Monthly Archives: July 2018

Economic Freedom Has A Lot Of Good Unintended Consequences

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On Wednesday, The Daily Wire posted an article about Oliver Cameron, a baby born in Britain with a tumor in his heart who was denied treatment and funding by the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS). However, unlike the recent story of Charlie Gard, this story has a happy ending.

The article reports:

The couple (Oliver’s parents, parents Lydia and Tim Cameron) did not have the funds to save Oliver, so they resorted to crowdfunding, opening a GoFundMe page and asking the public to donate.

After funding nearly $170,000 on their own and garnering international attention, the NHS’s hand was forced. The government finally announced that they would allow and fund the necessary surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital.

The article continues:

Professor Dominic Wilkinson at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics said that the pressure was on the NHS to comply due to the recent case of U.K.-based baby Charlie Guard, who was denied medical treatment by the NHS despite other nations offering treatment. “I think the intense attention from the Charlie Gard case is likely to make those decision makers more conscious that they are under greater scrutiny and therefore that they have to be particularly careful in making a fair decision,” he told The Telegraph.

Thankfully, Boston Children’s Hospital was able to perform a successful surgery on 10-month-old baby Oliver in November of 2017. “When they told us Dr. del Nido had removed all of it, we were so happy we just burst into tears,” said mother Lydia, according to the hospital’s site.

Boston Children’s Hospital had the skill and the resources to solve the problem. In a free market (although American medicine is not totally a free market, it is more free than most), the hospital was able to do the research and discover the techniques that saved this child’s life. Socialized medicine only works for those who are not seriously ill (or for the very rich who are able to go elsewhere for medical treatment). In a country with socialized medicine, there is no incentive to do the research needed to solve complex medical problems.

The Plot May Be Beginning To Unravel

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One of the problems with trying to maintain a conspiracy is that as it begins to unravel, people begin to say things to distance themselves from responsibility for any wrongdoing that has occurred. I believe that is what is happening regarding the wiretapping of the Trump campaign and possibly regarding the Mueller investigation.

The Gateway Pundit quoted President Obama’s Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, today. James Clapper made the following statement on CNN yesterday:

If it weren’t for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today including Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place.

We need to put this into perspective in terms of what was going on during the final days of the Obama administration. During the final year of the Obama administration, Susan Rice, Ambassador to the United Nations. made an unprecedented number of requests for unmasking Americans whose conversations were inadvertently captured in wiretapped conversations. (article here) Americans were routinely being spied on by their government at this time.

Most Americans, particularly those familiar with procedures in the intelligence community were reluctant to believe what was reportedly going on with domestic spying. However, the truth has become obvious in recent days.

The following is an interview with Andrew McCarthy, who was initially skeptical that the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court was being used for political purposes. The interview is posted at YouTube:

I believe that the Mueller investigation is the ‘insurance policy’ discussed in Andrew McCabe’s office. We know that Lisa Page and Peter Strzok were involved in that discussion. We don’t know if anyone else was. The investigation was supposed either to create enough turmoil to remove President Trump from office (before he could cut taxes, appoint judges, or actually accomplish anything) or to cripple his presidency to the point where he accomplished nothing. Obviously the plan has created a lot of turmoil, but not a lot of the results the plotters were aiming for.

Ideally we will see this entire charade resolved within the next year. I am hopeful, but not necessarily optimistic.

Doing Their Job Well

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Townhall posted an article today about the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Lately they have come under fire from some Democrats for doing their job. So what exactly is the job they are doing?

The article states:

Today on Fox News, former director of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Thomas Homan, responded to comedian Michelle Wolff’s parody video comparing ICE to the terrorist organization ISIS. Homan condemned the video and explained that ICE has “arrested over 2,000 child predators” among other nefarious criminals who threaten the public.

Yesterday, Michelle Wolff released a mock recruiting video for ICE, featuring officers saying things such as “ICE is … rooting out the foreign enemy” and “ICE is … attacking when they least expect.” It also featured scenes reminiscent of the Islamic State’s propaganda such as tactical training and masked men.  Wolff, dressed as Homeland Security Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, ends the video by saying “there’s no better representation of American values right now than ICE is.”

The article concludes with a quote from Mr. Homan:

Since 2003, ICE has “arrested more than 16,000 individuals for crimes against children, including the production and distribution of online child pornography.” During Operation SOAR in 2017, ICE arrested 32 illegal aliens with past histories ranging from sexual abuse to rape. ICE also made “more than 4,800 criminal arrests in national anti-gang operations” last year. 

It is truly a shame that our media encourages lawlessness among Americans. Promoting a negative image of ICE encourages lack of respect for the laws of America. Many of the people criticizing ICE have no idea what ICE does or how they have protected children in America and children being brought to America to be trafficked.

Equal Justice Under The Law?

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It has become very obvious in recent years that people close to the Clintons who break the law are held to a different standard than the rest of us. The amount of evidence destroyed in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server is amazing–and no one was ever charged with destroying evidence. Now we have a new example of how to break laws with no consequences if you are a supporter of the Clintons.

The American Thinker posted the following today:

Tony Podesta, the Democratic über-operative and brother of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, has been offered immunity from Special Counsel Robert Mueller in exchange for his testimony against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.  The two men were doing the exact same “crime,” which was acting as unregistered lobbyists on behalf of the Ukrainian government, but Podesta skates, while Manafort goes to prison for the rest of his life.

As Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who broke the story, pointed out, the only difference between them is that Manafort worked for Donald Trump.

Is there anyone honest enough in Washington to call ‘shenanigans?’ This should chill every person who has ever done business overseas or worked in Washington. I have news–if this is allowed to stand, it could happen to anyone in the future if the tables are turned. I would hope the political right would be too honest for this sort of thing, but this sets a precedent that is frightening.

