Monthly Archives: September 2016

A Very Complex Smoking Gun

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The smoking gun has appeared in the Clinton email scandal. Unfortunately some aspects of it are so technical that those of us who think a megabyte is something you do at McDonald’s may struggle with it (Just for the record, I put myself in that category).

The Washington Post is reporting the story today. The headline of the story is, “Hillary Clinton‘s IT guy asked Reddit for help altering emails, a Twitter sleuth claims.”

These are the important parts of the story:

In the posts, stonetear asks for technical advice on retaining and deleting email messages that are more than 60 days old, as well as on removing the email address of an unnamed “VERY VIP” client from email archives.

“Hello all,” one of the posts begins. “I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP’s (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a PST file. Basically, they don’t want the VIP’s email address exposed to anyone. … Does anyone have experience with something like this, and/or suggestions on how this might be accomplished?”

The screen shot of one of the requests for help altering the emails:

emailsredditThe timeline:

The timing of two of Stonetear’s Reddit posts coincides with events in the Clinton email saga. One post, dated July 24, 2014, came one day after the House Select Committee on Benghazi and the State Department reached an agreement on producing records. The second, which is dated Dec, 10, 2014, and describes a 60-day email retention policy, came the same month that a longtime Clinton aide requested that their email retention policy be shortened to 60 days.

What cover up?

If you are going to do something illegal (like destroy subpoenaed evidence), you really should make sure that everyone involved has the knowledge required to do their part. This is really sloppy criminality. No self-respecting criminal would expect an IT guy to do this unless they were sure they would never be prosecuted (even if they were caught). That alone should provide food for thought.

 

 

 

Dear White House press secretary Josh Earnest–This Is Not A Narrative Fight

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Yesterday Hot Air posted a story quoting White House press secretary John Earnest on the bombings and stabbings that occurred this weekend.

The Washington Free Beacon has the full quote:

“When it comes to ISIL, we are in a fight, a narrative fight with them, a narrative battle, and what ISIL wants to do is they want to project that they are an organization that is representing Islam in a fight and a war against the West, and a war against the United States,” he said. “That is a bankrupt, false narrative. It’s a mythology, and we have made progress in debunking that mythology.”

After laying out advances made militarily against ISIS, which the Obama administration calls ISIL, Earnest again repeated the U.S. had made progress in “debunking this mythology.”

“We can’t play into this narrative that somehow the United States or the West is fighting against the Muslim religion,” he said. “The fact is there are millions of patriotic Muslims in this country right now that make our country proud. They serve in our armed services. They serve in our law enforcement … These are individuals who make a substantial and positive contribution to our country, and that is an inconvenient fact for the ISIL narrative.”

This statement infuriates me. We have had to put soldiers back in Iraq because President Obama decided to unilaterally end the war. Those soldiers are not fighting a narrative–they are fighting real bullets.

The article at Hot Air tells us a few important things about the bombings in New York City on Saturday:

A top law enforcement official said the pressure cookers in the two bombs in Chelsea on Saturday night were filled with “fragmentation materials.” The bomb that exploded, at 23rd Street, was filled with small bearings or metal BBs. A second device on 27th Street that did not explode appeared to be filled with the same material, the official said…

At the same time, pressure cookers have been a container of choice for many improvised explosive devices over the years. They were used in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 based on a model in publications put out by Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.

An expert on improvised explosive devices used by terrorists around the world said that a device constructed with a cellular phone as a timer and Christmas lights as an initiator would indicate a higher-than-average competence than what is usually found in the United States. “Most of what we see in the United States is a pipe bomb with black powder or smokeless powder or a simple hobby fuse,” said the expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he does sensitive work for government agencies. “This would be the high end of sophistication for I.E.D.s in the United States.”

The article at Hot Air also includes the irony that thieves prevented the second bomb from exploding:

The day Ahmad Khan Rahami allegedly planted two bombs in Chelsea — one of which detonated on West 23rd Street — two thieves accidentally helped to disable his second pressure cooker bomb left inside a rolling suitcase on West 27th Street, sources said.

