News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.
The media has written a lot about Joe Biden’s style in the past few days. Today the Associated Press posted an article stating that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has stated that Joe Biden needs to understand that people have personal space that needs to be respected. Yesterday The American Thinker posted an article noting that even after the dawn of the #MeToo movement, Democrats do not seem overly concerned about Joe Biden’s behavior. Remember, this is the party of Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, etc. Joe Biden’s behavior seems tame. There are numerous pictures showing questionable behavior by Joe Biden, but he gets a pass. There was no actual evidence against Clarence Thomas or Brett Kavanaugh, but they were viciously attacked. The Lt. Governor of Virginia is still in office despite reports of sexual assault that were reported at the time of the incident. There seems to be a bit of a double standard here.
The American Thinker concludes:
My guess — and it is a pure guess, as I have no connections with the Dems’ inner circles — is that Joe Biden is going to see the wisdom of withdrawing from the race, especially since his son Hunter’s connections in Ukraine are at risk. He’s old and has been making scads of money giving lectures. He has a choice: retire and reap gratitude, honors, and many more lucrative speaking gigs, or else press forward with his candidacy and become an icon of perversion, with his son facing Trump treatment by the media, an old white male whose apologies for his privilege only further enrage the aggrieved.
I think Joe Biden is probably a very nice man, but I don’t want a man who has no respect for personal space as President. I realize that the media will pretty much leave him alone because he is a Democrat, but there would always be a controversy about his behavior swirling around him.
It is in the best interests of all Americans for the country to prosper. Unfortunately, some of our politicians have forgotten that principal.
Stephen Moore posted an article at Townhall today with the following title, “Why the Left Hates Prosperity,” It’s an interesting premise.
The article states:
Here is Moore’s rule of modern-day politics: The better the economy performs under President Donald Trump and the more successes he racks up, the more unhinged the left becomes. It’s a near linear relationship. And it goes for media as well.
That’s why the monthly jobs announcements and the quarterly GDP reports, like the one released Oct. 26, are the unhappiest days of the year for the Trump haters. News of 3.5 to 4 percent growth and 7 million surplus jobs are the bane of the resistance movement’s existence.
The usual charge against President Trump is the he has moved the Republican party to the far right and ended the days of compromise with the likes of Ted Kennedy. Just for the record, that wasn’t compromise–it was capitulation (aka losing).
The article continues:
Liberals want a return to the days when the GOP’s standard bearers were people like George H.W. Bush, Bob Michel, Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and most recently, John Kasich.
Think. What do all these Republicans have in common? Losing.
My intention isn’t to disparage these men. I have known all of them and respect them all — especially the noble war heroes. Michel was a Republican minority leader beloved by the left for years and years, precisely because he kept the House Republicans where they belonged — in the minority.
I think Mr. Moore is on to something here. As long as the Republicans were shooting themselves in the foot, the Democrats loved them. Donald Trump is not your average Republican. He is probably one of the few Republicans who would have stood strong during the nomination process of Justice Kavanaugh, That’s one of many reasons why Democrats hate him.
The article concludes:
Politics is a contact sport. There aren’t many moral victories in politics. And yes, it really all does come down to winning. As two-time winner Bill Clinton used to say, you can’t change the country if you don’t win.
The problem for the Trump haters, and the reason they are so spitting angry, is that Trump is changing the country for the better. According to a Quinnipiac poll, 7 of 10 voters rate the economy as good or great. Liberals are doubly angry and frustrated because they were so sure he would fail. Perhaps they are the ones who are intellectually inferior.
I strongly suggest that you follow the link and read the entire article–there is a lot of insight in what Mr. Moore is saying. No one likes to lose, but at least the Republicans were gracious about it–too gracious.
Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about some recent comments by former Attorney General Eric Holder.
The article reports:
Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, who is considering running for president in 2020, called into doubt the legitimacy of the Supreme Court following the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Court by a 50-48 vote in the Senate on Saturday. Holder on Friday used incendiary rhetoric to call on liberals to use their “rage” to vote to “be rid of these people”–singling out Republicans in the Senate who support Kavanaugh and have used their majority power to control nominations to the courts.
I hate to say this, but this brings to mind how unpolitical the actions of the Senate were when Barack Obama nominated judges to the Supreme Court. The Democrats held the majority in the Senate when Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. Fifty-nine Democrats voted for confirmation (Ted Kennedy was not present) and nine Republicans voted for confirmation. When Elena Kagan was nominated for the Supreme Court, the Democrats also held the majority. The vote was 63-37 with five Republicans voting for confirmation. The Republicans acted like gentlemen, and the judges were confirmed. Both judges were known as liberal judges, but no one questions the legitimacy of the Supreme Court after they were confirmed.
The duly-elected President is the person the Constitution gives the power to select Supreme Court Justices. The Senate’s role is Advise and Consent. I believe that in the hearings for Judge Kavanaugh the Senate abused that role. There is nothing illegitimate about the Supreme Court now that it includes Justice Kavanaugh.