The article concludes:

What we are seeing is one set of laws for Democrats and another set of laws for Republicans.  Its analogy in the press is media bias – one kind of coverage for Republicans, and another kind for Democrats, as we recently saw with the undocumented children case, which it turns out was President Obama’s doing, not President Trump’s, but guess who got the wall-to-wall coverage.  People notice things like that.  The Deep State doesn’t, but normal people do see these double standards.  Double sets of laws for the elites and masses are precisely why voters turned to Donald Trump back in 2016.

This Manafort-Podesta thing isn’t about justice.  It’s about the Deep State’s bid to preserve its power.  It can only serve as rocket fuel for Trump.

I hope this injustice encourages voters to vote out of office anyone who has supported this witch hunt.

Washington Has Lost Its Bearings

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Fox News is reporting today that a D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC 4C) is supporting a petition to pull the Trump International Hotel’s liquor license — citing D.C. law that only individuals of “good character” qualify for a liquor license. This has to be the dumbest thing I have heard in a long time.

The article reports:

“Donald Trump, the true and actual owner of the Trump International Hotel, is not a person of good character,” the petition, filed by a group of D.C. residents including two former judges, a pastor and a rabbi, reads.

The complaint, filed in June, cites Trump’s “long history of telling lies,” his alleged lack of integrity in dealings with others and his “failure to abide by the law and to repudiate associations with known criminals.” It goes on to call for a show cause hearing to judge whether the license should be revoked.

“What the complaint says is that the owner of the Trump International Hotel doesn’t meet that definition and so ABRA, the Alcohol Beverage Regulation Administration, should take action,” Zach Teutsch, ANC Commissioner 4C, said. He denied that the move was a political stunt.

I daresay that Donald Trump’s character is at least as good as many of our elected leaders.

The article concludes with a bit of common sense:

However, the commission representing the area in downtown Washington, ANC 2C, reportedly has no plans to weigh in on the complaint. Chairman John Tinpe told The Washington Post that it’s a slippery slope to comment on a licensee’s character and could lead to a rush of similar protests.

“Now, if there is criminal activity, that is different,” Tinpe said. “But the subject of character is something different.”

Fox 5 reports that not everyone is on board with the move in D.C., with some local residents arguing that the swipe at Trump will only hurt bartenders and servers at the hotel and hurt the tax take from the hotel.

Washington definitely has its own brand of crazies.

Something To Consider

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Yesterday John Solomon posted an editorial at The Hill that should give all of us pause. The editorial involves one particular email sent between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.

The editorial states:

It is no longer in dispute that they held animus for Donald Trump, who was a subject of their Russia probe, or that they openly discussed using the powers of their office to “stop” Trump from becoming president. The only question is whether any official acts they took in the Russia collusion probe were driven by those sentiments.

The Justice Department’s inspector general is endeavoring to answer that question.

For any American who wants an answer sooner, there are just five words, among the thousands of suggestive texts Page and Strzok exchanged, that you should read.

That passage was transmitted on May 19, 2017. “There’s no big there there,” Strzok texted.

The date of the text long has intrigued investigators: It is two days after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee an investigation into alleged collusion between Trump and the Russia campaign.

Since the text was turned over to Congress, investigators wondered whether it referred to the evidence against the Trump campaign.

This month, they finally got the chance to ask. Strzok declined to say — but Page, during a closed-door interview with lawmakers, confirmed in the most pained and contorted way that the message in fact referred to the quality of the Russia case, according to multiple eyewitnesses.

The admission is deeply consequential. It means Rosenstein unleashed the most awesome powers of a special counsel to investigate an allegation that the key FBI officials, driving the investigation for 10 months beforehand, did not think was “there.”

On December 1, 2017, Newsweek reported:

Since his appointment almost seven months ago, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his crack team have racked up a $5 million tab as they probe Russia’s meddling in last year’s presidential election and alleged collusion with Donald Trump’s campaign to claim the White House, according to ABC News.

The editorial continues:

In other words, they had a big nothing burger. And, based on that empty-calorie dish, Rosenstein authorized the buffet menu of a special prosecutor that has cost America millions of dollars and months of political strife.

The work product Strzok created to justify the collusion probe now has been shown to be inferior: A Clinton-hired contractor produced multiple documents accusing Trump of wrongdoing during the election; each was routed to the FBI through a different source or was used to seed news articles with similar allegations that further built an uncorroborated public narrative of Trump-Russia collusion. Most troubling, the FBI relied on at least one of those news stories to justify the FISA warrant against Carter Page.

That sort of multifaceted allegation machine, which can be traced back to a single source, is known in spy craft as “circular intelligence reporting,” and it’s the sort of bad product that professional spooks are trained to spot and reject.

Please follow the link to read the entire editorial at The Hill. A lot of people need to lose their jobs over this. It is a disgrace.

Private Property Rights

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According to The American Policy Center:

In a “Fifth Amendment” treatise by Washington State Supreme Court Justice Richard B. Sanders (12/10/97), he writes: Our state, and most other states, define property in an extremely broad sense.” That definition is as follows:

“Property in a thing consists not merely in its ownership and possession, but in the unrestricted right of use, enjoyment, and disposal. Anything which destroys any of the elements of property, to that extent, destroys the property itself. The substantial value of property lies in its use. If the right of use be denied, the value of the property is annihilated and ownership is rendered a barren right.”

The right of use has come under fire in recent years. One instance of property rights being violated occurred recently in Pennsylvania.

Yesterday Todd Starnes posted the following:

The owners of a Pennsylvania farm have been ordered by the Sewickley Heights Borough to cease and desist holding Bible studies on their private property.

Borough leaders accused Scott and Terri Fetterolf of improperly using their 35-acre farm as a place of worship, a place of assembly and as a commercial venue.

They were served a cease-and-desist order in October 2017, the Post-Gazette reported.

The Independence Law Center filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the farmers against the borough alleging an egregious violation of the U.S. Constitution.

According to the lawsuit, the Fetterolfs were threatened with fines of $500 per day plus court costs for having Bible studies at their home, having meetings where religious songs are sung, conducting any religious retreats for church leaders or seminary students or conducting any religious fundraisers.

