPen in semiannual 10% to 15% tranches so that a two-pack that cost about $100 in 2008 now runs $500 or more after insurance discounts and coupons. Outrage seems to be peaking now because more families are exposed to drug prices directly though insurance deductibles and co-pays, plus the political class has discovered another easy corporate villain.

Still, the steady Mylan rise is hard to read as anything other than inevitable when a billion-dollar market is cornered by one supplier. Epinephrine is a basic and super-cheap medicine, and the EpiPen auto-injector device has been around since the 1970s.

Thus EpiPen should be open to generic competition, which cuts prices dramatically for most other old medicines. Competitors have been trying for years to challenge Mylan’s EpiPen franchise with low-cost alternatives—only to become entangled in the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory afflatus.

Approving a generic copy that is biologically equivalent to a branded drug is simple, but the FDA maintains no clear and consistent principles for generic drug-delivery devices like auto injectors or asthma inhalers. How does a company prove that a generic device is the same as the original product if there are notional differences, even if the differences don’t matter to the end result? In this case, that means immediately injecting a kid in anaphylactic shock with epinephrine—which is not complex medical engineering.

But no company has been able to do so to the FDA’s satisfaction. Last year Sanofi withdrew an EpiPen rival called Auvi-Q that was introduced in 2013, after merely 26 cases in which the device malfunctioned and delivered an inaccurate dose. Though the recall was voluntary and the FDA process is not transparent, such extraordinary actions are never done without agency involvement. This suggests a regulatory motive other than patient safety.

The article concludes:

Mrs. Clinton claims the EpiPen price hikes show the need for price controls, and she says she’ll require drug makers to “prove that any additional costs are linked to additional patient benefits and better value.” Somebody in Congress should require the FDA to justify how its delays are advancing the same goals.

Price controls are not the answer–a government agency that cannot be corrupted by special interests is the answer. The FDA has been interfering with the free market, and the price of the EpiPen is exhibit A in the case against the FDA. I am all for safe drugs and clinical trials, but I am tired of federal agencies being used to pick winners and losers.

Where Is The Mainstream Media?

Somehow the mainstream media missed the following story. I almost did. The story is from August 19th and was posted at Investor’s Business Daily.

The article reports:

Leaked documents released a few days ago provide juicy insider details of how a fabulously rich businessman has been using his money to influence elections in Europe, underwrite an extremist group, target U.S. citizens who disagreed with him, dictate foreign policy, and try to sway a Supreme Court ruling, among other things. Pretty compelling stuff, right?

Not if it involves leftist billionaire George Soros. In this case, the mainstream press couldn’t care less.

On Saturday, a group called DC Leaks posted more than 2,500 documents going back to 2008 that it pilfered from Soros’ Open Society Foundations‘ servers. Since then, the mainstream media have shown zero interest in this gold mine of information.

The article goes on to list some of Mr. Soros’ activities:

As we noted in this space on Monday, the leaked documents show how Soros’ far-flung international organizations attempted to manipulate Europe’s 2014 elections. The “List of European Elections 2014 Projects” details over 90 Soros efforts he had under way that year.

The documents reveal that Soros has poured nearly $4 million into anti-Israel groups, with a goal of “challenging Israel’s racist and anti-democratic policies.”

Here at home, they show that Soros proposed paying the Center for American Politics $200,000 to conduct a smear campaign against conservative activists.

More recently, an October 2015 document came to light showing that Soros’ Open Society U.S. Programs had donated $650,000 to “invest in technical assistance and support for the groups at the core of the burgeoning #BlackLivesMatter movement.” Since then, several BLM protests have turned violent.

That same document details how this group successfully used its “extensive networks” to pressure the Obama administration into increasing the number of refugees it would take to 100,000, despite concerns that Islamic terrorists could use the refugee program to infiltrate the U.S.

A separate memo details how Soros tried to use his clout to sway Supreme Court justices into approving President Obama’s unilateral effort to rewrite immigration law. “Grantees are seeking to influence the Justices (primarily via a sophisticated amicus briefs and media strategy) in hopes of securing a favorable ruling in U.S. v Texas,” the memo, dug up by the Daily Caller, states.