The article continues:
On Friday Holder expressed similar concerns in comments but also exhorted his supporters use their “rage” about how the Republicans who control the Senate used their power to confirm Kavanaugh and fill other judicial seats to “be rid of these people.” While Holder wrote he was urging people to vote to “be rid of these people”, his choice of language encouraging liberals to ‘use their rage’ to ‘be rid of these people’ is deliberate.
“Reputation and credibility of Supreme Court at stake with upcoming vote. How the Court is viewed. For years. Bigger than one individual. There are conservative acceptable alternatives…As you lament the Merrick Garland outrage never forget that McConnell and R’s did not fill lower court seats for YEARS. Those are the seats being filled now. Use the rage of today to get people out to vote and be rid of these people. Your voice matters. Your vote counts. VOTE!”
I really don’t think Eric Holder’s statements add anything to the civility of our political discourse.
Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, currently running for re-election.
The article reports:
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is one of three attorneys general in the country who knows his opponent this fall has the backing of California billionaire and political activist Tom Steyer, but told the Washington Free Beacon he believes his track record of focusing on local issues and the rule of law will be a better hand come November.
Steyer’s efforts on the national stage have been flashy. He has poured his resources into the “Need to Impeach” television campaign and pledged hundreds of millions to help Democrats retake the majority in the House of Representatives.
However, Steyer has not abandoned local politics, keeping an eye out for local races that interest him. In this instance, he is backing the Democratic nominee January Contreras, who has experience as a county and state prosecutor, but has never run for elected office until now.
“It’s been said that you can judge a person by their opponents, so I don’t know if I should take it as a badge of honor that a California billionaire with a radical-left agenda has decided to target me,” Brnovich told the Free Beacon in a recent one-on-one interview.
There are certain state offices that are vital to the Democrat’s agenda. For instance, a state Attorney General can decide not to report illegal aliens to immigration services. A state Attorney General can decide to look the other way regarding certain laws. A state Attorney General has the power to take the blindfold off of justice and corrupt the system of justice in a state. A Secretary of State is in charge of elections in most states. There is tremendous potential for mischief in that office.
Targeting certain state offices in not a new Democrat tactic. The video “Rocky Mountain Heist” (available at YouTube) explains how a group of wealthy men targeted certain key offices in Colorado and turned a red state blue.
I have embedded the video here because I am not sure how much longer it will be available at YouTube:
One example of how state politics can have a national impact. Ted Kennedy died in August 2009. His vote was needed to get ObamaCare past a Republican filibuster. During the time Mitt Romney was Governor of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts legislature had passed a law saying that any Senate vacancy would be filled by a special election rather than by appointment of the Governor. Massachusetts law now requires a special election to be held on a Tuesday, no fewer than 145 days, nor more than 160 days from the date of office vacancy. When Ted Kennedy died, Governor Patrick (a Democrat) appointed the Executor of Ted Kennedy’s will to fill the vacancy temporarily. The special election was held in January–after the Senate had voted on ObamaCare. The reason that ObamaCare was passed through reconciliation rather than being voted on again in the Senate was that after Scott Brown won the election in Massachusetts, he would have been the vote that blocked ObamaCare. State politics make a difference nationally.
What is being done to Judge Kavanaugh is a borking. It’s an eleventh-hour attempt to make sure he never sits on the Supreme Court. It is based on a thirty-some-year-old charge that cannot be substantiated or disproved. On an interesting side note, a classmate at one point posted on Facebook that the incident happened and was the talk of the school for days. Unfortunately, the incident evidently happened in the summer when school was not in session. One thing everyone needs to consider is whether or not they want to live in a country where when you are up for a promotion a person can come out of the woodwork and deny you that promotion based on an unsubstantiated claim that you did something inappropriate in high school. The other thing to consider is patterns. Is there a pattern of abuse in Judge Kavanaugh’s life? Is the pattern there that was there with Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and some other public figures? If there is a pattern, this charge needs to be examined more closely. If not, it is time to move on and understand that the charge can be neither proven or disproven and therefore must be dismissed.
Yesterday The New York Post posted an editorial about the circus this nomination process has become.
The editorial states:
It didn’t have to be this way.
Feinstein didn’t have to leak the anonymous accusation to the press, contrary to Ford’s wishes. Or she could have urged Ford to go public early, giving both parties enough time to be heard.
Even now, Feinstein and her colleagues could back a committee hearing, without which Kavanaugh has no realistic opportunity for mounting a defense. Kavanaugh is a judge and a political operator. But he ‘s also a father and husband.
But no. Senate Dems have settled on the ugliest means available, even by the standards of the body that added the verb “Borking” to our political vocabulary. The question is: Why have Republican high-court nominations brought out the worst from the left, going back to the Ronald Reagan era?
The short answer is that liberals fear their major cultural victories of the past half-century are democratically illegitimate. Not a single one was won at the ballot box, going back to the Supreme Court’s 1965 Griswold decision, which recognized a constitutional right to contraceptives. From abortion to gay marriage, plus a host of less titillating issues, modern liberalism has lived by the Court. And liberals fear their cause will die by the Court.
