Positions Change When You Run For President

Kamala Harris is running for President. She has taken a number of stands on the issues, but some of these stands are in conflict with previous stands and actions. I guess things change when you run for President.

On Tuesday The Washington Examiner posted an article about one area where Kamala Harris has changed her views.

The article reports:

Presidential wannabee and Sen. Kamala Harris, who spent decades as a district attorney and California attorney general destroying the lives of sex workers, has officially come out in support of decriminalizing sex work.

In an interview with The Root, which includes a haphazard endorsement of reparations, Harris confirmed that “when we’re talking about consenting adults,” she endorses decriminalizing sex work.

It’s called the world’s oldest profession for a reason, and the overwhelming empirical evidence continues to demonstrate that in the absence of a legal and regulated arena for prostitution, an exploitative black market emerges. Decriminalizing, taxing, and regulating sex work seems like an obvious compromise that both the Left and libertarian-leaning conservatives would agree upon. But if you spend longer than half a second delving through Harris’ checkered past, you’d realize that she’s not a part of that coalition, and she never has been.

In 2008 as San Francisco district attorney, Harris excoriated Prop K, a ballot measure which would have ceased the enforcement of anti-prostitution laws and defunded the city’s anti-prostitution programs.

I honestly do not know enough about this issue to take a stand on it. However, I suspect that as a District Attorney, Kamala Harris saw the issue up close and made a decision based on what she saw. My question is, “Why would she change that decision?”

Revising The Numbers

Economists seems to have a problem lately correctly predicting economic growth. They always seem a bit surprised when the numbers come in higher than what they predicted. Well, it has happened again.

The Gateway Pundit is reporting the following today:

The fourth quarter GDP number was released on Thursday and beat expectations at 2.6%Economists expected a 2.2% GDP rate.

CNBC says the GDP report was only preliminary, it would mean average growth for the year was 3.1 percent.

...Ronald Reagan brought forth an annual real GDP growth of 3.5% . Barack Obama, with his abysmal policies, was lucky to average a GDP growth rate of slightly greater than 1%.

Obama ranked as the fourth worst presidency on record in GDP growth at 1.457% . Only Herbert Hoover (-5.65% ), Andrew Johnson (-0.70% ) and Theodore Roosevelt (1.41% ) had lower average annual GDP growth than Barack Obama.

The Commerce Department announced in the first quarter of 2016 that the US economy expanded at the slowest pace in two years with a GDP growth rate of an anemic 0.5% . The second quarter GDP growth rate was not much better at 1.2% . (The 3rd quarter GDP rate was not yet announced by the time we drafted our post before the 2016 election.)

…Barack Obama was the first President ever to never surpass an annual rate of 3% GDP growth!  This resulted in Obama being rated the worst economic President ever!

Obama’s Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecast in 2016 that America would never see 3.0% economic growth again. They had given up and Hillary was their candidate.

President Trump did win the election in 2016 and his Director of the White House National Economic Council Larry Kudlow said in early December that the U.S. economy is growing at a rate greater than 3% –

This is good news for people in the job market and people entering the job market. Jobs are becoming more plentiful and salaries are rising.

Reykjavik Revisited

All Americans were hoping something good would come out of the meetings between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. It was understood that China was holding a leash on Kim Jong Un and that he was very limited in what he could agree to, but we hoped. Holding the summit in North Vietnam was a stoke of genius–the message it sent was ‘your country can have this kind of prosperity if you behave well.’ Unfortunately the talks ended without an end to North Korea’s nuclear policy and with no relief in sight for the starving, abused people of North Korea.

Fox News posted an article about the talks.

The article reports:

President Trump abruptly walked away from negotiations with North Korea in Vietnam and headed back to Washington on Thursday afternoon, saying the U.S. is unwilling to meet Kim Jong Un’s demand of lifting all sanctions on the rogue regime without first securing its meaningful commitment to denuclearization.

Trump, speaking in Hanoi, Vietnam, told reporters he had asked Kim to do more regarding his intentions to denuclearize, and “he was unprepared to do that.”

“Sometimes you have to walk,” Trump said at a solo press conference following the summit.

Trump specifically said negotiations fell through after the North demanded a full removal of U.S.-led international sanctions in exchange for the shuttering of the North’s Yongbyon nuclear facility. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters that the United States wasn’t willing to make a deal without the North committing to giving up its secretive nuclear facilities outside Yongbyon, as well as its missile and warheads program.

Removing sanctions without denuclearization would have been reminiscent of the Iran deal, which did not go well. Walking away was reminiscent of Reykjavik, which actually went very well (although it did not appear to go well at the time).

Let’s take a look at Reykjavik for a moment. Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and American President Ronald Reagan met in Reykjavik on October 11 and 12, 1986. The purpose of the meeting was to explore the possibility of limiting each country’s strategic nuclear weapons to create momentum in ongoing arms-control negotiations. The two leaders failed to come to an agreement because President Reagan insisted on America having the freedom to develop the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, mockingly known as ‘Star Wars’). SDI was still in the infant stages of its development at that point, but President Reagan wanted the freedom to develop it (and was willing to share the technology with Russia in order to create a situation where nuclear weapons owned by rogue nation states would be useless). Gorbachev refused to allow America to develop SDI, and President Reagan left the summit. The Soviet Union officially dissolved on December 26, 1991. The strong stand taken by President Reagan against the Soviet Union played a part in the end of the Soviet Union.

