Tag Archives: george h w bush

Wait For The Boomerang

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The headlines are screaming today–“Paul Manafort Indicted.” Well, before the Democrats celebrate too loudly, they might want to take a look at the indictment.

The New York Post posted an article today listing the charges:

The indictment says Manafort and Gates worked as “unregistered agents” for Ukraine and the Party of Regions, a political party run by Yanukovych.

​They “generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of their Ukraine work” and hid the payments from US authorities, the indictment says.

From 2006 through 2016, Manafort and Gates laundered $75 million through “scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts,” it says.

The 31-page indictment does not mention Trump or the 2016 election.

There are a few things that need to be noted about the indictment of Paul Manafort. Wikipedia lists a few positions Paul Manafort held in the past. Between 1978 and 1980, Manafort was the southern coordinator for Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, and the deputy political director at the Republican National Committee. After Reagan’s election in November 1980, he was appointed Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office at the White House. Paul Manafort worked as an advisor to the presidential campaigns of George H.W. Bush in 1988 and Bob Dole in 1996. Manafort was someone used by the Republican establishment in the past, it is quite likely that establishment Republicans had something to do with Manafort being chosen to work on the Trump campaign. It is also important to note that Manafort was hired in March 2016 and fired in August 2016.

So what can we conclude from this? It is quite likely that Robert Mueller has indicted Manafort as an attempt to bring down President Trump. All Mueller has to do is promise leniency to Manafort if Manafort will blow the whistle on the President.

The fact that the special prosecutor indicted someone who worked on the Trump campaign for a matter of months on charges that were in no way connected to the campaign or Donald Trump is an indication that Mueller is not finding what he needs to find in order to go after President Trump. It is becoming very obvious that Mueller is conducting an extensive witch hunt that is only yielding shady characters not related to the President.

In a nutshell, if this is all Robert Mueller can come up with, he needs to go away. He is a very expensive distraction.

 

Deal With Karma Carefully

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The Washington Examiner reminds us today of some not-so-recent history.

An article posted today takes us back to 1992:

…24 years ago, as former President George H.W. Bush was surging back against challenger Bill Clinton, a special prosecutor raised new charges against Bush in the Iran-Contra probe, prompting Clinton to claim he was running against a “culture of corruption.”

…When it came, Clinton seized on it, saying for example, “Secretary Weinberger‘s note clearly shows that President Bush has not been telling the truth when he says he was out of the loop.” Clinton added, “It demonstrates that President Bush knew and approved of President Reagan‘s secret deal to swap arms for hostages.”

Paul Mirengoff of Power Line has stated:

Shortly after the election, a federal judge threw out the new indictment because it violated the five-year statute of limitations and improperly broadened the original charges. President Bush then pardoned Weinberger.

What goes around comes around.

The thing to remember here is that the media loved Bill Clinton and made the most of the charges against Casper Weinberger. The media today is supporting Hillary Clinton and will play down the new information as much as possible.

 

What Are These People Smoking?

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I will admit that I did not watch the Republican debate last night. I couldn’t face another cage match. I have read a number of reports on the debate, and I am wondering where these candidates get their ideas. Some of their ideas have strains of a possible solution in them, but others really make me wonder.

Late last night The Washington Examiner posted a story highlighting a few things from the debate.

Here are a few things I learned from their summary:

Donald Trump suggested that as president he would finance Social Security by requiring countries that benefit from U.S. military protection to pay for the service.

“We’re the policeman of the world: We take care of Germany; we take care of Saudi Arabia; we take care of South Korea,” he said during Thursday night’s presidential debate. “Saudi Arabia was making a billion dollars a day and we were getting virtually nothing to protect them. … We are going to be in a different world. We’re going to negotiate real deals, now, and we’re going to bring the wealth back to our country.”

This was his solution for bringing solvency to Social Security. Actually it makes a certain amount of sense–Europe has managed to pay for socialism over the years because of the money they did not have to spend on their military. If they were forced to pay America for protection or develop their own military, they might have to go to a free market economy.

The article further reports:

Rubio wants to raise the retirement age to 68 years old for people of his generation and raise it to 70 years old for people who are currently children, while leaving the age alone for current retirees and people close to retirement.