Unless, that is, they block conservative encroachments into the judiciary by all means necessary. Hence, Borking and Clarence Thomas-ing. And hence, too, the naked slandering of Mitt Romney in the course of the 2012 presidential campaign, to forestall his shifting the Court to the right.
I wish I could say that the way out of this impasse is for the right to double down on the gentle conservatism represented by Romney, the Bush dynasty, and the late John McCain. Perhaps that is the right course in the long term. But for now, it is imperative for the health of American democracy to resist the liberal ruthlessness that is on display in the halls of the Senate.
The verb “to Kavanaugh” must not be permitted to enter our lexicon, lest the step to unfreedom become irrevocable.
This is where we are. The only way out is to confirm Judge Kavanaugh so that this does not happen again. The last-minute sex accusation did not work on Clarence Thomas and it should not work on Brett Kavanaugh. Maybe after two strike outs, the Democrats will stop using this technique.
Robert Bork would have made a fantastic Supreme Court judge. He was brilliant and understood the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately he was blocked from being a Supreme Court Justice because of the antics of that bastion of virtue Ted Kennedy. A similar tactic was tried on Justice Thomas, but it didn’t work. Justice Thomas, thankfully, sits on the Supreme Court. Now the attempt is being make to prevent Judge Kavanaugh from being confirmed. It is an ugly attempt, and hopefully it will fail.
The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday detailing the problems with the Democrats’ case against Judge Kavanaugh. Diane Feinstein has come up with a letter charging Judge Kavanaugh with inappropriate behavior when he was in high school. In the article, Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal listed the problems with the accusations against Judge Kavanaugh:
Strassel began by pointing out reports from the New York Times that suggested Feinstein had at least been aware of the letter’s existence since summer — and argued that if the accusation was truly damning enough to warrant an FBI investigation, it would have been reason enough for Feinstein to present it to authorities immediately.
…Strassel went on to question whether a letter concerning enough to warrant a federal investigation should have been shared with Senate Republicans, who, just like their Democratic counterparts, were charged to “advise and consent” with regard to Kavanaugh’s nomination. Additionally, she suggested that if the accuser had explicitly stated a request to not take things further, Feinstein could be betraying that trust by going to the FBI.
…Finally, Strassel argued that the timing of the letter’s introduction into public discourse “cannot be ignored” — it was made public only after Senate Democrats made numerous attempts to stall or delay Kavanaugh’s hearings, all of which were shut down.
Approval of nominees is supposed to be based on the qualifications of the nominee. Unfortunately in recent years, it has become extremely political. I firmly believe that barring unusual circumstances, a President is entitled to appoint the people he chooses. That courtesy was extended to President Obama, who appointed Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. The appointment of Merrick Garland was blocked according to the ‘Biden Rule’ put in place under George W. Bush. The Democrats invented the ‘Biden Rule’ to block an appointment by President Bush. It is only fair that they got hoisted on their own petard.
I believe that the Democrats need to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. Their stall tactics are only creating bad feelings that will come back to bite them in the future.
We are hearing a lot about Ted Kennedy with the release of the movie “Chappaquiddick” The man who was praised at his funeral for being a wonderful addition to American politics is being revealed for being a deeply flawed human being. Chappaquiddick was bad enough, but there were other things done by Ted Kennedy that were simply not right. His treatment of Robert Bork is one example, but there is another example of bad behavior that borders on treason.
The American Spectator posted an article today that reminds us of something Ted Kennedy did that was truly unacceptable.
The article states:
In 1991, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin opened the archives of the Soviet Central Committee, Western researchers quickly descended on Moscow to plow through the treasure trove of previously classified official documents.
Among those researchers was Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times and the BBC who found a May 14, 1983 letter from KGB chief Viktor Chebrikov to Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov. Bearing the highest security classification, it summarized a confidential offer by Senator Ted Kennedy to the Soviet leadership to help stop President Ronald Reagan’s aggressive, anti-Soviet defense policies.
The letter was written as the debate was heating up over Reagan’s proposed deployment of intermediate range missiles to counter the Soviets’ medium range weapons in Eastern Europe.
Sebastian reported his find in an article titled “Teddy, the KGB and the top secret file” which appeared in the February 2, 1992, London Times. And there the story remained unheeded and unheralded until 2006 when historian Paul Kengor published The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communismin which he discussed Kennedy’s secret approach to the Soviets.
In an appendix to his book, Kengor reproduced Chebrikov’s classified missive unedited and unabridged along with extensive documentation establishing its authenticity.
This is an example of partisan politics going well past the borders of the United States.
The article at The American Spectator illustrates that media bias is not a new thing:
So, what was the reaction of the mainstream media when this alarming document was made public? According to Paul Kengor, not a single American news organization picked up the London Times story.
Similarly, when Kengor published his book which discussed and reproduced the letter, he “couldn’t get a single major news source to do a story on it. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC. Not one covered it.” And “all mainstream sources” turned down his proffered op-eds regarding Chebrikov’s letter.