Hopefully the strong stand taken regarding North Korea’s nuclear program will also result in the dissolution of the tyrannical government currently in control of that country.

The Insanity Continues

The National Review is reporting today that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will support a bill that would approve a commission to study the possibility of paying reparations to the descendants of American slaves. What about the descendants of the soldiers who fought to free the slaves?

The article reports:

“As you probably are aware, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee has legislation to study this issue, and I support that,” the California Democrat told reporters. “One of the things that we can do not only just in terms of trying to make up for a horrible, sinful thing that happened in our country in terms of slavery, but for our country to live up to who we think we are.”

Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas, reintroduced the resolution last year. It currently has modest support in the House, with 35 cosponsors, and Pelosi’s support comes amid renewed public discussion of the idea. But the speaker said that there are other policies that could make a more immediate impact on African-American lives.

“We have to reduce the disparity in income in our country. We have to reduce the disparity in access to education in an affordable way in our country, reduce the health disparities in our country,” she said. “So while we’re studying how we deal with the reparations issue, there’s plenty we can do to improve the quality of life of many people in our country.”

Several of the top candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, including Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, said last week that they support some sort of reparations. The policy has historically not enjoyed majority support within the Democratic party, and both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama previously declined to support it.

I suspect that supporting a commission is a way to prevent the idea from going anywhere before the rational Democrats (assuming there are some) come to their senses and realize that this is not going to win votes from American voters.

In Case You Had Any Doubts As To What Is Actually Going On

Breitbart is reporting today that Michael Cohen has admitted that he discussed topics that might come up during his appearance before the House Oversight Committee with Adam Schiff. Keep in mind that Adam Schiff has been claiming for two years to have evidence that President Trump has colluded with Russia, but has somehow been unable to produce that evidence. When pressed, Representative Schiff stated that the information was out there and available to anyone who looked for it. Somehow we are all missing the evidence even though it is obvious. Representative Schiff is as shady as Michael Cohen.

The article reports:

As part of his testimony before House investigators Wednesday, Cohen claimed President Trump is a “racist,” a “con man,” and a “cheat,” and he regrets working for him.

Cohen said he acted to benefit his former boss and his campaign for president in 2016 out of “blind” loyalty which he now realizes was misplaced.

He also claimed to have witnessed an incident in 2016 when Donald Trump Jr. whispered something to then-candidate Trump about a meeting — which Cohen retroactively believes was in reference to the infamous Trump Tower meeting where the eldest Trump son met with Russian nationals. The former lawyer said he does not have hard evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia.

If President Trump was so horrible, why did Michael Cohen work for him for ten years? I sincerely hope this clown show backfires on those who orchestrated it. When Congress interviews someone who has already been convicted of lying to Congress, it is not the best look for America. Also, whatever happened to attorney-client privilege.

Be Careful When Getting Excited About An Upcoming Trip

Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about a recent controversy in the knitting community. I am posting most of the article because I am not sure anyone could explain this as well as Mr. Hinderaker.

The article reports:

It begins with a young (white) knitter who expressed enthusiasm about an upcoming trip to India on social media:

On January 7, she blogged excitedly about her upcoming trip to India. She wrote that 2019 would be her “year of color.” She said that as a child, India had fascinated her, and that when an Indian friend’s parents offered to take her with them on a trip, it was “like being offered a seat on a flight to Mars.” She spoke of her trip as if it were the biggest hurdle anyone could jump: “If I can go to India, I can do anything — I’m pretty sure.” Templer, it should be noted, is white.

As someone who is mixed-race Indian, to me, her post (though seemingly well-meaning) was like bingo for every conversation a white person has ever had with me about their “fascination” with my dad’s home country; it was just so colorful and complex and inspiring. It’s not that they were wrong, per se, just that the tone felt like they thought India only existed to be all those things for them.

Following a major controversy in the online knitting community, the offender offered a Maoist apology:

Templer has since apologized for her post, writing, “It took women of color pointing this out for me to see it … which is not their responsibility, and I am thankful to them for taking the time,” and that she’d be continuing to raise visibility of people of color (and specifically black/indigenous POC) knitters and their work.”

The article concludes:

Social media also makes pointing out racism easier than ever. For weeks, POC knitters have used Instagram, and specifically Instagram stories, to share their observations, tag other knitters, and conduct polls about others’ experiences with racism in the community. Hundreds of people of color have shared stories of being ignored in knitting stores, having white knitters assume they were poor or complete amateurs, or flat-out saying they didn’t think black or Asian people knit.

There is much more–“whitewashing,” for example. If lefties can turn knitting into a hotbed of racism, what can’t they do?

Wow. Not even knitters are safe from racism.

Actions Have Consequences

I am not a doctor, and I raised children before the controversy over vaccines began. I had my children vaccinated because it was what their pediatrician recommended. At the time that was pretty standard. Times have changed, and I am not sure what the right answer is, but at some point it seems that common sense should play a role.

The Hill is reporting today that state lawmakers are considering eliminating the vaccine  exemptions that have been granted to parents. The reason is the recent outbreaks of measles.

The article reports:

But the most recent measles outbreaks, which have infected 159 mostly unvaccinated people in 10 states, is leading some states to reconsider.

