Monthly Archives: September 2012

How To Steal An Election

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On August 25th, the Providence Journal posted an article and a video (the video is also on YouTube) showing the promise of absentee ballots in exchange for a weekly paycheck.

The article reports:

The recording, obtained by The Providence Journal, captures a meeting secretly recorded by investigators working for Gemma in which the man promises hundreds of such absentee ballot votes for the congressional candidate in exchange for a weekly paycheck of $500.

The man, Erasmo Ramirez, also is recorded saying that he has prior experience working for Rep. David N. Cicilline, whom Gemma is challenging. Eric Hyers, Cicilline’s campaign manager, said Ramirez worked as an unpaid volunteer for Cicilline when he first ran for mayor of Providence in 2002 and has not worked for Cicilline since then.

This is the video:

It is a long video, but it is worth watching. There is no clearer argument for voter identification laws. I have no idea how to enforce those laws with absentee ballots, but it seems as though a thorough check of addresses might solve that problem.

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A California Judge Who Ruled Correctly Based On The Facts

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On Thursday, CNS News reported on a lawsuit brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) against California dairy farmers. PETA sued to get the daily farmers to stop running ads showing happy, well cared for dairy cows. PETA claimed that the cows were neither happy nor well cared for.

The article reports:

PETA, which filed the lawsuit in 2011, had argued that the California Milk Advisory Board and the California Department of Food and Agriculture had violated state rules that bar misleading or inaccurate marketing with the “Happy Cows” ads.

I am not totally sure how PETA knew whether or not the cows were happy, but I will continue with the story.

The article reports:

According to court documents, PETA had specifically complained that “most California dairy cows are subjected to physical and psychological pain and stress caused by intense and uncomfortable dairying practices, have a high risk of suffering from a number of diseases, and die prematurely” and that “dairy producers take into account the animals’ wellbeing only to the extent that it is economically advantageous to do so.”

The judge ruled that PETA had failed to produce any specific evidence that the cows were being mistreated. The judge also pointed out that state veterinarians and agriculture officials routinely visit and inspect California dairy farms to observe the conditions at the farms.

I am not sure what PETA would like to do to change the conditions of cows on dairy farms. I am also not sure what causes stress in cows. I think most people want to see animals treated well, but I do wonder what changes PETA would make to the average dairy farm.

The article concludes:

PETA, meanwhile, said it is “continuing a review of the judge’s decision in order to determine its next step.”

My question is simple, “How much did this lawsuit cost the dairy farmers of California, and how much of that cost will be passed along to consumers in California when they buy milk or milk products?”

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Running For Senator In Nebraska

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We all remember the ‘cornhusker kickback’ from the debate on Obamacare and the fact that it resulted in Senator Ben Nelson deciding not to run for re-election. The Democrats chose Bob Kerrey to run for the Senate seat that Ben Nelson occupied.

Yesterday Breitbart.com posted a story about Bob Kerrey and some of the positions he has taken in his campaign for the Senate.

The article reports some recent statements:

Democratic Senate candidate Bob Kerrey said Thursday that he hates the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act and that his own businesses might drop employee insurance and pay the federal fine for doing so if the mandate goes into effect in 2014.

 Kerrey said wealthy Americans pay their fair share in taxes. And he said President Barack Obama made a big mistake by not following the recommendations of his own bipartisan budget deficit commission.

That doesn’t sound as if he is in agreement with the Obama campaign.

The article quotes additional comments:

“I hate the employer mandate,” Kerrey said. “I think it’s going to have a counterproductive impact. We don’t have any (insured employee) that costs us less than $7,000 (a year), and the fine’s $2,000. We’ll dump ’em off. We won’t call it dumping, we’ll say … ‘Go get it from the exchange.’”

He said the employer mandate “will accelerate an already breaking-down employer-based system.” That portion of the law should be repealed, he said.

What Bob Kerrey is saying makes sense. Why is it that other Democrats cannot recognize the logic in his statements? If Obamacare stands, we will see the private healthcare industry in America destroyed and the quality of healthcare in America decrease very quickly.

As I have said before, please note that the nastiest parts of Obamacare go into effect after the election this year. We will begin to see the impact in the increased taxes we will all face in January 2013 and other negative things will take effect within the year.

We need to repeal (and replace) Obamacare.

 

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A Happy Ending To An Awful Story

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Fox News is reporting today that Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani has been released from prison in Iran and has been reunited with his family. The Pastor had been in prison for three years on charges of apostasy, which is punishable by death in Iran. The charges were lowered to evangelizing to Muslims, which carries a three-year sentence, and he was released.

The article reports:

…He was released with time served, according to the American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington-based watchdog group that had been campaigning for the pastor’s release.