Think about that. Here is a classified document found in the Soviet archives from the head of the secret police to the General Secretary spelling out an outrageous and treasonous political plot by Kennedy to enlist the Soviet Union’s assistance in his campaign for the presidency. And not one major media outlet uttered so much as a peep about it.
So the voters of Massachusetts never had a chance to know that Ted Kennedy, their Senator, had attempted to work with the Russians to avoid the election of Ronald Reagan. Don’t you think they were entitled to know that? Well, wait a minute. These are Massachusetts voters, and he was a Kennedy.
The article concludes:
The media’s failure to even report or discuss the discovery and contents of Chebrikov’s letter is but one more example of their dishonesty. The fact that they have ignored this story should tell us all that we need to know about their integrity, fairness, and allegiance to the truth. How many more examples of their blatant bias and duplicity do we need before we completely discount all of their reportage as nothing more than progressive agitprop and propaganda?
As a wise man once said, if the mainstream media didn’t have double standards, they would have no standards at all. For further proof of that statement, one need only to compare and contrast the media’s fevered, unhinged coverage of the alleged Trump-Russia collusion theory with the protective cone of silence they have placed over “Teddy, the KGB and the top secret file.”
The silence on this story is one of many reasons Americans have turned to alternative news sources.
Newsbusters posted an article today about some recent comments by Joe Biden. The comments provide insight into the poisonous atmosphere that permeates Washington, D.C.
The article reports Joe Biden’s comments in an interview with Jon Favreau on “Pod Save America,” a liberal podcast.
This is part of the conversation:
FAVREAU: Well, sir, I wanted to start with the economy but, real quick, if Democrats take back the Senate and a seat opens up on the Supreme Court in the next two years, should Democrats hold that seat open like Republicans did to Obama?
BIDEN: I don’t think so.
FAVREAU: Even if it means they get another Gorsuch?
BIDEN: No, no, that’s a big difference. Remember, I’m the guy that kept there from being a guy who was maybe the most brilliant conservative who was nominated for the Supreme Court (Favreau snickers) and I kept him off the court. And I was able to … in the Judiciary Committee (to) defeat (Clarence) Thomas (nominated by the elder Bush four years later). Bork got flat defeated. Thomas got defeated in committee. But the Constitution says the Senate shall advise and consent, not a committee shall advise and consent. And so, you know, you can, I don’t think we should step away for a moment.
The article concludes:
…Biden lets the cat out of the bag. The biggest problem for liberals when it came to Bork was not his originalist views of the Constitution, or that he pulled the trigger for Nixon in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, but the fact that he was brilliant and could be expected to push the court to the right for generations to come — hence he had to be destroyed. How seemingly gracious of Biden to acknowledge Bork as legal exemplar, albeit long after it mattered and seeing how it is now beyond dispute.
Worth noting is that Bork’s months-long nomination battle in 1987 roughly aligned with Biden’s first doomed run for the presidency which ended amid growing evidence of propensity for plagiarizing remarks from other politicians. Also leading the charge against Bork that year was Senator Ted Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. This week, a movie comes out portraying how Kennedy left a woman to drown in his car while he waited 10 hours to report the accident and focused instead on saving his political hide. It’s taken Hollywood nearly 50 years to depict one of worst — and most dramatic — political scandals of the last century. But again, better late than never.
It is truly sad that we have reached the point in our government where the political leanings of a Supreme Court nominee are more important than his qualifications. Unfortunately, I am not optimistic that this is ever going to change.
Yesterday Roll Call posted an article stating that the House of Representatives has paid out more than $15 million over the last decade to settle harassment cases, though that number also includes discrimination claims. There has been no information released as to exactly why the payments were made or exactly which members of Congress were involved.
The article reports:
Speier’s (Representative Jackie Speier) office clarified Wednesday that the Office of Compliance, which handles workplace and accessibility issues on Capitol Hill, does not provide a breakdown for the type of discrimination payments made.
The OOC’s $15 million figure covered more than 200 payouts made from fiscal years 1997 to 2016 for all claims the office covered, such as racial and religious discrimination cases, discrimination against people with disabilities and sexual harassment, a Speier staffer said.
Why were the taxpayers paying out this money instead of the people involved?
It seems as if sexual harassment has become the issue of the day. I find this a bit disingenuous. In addition to the pass given to Bill Clinton, where was this issue when Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd were in Congress? There is a danger of a witch hunt here. There is also a danger that because of the political divide in the country right now, the investigation of sexual harassment in Congress will turn into a very ugly political process.
The Kennedy immigration law abolished the national origins quota system, which had favored immigrants from nations with a similar heritage to our own, and opened up American immigration visas to the entire world.
While about nine in ten of the immigrants who came to the United States during the 19th and 20th century hailed from Europe, the 1965 law inverted that figure. Today about 9 out of every 10 new immigrants brought into the country on green cards come from Latin America, Africa, Asia or the Middle East.
The size of the numbers also grew exponentially as well. According to Pew Research Center, 59 million immigrants entered the United States following the Act’s passage. Including their children, that added 72 million new residents to the U.S. population.