“That goes beyond religious freedom,” said Burke.

Every state requires that students be vaccinated to enroll in school, and all states allow exemptions for children who are too sick to receive vaccines or who have a weakened immune system.

Most states also allow exemptions for religious reasons, and 17 states, including Washington and Texas, allow exemptions for both religious and personal or philosophical beliefs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Both Washington and Texas have seen measles outbreaks this year.

Lawmakers in Iowa, New Jersey and Vermont, which already ban personal or philosophical exemptions, are now debating proposals to eliminate religious exemptions.

I am concerned that if these exemptions are eliminated, exemptions for more controversial vaccines will also be eliminated. I am also concerned that smallpox vaccines are no longer given to American children because the disease is said to have been eradicated in America. Unfortunately, a person recently stopped while attempting to enter America illegally was diagnosed with smallpox. I would like to think that he was the only person with the disease attempting to enter America, but I am not sure that is realistic.

The article concludes:

Outbreaks can occur in communities where there is not a high enough percentage of people who are vaccinated.

Described as “herd immunity” by public health experts, at least 94 percent of a community must be vaccinated against measles to prevent the disease from spreading.

Herd immunity protects those with weakened immune systems, babies who can’t be vaccinated or those who are too sick to receive vaccinations.

But as more and more parents claim vaccine exemptions, experts say, the disease is more likely to spread.

And federal officials have indicated the government might step in if state legislatures don’t.

“Some states are engaging in such wide exemptions that they’re creating the opportunity for outbreaks on a scale that is going to have national implications,” Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CNN last week.

If “certain states continue down the path that they’re on, I think they’re going to force the hand of the federal health agencies.”

Health committees in the House and Senate are set to hold hearings on the measles outbreaks this month.

It will be interesting to watch the hearings. Good arguments can be made on both sides of this issue.

The Power Of Energy Independence

America is now energy independent. We now export oil and natural gas. This gives us some degree of leverage against what used to be the monopoly held by OPEC (The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). Yesterday Townhall posted an article that illustrates the influence America now wields because of its energy independence.

The article reports:

In the midst of the oil price spike scare, President Donald Trump warned the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Monday to “take it easy” on raising the price of oil.

This is the tweet:

So what were the consequences of this tweet?

The article reports:

Since this morning, the price of crude oil dropped by more than a dollar per barrel in just an hour. Bloomberg reported today that New York saw a 2.7 percent decrease in oil prices, which is the lowest drop in two weeks.

“Analysts attributed the price rise to improving trade talks between the U.S. and China, unrest in Nigeria and Venezuela, Libya’s refusal to restart production in the El Sharara oil field and continued efforts to curtail supplies by OPEC and Russia,” according to The Daily Caller.

When you don’t have to depend on OPEC for oil to keep your economy going, you have much more power to negotiate oil prices.

What Does This Say About Our Values?

I am strongly pro-life. I believe that the only time an abortion should be performed is when the pregnancy presents a physical threat to the mother. Those instances are rare and could easily be dealt with in a hospital. Those instances would also not result in a multi-million-dollar abortion industry.

Yesterday The Washington Examiner reported that the Democrats had blocked a vote on a bill called the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (S.311). Because of Senate rules, a bill needs 60 votes in order to be brought to the floor to be voted on (that is based on the idea of a filibuster except people no longer stand up and talk for hours). Republican Ben Sasse wanted a vote on S.311, but there were only 53 Senators in favor of voting for the measure (translated loosely that means that there were only 53 Senators willing to go on the record on treating infants who survive abortions). The bill was not perfect. There were some things I would have been very uncomfortable with–I don’t like the idea of doctors being sued or arrested for actions taken in the operating room. However, it seems strange to me that people would be more likely to help a puppy found on the side of the road than a baby who survived and abortion attempt. Most Republicans voted for a vote on the bill. A few Democrats voted for a vote.

In view of recent statements by the Governor of Virginia and the Governor of New York on abortion, some form of this bill is probably necessary. I hope we will see some form of the bill pass in the future. However, it is a sad commentary on our society that a stranded puppy would be more likely to receive care than an aborted baby.

Natural Consequences Of Stupid Policies

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about a recent high school girls’ track meet in Connecticut.

The article reports:

High school juniors Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood took first and second place in the state open indoor track championships Feb. 16, The Associated Press noted in a report Sunday. Both Miller and Yearwood are biological males who identify as transgender girls.

One of their competitors, high school junior Selina Soule, told the AP it was unfair to force female runners to compete against male runners.

“We all know the outcome of the race before it even starts; it’s demoralizing,” said Soule. “I fully support and am happy for these athletes for being true to themselves. They should have the right to express themselves in school, but athletics have always had extra rules to keep the competition fair.”

Miller is the third-faster runner in the country in the girls’ 55-meter dash. Yearwood is close behind, tied for seventh nationally.

Along with the transgender movement is the idiotic idea that there is no difference between boys and girls. As unfortunate as what is happening in high school sports because of the transgender movement, the results of the various athletic contests illustrate the fact that boys are different than girls. Any woman who has gone on a diet with her husband could have told you that–she eats salads and green things and loses two pounds–he has steak and beer and loses ten pounds. We are made differently. It has to do with muscle mass and hormones. Selina Soule is right–it is unfair to force female runners to compete against male runners.