“Today our sources in Iran reported that Pastor Youcef was acquitted of apostasy and released from prison. After languishing in prison for almost three years, he has been reunited with his family,” Jordan Sekulow, executive director of ACLJ said in a statement to FoxNews.com.

“While we are working on confirming the exact details of his release, some sources report that the court alternatively convicted Pastor Youcef of evangelizing to Muslims, sentencing him to three years and granting him time served.  Pastor Youcef’s story is an example of how the world can join together to ensure that justice is served and freedom preserved.”

I am glad that the Pastor has been released and is home with his family, but we need to look at the overall situation here. Iran is a country governed by Sharia Law. There is no freedom of religion–sharing any faith other than Islam will result in a jail sentence or worse if you are caught. This is a part of Sharia Law. Please keep that in mind as you hear Muslims in America attempt to introduce Sharia Law into American courts.

The article further reminds us:

“While we praise the release of Pastor Youcef, we must recognize that Iran felt obligated to save face among its people and continue its pattern of suppressing religious freedom with intimidation tactics,” Tiffany Barrans, a legal director for ACLJ said to FoxNews.com.

“International attention to this matter saved this man’s life, but we must not forget the human right of freedom of religion includes the right to freedom of expression.”

As Americans, we need to treasure our freedom and work to protect the freedom of people like Pastor Youcef.

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Media Bias?

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I am not on Twitter. One of my daughters set up an account for me, but it took more time than I was willing to give it. That might have to change at some point, because it seems as if there is a lot going on at Twitter.

A website called Twitchy Media is reporting today that NBC and some of the other networks covering the Democrat Convention chose to cut off the coverage of Cardinal Dolan’s benediction mid-sentence and went to commercial. Tacky. Some of the people on Twitter made there feelings very clear. You can read some of the posts by following the link above.

For anyone who would like to know what they were prevented from seeing, LifeNews posted the prayer:

With a “firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence,” let us close this convention by praying for this land that we so cherish and love:

Let us Pray.

Almighty God, father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, revealed to us so powerfully in your Son, Jesus Christ, we thank you for showering your blessings upon this our beloved nation. Bless all here present, and all across this great land, who work hard for the day when a greater portion of your justice, and a more ample measure of your care for the poor and suffering, may prevail in these United States. Help us to see that a society’s greatness is found above all in the respect it shows for the weakest and neediest among us.

We beseech you, almighty God to shed your grace on this noble experiment in ordered liberty, which began with the confident assertion of inalienable rights bestowed upon us by you: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Thus do we praise you for the gift of life. Grant us the courage to defend it, life, without which no other rights are secure. We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected. Strengthen our sick and our elders waiting to see your holy face at life’s end, that they may be accompanied by true compassion and cherished with the dignity due those who are infirm and fragile.

We praise and thank you for the gift of liberty. May this land of the free never lack those brave enough to defend our basic freedoms. Renew in all our people a profound respect for religious liberty: the first, most cherished freedom bequeathed upon us at our Founding. May our liberty be in harmony with truth; freedom ordered in goodness and justice. Help us live our freedom in faith, hope, and love. Make us ever-grateful for those who, for over two centuries, have given their lives in freedom’s defense; we commend their noble souls to your eternal care, as even now we beg the protection of your mighty arm upon our men and women in uniform.

We praise and thank you for granting us the life and the liberty by which we can pursue happiness. Show us anew that happiness is found only in respecting the laws of nature and of nature’s God. Empower us with your grace so that we might resist the temptation to replace the moral law with idols of our own making, or to remake those institutions you have given us for the nurturing of life and community. May we welcome those who yearn to breathe free and to pursue happiness in this land of freedom, adding their gifts to those whose families have lived here for centuries.

We praise and thank you for the American genius of government of the people, by the people and for the people. Oh God of wisdom, justice, and might, we ask your guidance for those who govern us: President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, Congress, the Supreme Court, and all those, including Governor Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan, who seek to serve the common good by seeking public office. Make them all worthy to serve you by serving our country. Help them remember that the only just government is the government that serves its citizens rather than itself. With your grace, may all Americans choose wisely as we consider the future course of public policy.

And finally Lord, we beseech your benediction on all of us who depart from here this evening, and on all those, in every land, who yearn to conduct their lives in freedom and justice. We beg you to remember, as we pledge to remember, those who are not free; those who suffer for freedom’s cause; those who are poor, out of work, needy, sick, or alone; those who are persecuted for their religious convictions, those still ravaged by war.

And most of all, God Almighty, we thank you for the great gift of our beloved country.

For we are indeed “one nation under God,” and “in God we trust.”

So dear God, bless America. You who live and reign forever and ever.

Amen!

The thing to remember about media bias is that it is not only reflected in how the news is covered, but also by what news is covered. The commercial could have waited a minute.