In 1965, according to Pew, the country was 84 percent white, 11 percent black, 4 percent Hispanic and less than 1 percent Asian.
In 2015, as a result of Kennedy’s immigration law, the country is now 62 percent white, 12 percent black, 18 percent Hispanic and 6 percent Asian.
Numbers USA notes the range and scope of the reforms in the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act passed:
The 1965 revamp of the entire immigration system. It ended 40 years of low immigration, got rid of solid numerical caps and opened up chain migration into every overpopulated country in the world, exploding annual immigration numbers.
Massive expansion of the refugee programs in the late 1970s, opening up massive loopholes and encouraging a domestic resettlement industry that became a major lobby for more and more overall immigration.
The 1986 blanket amnesty. Kennedy’s skills may have been best seen here where he got legislators on our side to agree to the amnesty in exchange for enforcement rules that he made sure were written in a way that would not work. Within a decade, he would be using the inability to enforce the 1986 rules as an excuse for why we needed more green cards and more amnesties. An example of Kennedy’s great skill was that he persuaded Ronald Reagan to enthusiastically support this bill.
The 1990 immigration act, which increased overall immigration by another 35%. The first Pres. Bush was Kennedy’s co-partner, just as the second Pres. Bush was Kennedy’s eager co-partner in trying to force through another blanket amnesty 2001-2008.
The 1990 act also established the lottery whereby we randomly give away 50,000 green cards a year to people in countries picked because they have the least ties and cultural association with the United States, and which disproportionately are terrorist-sponsoring countries. This was something of a compromise for Kennedy who was able to ensure that during the first few years, much of the lottery winners would be illegal aliens from Ireland — his own ethnic group.
The H-1B visas which have enabled corporations to keep hundreds of thousands of American kids from getting a foothold in the high tech industry.
The total defeat of liberal civil rights champion Barbara Jordan’sblue-ribbon commission recommendations to reduce overall immigration and eliminate chain migration and the lottery in 1996.
Six mini-amnesties that passed in the 1990s, primarily aimed at specific nationalities.
In February of this year, Senator Tom Cotton and Senator David Perdue unveiled the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act, which would undo some of the damage done by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.
Yesterday Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article about RAISE.
The article at Power Line reports:
Today, President Trump, with the two sponsoring Senators by his side, publicly backed the RAISE Act. Subsequently, at a press briefing, CNN’s Jim Acosta invoked the words on the Statue of Liberty, as he tried to debate White House policy adviser Stephen Miller on the merits of the legislation. Putting it nicely, Scott observed that Acosta was in over his head (Steve was more graphic).
This is the video of Jim Acosta debating White House policy advisor Stephen Miller (when did it become the job of the press to debate the White House policy advisor instead of simply reporting the news?);
The problem with our current immigration system is that it lowers the wages of of workers in jobs that don’t require a lot of training or education.
The Power Line article explains:
As Sen. Cotton has pointed out, wages for Americans with only a high school diploma have declined by two percent since the late 1970s. Wages for those who didn’t finish high school have declined by nearly 20 percent. Wage pressure due to immigration doesn’t explain all of this decrease, but unless the law of supply and demand has been repealed, such wage pressure explains a good deal of it.
The American Dream is at least as fundamental to our national identity as the “nation of immigrants” theme. The collapse of wages described above threatens to create a near permanent underclass for whom the American Dream is always out of reach.
The RAISE Act seeks to vindicate the American Dream while permitting historical levels of immigration. It does so by placing the priority on high-skilled immigrant — immigrants who won’t squeeze the wages of our low-skilled workers, but who instead will spur innovation, create jobs, and make America more competitive.
The article at Power Line concludes:
We can expect Senate Democrats to block the RAISE Act. But before they do so, Democrats should ask themselves how they expect to return to the good graces of the working class if they put the interests of foreigners ahead of the interest of working Americans at the lower end of the economic spectrum. How is this “A Better Deal”?
I was living in Massachusetts when Ted Kennedy died. A friend of mine who is a lawyer commented on how much damage Senator Kennedy had done to America. Because my friend is a conservative, I at first assumed he was referring to what was done to Judge Bork and some of the other ridiculous charges the Senator levied at various Republicans. It wasn’t until later that I began to look at the damage done to America by the 1965 immigration law that Senator Kennedy had pushed through. It is time to begin to undo that damage. Hopefully it is not too late.
One final comment from the article at Numbers USA:
He (a friend of the author of the article) also said that he believes that, despite all the liberal veneer, Kennedy was deeply beholden to the country’s banking titans and other globalist business entities who have so much interest in the free flow of international labor and in keeping the wages of Americans stagnant. (This was given credibility later when Kennedy was lauded for the great work he did to help the high-tech industry of Massachusetts to hire foreign computer programmers.)
The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act illustrates the damage the ‘Washington swamp’ can do to average Americans.