Hopefully the women who have had to put up with competing against men claiming to be women will learn from this experience. Men and women are different and need to be reminded to rejoice in their differences. I understand that there are some people who are confused about their gender, but what is happening now is the result of making something that is the exception rather than the rule fashionable. Hopefully the young people who are caught up in this current transgender fad will come to their senses before they do something irreversible.

Did They Plan On A Backlash?

Townhall posted an article today about the consequences of the recent trend in some states to make abortion more available. The idea of aborting babies right up until birth has created a backlash resulting in growth in the pro-life movement.

The article reports:

A recent Marist poll commissioned by the Knights of Columbus shows a significant increase just over the past month in the number of Americans who identify as “pro-life.”

The survey found that Americans are now just as likely to identify as “pro-life” (47 percent) as “pro-choice” (47 percent). This is a large increase from a similar survey last month, when another Marist Poll found Americans “more likely to identify as pro-choice than as pro-life by 17 percentage points (55 to 38 percent).”

The poll marks the first time since 2009 that the same amount of Americans identified as “pro-life” as “pro-choice.”

The increase in pro-life identification occurred among Americans under the age of 45 and among Democrats.

The article continues:

Another key finding by Marist was that 80 percent of Americans supported limiting abortion to the first three months of pregnancy, a 5 percent increase in that view since last month’s poll.

“Current proposals that promote late-term abortion have reset the landscape and language on abortion in a pronounced – and very measurable – way,” Carvalho emphasized.

“Arguments in favor of late-term abortion are simply not convincing the American people,” Knights of Columbus CEO Carl Anderson remarked on the findings. “If anything, since these proposals have been unveiled, people are moving noticeably in the pro-life direction. It is now clear that these radical policies are being pursued despite the opposition of the majority of Americans of both parties.”

This trend is going to force Democrat candidates to choose between campaign money from Planned Parenthood PAC’s and actual voters. We should see that choice being made during the next year. Watch for members of Congress who realize the significance of these poll numbers to begin to distance themselves from the extreme position on abortion expressed in the New York law and attempted by the Virginia legislature. Other states are following suit on liberal election laws. It will be interesting to see how these new laws impact the election of state governors and legislators.

The Real Numbers

On Friday The Daily Signal posted an article about the consequences of winding down ObamaCare. It seems that the press and the Congressional Budget Office lied to Americans about the consequences of repealing ObamaCare.

The article reports:

According to a report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office wildly overestimated the number of people who would lose their health insurance with the repeal of the individual mandate penalty.

Initial estimates from the Congressional Budget Office said 14 million would drop off their health insurance coverage due to the elimination of the individual mandate. Then, during the height of the 2017 debate over repeal, progressives touted a leaked number from the Congressional Budget Office claiming that 22 million people would “lose” their insurance if Congress repealed the law.

However, as health care analyst Avik Roy pointed out, what made this number so high was the inflated number of people expected to lose their insurance due to repeal of the mandate—about 73 percent to be exact. So, it wouldn’t be 22 million Americans losing their insurance. Most of those in the projection would simply be choosing to opt out of insurance.

And it turns out even that wasn’t true. A far smaller number of Americans appear to be opting out of insurance since the individual mandate’s repeal. Only 2.5 million more people are expected to go without insurance in 2019 due to its repeal, according to the latest report, and that number is expected to decline in the years ahead.

Putting the government in charge of healthcare is always a bad idea. Economist Milton Friedman once stated, “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.” The government is not responsible for providing healthcare to anyone. Charitable hospitals and charitable organizations are welcome to take on that responsibility, but government healthcare is nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution.

The article further states:

Doug Badger, a visiting fellow in domestic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal that Congressional Budget Office analysis has been a chronic problem.

“When it comes to the individual mandate, CBO has never let the facts affect their wildly inaccurate estimates. CBO continued to forecast that millions of insured Americans would suddenly become uninsured if the mandate were repealed,” Badger wrote in an email to The Daily Signal. “CBO’s faulty estimates misled the public into believing that repealing Obamacare would lead to a vast increase in the number of uninsured. Bad estimates produced bad policy.”

Many conservatives are fed up with the deference shown to the agency, given it’s poor track record and track of transparency. Reps. Mark Walker, R-N.C., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, suggested in 2017 that it’s time to stop “blindly” following the agency’s predictions.

“The value of having outside experts review legislation cannot be understated,” they wrote for the Washington Examiner. “But continuing to hinge congressional actions on the projections of an agency that has proven to be so consistently wrong does a disservice to not only members trying to represent their constituents, it primarily does a disservice to the public.”

I wrote in 2017 that perhaps we should be more skeptical toward the findings of independent agencies like the Congressional Budget Office. It seems those doubts were valid.

People based their votes on the information they were given. It is a shame that a government agency provided inaccurate information.

The Problem With Global Warming

Power Line Blog is one of my favorite blogs. Wikipedia describes it as follows:

Power Line is an American political blog, founded in May 2002. Its posts were originally written by three lawyers who attended Dartmouth College together: John H. Hinderaker, Scott W. Johnson, and Paul Mirengoff. The site is published by Publir, founded by Joseph Malchow, also a Dartmouth graduate.