The article concludes:

The lawsuit accuses the government leaders of violating religious freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and equal protection.

“Government should not target religious activities for punishment, particularly when similar secular activities are permitted,” attorney Jeremy Samek said. “In America, no government can categorically ban people from assembling to worship on one’s property.”

To that point, the lawsuit alleges the borough allows other activities and gatherings – ranging from political rallies to a Harry Potter event.

So if government leaders allow muggles to cavort in Sewickley Heights Borough, they should afford the same rights to Christians gathering for Bible study on private property.

There are situations where it might be appropriate to limit a home Bible study–if parking becomes a problem in the neighborhood or if the noise level was inappropriate. However, this was on a farm–I doubt there was either a noise or a parking problem. This is simply an illegal attempt to limit religious activity, and I suspect the Sewickley Heights Borough will lose the case in court. However, the thing to remember here is that in many cases the people holding the Bible study would not have the resources to fight the case in court. There are a number of legal advocates for Christians under attack that are handling this sort of case. We should all be grateful for these organizations–they are protecting our right to the free exercise of our religious beliefs.

Swamps And Alligators

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As the saying goes–“When you are up to your neck in alligators, it is hard to remember that your objective was to drain the swamp.” As we watch the deep state react to being backed into a corner, it is good to remember that expression.

Let’s try to put the ‘hair-on-fire’ reporting of the President’s statements at his press conference with Putin in perspective. First of all, we have seen in the short time that Donald Trump has been President that he tends to be polite in press conferences. We also have learned that he tends to be tough in private talks.

One of the hair-on-fire media statements is that Putin must have something on President Trump. He may, but I can guarantee he has a whole lot more on Hillary Clinton.

Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial today that reminds us:

Last week we learned that a “foreign entity” may have been secretly receiving Hillary Clinton’s emails while she was Secretary of State, including many that contained classified information. And that the FBI apparently ignored this information during its “investigation.” The reaction by the press to this bombshell? Crickets.

At one point during Peter Strzok’s congressional testimony last week, Rep. Louie Gohmert made a stunning claim: FBI investigators were told that Clinton’s emails had been surreptitiously forwarded to a “foreign entity.” And the FBI investigators who were allegedly conducting a thorough, unbiased, professional probe into Clinton’s mishandling of classified materials ignored it.

Trump did business with Russia for years. It is quite possible some corners were cut. How does that stack up to information that could have been obtained from Hillary Clinton’s server–Clinton Foundation activities illegally related to State Department access, misuse of funds going into the Clinton Foundation, pay-for-play schemes, Uranium One information, etc. It seems to me that anything Putin may or may not have on President Trump pales in comparison to what Putin has on Hillary Clinton.

The following was posted at rightwinggranny on March 7, 2018:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: This brings us back full circle to the beginning. The question was originally: Why did she have the private server? She said convenience, obviously that was ridiculous…

It was obvious she was hiding something.

And think about it, she set it up in 2009, before becoming Secretary of State. So, she anticipated having exchanges that she would not want anyone to see. So, we’ve been asking ourselves on this set for a year almost, what exactly didn’t she want people to see?

Well, now we know.

And as we speculated, the most plausible explanation was the rank corruption of the Clinton Foundation, and its corrupt — I don’t know if it’s illegal, but corrupt relationship with the State Department.

And her only defense as we saw earlier– the Democrats are saying, well, there was nothing she did… that was corrupted by donations. You can believe that if you want, but there’s a reason that people give donations in large amounts, and that’s to influence the outcome of decisions. So, this — we are getting unfolding to us, exactly what she anticipated having to hide, and it is really dirty business.

The above quote is from October 2016. As usual, the late Charles Krauthammer was right on target.

ZeroHedge quotes a claim Vladimir Putin made in the press conference in Helsinki:

Vladimir Putin made a bombshell claim during Monday’s joint press conference with President Trump in Helsinki, Finland, when the Russian President said some $400 million in illegally earned profits was funneled to the Clinton campaign by associates of American-born British financier Bill Browder – at one time the largest foreign portfolio investors in Russia. The scheme involved members of the U.S. intelligence community, said Putin, who he said “accompanied and guided these transactions.”

Browder made billions in Russia during the 90’s. In December, a Moscow court sentenced Browder in absentia to nine years in prison for tax fraud, while he was also found guilty of tax evasion in a separate 2013 case. Putin accused Browder’s associates of illegally earning over than $1.5 billion without paying Russian taxes, before sending $400 million to Clinton.

Is it possible that the hair-on-fire reporting on President Trump’s statement is simply to distract us from the questions about the $400 million donation to the Clinton campaign?

 

 

 

Realizing The Threat To European Civilization

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Reuters posted an article today reporting that Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has decided not to sign the Global Compact For Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. The agreement was approved on Friday by all 193 U.N. member nations except the United States, which pulled out last year.

The article reports:

“This document is entirely against Hungary’s security interests,” Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told a news conference, adding: “This pact poses a threat to the world from the aspect that it could inspire millions (of migrants).”

Hungary, along with Poland and Czech Republic, has taken a tough stand against the admission of migrants, putting it at odds with the European Union, but striking a chord with voters by arguing that irregular immigration threatens European stability, and fencing off Hungary’s southern borders.

Szijjarto said the U.N. pact was “extreme, biased and facilitates migration.

“Its main premise is that migration is a good and inevitable phenomenon … We consider migration a bad process, which has extremely serious security implications.”

France, Germany, and Sweden have all experienced drastic increases in crime due to the influx of immigrants from Muslim countries. Unless the immigrants are willing to assimilate (and most of them are not), the attitudes of the immigrants towards women and other western cultural norms have been a problem. Hungary has recognized this and acted accordingly.