The article reports on an email leaked by Wikileaks showing that George Soros was giving then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton very specific instructions on how to handle unrest in Albania in early 2011.

Referring to the instructions given regarding Albania, the article states:

Thomas Lifson, writing in the American Thinker blog, said “Soros got the U.S. and other accomplices to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign state…. How is this not huge news?”

I guess the mainstream media has been dying for a while, but ignoring this story is amazing. I am waiting for the day that the mainstream media realizes that if we lose our freedom and security in America they will also be impacted. I am not holding my breath.

An Inappropriate Response Followed By An Appropriate Response

The rescue and rebuilding efforts are continuing in Louisiana. The area has been visited by President Obama and Donald Trump. The Cajun Navy is continuing its rescue efforts. However, President Obama’s initial response to the flooding left a lot to be desired.

Hot Air posted a story today that shows the proper response to President Obama’s initial response to the flooding.

In case you have forgotten, this was part of President Obama’s statement (released in between golf holes) on the flooding:

Care must be taken to ensure that actions, both intentional and unintentional, do not exclude groups of people based on race, color, national origin (including limited English proficiency), religion, sex, or disability.”

“Those planning for Katrina appeared to assume most people could rely on personal vehicles to evacuate and failed to consider the transportation needs of all segments of the population.”

“Many seeking temporary housing immediately encountered discriminatory advertisements that explicitly refused to rent to African Americans.”

Ben Husser, who has been helping his neighbors in Louisiana, penned the following response:

Dear Mr President,
I want to thank you for reminding us in South Louisiana not to discriminate against anyone based on race or religion. Had you not reminded us of this I don’t know what we would have done. See we rode around in a boat saving people and well race or religion never entered my mind. Not once. It didn’t enter my buddies mind or my wife’s. Just saving people.
I understand you may be miss informed because of all the race baiting that the media did a couple months ago here is South Louisiana. But I assure you that’s not what we stand for in South Louisiana. We love each other when the times get hard. We look out for our own. Now I know this doesn’t fit your agenda. But facts are facts.
O and by the way stay up in DC play a little golf and enjoy your last couple months in office. Make sure you clean out your desk. Clean out the house you’ve occupied for 8 years cause your time is up. Let ya buddy Ms Clinton know we don’t need her either. She needs her rest. Lord knows she needs rest more then the residents of South Louisiana do. She may could put some of that Clinton foundation blood money to good use down here helping others. But why would she do that. She already knows Louisiana doesn’t belong to her come November. If this was a state she needed she would have been on the boat with me. But that’s OK we got this we are strong here in Louisiana. Something you will never understand.

Thanks
The true citizens of Louisiana

I think that pretty much sums it up!

There Seems To Be A Slight Difference Of Opinion Here

This article is based on a newspaper story from April of this year. The Clinton campaign is hoping that we will have forgotten this by now.

The Washington Post posted the following on April 26, 2016:

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has received more than $20,000 in donations contributed by members of the Ku Klux Klan, a prominent member of the hate group said Monday.

“For the KKK, Clinton is our choice,” said Will Quigg, California Grand Dragon for the Loyal White Knights, Vocativ reported.

Mr. Quigg, the leader of the Klan’s California chapter, announced last month that he had abandoned supporting Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump in lieu of backing his likely Democratic opponent. The Klansman claims that members have raised more than $20,000 for Mrs. Clinton and have donated it anonymously to her campaign.

“She is friends with the Klan,” Mr. Quigg told Vocativ. “A lot of people don’t realize that.”

Obviously her campaign spokesman rejected the endorsement. Hillary Clinton released an ad today accusing Donald Trump of endorsing the views of the KKK. I guess she’s not interested in giving the Trump campaign the benefit of the doubt that she claimed for her campaign. She is obviously not interested in waging a campaign on facts–those are not on her side.