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Massachusetts Fourth Congressional District

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Today’s Attleboro Sun Chronicle reported the results of the Massachusetts Fourth Congressional District primary.

These are the numbers as reported by the Sun Chronicle:

U.S. House – District 4 – Dem Primary
September 07, 2012 – 09:41AM ET
Massachusetts – 215 of 220 Precincts Reporting – 98%

Name                         Party       Votes       Vote %
Kennedy , Joe            Dem      35,318        90%
Brown , Rachel          Dem        2,411          6%
Robinson , Herb         Dem        1,314          3%

U.S. House – District 4 – GOP Primary
September 07, 2012 – 01:38AM ET
Massachusetts – 207 of 220 Precincts Reporting – 94%

Name                        Party        Votes       Vote %
Bielat , Sean              GOP      13,844        73%
Childs , Elizabeth      GOP       2,594        14%
Steinhof , David         GOP       2,530        13%

There are a few things we can learn from these numbers. About 39,000 people voted in the Democrat primary, about 19,000 people voted in the Republican primary. That alone means that Sean Bielat has a difficult job ahead of him in order to win the election. It can be done, but it will be difficult. Also, notice that the Democrats opposing Joe Kennedy got a total of 9% of the votes; the Republicans opposing Sean Bielat got almost 30% of the vote. Evidently the Kennedy name still has value in an election despite all the scandals connected to it.

I don’t know how many independent voters there are in the Massachusetts Fourth Congressional District. I suspect that Sean Bielat is hoping that there are a lot of them. In order for Sean Bielat to win, he needs the independent voters and the voters who are tired of the status quo represented by Joe Kennedy. Admittedly Joe Kennedy is a fresh candidate, but his ideas represent the Democrat establishment. If the voters look around and decide that the Democrat establishment (and the Republican establishment) does not work, Sean Bielat can win.

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Sifting Through The Jobs Numbers

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about the jobs numbers just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The news that you will probably hear Democrats talk about is that the unemployment rate has gone down to 8.1 percent. Obviously that number is nothing to brag about, but at least it went down. But when you take a look at the numbers that are part of that number, unemployment is a problem.

The article mentions that the workforce shrank by 368,000.

CNBC reported:

But job reports for June and July were revised lower. The June count fell from 64,000 to 45,000, while July’s number came in at 141,000 from an originally reported 163,000.

Despite hopes that job creation would be better than expected, the monthly report fell short of economist expectations that 125,000 jobs were added for the month. The government said private payrolls increased by 103,000, about half the 201,000 that ADP reported Thursday.

The article at Hot Air explains that the decline in unemployment was due to people leaving the workforce. The employment-population rate in August was 58.3 percent.

The article at Hot Air points out:

That’s a new 30-year low in the civilian participation rate, lower than April’s 63.6%.  That’s the reason for the decline in the jobless rate.  The workforce decline artificially depresses the official unemployment rate.  If we had the same level of civilian participation as we did at the beginning of the recovery in June 2009 (65.7%), we’d be looking at a jobless rate of well over 10%.  The employment-population ratio dropped to 58.3% in August, not as low as last year’s 58.2%, but still bouncing along a generational bottom.  That measure was 59.4% at the beginning of the recovery.

There is talk of another quantitative easing (it would be QE3) by the government, but considering that QE1 and QE2 were not overly popular, it is questionable whether this will happen.

There is a political class in Washington that wants to remain in power–it includes both Congress and the Executive branches of government. There have been a few cracks made in that power by the Tea Party, but it remains to be seen if they will be corrupted by their new acquisition of power. If the Tea Party is not corrupted by Washington, they will provide the only hope to turn this mess around. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see what those currently in power are willing to do to the economy to get themselves re-elected.

 

 

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Sharing The Cost Of Obamacare

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One of the threats I am hearing from Democrats to the American people is that if Mitt Romney is elected, your children under 26 will no longer have health insurance. There is no mention of the fact that the Republicans are not stupid, and if they repeal Obamacare, there are certain provisions of it that they will quickly implement. However, in making these charges, the Democrats do tend to overlook some basic facts.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air reported yesterday that under Obamacare, the cost of health insurance for college students at the University of North Carolina will be increasing from $460 per semester to $709 per semester.

The article reports:

In part, this was caused by the claims experience of Chartis over the last couple of years, which discovered that students on this plan accessed care more often than they initially predicted.  A significant part of the increase, however, comes from the requirements of comprehensive insurance coverage that will exacerbate those trends rather than limit cost increases.

We saw a similar thing happen in Massachusetts with insurance rates for all residents of the state. You can’t mandate ‘one size fits all’ insurance coverage for everyone and expect the rates to stay the same. People need the right to decide how much coverage they want. Logically you should decide whether you want a policy that covers every doctor’s visit or one that simply covers specialists and hospital visits. Obamacare takes this right away from you (as did Massachusetts healthcare reform).