The site gained recognition among the American right for its role in covering the Killian documents story that aired during the 2004 Presidential campaign about forged documents relating to President George W. Bush’s term of service in the Texas Air National Guard, which kept him out of the Vietnam war.

In 2004, Power Line was named Time magazine‘s first-ever “Blog of the Year.”[ When AOL added blogs to their news website in 2007, Power Line was one of the five blogs included. A 2007 memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee described Power Line as one of the five best-read national conservative blogs.

The major writers for Power Line Blog are Steven F. Hayward, John H. Hinderaker, Scott W. Johnson, and Paul Mirengoff. Susan Vass, writing under the name “Ammo Grrrll,” contributes a humor column to the site each Friday. John Hinderaker lives in Minnesota and has written extensively about the new Congresswomen from Minnesota.

Yesterday John Hinderaker posted an article about the current weather in Minnesota.

The article reports:

I wrote here about the epic winter we are having in Minnesota, hard on the heels of “expert” testimony in Minnesota’s legislature to the effect that we don’t get much snow anymore because of global warming–false, snowfall has been increasing, not decreasing–and temperatures in Duluth are no longer expected to dip below 10 degrees. Less than two weeks after that testimony was given, the winter turned brutal and the temperature in Duluth fell to 25 below zero. The Al Gore Effect lives!

Meanwhile, here in the Twin Cities, the snow continued to fall. We have already smashed the record for snowfall in February by six or seven inches, and as I type this, there is a blizzard warning in effect for tonight. This was the view out my bedroom window this morning; some of these icicles are more than six feet long:

The article concludes:

Memo to the alarmists who warned us that children will grow up, no longer experiencing snow: not to worry.

Of course, all of this is just “weather,” as the alarmists tell us. But climate is experienced as weather, and the alarmists have made countless predictions about weather, pretty much all of which have turned out to be false. A model that generates false predictions has the same value as a losing lottery ticket. So I guess we should be happy that a blizzard is on the way.

I guess the people in Minnesota would welcome global warming.

Women’s Health Is Improving–The Causes

The Washington Examiner posted an article today with the following headline: “Women’s health has improved over the last century, and Planned Parenthood had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

The article lists the scientific and cultural changes that impact the health of women:

1. Mammography–note–not a single Planned Parenthood facility offers mammography to patients.

2. Breastfeeding–the article states:

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services cites breastfeeding as a benefit to infants, and to mothers, where women who breastfeed are “less likely to develop type 2 diabetes, breast and ovarian cancer, and postpartum depression.”

On Planned Parenthood’s website, the only note on breastfeeding is buried deep in the “birth control” page, where the only emphasized benefit of the practice is its natural tendency to wane with ovulation. It boasts how “you can’t get pregnant if you don’t ovulate.”

3. Smoking (In 1985 28 percent of women smoked; in 2012 the number had dropped to 16 percent. Obviously quitting smoking improves a woman’s health.)

4. Mental health–the article states:

A recent survey on abortion and mental health risks found that “women seeking abortions may be at higher risk of prior mental health disorders,” and it recommended that abortion care settings should be an intervention point for mental health screening. Because there is little to no access to behavioral healthcare at Planned Parenthood, many of the company’s patients may go untreated for their mental health needs.

5. Sexually transmitted diseases–the article states:

Last year’s Center for Disease Control STD report revealed a sharp increase in STD infections for the fourth year in a row, with gonorrhea cases increasing 67 percent between 2013 and 2017 and syphilis increasing 76 percent over those four years. Chlamydia, which was virtually nonexistent in the 1980s, is now a common condition. The National Coalition of STD Directors’ David Harvey noted that the U.S. has “the highest STD rates in the industrialized world.”

After the CDC report was released, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, Dr. Gillian Dean, blamed a lack of sex education as the reason STD rates were rising and applauded her organization as “the nation’s largest provider of sex education and one of the nation’s leading HIV testing providers.”

But here’s the thing: The states with the most Planned Parenthood clinics disproportionately suffered the largest increases in STDs.

California, for instance, with the most Planned Parenthood Clinics per capita of any state, saw a record rise in STDs and a spike in the number of stillbirths caused by syphilis for the third year in a row. California also mandates sex education in schools, which was incidentally signed into law nearly four years ago, when this alarming trend began.

6. Abortion and Maternity–the article states:

Planned Parenthood is notorious for its focus on abortion services as the crown jewel of the organization. The company continues to claim that abortions are only about 3 percent of its services, even though the Washington Post debunked that claim.

…An organization that boasts its “100 years of women’s healthcare” history but does not support vital protections, like a 20-week cutoff for abortion or the requirement that they be done by qualified doctor who graduated medical school, leaves women vulnerable to unsafe, low-quality, and high-risk healthcare.

The article concludes:

Planned Parenthood has yet to make a mark on women’s healthcare for anything other than promoting various controversial birth control methods and performing abortions. Looking back at the company’s history in the last 100 years, it’s clear that the U.S. government and its various women’s health initiatives in the last few decades have done far more than Planned Parenthood in its entire century of existence.

For Planned Parenthood to think it can claim the topic of women’s healthcare as its own is laughable, especially for an organization which has arguably done the most to hurt women in the last 100 years with its subpar, bare-bones medical offerings — abortion being at the very top of the list.