The solution to the massive migration to Europe from Africa and the Middle East is for the people in the African and Middle Eastern countries to clean up their act. Generally speaking, in the countries the migrants are coming from, the wealth and the law are controlled by a select group of people in charge. I don’t blame these people for fleeing, but they need to stay and fight. If you look at the pictures of the migrants, the majority of them are men between the ages of about eighteen to thirty-five. They are fleeing rather than joining together to fight for economic (and other) freedoms. I wonder if these migrants were forced to remain in their home countries if they would be willing to fight for those countries.

Common Sense In The Midst Of Hysteria

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Yesterday The Daily Caller reported that the Latino Coalition, a “leading, national non-partisan advocacy organization representing Hispanic businesses and consumers,” has released a statement in support of the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

The article includes the statement:

“Judge Brett Kavanaugh is an exemplary individual and an extremely qualified legal constitutionalist with a record of ruling against the kind of regulatory overreach that can be chilling to America’s entrepreneurs,” said TLC Chairman and former U.S. SBA Administrator Hector Barreto. “The Latino Coalition urges the Senate to put partisanship aside in order to quickly confirm Judge Kavanaugh. We believe he will protect the rights of all Americans, including the small-business owners who suffer most when government goes beyond its constitutional bounds.”

The article concludes:

Meanwhile, liberal advocacy groups like Think Progress continue to proclaim the various ways in which the sky will fall if Kavanaugh is confirmed, as evidenced by this piece published Monday titled “If Kavanaugh is confirmed, you can kiss the right to vote goodbye.”

Does anyone actually believe the garbage about Judge Kavanaugh being put out by the political left?

Misleading Propaganda From The United Nations

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Yesterday The Daily Signal posted an article about the latest numbers on worldwide poverty.

The article reports:

Philip Alston, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, recently reported that in the United States, “[a]bout 40 million live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and 5.3 million live in third-world conditions of absolute poverty.”

He further argued before the U.N. Human Rights Commission that “one of the world’s wealthiest countries does very little about the fact that 40 million of its citizens live in poverty.”

That would be very serious if it were true. Thankfully it is not.

The article further reports:

Such claims do have a veneer of legitimacy, however, because when compiling the U.S. government’s official poverty statistics, the Census Bureau considers only the cash income each family reports in an annual survey.

These “official” income figures exclude substantial off-the-books earnings among low-income households and omit roughly 95 percent of the $1.1 trillion U.S. taxpayers provide in means-tested cash, food, housing, and medical benefits for low-income persons each year.

Fortunately, the Census Bureau also conducts, on behalf of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a survey of household expenditures, in which families are asked to report how much money they spend each month on each of up to 594 categories of purchases. Poor families routinely report spending an average of $2.40 for each dollar of official cash income.

…Alston claims that 40 million Americans have incomes below the official U.S. poverty level of roughly $24,000 per year for a family of four. However, the reality is that at most 25.9 million Americans live in poverty, based on reported spending less than the official poverty threshold. And, the official U.S. poverty threshold is far higher than the living standard for most of the world’s population.

The article explains what poverty looks like in America:

The severe shortcomings of income-based poverty measures are made clear when one considers the actual living conditions of those whom Alston considers to be in “extreme poverty.” American families living in “extreme poverty” typically have air conditioning, computers, DVD players, and cellphones. They rarely report material hardships such as hunger, eviction, or having utilities cut off.

The article notes that we need to find a better way of compiling our poverty statistics in America so that they actually reflect the truth. An accurate reporting of poverty statistics would help the government gauge exactly what our spending on poverty needs to be.

Propaganda Masquerading As News

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On June 28, The New Yorker posted an article with the following headline:

Many Gazan Women Are No Longer Able to Enter Israel for Cancer Treatment

Horrible if true. Thankfully it is not true.

The article cites claims by patients Amani Abu Taema and Dena Mekhael, stating:

In 2012, Israel approved ninety-two per cent of medical permits for Gazans. In 2014, a year of deadly conflict, eighty-two per cent of patients were allowed in. But, since the beginning of 2018, with no announcement of a change in policy, more than half of applications for medical permits from Gaza have been turned down or left unanswered, according to Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, or P.H.R.I., a nonprofit organization that represents many of these patients. A 2017 directive from the Defense Ministry gave Israel twenty-three working days to process requests for medical permits, an increase from the previous ten-day processing time. (The extension, according to the ministry, was due to a backlog of some sixteen thousand travel-permit requests, the result of an overwhelming number of applications and the time needed to run proper security checks.) The average case now takes months—if it’s approved at all.

Since Mekhael’s last checkup in Tel Aviv, a year ago, she has found a new lump, this time in her right breast. She applied for a medical permit last December (the permits are only valid for a few weeks) but has not been approved to cross the border. “I never got a refusal, but they keep saying it’s ‘under review,’ ” she told me. Her options in Gaza are dismal: its public hospitals provide very limited and sporadic access to functional MRI and mammogram machines, so she has no way of receiving a diagnosis, let alone treatment.

This is shenanigans. According to reliable sources:

• Had reporter Ruth Margalit bothered to check Dena Mekhael’s account with the Israeli authorities, she would have learned that it is the Palestinian side which is holding up her permit approval; she has valid security clearance from Israel but the Palestinian committee has failed to provide the needed updated hospital appointment information necessary for her request to be approved.

• It is not true that Israel “turned down or left unanswered” over half of the applications for medical permits from Gaza in 2018. According to figures from the World Health Organization and Israel’s COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories), Israel approved more than half of the applications this year.

…Regarding Amani Abu Taema, Margalit had reported, “In January, she was allowed into Israel for an MRI and radiation therapy, but since then her application for a permit has been declined four times without explanation.” According to the Israeli spokesman, Abu Taema did indeed enter Israel in January for medical treatment, but since then has not reapplied for an additional entry. The Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee has likewise not received any requests from Abu Taema since her January visit. Thus, Abu Taema’s claim that her application permit was declined four times was flatly rejected and refuted by the Israeli authority, with whom New Yorker never consulted.  