Now before you say that Romneycare equals Obamacare, let me explain a few things about Romneycare. Governor Romney had no choice but to go along with the idea of state health insurance–Massachusetts is a one-party state, and the legislature was going to pass healthcare reform. As Governor, Mitt Romney tried to temper the ‘let the government do everything’ philosophy’ of the state legislature, but was unsuccessful. The bill that eventually passed in Massachusetts had little or no resemblance to what the Governor originally proposed. Under Governor Patrick, it has gotten even worse. At some point in the future, it will probably be defunded and killed. As a result of Romneycare, insurance premiums are growing faster than in other states, waits to see a doctor are longer, patients do not always have the freedom to choose what hospital they would like to go to, and emergency waiting rooms lines are still incredibly long. Progress has not been made. This is what we will see nationally when Obamacare is fully implemented (oddly enough, after the election).

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One Of The First Casualties Of The Democratic Convention Is Truth

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The Foundry at Heritage.org posted an article today about President Clinton’s remarks in his speech last night that President Obama has not gutted the work requirements passed in the Welfare Reform Act during the Clinton Administration.

The article reminds us:

Last night, in his nationally televised speech, former President Bill Clinton said the charge that President Obama has gutted welfare reform was “a real doozy.”

The Heritage Foundation pointed out some basic facts that contradict this statement.

The article quotes Robert Rector, who helped write the 1996 law:

The Obama Administration will put in mothballs the formal purpose of welfare reform—to reduce the number of people dependent on government benefits. The Administration will abandon the legislative performance goal that encourages states to reduce welfare caseloads. It will weaken the “work participation” standards that require some 30 percent of able-bodied Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients to engage in work activities for 20 to 30 hours per week.

The changes that the Obama Administration has made to welfare reform will create more dependency–not encourage people to find work and contribute to society rather than take from it.

Mr. Rector further explains:

In the typical state, 1.5 percent of the TANF caseload leaves welfare and obtains work each month. Thus, any state can be fully exempted from the TANF work requirements if it raises the number of exits to 1.8 percent. This is a miniscule change. What will the other 98.2 percent of the caseload be doing? No one knows for sure. But one thing we do know for certain: They will be exempt from the federal “work participation” requirements established in the welfare reform law.

I realize this may seem a little trivial, but it is not–for two reasons. First of all, the change in the law encourages dependency on the government–never a good thing, and second of all, it is obvious that President Clinton was lying. It is also obvious that the mainstream media is not going to report that President Clinton was lying.

It is truly time for a housecleaning in Washington. At the same time we initiate housecleaning, we need to impose term limits, end retirement pay for Congressmen (put them under Social Security or other programs they have to contribute to), and refuse to pay Congress if they do not pass a budget. These ideas may seem a little drastic, but these are drastic times.

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Correcting The Public Relations Problem

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The Hill is reporting today that the Democratic National convention has reinstated language into its platform that recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. They have also gone back to the language of the 2008 platform which included the concept of God-given potential.

The Blaze reported yesterday on the change from the 2008 platform:

This is a departure from the past. In 2008, the platform read (emphasis added), “We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.”

With the words “God-given” removed, the 2012 platform sticks to a more secular script: “We gather to reclaim the basic bargain that built the largest middle class and the most prosperous nation on Earth – the simple principle that in America, hard work should pay off, responsibility should be rewarded, and each one of us should be able to go as far as our talent and drive take us.”

After three voice votes God and Jerusalem have been added back in. Frankly, I suspect the change had more to do with a focus group somewhere than any vote taken at the convention.

The article at The Hill tells the story of the three votes:

The additions were approved by a voice vote that seemed to split the crowd evenly and confused Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was leading the proceedings. 

 Villaraigosa looked around the stage and appeared uncertain over how to proceed after an initial vote, in which the “nays” to adding Jerusalem and God back into the platform sounded just as loud as the “ayes.”

Villaraigosa called for a second vote with similar results. He then called for a third voice vote, and while it sounded evenly split, he proclaimed that two-thirds of the delegates approved the changes, which sparked some grumbling in the audience.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the platform was changed to reflect Obama’s views.

Of course it was. Please note that in a voice vote, no one is on the record for their vote. Essentially, all of the convention voted ‘present.’

Please watch the video to see how the Democrats count votes:

The Contrast Is Obvious

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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?

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How To Mislead With Statistics

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There was a book out many years ago called “How To Lie With Statistics” written by Darrell Huff and Irving Geis. That book seems to have found its way into the speeches at the Democratic convention.

CNN reports that speakers have repeatedly stated that President Obama has added 4.5 million jobs to the economy during his time in office. That fact is true, but when you look at the entire picture, the importance of the number changes.