The High Cost Of Solar Energy That Isn’t Solar Energy

On August 12, The Daily Signal posted an article about Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, a taxpayer-subsidized solar power plant in California’s Mojave Desert. Most solar power plants (if not all) are taxpayer-subsidized, so that is not unusual. What is unusual is what the power plant has had to do to compensate for the desert weather conditions.

The article reports:

Ivanpah is different. It uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight for generating steam that then drives turbines. These turbines produce energy in a similar fashion to that of traditional coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plants.

However, Ivanpah has a problem those technologies don’t: intermittency. Meaning the sun doesn’t always shine.

For Ivanpah, this is an even bigger problem than it is for plants that use solar cells, because at night the temperature in the desert falls dramatically and the water cools down.

So, the water must be reheated the next morning before power production can resume. Instead of relying on the sun to reheat the water, the Ivanpah plant burns natural gas.

A true description of Ivanpah, then, is that it is a hybrid solar-natural gas power plant. The electricity is not entirely solar produced, yet it is sold at the higher prices regulators allow for solar power, a benefit worth millions of dollars per year to Ivanpah’s owners.

This is how the solar scam works:

That’s how Ivanpah hits the “bad policy” trifecta that is all too common in today’s heavily subsidized renewable energy markets:

Rich consortium gets huge subsidies from taxpayers to build a plant. Check.  Regulators OK a contract that forces consumers to pay four to five times the going rate for its product. Check. And the product actually is nowhere near as “green” as people thought it’d be. Check.

The inconvenient truth is that Ivanpah uses a lot of natural gas to generate “solar” electricity, and neither the California Energy Commission nor the U.S. Department of Energy seems to care enough to come clean about it.

I am not opposed to solar energy. What I am opposed to is government meddling in the free market to the point where healthy competition is prevented from developing a product to generate energy that would be clean, efficient, and cheap enough to use. Since the dawn of science, scientists have been looking for a perpetual motion machine, and I wonder if the search for green energy is going to have the same amount of success. There are laws of physics involved in generating energy that control the process regardless of what the government, the power companies, or the consumers may want. Those rules are not variable and play a major part in our success in creating renewable energy.

Are There Any Honest People Left In Washington?

I know that there are some honest people in Washington, but sometimes it just doesn’t seem that way. What is really disturbing to me is that corruption seems to run from top to bottom. We may have to get rid of politicians with questionable ethics, and we may have to get rid of their staffs as well. This does not bode well for America.

Last week The Wall Street Journal posted a story that illustrates the total disregard for ethical behavior now running rampant in Washington. The story has to do with a company named Cadiz, Inc., and their plans to build an underground pipeline along the Arizona & California Railroad’s right-of-way to transport 50,000 acre-feet of water annually to Southern California.

The article reports:

The Department of Interior’s longstanding policy allowed railroads to run power, telephone and fiber optics lines along their rights-of-way without a federal permit, thus expediting environmental review. However, in November 2011, after Cadiz had modified its plan to reduce environmental opposition, Interior at the insistence of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein revised its policy to limit the use of railroad rights-of-way granted in 1875 to “activities that derive from or further a railroad purpose.”

The Cadiz pipeline was the only project subject to the new rules. Cadiz spent several years and $12 million reconfiguring the pipeline to “further a railroad purpose,” proposing the likes of hydro-turbines, power safety systems and automated fire suppression. None of Cadiz’s compromises satisfied regulators.

On Oct. 2, 2015, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) informed congressional staff—who tipped off Cadiz—of an imminent adverse ruling. A letter circulated by the bureau noted that the pipeline “does not derive from or further a railroad purpose” because the fire suppression system was “an uncommon industry practice,” among other complaints. The kicker was that the ruling could not be appealed because it “is not a final agency decision.” Thus the pipeline would have to undergo a formal environmental review. Ms. Feinstein has attached riders to every Interior appropriations bill since 2008 barring a review.