Abortion is a million-dollar business, and unfortunately a lot of that money is funneled into political campaigns through PAC’s. Political candidates like campaign money, and many candidates have no problem with taking money from people who kill unborn babies and sell aborted baby body parts. That is extremely sad.

How Much Did This Cost The Taxpayers?

The Daily Wire posted an article today about the final required filing on Friday by Robert Mueller on the Paul Manafort case.

The article reports:

Mueller and his team made their final required filing in Manafort’s case late Friday, submitting a “government sentencing memorandum” to the United States District Court in Washington, D.C., justifying their request for a harsh, 17-year prison sentence against Manafort.

In it, the government argues that Manafort “chose repeatedly and knowingly to violate the law— whether the laws proscribed garden-variety crimes such as tax fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and bank fraud, or more esoteric laws that he nevertheless was intimately familiar with, such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),” both before and after he was under scrutiny by the Special Counsel.

Manafort’s portfolio of crimes include incidents going back more than a decade to 2005, to when Manafort was a lobbying the federal government on issues involving Russia and Ukraine. They run all the way up to last year, when Manafort was discovered to have engaged in witness tampering, even after he was indicted on tax fraud charges.

But what the government sentencing document — and Manafort’s apparent list of transgressions — doesn’t include is evidence of actual collusion with Russia during the course of the Trump for President campaign, the actual focus of Mueller’s investigation. Instead, the filing simply says that Manafort committed some of his crimes while under the “spotlight” of the campaign.

The filing is 25 pages long and barely mentions President Trump’s campaign. Collusion between candidate Trump and the Russian government is never mentioned.

The article concludes:

One item does seem to be from the correct era — an instance of “false statements to the Department of Justice” in late 2016, just before the presidential election — but those statements appear, based on the filing, to relate to Mueller’s (and before him, the Justice Department’s) investigation of his work with Ukraine. Instead of lying about something new, it seems Manafort was still covering for actions he took years earlier.

Mueller’s report is expected in early March, but so far, it seems, may have little in the way of evidence that the Trump campaign is guilty of collusion, as a number of Democrats desire.

Keep in mind that eight years ago Paul Manafort was investigated (and cleared) of most of the charges currently against him. The prosecutor that led the exoneration was Rod Rosenstein. Paul Manafort may not be as pure as the driven snow, but I strongly suspect the charges against him have more to do with the “insurance policy” discussed by the FBI than any actual crimes.

Attacked For Doing His Job

A smart police force keeps track of groups coming into town to hold rallies or protests. I am sure that any time the Tea Party or Antifa holds a rally in a city, the police are aware of the gathering and keep close tabs on it. That is their job. However, some of the residents of Portland, Oregon, seem to be unaware of the procedures involved in policing rallies.

Yesterday Hot Air posted an article about some recent events in Portland.

The article reports:

Last week a Portland police lieutenant named Jeff Niiya was accused of colluding with right-wing protest group Patriot Prayer after a string of his texts were released to the public. Lt. Niiya’s job is to coordinate with protest groups coming to the city and the texts show him doing just that, i.e. chatting with Patriot Prayer’s Joey Gibson about the group’s intentions and planned movements. As I noted last week, Lt. Niiya has previously been in close contact with a member of Antifa who became an outcast when other members of the group learned she’d be talking with police.

…Despite the fact that it was the Mayor’s own office requesting the information Lt. Niiya was gathering on Patriot Prayer, the investigation prompted by Niiya’s texts remains ongoing. As part of that process, Police Chief Outlaw scheduled a listening session to hear the community’s concerns Thursday night. Reporter Andy Ngo, who attended the meeting, says it quickly became a “sh*tshow” and a “circus of identity politics and hysteria.”

Some attendees at the listening session called for the Portland police to be disbanded. This sort of foolishness in Portland is not all that unusual.

The article concludes:

It’s not hard to imagine why Antifa anarchists like the idea of a city without a police force. That’s pretty much what they got last August when Mayor Ted Wheeler allowed an Occupy ICE camp full of vile extremists to grow and fester. Protestesters became so violent that ICE officers called 911 for help but Mayor Wheeler ordered the police not to respond. When the same mob turned on a woman running a food cart and burned it down, the police never responded. In the end, it was Police Chief Danielle Outlaw who demanded the Mayor allow her to clear out the camp. Naturally, the protesters left behind loads of garbage for the city to clean up.

At this point, Chief Outlaw seems to be one of the few city officials with any sense. Hopefully, she won’t buckle under the pressure from extremists to condemn Lt. Niiya.

This would be comical if it were not so serious.

A New Dimension Of Twisted Logic

Channel 25 in Boston reported yesterday that Rosiane Santos, 41, of Falmouth, Massachusetts, was arrested last Friday at a Mexican restaurant in Falmouth for assaulting a man because he was wearing a “Make America Great Again” Hat. The man involved, 23-year-old Bryton Turner of Mashpee, was smart enough to record the incident on his cell phone when she began verbally attacking him. The verbal attacks were followed by knocking the hat of off his head multiple times.

The most interesting part of this is found in the concluding paragraphs of the article:

As Falmouth police officers were escorting Santos out of the restaurant, Macarao (bartender Geo Macarao) said she took another swipe at Turner.

“I couldn’t imagine somebody just coming up and hitting them when there’s cops right here,” Macarao said.

“She just tried to grab my hat in front of four officers, not smart,” Turner said.