CNN reports:

While that is indeed a gain of 4.5 million, it’s only a net gain of 300,000 over the course of the Obama administration to date. The private jobs figure stood at 111 million in January 2009, the month Obama took office.

And total nonfarm payrolls, including government workers, are down from 133.6 million workers at the beginning of 2009 to 133.2 million in July 2012. There’s been a net loss of nearly 1 million public-sector jobs since Obama took office, despite a surge in temporary hiring for the 2010 census.

Meanwhile, the jobs that have come back aren’t the same ones that were lost.

According to a study released last week by the liberal-leaning National Employment Law Project, low-wage fields such as retail sales and food service are adding jobs nearly three times as fast as higher-paid occupations.

The bottom line is simple–we are not better off today than we were four years ago–our personal wealth has declined and our status as a nation has declined. It is time for a course correction.

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The Hazards Of Being A Diplomat During The American Politcal Season

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Breitbart.com reported today that Israeli Ambassador to America, Michael Oren, has stated that Democratic National Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was not telling the truth when she stated that he had told her that the Republican approach to Israel was dangerous to the State of Israel.

The article reports:

“I categorically deny that I ever characterized Republican policies as harmful to Israel. Bipartisan support is a paramount national interest for Israel, and we have great friends on both sides of the aisle,” Oren said, according to Alana Goodman of Commentary.

Meanwhile, the growing alienation of the Israeli government and the Obama administration is leading to fears of a further decline in relations if Obama wins re-election in November.

There really are no words to describe the lunacy of Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s statement. The Obama Administration has not treated Israel well, and it has not supported Israel as Israel has been continually threatened by Iran. Meanwhile, it has supported the overthrow of governments that although not friendly to Israel, were at least not hostile to Israel.

The article further reports:

An Israeli security official believes the distance Obama is placing between the U.S. and Israel is indicative of at least one thing — plans to punish Netanyahu if Obama is able to win a second term.

The unnamed official believes Obama took umbrage at a dinner Netanyahu held in Gov. Mitt Romney‘s honor, and is now positioning himself to “make Netanyahu pay for his behavior.”

President Obama has not visited Israel since he became President. It is no secret that the President and Benjamin Netanyahu are not great friends. If the Jewish vote in America goes for Obama, it will be because the American Jewish population simply is not paying attention.

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As A Non-Prisoner I Would Have To Pay For This Myself !

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WCVB in Boston reported today that a Massachusetts Judge has declared that the Massachusetts taxpayers must pay for sex change surgery for Michelle Kosilek (formerly Robert Kosilek). Michael Kosilek killed his wife in 1990 and was sentenced to life in prison.

The article reports:

Kosilek first sued the Massachusetts Department of Correction 12 years ago. Two years later, Wolf ruled that Kosilek was entitled to treatment for gender-identity disorder but stopped short of ordering surgery. Kosilek sued again in 2005, arguing that the surgery is a medical necessity.

In his 126-page ruling Tuesday, Wolf found that surgery is the “only adequate treatment” for Kosilek and that “there is no less intrusive means to correct the prolonged violation of Kosilek’s Eighth Amendment right to adequate medical care.”

Prison officials have repeatedly cited security risks in the case, saying that allowing Kosilek to have the surgery would make her a target for sexual assaults by other inmates.

But Wolf, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, found that the security concerns are “either pretextual or can be dealt with.” He said it would be up to prison officials to decide how and where to house Kosilek after the surgery.

I can see the next step coming. Kosilek will sue after the surgery to be put in a separate unit because he feels threatened.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about this is that if Kosilek were any place other than jail, he would be expected to find a way to pay for the surgery himself. Because he is currently living at taxpayers’ expense (don’t forget that he is in jail because he killed his wife), the surgery is free to him. This passed ridiculous a long time ago.

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Can American Aid Buy Peace ?

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Today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting that the American State Department is working out a deal with the new Egyptian government to give them $1 billion in debt relief. Aside from the fact that America faces its own debt problems, what in the world are we supporting? This is obviously an effort by the State Department to encourage Egypt to keep the peace treaty it signed with Israel that returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Unfortunately, that peace is danger due to the actions of the new Egyptian government.

On August 6, the Los Angeles Times reported that Islamic militants have increased their presence in the Sinai Peninsula since the revolution in Egypt. We need to understand the the new government of Egypt will align itself with Iran and is fundamentally opposed to the existence of Israel.

The article in the Wall Street Journal reports:

But the election in June of Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood-backed president, Mohammed Morsi, has called the strength of the old alliance into question. Mr. Morsi selected Beijing last week for his first official trip outside the Middle East, followed by a trip to Iran—moves some observers saw as a deliberate snub to Egypt’s traditional Western backers.