In addition, the claim that there are no MRI machines in Gaza is also false:

…according to the United Nations, a scientific  journal, Palestinian sources, and the European Gaza Hospital (a public institution), along with mainstream media, there are indeed MRI machines in Gaza. Notably, a 2017 report in The Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences (“Evaluation of advanced medical imaging services at Governmental Hospitals – Gaza Governorates, Palestine“), noted there are two MRI machines in the Gaza Strip per one million inhabitants. This compares to four MRI machines in Israel per one million inhabitants. Both Israel and the Gaza Strip lag significantly behind other countries, including Turkey, France, Australia, and especially Germany.

There are a few things that are noteworthy in this article. First of all, the women were able to get treatment for cancer in Israel. After all the money the world has poured into Gaza, why aren’t the medical facilities there adequate? Where is the money going? With all the rockets, etc., Gaza has aimed at Israel, Israel is still treating patients from Gaza. It seems to me that Israel is the humanitarian force here–not Gaza.

The story in The New Yorker is an example of misstating facts in order to achieve a specific goal–anti-Israel sentiment. Nowhere does the writer question the lack of infrastructure in Gaza after all the money poured in there. Nowhere does the writer note that Israel routine helps with medical needs in Gaza. Nowhere does the writer mention the terrorist activities against Israel that originate in Gaza–the rockets, the tunnels, the suicide bombers, etc.

This is a blatant example of fake news with the purpose of stirring up anti-Israel sentiment while Gaza continues its terrorist activities with no repercussions.

Why Many Americans Think That The Second Amendment Is Threatened

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Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about an incident at Jackson Elementary School in Everett, Washington.

The article reports:

…Riley Malone was talking with one of his classmates this past May. They got on the subject of guns, and Riley mentioned that he had a .22 bolt action rifle and that he occasionally goes to the gun range with his parents. The other boy thought it would be cool to try shooting some time. That was the end of the conversation. Or so they thought.

Another student overheard the talk about guns and shooting ranges, and she told her parents about it. In turn, her parents notified the school.

The saga continues:

Riley’s mother, Christine Malone, received a phone call from Principal Falicia Green, who was “understandably concerned” that students would be talking about firearms.

“She said, ‘You don’t have any guns in the house, do you?’ I told her my son does not have access to guns. Christine Malone tells The Gateway Pundit. “At the time I was very worried my son would be targeted in some way by the school. My son’s rifle is locked up, along with all other guns in the house. He cannot access them – our safe has a finger print lock.”

Christina Malone, Riley’s mother, talked to her son about the conversation. Riley thought he was in trouble and was very upset. She explained to him that he was not in trouble, but it was not a good idea to talk about guns in school because some people might freak out. Obviously she was right.

The article concludes:

“The next day, my son was pulled out of the classroom by a school counselor. She sat him down and asked him if he ever used guns. He was terrified. He told her he has a rifle and that Mom and Dad have hand guns. He told her they are all locked up and that Mom and Dad have taken shooting classes. Apparently, the counselor was satisfied with his answers and I didn’t hear anything more about it from the school.“

While this has apparently concluded, it’s entirely possible that 10 year old Riley is now on some watch list at the school, and surely this non-incident has been added to his record somewhere.

This comes on the heels of similar story involving a New Jersey veteran whom police tried to disarm because his son mentioned something about guns in school.

A child who is taught gun safety and taken to the gun range is not a child who is going to shoot up a school. To treat this child the way he was treated was ridiculous. The mother who reported the incident to the school should have sat down with her son and told him that owning a gun is a legal right in America and that some people have guns. She also might have mentioned that it was rude to eavesdrop!  When the mother of the child who overheard the conversation contacted the principal, the principal should have thanked her for her concern, documented the call, and mentioned to Mrs. Malone that the call was made. That should have been the end of it. As I have previously stated, in the elementary school my husband attended, the children were taught gun safety. The junior high school had a gun range. The high school had a shop where students could bring their guns to work on them. Before you decide that this was some middle American town–it wasn’t–it was Great Neck, New York.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

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On Friday Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about a recent bill sponsored by Washington, D.C.’s city council.

The article reports:

On Tuesday, 7 of the 13 members of Washington’s city council sponsored a bill to jettison the wage hike for tipped workers that 56% of D.C. voters had approved by a ballot initiative less than a month before.

Under Initiative 77, the workers would see their minimum wage climb from the current $3.89 an hour to $15 an hour by 2026, erasing the difference between tipped and nontipped workers.

Keep in mind that D.C. is about as heavily Democratic as you can get. It went for Hillary Clinton by a 91%-4% margin.

But the D.C. council members came to understand what economists — and D.C. restaurant workers themselves — already know. Sharp increases in the minimum wage will cost lost hours, lost jobs and lost income.

The article concludes:

This wage mandate, just like the one the council is trying to repeal, will also end up hurting the very people it’s supposed to help.

That’s not speculation. It’s what happened in Seattle, which four years ago decided to gradually hike the city’s minimum to $15. Researchers from the University of Washington found that the average low-wage worker lost $125 a month as the mandate took effect and employers cut back on hours and jobs.

Other parts of the country are catching on as evidence rolls in of the job-killing side effect of these mandated wage hikes. The mayor of heavily Democratic Baltimore vetoed a minimum-wage bill last year. The city council in Flagstaff, Ariz., decided to scrap the planned hike to $12, and cap it at $10.50.

“Fight for $15” makes a good bumper sticker. But as Democrats are finding out first hand, it makes bad public policy.

Maybe the answer is not raising the pay for minimum-wage jobs, but in better educating our children so that when they enter the workforce at minimum jobs, they are able to learn skills and progress to better paying jobs. In many cases, companies have responded to increases in the minimum wage by replacing workers with machines. Minimum-wage jobs are valuable–they teach workers entering the workforce the basic principles of holding a job–showing up, working hard, being courteous to fellow employees and customers, and being dependable and on time. Drastically increasing the minimum wage will result in many minimum-wage jobs being eliminated.