“If you do not do it, we will have a debt crisis, not to mention a crisis of Social Security and medicare,” Rubio said. “Both parties have taken far too long to deal with it. It is one of the major issues confronting America. It’s barely been asked in any of these debates and we’d better deal with it or we’re going to have to explain to our children why they inherited this disaster.”

Just for the record, I would like to point out that George H.W. Bush had a viable plan for fixing Social Security. Unfortunately, it was blocked by the Democrats because they did not want him to get credit for the plan.

There are a few things I would like to note about Social Security. Congress has been spending the money taken out of paychecks for Social Security on other things since the 1960’s. That is a huge part of the problem. Secondly, there are two reasons Democrats want open borders–they want illegals to vote (they believe illegals will vote Democrat) and they believe that bringing in more workers will shore up Social Security until at least the time when the politicians who have spent the money leave office. At that point it will be someone else’s problem.

As I said, I did not watch the debate, but it sounds as if there might have been some intelligent discussion of important issues last night. That is a good thing.

Karma Is Always Interesting

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Someone much wiser than I once said, “Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.” That man was Andy Rooney. Eating your words is something no one likes to do, but in this age of digital information, everything a public figure has said can be easily discovered.

On Monday, Truth Revolt posted the following statement made by then Senator Joe Biden in 1992:

JoeBidenSCOTUSIf you follow the link above, it includes the C-SPAN video of Vice President Biden making this statement.

This Is Supposed To Be A Solution???

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Last week we lost four valiant men in an attack on a recruiting center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and there are reports this morning that a fifth man has died. This is not the first time a recruiting office has been attacked by someone with links to Islam. In 2009, an Army recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas, was attacked by Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, born Carlos Leon Bledsoe. There is a documentary about how Carlos Bledsoe became Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad and how his family and the family of Andy Long, the soldier killed in the attack, have struggled with the loss of their sons. It is called, “Losing Our Sons,” and is worth watching.

We have a problem. The policy of making military bases a gun-free zone was signed into effect in February 1992 by Donald J. Atwood, deputy secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush. Frankly, I think we have lost more soldiers because of this policy than we would have without it.

So what is the military going to do about the problem of Islamists shooting American soldiers in America? Well, the answer is further proof that government is not the solution–it is the problem.

Gateway Pundit posted an article yesterday about the military’s response to the shooting in Chattanooga.

This is a tweet sent by ABC News Pentagon reporter Luis Martinez on Friday evening:

chattanoogatweet

The article further reports:

Army chief of staff Gen. Ray Odierno said on Friday he has no plans to arm recruiters or add security patrols to military recruitment centers in the wake of the Islamist terror attacks on unarmed, unguarded military offices in Chattanooga, Tennessee on Thursday. Odierno basically said he doesn’t trust his troops to handle their weapons properly.

Also on Friday, the Marine Corps ordered recruiters to not wear their uniforms at work for ‘force protection.’

The whirring sound you hear is John Wayne spinning in his grave.

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

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

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

Mr. Silberman writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

This Isn’t The Time To Rewrite History

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The news coming out of Iraq is horrible. People are being killed because they belong to the wrong Muslim sect or because they tried to preserve the country. It is awful. But in the awfulness, let’s not forget how we got here.

Wikipedia (not a site I love, but occasionally useful) posts some of the items in the resolution that led us to war:

Then we need to look at the Senators who voted for the war. That list can be found at Senate.gov:

Grouped By Vote Position

YEAs —77
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Biden (D-DE)
Bond (R-MO)
Breaux (D-LA)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Campbell (R-CO)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carnahan (D-MO)
Carper (D-DE)
Cleland (D-GA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
Daschle (D-SD)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dodd (D-CT)
Domenici (R-NM)
Dorgan (D-ND)		 Edwards (D-NC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Fitzgerald (R-IL)
Frist (R-TN)
Gramm (R-TX)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Harkin (D-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Helms (R-NC)
Hollings (D-SC)
Hutchinson (R-AR)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)		 McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Miller (D-GA)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Nickles (R-OK)
Reid (D-NV)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Santorum (R-PA)
Schumer (D-NY)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-NH)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thompson (R-TN)
Thurmond (R-SC)
Torricelli (D-NJ)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)
NAYs —23
Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Chafee (R-RI)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corzine (D-NJ)
Dayton (D-MN)		 Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Graham (D-FL)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)		 Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Wellstone (D-MN)
Wyden (D-OR)