The arrival of an Islamist government followed by political upheaval and disconcerting moves on the international stage fueled questions over the reliability of Mr. Morsi as a U.S. ally. But his efforts at internal stability and his public criticism of Syria’s regime while visiting Tehran last week, which angered his hosts, have helped balance U.S. views of the new Egyptian leader.

At the present moment, America is dealing with record budget deficits and facing drastic cuts to our military. I realize that I am only an ordinary citizen, but it makes absolutely no sense to me to give $1 billion to a country that is in the process of aligning itself with countries that do not wish us well.

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Dead Voters In North Carolina

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A group called the Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina has done a ‘citizen audit’ of the North Carolina voter roles and found 30,000 dead registered voters.

The group’s website reports:

The group decided to conduct their audit of the voter rolls amid concerns about how well the State maintains the voter rolls. While they have not completed the full report, the group is still analyzing the actual cases of deceased persons who may have had votes cast in their names after having already died.

“It’s pretty clear that a few of those cases involved clerical errors on a busy election day,” DeLancy said, “but others look a lot like identity theft at the ballot box. Either way, we will need to review each one very carefully.”

The research almost ground to a halt when the group learned that some of the names on the list were from out-of-state deaths and are considered “unofficial,” even though the deaths were all reported through official government channels.

“It would seem normal for all states to share their death records with their out-of-state counterpart agencies,” said John Pizzo, Director of Research for VIP-NC, “but we were floored when North Carolina’s Registrar told us that South Carolina and Virginia have laws explicitly prohibiting the use of their mortality information for voter roll maintenance. Imagine that! We can use it for issues like corporate ownership and taxation, but not for taking dead people off the voter rolls!”

As the election approaches, we need to remember that voter fraud is an issue. In 2006, George Soros funded the Secretary of State Project (see Investors.com for further information). Generally speaking, the idea was to make sure the Secretary of State in every state (particularly in swing states) would make decisions that would support Democrat victories in elections. The stubborn refusal of many states (often abetted by the Obama Department of Justice) to verify their voting roles is part of that idea.

All states need to do a better job of maintaining their voting roles so that every American’s vote is counted once.

 

 

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Taken To The Woodshed For Telling TheTruth

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about some recent comments by Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. On “Face The Nation” yesterday, Governor O’Malley told Bob Schieffer that he couldn’t say that we were better off now than we were four years ago, but “but that’s not the question for this election.” Really? (or ‘seriously?’ as my three-year-old granddaughter likes to say)

Here is the video:

The logical question at that point was, “Then what is the point of this election?”

Today Governor O’Malley has changed his mind.

According to the article:

A day after saying, no, the country was not better off than it was four years ago, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley reversed course on Monday and said, yes, indeed it was.

“We are clearly better of as a country because we’re now creating jobs rathare than losing them,” O’Malley, a Democrat, said on CNN’s Starting Point. “But we have not recovered all that we lost in the Bush recession. That’s why we need to continue to move forward.”

He then motioned to a panel that included Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, among others. “Is there anyone on this panel that thinks we’ve recovered all we lost in the Bush recession? Clearly we’re moving forward, we’re creating jobs, unemployment is down, job creation is up. And that job creation would not happen without the president’s leadership.”

I get it–it’s George Bush’s fault. These people are getting so desperate they are becoming comical. We need to make sure no one votes for them out of sympathy.

This is the chart posted at Hot Air:

The Republicans are echoing Ronald Reagan:

I am sorry (but not surprised) to see the failure of the Obama Administration in so many areas. President Obama has done nothing that had a positive impact on our economy, and he has treated many of our friends around the world badly. I celebrate the fact that America elected a black President, but I fear that because President Obama has done such an inadequate job in the office that it will be difficult in the future for a black man to convince Americans that he is qualified to be President.

 

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With Friends Like This…

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One of the problems with the Obama Administration’s foreign policy is that for the past three years it seems as if we have watched our country reward our enemies and dis our friends. It’s getting worse–particularly in the case of our friend Israel.

The Blaze reported yesterday that a planned U. S. and Israel joint military exercise has been greatly scaled back.

The article reports:

Instead of the approximately 5,000 U.S. troops originally trumpeted for Austere Challenge 12…the Pentagon will send only 1,500 service members, and perhaps as few as 1,200.  Patriot anti-missile systems will arrive in Israel as planned, but the crews to operate them will not.  Instead of two Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense warships being dispatched to Israeli waters, the new plan is to send one, though even the remaining vessel is listed as a “maybe,” according to officials in both militaries.

“Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you,’” a unnamed senior Israeli military official told Time.

The U. S. of course is denying that it is a matter of trust. It really does not matter what the actual reason is–this is no way to treat our allies.

Meanwhile, Breitbart.com is reporting:

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of U.S. armed forces, said on Thursday that he does not wish to be “complicit” in any Israeli strike on Iran.