The young men, who sources described as being well-dressed, opened the bag and took the bomb out, sources said, before placing the explosive into a garbage bag and walking away with the rolling suitcase.

In doing so, investigators believe they inadvertently disabled the explosive, sources said. That allowed investigators to examine the cellphone attached to the bomb intact and discover that it was connected to the family of Rahami.

This is not a narrative fight–this is a fight where people get injured and killed. It is time those in the Obama Administration realized that and admitted it.

 

Free Speech Under Attack

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article about the upcoming transfer of the Internet. On September 30, the United States will transfer control of the Internet to a multi-stakeholder, nonprofit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

The article reports:

But Cruz (Senator Ted Cruz) and other critics have labeled the transfer an “Internet surrender,” and say the ceding of U.S. control will allow more than 160 countries, including authoritarian regimes, to have some influence over what is allowed and prohibited on the Internet.

During Congressional hearings last week, ICANN’s CEO and President Goran Marby told Congress that he did not believe that ICANN was bound by the First Amendment. So why are turning over something that provides an alternative to the heavily biased media we have in America to an organization that will not protect free speech? That is a dangerous thing to do–particularly right before an important election.

 

Why An Armed And Trained Civilian Population Is Important

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Allen West posted a story on his website today about the stabbings that occurred in the mall at St. Cloud, Minnesota, over the weekend. There are a few details about that attack that seem to have gotten lost in the reporting.

Jason Falconer, an off-duty police officer and firearms instructor who owns a gun range, was the man who stopped the attacker. The article reports:

Falconer happened to be at the mall when the terrorist began carrying out his attack. The Sun says, Falconer opened fire as the suspect lunged towards him.

He got up and continued his terrifying assault each time he was shot until he was eventually fatally wounded.

Morning News USA reports, “His (Falconer’s) goal is to teach individuals the mindset, knowledge and skills needed to be successful with firearms in order to secure their personal safety or that of their family, at home or in public,” said Tactical Advantage, the off-duty police officer’s company website.

The  attacker was asking victims if they were Muslim before he attacked them. If the answer was no, he stabbed them. The average response time for an emergency call is 10 minutes. Atlanta has the worst response time with 11 to 12 minutes and Nashville comes in at a lightning speed of 9 minutes (according to the Women’s Self-Defense Institute).

The best defense against a random terrorism attack involving a knife, gun or other weapon is a well-trained, well-armed, ordinary law-abiding citizen. The War on Terror is moving to America; as individuals, we need to be trained, armed, and ready to fight that war.

How many lone wolves does it take to make a wolf pack?

 

You Can’t Win The War Until You Identify The Enemy

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Israel has been dealing with terrorist attacks since the country was founded. They identify the bombings, shootings, etc. as terrorist attacks, pride themselves on being able to clean up anything in two hours or less, and continue on their way. Somehow America has not mastered these basic skills that unfortunately are necessary in the world we currently live in.

Over the weekend there was a stabbing in a mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Saturday, a bombing in Seaside, New Jersey, on Saturday morning during a 5K Marine charity race, and two bombs in New York City on Saturday night–one exploded and one did not. The device in New Jersey was described as three pipe bombs; the devices in New York City have been described as pressure cookers with timers.

Houston, we have a problem. Part of the problem is that terrorism has come to America, and part of the problem is that our political leaders are reluctant to admit that terrorism has come to America.

The Observer posted an article today that makes some very good points about our current situation:

Unlike the powers-that-be charged with running New York City, you and I can be realistic. Intentionally placing two live bombs set to explode and intended to commit mass murder in a populated center of the most recognized city in the United States is terror. It does not matter if the perpetrator is part of a group or a lone wolf, it doesn’t matter if you are fighting for Islam or animal rights or if you are an anarchist. The definition is plain and simple. Using violence or the threat of violence to achieve a political end is terror.

The only time it is not called terror is when you want to keep the masses calm. Then you rely on antiquated definitions by the FBI and Justice Department. But those days are long gone.