Within a week of the BLM ruling, Cadiz’s stock plummeted 65%. Yet one Cadiz investor had inside information that could have allowed him to make a killing. Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Cadiz reveal that BLM realty specialist Erik Pignata (who oversaw the Cadiz review from the Sacramento bureau) shared non-public information with Cadiz investor Thomas McGannon of Whetstone Capital Advisors. Cadiz provided the emails to us.

Thomas McGannon sold short based on the information that Erik Pignata shared and Mr. McGannon profited greatly. Just for the record, there is a 1990 executive order forbidding government employees from improperly using non-public government information to further a private interest. Let’s hope the government chooses to separate Mr. McGannon from his ill-gotten gains.

Just a note–I love the Freedom of Information Act.

No Wonder She Deleted Them

As more deleted emails drip out of Hillary Clinton’s email account, the information on them gets more interesting. It is becoming somewhat obvious why some of them were deleted. Judicial Watch has been busy making sure that the public gets a look at the deleted emails that are not marked classified (since Mrs. Clinton claims there were no classified emails on her server, there should be a lot of emails to look at).

Yesterday Counter Jihad posted a story about an interesting coincidence revealed in one of the emails that was deleted, recovered, and recently released.

The story reports:

Yesterday Judicial Watch released emails showing that a Crown Prince of Bahrain was able to secure a meeting with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton through the Clinton Foundationafter being rejected by official State Department channels.  Today, the International Business Times follows up on that report by revealing that the timing of this meeting lined up with a sudden, and large, increase in arms sales to Bahrain.  Furthermore, this increase came in spite of Bahrain being engaged in massive human rights abuses and suppression of peaceful civilian protests.  Finally, Hillary Clinton’s lawyers destroyed the emails documenting this meeting without turning them over to the State Department.  These were among the emails destroyed as allegedly “personal.”

Now, Bahrain is an important regional ally of the United States.  The US 5th Fleet, also called NAVCENT as it is the fleet permanently assigned to US Central Command, is based out of Bahrain’s harbors.  Bahrain would thus ordinarily enjoy some US military arms sales, as well as occasional access to high level State Department officials.  However, in this case the State Department had already turned down the request for a meeting when it came through official channels.  So, Crown Prince Salman contacted the Clinton Foundation to ask them to get him a meeting anyway.

And they did.

I really wouldn’t consider this email personal, but I guess Hillary did. The article goes on to explain that after the discussion of a meeting, the United States dramatically increased the amount of weaponry sold to Behrain (at a time when the government of Bahrain was moving against pro-democracy protests).

The article includes the following statement:

During those Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 — when Bahrain was accused of using tear gas on its own people — the Clinton-led State Department approved more than $70,000 worth of arms sales classified as “toxicological agents.”

The arms deal also included armored vehicles, missiles and ammunition. The sale of these items to Bahrain faced opposition in Congress, but the sale was approved.

The article concludes:

But the Crown Prince wanted his meeting, and he wanted his arms, and he got both because he was a good friend of the Clinton Foundation.

Not that the public would have known this, but for the FBI investigation.  Clinton’s lawyers deleted these emails without turning them over to the State Department, though it turns out that they are clearly public records that explain just how a momentous decision was made on a major arms deal.

In spite of that, the FBI recommended no prosecution.

I guess pay-for-play is not illegal in Washington. Now we know how the Clintons went from dead broke when they left the White House (as Hillary Clinton has stated) to a net worth in 2015 of $32,015,000 (Breitbart.com). I suppose she and Bill should be congratulated on their entrepreneurial spirit.

Pay For Play

The Associated Press posted a story today about the link between donations to the Clinton Foundation and State Department appointments given to people outside of the U.S. Government.

The article reports:

More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money – either personally or through companies or groups – to the Clinton Foundation. It’s an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.

At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.

When you go to the Charity Navigator that rates charities according to how much money they spend on administrative costs and how much money goes to their various causes and you look up the Clinton Foundation, this is what you find:

Why isn’t this organization rated?

We had previously evaluated this organization, but have since determined that this charity’s atypical business model can not be accurately captured in our current rating methodology. Our removal of The Clinton Foundation from our site is neither a condemnation nor an endorsement of this charity. We reserve the right to reinstate a rating for The Clinton Foundation as soon as we identify a rating methodology that appropriately captures its business model.