…We compare intelligence, we discuss regional implications, and we’ve admitted to each other that our clocks are turning at different rates … Israel is living with an existential concern that we are not living with.

Dempsey then said that he didn’t know Iran’s nuclear intentions.

That’s the same kind of thinking that gave Hitler Czechoslovakia.

 

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Editorial Compliance Equals Access

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The German newspaper called Deutsche Welle posted a story last Thursday about the American media. The headline of the story was “US journalists trade independence for access.” The article points out that in Germany it is not unusual to require authorization before interviews can be published, but that America is moving in that direction.

The article reports:

But in the United States, the balance of power between the journalist and the politician has increasingly shifted in favor of the latter. According to a July 15 report by Jeremy W. Peters of the New York Times, political journalists in Washington are increasingly trading their editorial independence for high-level access to members of the Obama administration.

Quotes gleaned from administration officials by a reporter are not just reviewed by the publication’s editor, they are often sent to the very same officials for approval – and even redaction – before going to print.

According to Stephen Ward, there is a growing and unhealthy “pressure on journalists and … on news organizations to get the story, to be first, to be the first tweet.”

“The officials who know this are quite aware that in this era of 24 hours news, access is king,” Ward, the director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told DW. “This is just a game of access – it’s as old as journalism.”

Access may partially explain the leftward tilt of American journalism, but I think there is also another explanation. Since the 1960’s our colleges have shifted to the political left. They have reflected the political and social upheaval of that time. The professors of today are often the students of that era or were educated after the our college campuses turned left. The inmates are running the asylum.

The article concludes:

Ultimately, journalists must assume much of the responsibility for the weakening of their editorial independence, according to Ward. He argues that they have increasingly bought into a partisan political game that revels in scandal at the sake of context.

“We are never going to get rid of all the tweets and the 24-hour business – all the fast-food journalism that we are seeing,” Ward said. “But we can at the core of political discourse maintain certain sources of news and analysis that are informed and not breathless – (that are) thoughtful.”

Our republic depends on a honest mainstream media. It is distressing that at this time we have to turn to the alternative media for the truth.

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Clint Eastwood Remixed

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Posted at Legal Insurrection yesterday:

I like the combination of the video from the Superbowl and the Clint Eastwood speech at the Republican Convention. The speech at the Republican Convention did nothing for me, although my husband loved it. My husband finally concluded that if you didn’t like the ‘spaghetti westerns,’ you probably didn’t like the convention speech.

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When Fact Checkers Don’t Fact Check

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Red State posted an article today on some of the ‘fact checking’ done on the speeches at the Republican Convention. I will post some of the details, but the bottom line is simple–Don’t believe anything you hear until you have a chance to look into the facts for yourself.

The article at Red State cites a few examples:

Democrats are energetically attempting to create the perception that Republicans — specifically, Paul Ryan — are running around Tampa making stuff up about Barack Obama (as if that’s necessary). And when I say Democrats, as regrettably cliché as it may sound, I also mean the mainstream media.

The following assertions, for instance, are true:

  • Obama did cut over $700 billion from Medicare to fund Obamacare.
  • The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism.
  • The Janesville, General Motors plant was closed down under Obama (though Ryan made a more nuanced assertion that we’ll cover below)
  • Obama did blow off the bipartisan debt commission.
  • Obama’s waivers do allow for the relaxing of work requirements in welfare reform.

Unfortunately, if you read the fact checkers, you wouldn’t know that those things are true. It is really sad that in a republic where the citizens are asked to vote for their leaders, the press cannot be trusted to provide the information the voters need.

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Interesting Insight From Thomas Sowell

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Yesterday Investors.com posted an article by Thomas Sowell with an interesting perspective on the Obama Administration.

The article opens with the following paragraph:

After reading Barack Obama’s book “Dreams from My Father,” it became painfully clear that he has not been searching for the truth, because he assumed from an early age that he had already found the truth — and now it was just a question of filling in the details and deciding how to change things.

Combined with the few bits of personal history of President Obama told by colleagues along the way, this makes perfect sense. The article points out that President Obama, when a professor at the University of Chicago chose not to mingle with the other professors. He wasn’t open to participating in the marketplace of ideas. He still isn’t. When presented with the conclusions of the Bowles-Simpson report, he not only ignored them, he didn’t even enter into negotiations to pass something that would begin to bring the federal government’s spending and deficits under control.

Mr. Sowell points out:

When Obama wrote that many people “had been enslaved only because of the color of their skin,” he was repeating a common piece of gross misinformation. For thousands of years, people enslaved other people of the same race as themselves, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Western Hemisphere.

Europeans enslaved other Europeans for centuries before the first African was brought in bondage to the Western Hemisphere.

The very word “slave” is derived from the name of a European people once widely held in bondage, the Slavs.