Santos, a Brazilian immigrant, said while she regrets her actions, she claims she was provoked.

“I had a little bit to drink maybe that’s the reason that I couldn’t walk away but being discriminated for so many times in my life, I just had to stand up for myself,” she said. “He’s not a victim. I am the victim. I have been bullied, OK?”

So let’s look at the logic here for a minute. It was okay for her to assault someone because she had a little too much to drink, she had been bullied in her life, and she had to stand up for herself. How was assaulting a man who simply entered a restaurant to pick up his food standing up for herself?

I think it is time to take a serious look at the attacks on Trump supporters and give the attackers the severest penalties possible. These attacks are not the earmark of a civilized society. President Trump is not responsible for these attacks–the attackers are responsible for these attacks. In November 2016, The Daily Caller posted a list of substantiated attacks on Trump supporters at that time. There have been many more since them. Again, President Trump is not responsible for these attacks–the attackers are. That is something we all need to remember.

 

Sometimes Getting Things Done Takes Time

The Daily Caller is reporting the following today: “Late-Night Deal Breaks Deadlock Over Natural Gas Exports. The Trump Administration Is Ecstatic.” Natural gas is one of the cleanest energy sources in the world. America has a lot of it. Exporting it will have financial and diplomatic rewards.

The article reports:

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) broke a two-year partisan deadlock Thursday night to approve a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Louisiana.

Top Department of Energy (DOE) officials said this was a major breakthrough that will alleviate a growing problem for U.S. energy producers — a lack of export infrastructure.

“We have been promoting US energy around the world and today’s decision by the FERC is a very important one,” DOE Deputy Secretary Dan Brouillette told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.

The Calcasieu Pass LNG export terminal is the first such project to get FERC approval in two years. Republican FERC commissioners Neil Chatterjee, the chairman, and Bernard McNamee worked with Democrat Cheryl LaFleur to hash out an agreement to get her support.

The article concludes:

FERC’s other Democratic commissioner Richard Glick opposed the terminal, arguing his colleagues were “deliberately ignoring the consequences that its actions have for climate change.”

The commission’s environmental review of Calcasieu Pass found the facility would emit roughly 3.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year — about 0.07 percent of total U.S. emissions.

Brouillette argued that while an individual LNG export terminal would emit greenhouse gases, it would help lower global emissions because countries want gas as an alternative to coal.

“To the extent that LNG is displacing coal around the world, we think the impact is going to be positive,” Brouillette said.

Brouillette also stressed the geopolitical implications of LNG exports and the role energy could play in President Donald Trump’s foreign policy.

“These are decisions that impact the President’s ability to make foreign policy decisions,” Brouillette told TheDCNF. “We get to assist Poland, we get to assist Lithuania, we get to assist the Baltic states.”

Energy independence for America is important, but it is also important to be able to export energy around the world when countries such as Russia threaten to shut down their energy pipelines in order the win political victories.

Israel Is Going To The Moon

CBS News reported yesterday that on Thursday night Israel launched a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral. The rocket launched an Indonesian communications satellite into orbit and carried a small Israeli spaceship that is scheduled to land on the moon in April. The mission is privately-funded.

The article reports:

If successful, the $100 million mission will put Israel in an exclusive club, joining the United States, the Soviet Union/Russia and China as only the fourth nation in space history to pull off a powered landing on the moon.

“This is going to be the first private interplanetary mission that’s going to go to the moon. This is a big milestone,” said Yonatan Winetraub, co-founder of SpaceIL, the non-profit that is promoting the mission to boost STEM education initiatives across Israel.

“This is going to be the first time that it’s not going to be a superpower that’s going to go to the moon. This is a huge step for Israel.”

The article describes the Israeli spaceship and its mission:

Landing on the moon’s Mare Serenitatis is targeted for April 11. During the final descent to the surface, a magnetometer will measure the local magnetic field before the main engine shuts down at an altitude of about 16 feet. From there, the spacecraft will free fall to the surface.

Beresheet is equipped with a high-resolution camera to capture panoramic views of the landing site to help scientists better understand the area. The spacecraft also carries a small “time capsule” loaded with cultural artifacts, including a copy of the Bible engraved on a coin-size disk.

“We have a vision to show off Israel’s best qualities to the entire world,” said Sylvan Adams, a Canadian-Israeli businessman and philanthropist who contributed to the SpaceIL project and is an enthusiastic, if unofficial, “ambassador.”

Payloads aside, the Falcon 9 launching was of vital importance to NASA, helping clear the way for the March 2 launch of a SpaceX Crew Dragon astronaut ferry ship on an unpiloted test flight to the International Space Station. NASA plans to hold a flight readiness review Friday.

Space exploration is moving to the private sector.

Some Interesting Legal Aspects Of The Isis Bride Who Wants To Come To America

Andrew McCarthy posted an article at National Review yesterday about Hoda Muthana, currently detained in a refugee camp in Syria, who wants to come home to America.

The article reports:

Now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced that Muthana will not be allowed to reenter the U.S. because she is not an American citizen: While born in America, she was the daughter of a diplomat and thus not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. As the secretary put it in his statement, “Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States. She does not have any legal basis, no valid U.S. passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the United States.”