I will admit to being young and stupid in 1972. I read the papers and watched the news and decided that Richard Nixon was a crook. I voted for George McGovern because he wasn’t a crook. For me it was that simple. I was quite satisfied with myself until about a year ago. I heard a discussion from some people I respect that caused me to revisit the situation. I am now reading a book called The Secret Plot to Make Ted Kennedy President by Geoff Sheppard. I’m not big on conspiracy theories, but there are some basic facts in this book that are hard to ignore.
The book explains the relationship between the Kennedy family and the media and details some of the ruthlessness of the Kennedy family. The book reminds us that after the accident at Chappaquiddick that resulted in the death of a young woman, there were some strange turns in the pursuit of justice. On July 18, 1969, Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne, a passenger in his car drowned. The accident was not reported to the authorities when it happened. Ted Kennedy was interviewed by the police (and press) the following day when fishermen discovered the car and the body and the car was traced to the Kennedy family. When the case came to trial, Judge James Boyle sentenced Kennedy to two months’ incarceration, the statutory minimum for the offense, which he suspended. In announcing the sentence, Boyle referred to Kennedy’s “unblemished record” and said that he “has already been, and will continue to be punished far beyond anything this court can impose.” Sometimes it pays to be a Kennedy.
Watergate was a simple burglary which was stupid, dishonest and unnecessary. From what I have read, Richard Nixon was not aware of the burglary ahead of time and was not aware of the cover-up until very late in the game. By then it was too late. When John Dean realized that he was in trouble, he hired a lawyer—a lawyer very close to the Kennedy family. Behind the scenes, Ted Kennedy was directing the Senate Committee and the investigation. Dean’s testimony was carefully scripted to have the most impact. The media was in on the deal. It is telling that when Archibald Cox was sworn in as the Special Prosecutor in the Watergate Case, at least ten members of the Kennedy family attended the swearing in. Somehow the media overlooked that fact.
I realize that this is old news, but I bring it up for one reason. Ted Kennedy wanted to be President, and Watergate was a distraction from the baggage of Chappaquiddick. He was able to enlist (either verbally or non-verbally) the help of the media in a ‘get-Nixon campaign’ that would clear the way for a Kennedy Presidential victory in 1976. He made sure the Watergate Investigation dragged on, the indictments were delayed, and the testimonies had the maximum impact. The goal was to permanently destroy the Republican Party and clear the way for another Kennedy to become President. It didn’t matter what the truth was—it mattered what the American people were told and expected to believe. Because there were only three network news sources at the time, all moving in the same direction, it worked.
I believe we are going to see the same kind of coordinated attack on Donald Trump when he becomes President. We have a few things going for us that we didn’t have then—we have alternative news sources. The left is currently trying to discredit those sources as ‘fake news’, but many Americans are not fooled. There may be an attempt to shut down or totally discredit internet news (Facebook is already hiring fact checkers with liberal political connections). There is also the fact that Donald Trump is not inclined to claim that he is perfect. He has an ego, and he will tout his business success, but I haven’t heard him claim to be perfect. Be prepared to tune out a lot of the attacks on Donald Trump and his administration that you hear. I am sure he will make mistakes, but I can guarantee that he is not capable of doing all the things the Democrats will accuse him of—there are not enough hours in the day!
Fasten your seat belts! Get out the popcorn! Pray for America!
In 1965 something major happened. Almost all of us missed its significance. We are now dealing with the consequences of the event.
John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article today about LEGAL immigration and the turn it has taken since 1965.
The article includes the following chart:
The staff of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration explains the history and significance of this chart:
Each year, millions of visas are issued to temporary workers, foreign students, refugees, asylees, and permanent immigrants for admission into the United States. The lion’s share of these visas are for lesser-skilled and lower-paid workers and their dependents who, because they are here on work-authorized visas, are added directly to the same labor pool occupied by current unemployed jobseekers. Expressly because they are admitted into the U.S. on legal immigrant visas, most will be able to draw a wide range of taxpayer-funded benefits, and corporations will be allowed to directly substitute these workers for Americans. Improved border security would have no effect on the continued arrival of these new foreign workers, refugees, and permanent immigrants—because they are all invited here by the federal government.
The most significant of all immigration documents issued by the U.S. is, by far, the “green card.” When a foreign citizen is issued a green card it guarantees them the following benefits inside the United States: lifetime work authorization, access to federal welfare, access to Social Security and Medicare, the ability to obtain citizenship and voting privileges, and the immigration of their family members and elderly relatives.
Some of our politicians see this as a way to fund Social Security, but they fail to notice the extra load it puts on the Social Security and Medicare programs.
The changes made in 1965 have not been good for the American economy. The 1965 immigration legislation for which Ted Kennedy was largely responsible has created problems for American workers:
Legislation enacted in 1965, among other factors, substantially increased low-skilled immigration. Since 1970, the foreign-born population in the United States has increased more than four-fold—to a record 42.1 million today. The foreign-born share of the population has risen from fewer than 1 in 21 in 1970, to presently approaching 1 in 7.