Facts can be very inconvenient things.

The article concludes:

Barack Obama is one of those people who is often wrong but never in doubt. When he burst upon the national political scene as a presidential candidate in 2008, even some conservatives were impressed by his confidence.

But confident ignorance is one of the most dangerous qualities in a leader of a nation.

If he has the rhetorical skills to inspire the same confidence in himself by others, then you have the ingredients for national disaster.

We have lived that disaster for the past four years.

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We Don’t Have A Solution, But We Need To Acknowledge That There Is A Problem

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Yesterday the Christian Science Monitor posted an article about the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) held in Tehran, Iran, which ended Friday. The summit was attended by 120 countries.

The Obama Administration has consistently claimed that the sanctions the United States has placed on Iran have isolated the country and will slow down the Iranian quest for a nuclear weapon. I don’t think a country that has been successfully isolated could host a conference of 120 nations. It is also disturbing to me that that conference included both Afghanistan and Egypt.

The article reported the positives and the negatives of the summit:

The US pressured NAM members not to go to Tehran, but many countries nevertheless “sent their highest delegates – their head of state, kings, prime ministers,” noted Mr. Zibakalam (Sadegh Zibakalam of Tehran University). “So I think…Iran can justifiably say, ‘I have scored some points against the United States and Israel.”

That view was countered by Mehdi Khalaji of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“What Iran does not want to admit [is] that many of these countries that participated in this summit, they are not non-aligned anymore, they have close relationships with the United States, countries like Saudi [Arabia]…like Bahrain, they do not have good relations with Iran,” Mr. Khalaji told AJE.

“The fact that many countries participated in this summit doesn’t mean that Iran can make up [for] its political isolation,” said Khalaji. “Iran has to look for [a] real solution for its problem, instead of focusing on propaganda and public diplomacy.”

Both were on display in Tehran during the two-day summit meeting.

“They put the cars of the murdered scientists in front of the venue, then they had a special press briefing from the families of the murdered scientists,” says the European diplomat. “They were feeding the media all these stories, ‘We are the victims here, and we are getting killed,’ which done with a slightly lighter touch may have worked. But they’ve just overdone it.”

“Instead, coming out of Iran were stories that this was not a successful conference for the Iranians, because the two issues they didn’t want to talk about were talked about from the very beginning, right at the top: the nuclear dossier and Syria.“

The longer the Iranian nuclear program goes unchecked, the more dangerous the world becomes. I have no idea what the solution is to the Iranian nuclear threat, but I suspect that killing their scientists and introducing computer viruses into their software is more effective than the current sanctions. I don’t want to see a war in the Middle East, but unless Iran is stopped, we are going to have one.

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Good News

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It is no secret that the Justice Department has gone political under President Obama. For the people who follow such things, it is amazing how unsuccessful they have been in some of their attempted prosecutions. One of those witch hunts has been aimed at Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

USA Today and website called Stand with Arizona are reporting that the investigation of Sheriff Arpaio has now ended and no charges will be filed.

NBC News reports:

The federal government has closed a criminal probe of alleged financial misconduct by Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio, who styles himself as “America’s toughest sheriff,” and no charges will be filed, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said on Friday.

A separate federal investigation relating to allegations of civil rights abuses by Arpaio’s office is continuing. 

That last sentence means that the Justice Department is still looking, hoping they can find something! I think, as Americans, we need to take a really good look at the federal government’s ability to hassle people.

The article at Stand with Arizona expresses it very well:

Friday night releases of embarrassing political revelations are a long and infamous tradition, in order to minimize the exposure of the story to the American people. But this release took the cake: Friday at 5pm, before a Labor Day weekend, and right after the close of the Republican National Convention.

And no wonder. This one was a doozy. After all, this was a political persecution right from the start. The Obama DOJ started this thing less than 100 days after Obama took office, at a time when the Department was not even fully staffed. They were chomping at the bit to go after him. And now it is all for nothing.

Dozens of investigators, 4 Federal prosecutors, countless FBI agents, all working for three damn years to try and bring down Sheriff Joe. We won’t hold our breath waiting for the left-wing media to demand to know how much the DOJ spent on this disgraceful witch-hunt, but you can bet it was in the tens of millions.

And they came up with NOTHING. Because there IS nothing. Because this was never about substance, only politics.

NBC News reported:

Arpaio, who returned from the Republican National Convention on Friday night, said he was “very happy” with decision.

“I send my appreciation to the federal government for their hard work in clearing my office,” he said in a news briefing. 

Arpaio, 80, who is seeking re-election to a sixth term as sheriff in November, has been under a separate federal inquiry since 2008 over allegations that he and his deputies engaged in an extensive pattern of civil rights abuses.

If Sheriff Arpaio has been elected five times, the people of Arizona must think he is doing something right!

 

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