The Democrat Party Moves Further Left

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Yesterday The Los Angeles Times reported that California Democrat leaders have endorsed Kevin de León for Senate in a stinging rebuke of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein. Senator Feinstein has been in the Senate since 1992. While some voters might see her an a poster child for term limits, she has been a mostly rational voice on the liberal side of the aisle during her time in the Senate. However, she has been rejected in favor of someone who has espoused views very much to the left of her views.

The article reports:

De León’s campaign has focused on the party’s energized liberal faction. He supports single-payer healthcare, aggressive goals for renewable energy and helped lead the successful effort to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. He has criticized Feinstein, known for having moderate tendencies, for being too conciliatory toward Trump, such as when she urged people to have “patience” with the president last year.

Senator Feinstein needs to remember that today’s Democrat party does not allow ‘moderate tendencies.’ It will be interesting to see in November if Americans in states other than California approve of ‘moderate tendencies.’

Where Some Of The Political Money Comes From

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The Daily Caller is reporting that Demand Justice (DJ), a group organized and financed by a 501(c)(4) called the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which collected some $2.2 million in contributions from the Open Society Policy Center (OSPC), one of George Soros’ primary donation vehicles, between 2012 and 2016, has pledged to put $5 million behind an effort to stop Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court . If George Soros opposes Judge Kavanaugh, then I have one more reason to support the Judge.

The article reports:

A Daily Caller News Foundation review has found that the group’s primary financial supporter is a nonprofit to whom Soros has given millions.

The group, Demand Justice (DJ), is organized and financed by a 501(c)(4) called the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which collected some $2.2 million in contributions from the Open Society Policy Center (OSPC), one of Soros’ primary donation vehicles, between 2012 and 2016.

…Demand Justice was formed in the spring of 2018 as the progressive counterpart to a constellation of conservative advocacy groups which advertise and organize around judicial confirmations. Republicans have significantly outpaced Democrats in this space in recent years, given conservative voters’ sustained interest in the federal courts.

Executive director Brian Fallon told The New York Times that DJ hopes to “sensitize rank-and-file progressives to think of the courts as a venue for their activism and a way to advance the progressive agenda.”

Its ranks are staffed by alums of the Obama administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign: Fallon, the former Clinton campaign press secretary, serves as executive director and longtime Obama aide Christopher Kang is chief counsel. Other Clinton veterans involved with the group include Gabrielle McCaffrey and Diana Bowen, according to LinkedIn.

The Fund serves as Demand Justice’s fiscal sponsor. As such, DJ does not have to submit its own tax returns or disclose its supporters. The Fund registered the trade name “Demand Justice” with the Washington D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory affairs on May 2.

George Soros is an naturalized American citizen and can legally donate his money to any cause he chooses. However, I would like to remind him that money in politics does not always equal success. On November 7, 2016, CNBC reported the following:

Still, the spending patterns offer some insight into the strategies pursued by the two rivals. As of Oct. 19, Clinton had raised some $513 million and spent $450 million on itemized expenses. The Trump campaign had raised $255 million and spent $239 million.

I hope the Soros-funded group is as successful in blocking Judge Kavanaugh as Hillary Clinton was in winning the presidency.

Lying To Congress Is Not A Good Idea

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It is no secret that the Department of Justice has been slow walking documents requested by Congress since Congress began their oversight investigation of corruption in the FBI and DOJ. However, with the testimony of Lisa Page, that slow walking has taken a new turn.

This article is based on articles posted at The Gateway Pundit yesterday and at The Conservative Treehouse yesterday.

The headline at The Gateway Pundit article is:

REPORT: House Conservatives Prepare to Impeach Rosenstein as Soon as Monday

This is about lying to Congress.

The article reports:

Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows dropped a bombshell Friday afternoon and said it appears the DOJ is continuing their efforts to keep material facts and even witnesses from Congress.

Meadows tweeted: Remarkably, we learned new information today suggesting the DOJ had not notified Lisa Page of Congress’ outstanding interview requests for over 7 months now. The DOJ/FBI appear to be continuing their efforts to keep material facts, and perhaps even witnesses, from Congress.

Rosenstein was defiant, smug and laughed off lawmakers during a recent Congressional hearing and refused to answer many pertinent Spygate questions.

The Deputy Attorney General has been working overtime to obstruct House conservatives from oversight while running offense for the Deep State with the Mueller witch hunt.

Both Mueller and Rosenstein are out of control and need to be prosecuted and thrown in prison.

Friday’s revelation the DOJ had not notified Lisa Page of Congress’ outstanding interview requests for over 7 months may be the last straw for GOP lawmakers; it’s way past time to get rid of Rod Rosenstein.

The Conservative Treehouse reports:

On January 3rd, 2018, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes and DOJ Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein entered an agreement for witness testimony.   One of those witnesses was FBI Attorney Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe’s former special counsel.

WASHINGTON – January 4th – House investigators will get access this week to “all remaining investigative documents” – in unredacted form – that they had sought as part of their Russia inquiry, under a deal between Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., according to a letter obtained by Fox News.

[…] According to the letter, committee investigators also will get access to eight key witnesses this month including FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who exchanged anti-Trump text messages during an affair and previously worked on the special counsel’s Russia probe.  (link)

The conversation was documented in a confirmation letter shared by Devin Nunes back to Rod Rosenstein the following day, January 4th, 2018.  Except there’s a problem, Lisa Page told congress today that no-one from the DOJ ever contacted her.  That means Rod Rosenstein was lying:

The impeachment of Rosenstein should be bi-partisan, but it won’t be. Both parties should be concerned when the oversight responsibilities of Congress are ignored. However, the spygate scandal runs so deep and is so obviously linked to a Democrat administration’s politicization of federal law enforcement, I will be totally surprised if any Democrats support this impeachment. That being said, I suspect many Americans are getting tired of watching people obviously break the law and not be held to the standard an average American would be held to. The Democrats block this impeachment at their own peril–the voters may protest, and there may come a day when they want the DOJ and FBI to cooperate with Congress.