As the supply of available labor has increased, so too has downward pressure on wages. Georgetown and Hebrew University economics professor Eric Gould has observed that “the last four decades have witnessed a dramatic change in the wage and employment structure in the United States… The overall evidence suggests that the manufacturing and immigration trends have hollowed-out the overall demand for middle-skilled workers in all sectors, while increasing the supply of workers in lower skilled jobs. Both phenomena are producing downward pressure on the relative wages of workers at the low end of the income distribution.”
We need sensible immigration policies that will bring people to America who want to be here, who want to assimilate, and who want to work. Our current immigration policies do not do that. Again, I would like to point out that I am talking about legal immigration. Illegal immigration is a separate problem for many additional reasons–national security being one of the major ones.
Donald Trump has experienced all sorts of blowback because of his remarks about illegal immigration. He doesn’t seem overly concerned. Regardless of how you feel about him as a presidential candidate, he has definitely made the debate interesting. So what is actually true about America’s problem with illegal immigration?
Non-Americans commit over five times more serious crimes per capita than Americans.
It is estimated that there are some 133,741 foreign criminals in prisons and jails in the USA (1). They are not there for spitting on the sidewalk or jaywalking, and very few are there for immigration violations, as those illegal alien criminals are typically deported in fairly short order or simply let go as we have seen time and time again. They are there in large part for molesting, raping, killing, maiming and murdering people in America, as you will see below.
Add in the 168,680 convicted criminal immigrants who have final orders of removal but who remain at large in the U.S., and another 179,018 convicted criminal aliens with deportation cases pending but who are also at large (2), and we have a total non-American felon population of 481,439…a number the size of our 35th largest city, Sacramento, California, and larger than the entire populations each of Atlanta, Kansas City, Omaha, Miami, Minneapolis – and more.
And remember, for most of these felons, there was a victim.
This is not encouraging. The article goes on to point out that although illegal aliens comprise less than 5 percent of the population, they make up 27 percent of the prison population.
So what has happened to American immigration? Has it changed over the years? Are we allowing legal immigration of people who are going to have a harder time assimilating than in the past? Yes to all three questions.
Senator Ted Kennedy was responsible for getting the 1965 Immigration Act (the Hart-Celler Act) passed. That Act represented a drastic change in American immigration policies. Previous immigration policies had favored immigrants from England, Ireland, and Germany–people from countries that had originally populated America. This Act added policies calling for “family reunification.” Numerical restrictions on visas were set at 170,000 per year, with a per-country-of-origin quota, not including immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or “special immigrants” (including those born in “independent” nations in the Western Hemisphere, former citizens, ministers, and employees of the U.S. government abroad). The new laws changed to demographic of America, resulting in pockets of various nationalities that did not assimilate. America was no longer a ‘melting pot,’ it had become a country of groups that were not necessarily interested in assimilating.
This is not a recipe for a successful country. America was built by people who came here for a better life and to become Americans. Many immigrants still fit that description, but many do not. Legal and illegal immigrants have learned how to take advantage of America’s welfare benefits and its tax system. In March of this year, I wrote an article about the use of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Credit by illegal aliens. This is directly taking money away from working Americans and giving it to people who are here illegally. That needs to stop.
At any rate, Donald Trump is pointing out things Americans need to be aware of. Again, regardless of how you plan to vote in the 2016 election, it is probably a good idea to listen to what he is saying. The one advantage Donald Trump has over most of the other candidates is that he is beholden to no one for money. Unfortunately many of our politicians cannot make that claim.
Unfortunately the mainstream media in America has become the spokesperson for the Democrat Party. Things are reported or not reported according to the impact they will have on the success of that party.
Others complained about Williams’s unwillingness to go after hard-hitting stories. Multiple sources told me that former NBC investigative reporters Michael Isikoff and Lisa Myers battled with Williams over stories. In February 2013, Isikoff failed to interest Williams in a piece about a confidential Justice Department memo that justified killing American citizens with drones. He instead broke the story on Rachel Maddow. That October, Myers couldn’t get Williams to air a segment about how the White House knew as far back as 2010 that some people would lose their insurance policies under Obamacare. Frustrated, Myers posted the article on NBC’s website, where it immediately went viral. Williams relented and ran it the next night. “He didn’t want to put stories on the air that would be divisive,” a senior NBC journalist told me. According to a source, Myers wrote a series of scathing memos to then–NBC senior vice-president Antoine Sanfuentes documenting how Williams suppressed her stories. Myers and Isikoff eventually left the network (and both declined to comment).
The actual definition of divisive is having a negative impact on a Democrat.
Today Newsbusters posted another example of how the American mainstream media works.
Newsbusters explains:
Despite the networks’ eagerness to tout Democratic opposition to the GOP letter (the letter stating that the Senate should weigh in on any agreement with Iran), on two separate occasions the “big three” completely ignored a letter penned by former Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) written to the Soviet Union in 1983 aimed at undermining President Ronald Reagan’s nuclear negotiations with the Communist regime.
…Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. “The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. “These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”
The Republicans who signed the letter are reminding the President of the Senate’s role in approving treaties. They are asking the President to respect the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution. Ted Kennedy was asking the Russians to get involved in an American election. It seems to me that the latter is much more significant than a reminder of how the U.S. Constitution works.
Hot Air posted an article today about the New Hampshire Senate primary. It seems as if Eric Cantor‘s defeat might have been the beginning of a trend. Scott Brown has been seen as the favorite to be the New Hampshire Senate candidate, but things may not be that simple.
The article explains:
One of the candidates, Karen Testerman, has dropped out of the race and tossed her support to former Senator Bob Smith…
Ms. Testerman made the following statement:
It is time for all of us to put aside pride and focus on our greater GOAL, that of fighting for Family, Faith and Freedom. I will not force our principle-driven primary voters to make a self-defeating choice. After much prayer and consultation, I will step aside to allow Senator Bob Smith to be the ONLY conservative name on the primary ballot.…
Senator Smith has a well-earned reputation of standing firm for our conservative beliefs and values and for fighting Washington to stop their overreach. Bob Smith was TEA Party before it had a name.
Scott Brown is a good man, but he has never claimed to be a conservative. He won the special election in Massachusetts to become the Senator to replace Ted Kennedy for two reasons–first of all, the Democrats did not see him coming and did not mobilize, second of all, he knocked on almost every door in the commonwealth and ran as the fifty-first vote against ObamaCare. The fifty-first vote didn’t work out because the Massachusetts Secretary of State delayed seating him in the Senate long enough so that he didn’t get to vote on ObamaCare, but that was the intention. The second time Scott Brown ran in Massachusetts, the Democrats threw everything they could at him to make sure he didn’t win. He didn’t have the support of the Tea Party and was totally outspent and outmaneuvered.
The New Hampshire Tea Party conservatives have never been a fan of Scott Brown. It is not a surprise that they would support a more conservative candidate.
This is the opening paragraph in an article about President Obama’s second term posted by the New York Daily News:
This wasn’t a war started on a lie about weapons of mass destruction the way Iraq was for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Affordable health care for all Americans was Barack Obama’s war, one started with noble intent, the way so many big ideas all the way back to Social Security have started.
The opening sentence of that paragraph is amazing. First of all, America’s intelligence organizations showed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Britain’s intelligence organizations showed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and Israel’s intelligence showed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. There is also a book called Saddam’s Secrets which details Saddam Hussein’s wmd program. The book was written by one of Saddam Hussein’s top generals and details the program and the exportation of those weapons during the run-up to the war. Regardless of whether or not you believe the weapons existed, the President did not lie. He spoke based on the information he had at the time.
ObamaCare is a very different situation. As reported on rightwinggranny yesterday, four years ago it was obvious to many people that people would lose their health insurance under ObamaCare. Christina Romer did an amazing job of avoiding that very question in her testimony before a House Education and Labor Committee hearing of June 23, 2009. You could make the argument that President Obama was not told that people would lose their insurance, but that would lead to the question of his basic competence.
The article at the Daily News points out that many Democrats are already supporting Hillary Clinton for President in an effort to distance themselves from the debacle of ObamaCare. The Democrats are also very anxious to change the subject.
The comparison of the ObamaCare roll-out to President Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina does not work either–President Bush did not create Hurricane Katrina–President Obama did create ObamaCare (or at least he allowed Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy to create it).
The article continues, smashing Republicans as it goes, but the bias is obvious. The rewriting of history is inexcusable, but until voters learn to do their own research, history will remain rewritten. Welcome to 1984.
I haven’t watched a lot of the Democratic convention–I have been tied up with more important family things, but I have seen the highlights. As you can assume from the name of this blog, I am a conservative, and I am not a young voter. I have watched a number of conventions over the years, and I am somewhat amazed at the direction of this year’s Democratic convention.
The opening video proclaimed, “The government is the only thing we all belong to.” I am more in line with Mitt Romney‘s tweet in response to that statement, “We don’t belong to the government, the government belongs to us.”
Think about that for a minute. If we belong to the government, the government is responsible for us–our successes, our failures, our prosperity, our poverty, our children’s behavior, etc. If the government belongs to us, we are responsible for the government and for ourselves. It seems to me that we have a choice to make here–are we going to grow up as a country and take responsibility for who we are (and what we need to do to make ourselves better) or are we going to sit back and wait for the government to do everything for us.
I have one more simple observation on the convention. There has been an awful lot of emphasis on the so-called ‘Republican war on women,’ and the Democrats seem to be trying to prove that their ideas are much better for women. Well, wait a minute. The convention has already honored Ted Kennedy, and Bill Clinton is the major speaker. How did these women treat the women in their lives? The Democrats seem to think that the essence of treating women well is defined as paying for them to kill their children and giving them free birth control (regardless of whether of not that is against their religion). There is more to woman than birth control. The women speaking at the Democratic convention are demanding things from the government–the women who spoke at the Republican convention were women of power. They had achieved success in their own lives–they were not taking from government–they were giving. Which image is more flattering to women?