What does it mean that this organization isn’t rated?

It simply means that the organization doesn’t meet our criteria. A lack of a rating does not indicate a positive or negative assessment by Charity Navigator.

Loosely translated that means, “We are not willing to take a stand.” I suspect they have seen what happens to people who take a stand to oppose or reveal anything the Clintons are doing.

The Associated Press article continues:

Some of Clinton’s most influential visitors donated millions to the Clinton Foundation and to her and her husband’s political coffers. They are among scores of Clinton visitors and phone contacts in her official calendar turned over by the State Department to AP last year and in more-detailed planning schedules that so far have covered about half her four-year tenure. The AP sought Clinton’s calendar and schedules three years ago, but delays led the AP to sue the State Department last year in federal court for those materials and other records.

S. Daniel Abraham, whose name also was included in emails released by the State Department as part of another lawsuit, is a Clinton fundraising bundler who was listed in Clinton’s planners for eight meetings with her at various times. A billionaire behind the Slim-Fast diet and founder of the Center for Middle East Peace, Abraham told the AP last year his talks with Clinton concerned Mideast issues.

Big Clinton Foundation donors with no history of political giving to the Clintons also met or talked by phone with Hillary Clinton and top aides, AP’s review showed.

Some of the people who have been screaming for years that they wanted to ‘take the money out of politics’ should take a really good look at this. The Clinton family has become one of the most advanced crime syndicates since the Mafia. They need to be investigated.

 

The Unintended Consequences Of ObamaCare

Breitbart is reporting today that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is reporting that businesses in New York have reduced their number of employees due to ObamaCare.

The article reports:

Asked whether they were changing their health plans in response to Obamacare, three in five respondents — in both the manufacturing and service sector surveys — said they were. The most widely reported adjustments involved higher deductibles, increased co-pays, and higher out-of-pocket maximums for employees.

About 83 percent of firms indicated that they would be paying higher total healthcare premiums in 2017. As a result:

  1. 73 percent of firms were raising employee premiums;
  2. 65 percent were raising employee out-of-pocket expenses; and
  3. 67 percent were increasing employee co-pays.

Due to Obamacare, about 14 percent of manufacturers and 18 percent of service firms indicated that more employees are now being covered by health insurance; 2 percent of manufacturers and 8 percent of service firms said that fewer employees are now being covered.

When asked if they were making specific changes to certain fundamental business measures, owing to effects of the Obamacare, “roughly 17 percent of service sector firms and 21 percent of manufacturers said they were reducing the number of workers in response to” Obamacare. The vast majority of respondents in both surveys said they were not changing the proportion of part-time workers that are ineligible for Obamacare.

This is another example of the impact federal policies and regulations have on the economy. The American economy functions best when the free market is allowed to work–ObamaCare short circuits that process. We need a new administration in Washington that will lessen the burden the government places on Americans and American businesses. It is obvious that Hillary Clinton will be four more years of government burdens on Americans. At some point the economy will collapse under that burden. A vote for Hillary is a vote for the collapse of the American economy.

Following The Money

There have been a lot of stories told about the $400 million that was paid to Iran (coincidentally just as some American hostages were being released). Yesterday Claudia Rosett posted an article in the New York Sun that offers an interesting explanation as to where the $400 million came from.

The article reports:

Congressional investigators trying to uncover the trail of $1.3 billion in payments to Iran might want to focus on 13 large, identical sums that Treasury paid to the State Department under the generic heading of settling “Foreign Claims.”

The 13 payments when added to the $400 million that the administration now concedes it shipped to the Iranian regime in foreign cash would bring the payout to the $1.7 billion that President Obama and Secretary Kerry announced on January 17. That total was to settle a dispute pending for decades before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in at The Hague.