This conclusion is disputed by Muthana’s family and allies, and they may have a case. I would strongly urge the Justice Department to file an indictment against Muthana for treason, material support to terrorism, and any other readily provable offenses. She is less likely to press the issues of citizenship and right to enter if she understands that she faces prosecution and, very likely, lengthy imprisonment if she succeeds in coming here.

But it’s worth taking a closer look at the citizenship question itself. To my mind, the concept of citizenship implies not just the benefits of being a full-fledged member of the body politic, but also a duty of fealty to the nation. In a rational world, then, a citizen who made war against the United States would be stripped of citizenship.

Ms. Muthana left America to join ISIS, a group that was (and is) at war with America. If she claims to be a citizen, she should be charged with treason.

The article concludes:

Again: If the president and the secretary do not want Muthana to try to come back to the United States, the best strategy is to have the Justice Department indict her on serious felony charges. She may seek another alternative if she knows the risk of coming back here is decades of imprisonment. Of course, Muthana may decide to come anyway. After all, (a) she might see life in an American prison as better than her other alternatives, and (b) if she is an American citizen, there is a good argument that her young son is a citizen, too — he’d have a more promising chance of survival and a decent life here than in Syria (or wherever else in that godforsaken region they could end up).

In any event, the State Department has made its decision. Now it is up to Muthana’s supporters to establish her citizenship if they can, and for the Trump administration to indict her if it chooses.

The Never Ending Story

Newsbusters posted an article today about the upcoming end to the Mueller investigation. The investigation is beginning to resemble the story of the man searching for his car keys on the opposite side of the street from where he dropped them because the light is better there. But that hasn’t slowed the mainstream media down a bit.

The article reports:

After news broke that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would be delivering his final Russia investigation report to Attorney General William Barr in the coming days, on Thursday, NBC’s Today show and CBS This Morning promised viewers that the investigation would continue regardless of Mueller’s findings.

Touting how “Several government officials say Robert Mueller is close to wrapping up” during a report for the Today show, correspondent Peter Alexander finished the segment by assuring: “….many legal experts say just because Robert Mueller is winding down does not mean the investigating stops, with federal prosecutors in Manhattan and elsewhere expected to follow up on pieces of the investigation.”

The article details some of the dialog between the news reporters and then concludes:

Co-host Bianna Golodryga tried to salvage the segment by concluding: “But as we showed, six people who are close to the President have pleaded guilty throughout this investigation.”

Even before Mueller has completed his investigation, the media are already gearing up for other investigations into the President as they prepare for the possibility that Mueller may not find Trump guilty of anything.

It should be noted that the six people who have pleaded guilty have been charged with crimes that either have no connection to either President Trump or Russia or are process crimes charging people who did not remember accurately facts that were totally unrelated to any investigation of Trump-Russia collusion. Generally speaking this has been an investigation searching for a crime and charging people close to the President with anything that might cause them to invent a crime rather than go to jail. The past two years of the Mueller investigation have given us a lot of insight into how things work in a banana republic.

I Guess We Haven’t Entirely Cleaned Up The Internal Revenue Service

Bay City News posted an article today with the following headline: “IRS analyst charged with leaking Michael Cohen bank records.” What was leaked was a bank report of suspicious activity. IRS investigative analyst John Fry, 54, was charged in federal court in San Francisco on Feb. 4 with leaking information about Michael Cohen’s (formerly President Trump’s personal attorney) bank records. Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for adult film actress Stormy Daniels, posted those records online. An employee of the IRS has stated that Fry talked with Avenatti the day before the records were posted online.

The crime that John Fry is charged with carries a jail sentence of five years if he is committed.

It is time that all of the people in government who are using their positions for political purposes or personal gain were removed. If the IRS cannot clean up its act, it needs to be put out of business.

Recycling Bad Ideas

Hot Air posted an article today about Democrat Presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. Both candidates have stated that they would be in favor of reparations for black Americans.

The article reports:

Last week, Senator Kamala Harris of California agreed with a radio host’s recent suggestion that government reparations for black Americans were necessary to address the legacies of slavery and discrimination. Ms. Harris later affirmed that support in a statement to The Times…

Ms. Warren also said she supported reparations for black Americans impacted by slavery — a policy that experts say could cost several trillion dollars, and one that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and many top Democrats have not supported…

“We must confront the dark history of slavery and government-sanctioned discrimination in this country that has had many consequences, including undermining the ability of black families to build wealth in America for generations,” Ms. Warren told The Times. “We need systemic, structural changes to address that.”

I would like to suggest that this might not be a winning issue. The article notes that last year Rasmussen found 70 percent of Americans opposed to reparations for slavery.

How would reparations be a positive thing? The money would have to come from somewhere. The people who paid increased taxes to pay reparations would resent it. Also, what about people in families that were not here during slavery? Also, how would you prove that a black person had ancestors who were slaves? How about reparations for the soldiers who fought against slavery? How about reparations for the Native Americans for the way they were treated? How about reparations for the Japanese interred during World War II? How about reparations for the Irish indentured servants who were treated badly?

As you can see, this would be the beginning of a journey down a very slippery slope. How about we make sure that all people of every color are treated equally under the law and given equal opportunity? How about we work to change the culture in low income communities of all colors to encourage intact families, a culture of learning, and a strong work ethic? Encouraging those three things would do more to increase the wealth of poor black communities than all the reparations in the world ever could.