 

Sharing Classified Information

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On Thursday The Daily Caller posted an article about something the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) found related to Hillary Clinton’s server that the FBI chose not to explore.

The article reports:

The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) found an “anomaly on Hillary Clinton’s emails going through their private server, and when they had done the forensic analysis, they found that her emails, every single one except four, over 30,000, were going to an address that was not on the distribution list,” Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas said during a hearing with FBI official Peter Strzok.

“It was going to an unauthorized source that was a foreign entity unrelated to Russia,” he added.

Gohmert said the ICIG investigator, Frank Rucker, presented the findings to Strzok, but that the FBI official did not do anything with the information.

Strzok acknowledged meeting with Rucker, but said he did not recall the “specific content.”

“The forensic examination was done by the ICIG and they can document that,” Gohmert said, “but you were given that information and you did nothing with it.”

The article further reports:

In late 2017, ICIG Chuck McCullough — who was appointed by former President Barack Obama —  took the unusual step of coming forward publicly to say that he perceived pushback after he began raising the alarm about issues with Clinton’s servers to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

He said he found it “maddening” that Democrats, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, were underselling the amount of classified information on the server.

McCullough said he “expected to be embraced and protected,” but was instead “chided” by someone on Capitol Hill for failing to consider the “political consequences” of his investigative findings, Fox News reported.

The ICIG has not publicly disclosed the findings Gohmert described in the meeting between Rucker and Strzok, but the congressman said the watchdog can document them.

It is time to retire the upper echelon of both the FBI and the DOJ. They either don’t know what they are doing or are so politically biased they can’t see past their noses. It is time for them to go before we turn into a republic where the government bureaucracy spies on anyone who disagrees with it and protects anyone who does.

Releasing The Documents That Will End The Circus

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The Daily Caller is reporting the following today:

The White House has ordered the Department of Justice and FBI to expand congressional access to FBI files about a confidential informant who met with members of the Trump campaign.

The New York Times reports that the White House overrode concerns from FBI Director Christopher Wray and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats regarding FBI documents about Stefan Halper, a former University of Cambridge professor who was a longtime FBI and CIA source.

Halper, a veteran of three Republican administrations, made contact during the 2016 campaign with three Trump advisers: Carter Page, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos.

The information on Halper had been restricted only to the Gang of Eight, a group of lawmakers that consists of the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress and the two intelligence committees. The White House push will allow all members of the intelligence committees to view the Halper records.

Democrats on the Gang of Eight sent a letter to Coats on Thursday expressing concern over expanding access to the Halper files.

“We believe your decision could put sources and methods at risk,” reads the letter, according to The Times.

The only sources and methods put at risk by expanding access to this information are the methods for misuse of the government to spy on a presidential candidate. The real solution to this is for President Trump to declassify all of this information and make it available to the public. If he is totally smart, he will do that about three weeks before the November election. At that point those responsible for this will have nowhere to hide.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It explains some of the behind-the-scenes activity about the spying on the Trump campaign. The fact that the government used government agencies to interfere in a political campaign for President is disturbing. Were we on the road to having the government determine the outcome of our elections?

Some Thoughts On Brett Kavanaugh

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Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial today about some of the reactions to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court Justice. Some of the attacks on this man by the political left are so ridiculous they are funny.

The editorial cites one example of the attacks:

The Washington Post red-flagged the fact that Kavanaugh racked up nearly $200,000 in credit card debt to buy season tickets to the Washington Nationals baseball team and also for “home improvements.”

A big chunk of change, to be sure. But…what? It’s a bit hard to argue Kavanaugh wasn’t gainfully employed. The Post further makes a big deal that Kavanaugh’s most recent financial form shows less than $70,000 in assets. Sound poor? Does that disqualify him from service on the Supreme Court? Do we now have an asset test for all Court nominees?

What’s absurd about the “assets” is they don’t include his six-figure income and generous pension from being a federal judge. Nor does it include the value of his home. We don’t know what those are, but we’re pretty sure the net value of both is well north of $1 million.

It gets worse:

The Post also “reported,” if that’s the word, that Kavanaugh proclaimed himself Treasurer of the “Keg City Club — 100 Kegs or Bust” in his high school yearbook, and referred to the “Beach Week Ralph Club” and “Rehoboth Police Fan Club.”

So, teenage hijinks are now a solid disqualification for service on the federal bench?

Of course, this is all recycled pap from Kavanaugh’s approval process to be a federal judge. It’s mostly all known. Why repeat it? Anything to sully a man’s reputation. After all, recall how both Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas were smeared by the left during their confirmation battles. Together, they were two of the most disgusting and unfair spectacles in American political history.

I that is all the dirt they can find on this man, he totally deserves to be confirmed in the next two months!

What We Learned From Congressional Hearings Yesterday

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This article is based on an article at The Federalist today which lists five things Mollie Hemingway learned from the hearings. I agree with her conclusions.

Here is her list:

1. This Is What DOJ Obstruction Looks Like

2. Strzok Somehow Came Off Even Worse Than He Did In His Texts

3. Democrats Run Interference

4. DOJ Clearly Hiding Its Relationship With Democratic-Funded Smear Group

5. The Mystery Of Why The Investigation Started

The goal of the obstruction seemed to be to minimize where the authorization to spy on the Trump campaign came from. There were a number of questions about how the FBI got hold of the Steele Dossier and the links between the dossier and the Clinton campaign. Generally speaking, those questions were not fully answered. Peter Strzok replied to any substantive questions by saying his lawyers at the Department of Justice told him not to answer questions about an ongoing investigation. Basically he very carefully told us nothing.

Peter Strzok came across as the snotty little kid who lived on the block who simply annoyed everyone with his arrogance and self-righteousness. He could not have been more obnoxious if he had tried.