…The Judgment Fund has long been a controversial vehicle for federal agencies to detour past one of the most pointed prohibitions in the Constitution: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”

The Judgment Fund, according to a Treasury Department Web site, is “a permanent, indefinite appropriation” used to pay monetary awards against U.S. government agencies in cases “where funds are not legally available to pay the award from the agency’s own appropriations.”

In March, in letters responding to questions about the Iran settlement sent weeks earlier by Representatives Edward Royce and Mike Pompeo, the State Department confirmed that the $1.3 billion “interest” portion of the Iran settlement had been paid out of the Judgment Fund. But State gave no information on the logistics.

Aside from the fact that we are funding a regime that is using the money to fund attacks against American civilians and servicemen, I would like to note that the Tribunal at the Hague decided that America owned money to a known sponsor of terrorism. Based on that decision, I don’t think the Tribunal at The Hague is force for global peace. Giving money to a known sponsor of terrorism is not a good idea under any circumstances.

If This Is Not Illegal, It Should Be

Anyone who follows the news closely (assuming they don’t depend on the mainstream media as their news source) is aware that the Clinton Foundation is a personal cash cow for the Clinton family. A number of sources that have investigated the Foundation have observed that between 8 and 10 cents of every dollar goes to help whatever cause is being helped. The other 90 to 92 cents goes to ‘overhead.’ It would be very interesting to see a dollar by dollar breakdown of that ‘overhead.’ Meanwhile, the concept of ‘pay for play’ keeps rearing its ugly head.

The Washington Examiner posted a story today about communication between the Clinton Foundation and the U.S. State Department during the time that Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

The article reports:

Call logs from the office of Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, show Mills had frequent contact with top executives at the Clinton Foundation.

The logs, which were obtained by Citizens United through the Freedom of Information Act, indicate the foundation’s chief operating officer, Laura Graham, called Mills often to discuss State Department business.

For example, Graham called Mills in February of 2012 to deliver a message relevant to the chief of staff’s upcoming meeting with an unidentified prime minister. The previous month, she had contacted Mills regarding “sensitive” issues that included Haiti relief.

Mills was also in contact with Stephanie Streett, executive director of the Clinton Foundation, the records show.

That’s just a little too cozy for me. It makes me wonder exactly who was influencing American foreign policy.

 

 

 

Some Office Holders Have Forgotten That We Are All Americans

On Thursday, Fred Fleitz posted a story at the Center for Security Policy website about the intelligence briefings received by Presidential candidates.

The article reports:

On Wednesday, Trump received the intelligence briefing traditionally provided by the U.S. Intelligence Community to newly nominated presidential candidates. This briefing was preceded by calls from the Clinton campaign, other Democrats, and, privately, by some intelligence officials that Trump be denied these briefings because, they claim, he can’t be trusted to protect classified information.

Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate, actually asked intelligence analysts to give Trump fake briefings.

The Washington Post’s intelligence reporter Greg Miller reported on July 28 that a senior intelligence official told Miller privately that he would refuse to brief Trump because of concerns about Trump’s alleged admiration of Russian president Putin and because “he’s been so uninterested in the truth and so reckless with it when he sees it.” Reuters ran a similar story on June 2, reporting that eight senior security officials said they had concerns about briefing Trump; Reuters did not indicate how many of the officials cited were intelligence officials or Obama appointees.

These calls to deny intelligence briefings to a presidential candidate are unprecedented, but they also reflect a serious problem within the U.S. intelligence community that awaits a possible Trump administration: the politicization of American intelligence by the Left.

I saw this constantly during my 19 years as a CIA analyst. CIA officers frequently tried to undermine CIA directors Casey and Gates because they disagreed with President Reagan’s policy goal of defeating the Soviet Union. Several testified against Gates’s nomination to be CIA director in 1991 by lodging false claims that he and Casey had politicized intelligence. Former senator Warren Rudman, a moderate Republican who headed President Clinton’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, described these attacks by CIA analysts as “an attempted assassination, an assassination of [Gates’s] character . . . McCarthyism, pure and simple.”

This is disturbing because it indicates that one political party in America puts partisan politics over national security. As Mr. Fleitz mentions, this is not healthy for America.