Have we forgotten the flouting of the U.N. No-Fly Zone by Saddam Hussein? It would have been nice if we had a viable, unbiased United Nations with the forces and power to handle the situation without using almost all American troops, but that was not the case. It was possible for Iraq to become a viable democracy aligned with western interests. That possibility was ended when no status of forces was reached, when the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki began persecuting minorities, and when President Obama withdrew all American troops. An America willing to be strong, to put pressure on the Prime Minister, and to leave a peacekeeping force would have made a difference. Unfortunately, when America refuses to be strong and lead, bad things happen.

 

The Double Standard At Work

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Yesterday Breitbart.com posted a story about the recent controversy regarding a rodeo clown at the Missouri State Fair. The clown wore a President Obama mask.

Breitbart.com reports:

On Tuesday, the Missouri State National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) issued a statement asking for federal involvement in the case of a rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask and then asked the crowd if they’d like to see Obama run down by a bull. “The activities at the Missouri State Fair targeting and inciting violence against our President are serious and warrant a full review by both the Secret Service and the Justice Department,” said State President Mary Ratliff. “Incidents involving individuals acting out with extreme violent behavior in movie theaters, schools, churches, political appearances, and outdoor events in general speaks volume to the irresponsible behavior of all the parties involved with the incendiary events at the Missouri State Fair.”

To be honest, I think the rodeo clown with the Obama mask is tacky. I think it was tacky when rodeo clowns wore George Bush masks. However, free speech is a part of American life. Where were all these people demanding investigations when this was done to George Bush? Why is this any different because President Obama is black (actually half black if you want to be technical)? If we had true equality of races, there would be no distinction between making fun of President Obama and making fun of President Bush. However, this is not really about race–it’s about politics–the political left always cries fowl when they are treated the way they routinely treat the political right.

There is nothing racial in this–the same thing was done to President Bush. I think it is tacky whatever race is involved. It may be considered satire in some circles, but it is definitely tacky.

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What Did The Fiscal Cliff Deal Really Accomplish ?

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Investors.com posted an article today about what the deal reached on the fiscal cliff this week will actually accomplish. Not much.

The article states that the tax hikes will hurt the economy. Specifically:

Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi says the higher taxes on the wealthy and the increase in payroll taxes will shave close to 1 point off GDP growth this year and result in 600,000 fewer new jobs.

Pantheon Macroeconomic Advisors chief economist Ian Shepherdson figures the deal will cut GDP by 1.5 points. And Gallup’s chief economist Dennis Jacobe says the deal has created a “higher probability of recession — just the opposite of what fixing the fiscal cliff was intended to do.”

The article also points out that the increased taxes will not actually help shrink the deficit. Included in the article is the following chart:

Any answer to the debt crisis must include cuts in government spending in order to work. Americans are waiting for the President to propose a plan to shrink government. If President Obama fails to do that, he will lose the support of the public. If he does propose a plan for smaller government, he will lose the support of his party (and a large part of the Republican establishment).

Tax hikes don’t necessarily raise the money that those who pass them think they will. For instance:

President George H.W. Bush‘s tax hikes in 1990 generated $135 billion less than expected. And revenues as a share of GDP came in lower than predicted after Clinton’s tax hikes went into effect.

The article concludes that because President Obama has added more brackets to the tax code, it will be harder to reform. I’m not sure that is an accident.

At any rate, we survived a Congress-created crisis and are about to face another one (the debt ceiling). It would be nice to believe that there are enough grown-ups in Congress to create a long-term solution to our overspending, rather than to simply put a band-aid on a broken arm.Enhanced by Zemanta

Good News !

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MyWay is reporting today that former President George H.W. Bush has been moved out of intensive care.

The article reports:

“President Bush’s condition has improved, so he has been moved today from the intensive care unit to a regular patient room at The Methodist Hospital to continue his recovery,” family spokesman Jim McGrath said Saturday. “The Bushes thank everyone for their prayers and good wishes.”

That is wonderful news. President George H. W. Bush is our oldest living President. President Jimmy Carter is the second oldest.

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