The Democrats were almost comical in making sure no significant information came out in the hearings. They made sure that the hearings took on the appearance of a rather undisciplined circus. It has become obvious in recent years that the Democrat party is expert at circling the wagons around any Democrat, regardless of what they have done. President Trump was trashed for what he said about women, Bill Clinton was never trashed even when he was believably accused of rape.

The article details the relationship between the DOJ and Fusion GPS (these were questions Peter Strzok generally refused to answer):

But Strzok did admit that Bruce Ohr, husband of Fusion GPS operative Nellie Ohr, funneled documents to the FBI related to the Russia case. He refused to say what those documents were. Yesterday, Sen. Chuck Grassley asked DOJ to declassify the dozen reports summarizing Ohr’s 12 information-sharing meetings with the FBI.

The FBI used Fusion GPS-hired Christopher Steele until the end of October, when he was terminated for lying about his leaks to the media. But Fusion and Steele were able to continue funnelling information to the FBI using colleague Nellie Ohr and her husband Bruce Ohr, a top DOJ official who worked closely with acting Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

When the Russia story first broke, Americans didn’t realize that the dossier was a secret Clinton/DNC operation, or that the unverified opposition research was sent to various Obama officials in multiple agencies. Americans didn’t know that a top DOJ official was married to an employee of the group that created the dossier, or that he was used to get information into the government.

The article concludes:

The entire investigation has major problems from start to finish, whether it’s the use of a dossier that Steele created and Bruce Ohr sent to the FBI, or the fact that Strzok ended up having to be removed from the investigation for his obvious and extreme bias. Strzok said Mueller never asked him about his texts, and didn’t seek to find out more from him about what his “insurance policy” or “impeachment” rhetoric meant.

Again, the hearing was less than substantive because of the ongoing obstruction and stonewalling campaign engaged in by DOJ. That was itself instructive.

It will be a miracle if anyone in the DOJ or FBI is ever held accountable for their use of government agencies to influence the 2016 election. Russia is not guilty of election meddling–our own government is.

 

How Things Actually Work In Washington

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Yesterday Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article about the confirmation vote that will eventually take place to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court Judge. The article explains exactly how things work in Washington. If Judge Kavanaugh has enough Republican votes to be confirmed, he will probably receive a few votes from Democrats in favor of his confirmation. This has nothing to do with his qualifications or what those Democrats believe about his willingness to uphold the Constitution–it has to do with their election prospects in 2018. If there are enough Republican votes to confirm Judge Kavanaugh (and the votes of Democrats will not change the outcome), Democrat Senators from states that voted for President Trump will probably vote to confirm. If there are not enough Republican votes to confirm Judge Kavanuagh, all of the Democrat Senators will vote against him. The good of the country or the man’s qualifications have nothing to do with the way they will be voting. That should give all of us pause.

The article includes a quote from Senator Joe Manchin on the vote:

“I think he seems to be a very fine person of high moral standards, a family person who’s very involved in his community, has all the right qualities. He’s well-educated. And with that, you know, we have to just look at making sure that the rule of law and the Constitution is going to be followed, and that’s going to basically preempt anything else he does.

“Most importantly. . .I intend to hear from West Virginians. And during that period of time, I just announced, I’ll be hearing from West Virginians and their opinion. And I think they have, also, a right. And that’s who I work for. They’re my boss. And we want to hear from them, too, during this process. .”

The article notes:

A new poll released on Tuesday by Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) found that 59 percent of West Virginia voters want Manchin to vote to confirm Kavanaugh.

I looks to me like Manchin will do so unless something is discovered that causes one or two Republican Senators to defect.

The same poll finds that 56 percent of Indiana voters want their Senator, Joe Donnelly, to vote to confirm the Kavanaugh. Sen. Donnelly has not, to my knowledge, praised the nominee the way Sen. Manchin has. But Donnelly echoed Manchin when he said, “I work for the people of Indiana and I want them to have a voice in this.”

The article concludes:

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see whether Sen. Heidi Heitkamp begins to make mildly pro-Kavanaugh statements. The poll I cited above found that 68 percent of North Dakota voters want Heitkamp to vote to confirm Kavanaugh. If that number holds, the pressure on her to comply will be enormous.

Stay tuned.

Get out the popcorn!

The Facts vs The Talking Points

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Remember when the Democrats said that the Trump tax cuts would blow a huge hole in the deficit because of the money that would not be collected. Those who believed the Democrats need to study the Laffer Curve. Although liberals keep saying it doesn’t work, the history of tax cuts proves it does.

Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial about the impact of President Trump’s Tax Cuts.

The editorial states:

The latest monthly budget report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office finds that revenues from federal income taxes were $76 billion higher in the first half of this year, compared with the first half of 2017. That’s a 9% jump, even though the lower income tax withholding schedules went into effect in February.

The CBO says the gain “largely reflects increases in wages and salaries.”

For the fiscal year as a whole — which started last October — all federal revenues are up by $31 billion. That’s a 1.2% in increase over last year, the CBO says.

The Treasury Department, which issues a separate monthly report, says it expects federal revenues will continue to exceed last year’s for the rest of the 2018 fiscal year.

The editorial concludes:

As we have said many times in this space, the problem the country faces isn’t that taxes are too low, but that spending is too high. The CBO projects that even with the Trump tax cuts in place, taxes as a share of GDP will steadily rise over the next decade, and will be higher than the post-World War II average.

But bringing in more tax revenues doesn’t help if spending goes up even faster. And that has, unfortunately, been the case, as the GOP-controlled Congress has gone on a spending spree.

Look at it this way. Tax revenues are up by $31 billion so far this fiscal year compared with last year. But spending is up $115 billion.

In other words, the entire increase in the deficit so far this year has been due to spending hikes, not tax cuts.

There are too many Republicans in Congress who don’t understand why the American voters sent them there. The Democrats have always loved to spend other people’s money, but the Republicans were supposed to be the alternative to that. Unfortunately, many Republicans have failed the voters. The only way to fix Washington is to unelect every Congressman who votes for spending increases. Otherwise the spending will only get worse.