The irony of suggesting that Donald Trump be denied intelligence briefings after Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information is not lost Mr. Fleitz:

In light of this history, it is no surprise that Democrats, intelligence officers, and the liberal media urged that Trump be denied an intelligence briefing as the GOP presidential candidate. Naturally, they did not raise similar concerns about briefing Hillary Clinton, although the FBI director determined she was “extremely careless” in handling classified information as secretary of state, even sharing classified intelligence with people who had no security clearance. Comey also stated that due to this carelessness, it’s possible hostile actors have gained access to the highly classified information that traveled through the multiple private servers Clinton used.

It’s true that intelligence briefings to presidential candidates are offered at the discretion of a sitting president. But calls to deny these briefings to Trump or to give him fake briefings are an affront to the American tradition of peaceful transfer of power and could undermine his presidential transition if he wins the election.

It is not up to Senator Reid or U.S. intelligence officers to prevent a duly elected major-party presidential candidate from receiving intelligence briefings because they don’t like him or because he is from the wrong political party. Of more concern is whether some intelligence personnel, out of political bias, would refuse to provide a President Trump with the intelligence support he would need to protect American national security.

It is definitely time to clean house in Washington. The future of America depends on it.

Whoops!

The Hillary Clinton email story is getting old. It is getting old because the Clintons have handled it the way they usually handle scandals–stall, obfuscate, and claim a right-wing conspiracy until people get tired of hearing about it, and then refer to the scandal as old news. Well, there’s old news and there’s old news. One of the problems with the ‘old news’ in the email scandal is that new facts keep coming up–creating new news. There are two new stories that have come out recently that are relevant to the scandal.

The Washington Times is reporting today that the FBI has found nearly 15,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton did not turn over to the government after she left office.

The article reports:

Some of the new documents will contain information that is deemed private under open-records laws, but Judicial Watch, the group that forced Monday’s hearing, said many of the documents will have information that should have been public all along.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the State Department must keep politics out of the process as it works on the messages, and said speed is important. He said the department has had the 14,900 messages for a month and hasn’t produced any of them yet.

“That’s simply not acceptable,” he said.

The 14,900 emails are on one computer disk. All told, the FBI turned over seven disks. It’s not entirely clear what documents are on the others.

The FBI said the 14,900 emails on disk one were either sent or received by Mrs. Clinton and are not duplicative of the approximately 30,000 emails she turned over and that the State Department already released, under a judge’s order.

Meanwhile, People Magazine posted an article on its website yesterday which includes the following quote from Colin Powell:

“Her people have been trying to pin it on me,” Powell, 79, told PEOPLE Saturday night at the Apollo in the Hamptons 2016 Night of Legends fête in East Hampton, New York.

“The truth is, she was using [the private email server] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did,” Powell added.

The article in People Magazine also reminds us:

The reported conversation was first brought to light in journalist Joe Conason‘s upcoming Bill Clinton biography, Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton, in which the writer details a dinner party held by Clinton and attended by Powell, Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger and Condoleeza Rice.

“Toward the end of the evening, over dessert, Albright asked all of the former secretaries to offer one salient bit of counsel to the nation’s next top diplomat,” Conason wrote. “Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer … [Powell] confirmed a decision she had made months earlier – to keep her personal account and use it for most messages.”

Powell’s office later released a statement to NBC News, saying he “has no recollection of the dinner conversation.” However, “He did write former Secretary Clinton an email memo describing his use of his personal AOL email account for unclassified messages and how it vastly improved communications within the State Department.”

(The italics are mine.)

No one has argued that the use of a personal email for personal, unclassified communications is a problem. The problem occurs when a private, unsecured server is set up outside of the State Department and used for classified communication. A private server simply does not have the security a server within the State Department would have. A private server is an invitation to hacking by any foreign service worth its salt. It is interesting that in his comments, Colin Powell made clear that he was not willing to take responsibility for Mrs. Clinton’s actions. She is going to have to find someone else to throw under the bus.