…Our leaders want to package terrorists into nice neat boxes. So they conclude that if a terrorist is not a member of a terror group the violent act they perpetrate is not considered terror. The obvious example is the terror at Fort Hood, officially classified as workplace violence.

Even more poignant is the Orlando terrorist. The perpetrator was actually on the phone with local media bragging that he was part of ISIS and explaining that his actions were motivated by a need to defend Islam.  He even repeatedly chanted the Islamic terrorist battle cry: “Allahu Akbar.”  Yet, the US Attorney General still responded by saying “We may never really know the motivation behind the attack.”

If you are a regular reader of this website, you are familiar with the information in the following paragraph. If you are not a regular reader, this is something you need to be aware of:

In October 2011, elements of the American Muslim Brotherhood wrote the White House demanding an embargo or discontinuation of information and materials relating to Islamic-based terrorism. The letter was addressed to John Brennan, who at the time was Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.  Days later John Brennan agreed to create a task force to address the problem by removing personnel and products that the Muslim Brotherhood deemed “biased, false, and highly offensive.” This move in effect allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to control the information given to the people charged with stopping the terrorism initiated by groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. At this point, the 9/11 reports and other actual historic documents were altered to make them compliant with the new paradigm. (I thought only the Russians rewrote history.)

If we are not careful, political correctness is going to kill us all. The weekend attacks were terrorism–whether by a lone nutcase who thought he represented Allah or a member of a group. It really doesn’t matter–people were injured as a result of the actions of these people. CAIR (which is one of the major Muslim Brotherhood front groups in America–see the list of unindicted co-conspirators from the Holy Land Foundation Trial) works very hard to keep the Muslim community from reporting suspicious behavior and to keep our government unaware of what is being taught in some mosques. It is time to pay attention to the people among us who have refused to assimilate and who are fighting to undermine our way of life. That group of people does not include all Muslims, but it does mainly consist of Muslims, and until peaceful Muslims rein in the radicals among them, we need to watch the entire community. Refusing to call a terrorist attack a terrorist attack does not help anyone; and in fact, it simply emboldens those planning more attacks.

Stacking The Deck In The Presidential Debates

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Yesterday Lifezette posted a story about the bipartisan commission that is in charge of planning the debates of the presidential candidates.

The story reports:

The men and women who run the supposedly “nonpartisan” Commission on Presidential Debates have put their money where their mouths are — and it all has gone to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The amount of money is small by the standards of a modern presidential campaign, but it is one-sided. A pair of Ph.D. candidates at Stanford University examined campaign finance reports and found that all of the $5,650 in contributions that commission members have made to presidential candidates during this election season have gone to Clinton.

Republican Donald Trump, who will meet Clinton in the first debate a week from Monday, received no donations from debate commission members. Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, who both learned Friday that they will be shut out of the first debate, also received nothing.

It gets even better. The article quotes one of the commission members:

Kevin Zeese, an adviser to the Stein campaign, told LifeZette the contributions are further evidence of a bipartisan conspiracy to rig the electoral system against third-party alternatives. And the fact that Clinton scooped up all of the contributions made by commission members this year fits with the fact that she has won support not only from her own party but many Establishment figures in the Republican Party, as well.

“Hillary Clinton has done a really good job of uniting the two parties,” he said. “It’s almost like one party.”

Has it occurred to the commission that the fact that ‘it’s almost like one party’ might be the problem? That is exactly the reason Donald Trump is doing so well–the establishment Republican party is indistinguishable from the Democrat party. The establishment Republican party is no longer the party of smaller government and lower spending–they are now the party of ‘we want to do the spending.’ Donald Trump is not a conservative, but at least he has some sort of business sense.

There is a book called Tragedy and Hope 101: The Illusion of Justice, Freedom, and Democracy that discusses the move to morph the two-party system in America into a system that appears to be a two-party system, but in reality is a one-party system. In this scenario, elections happen, but the same people are always in control. We are dangerously close to that place, and I believe that the election of Donald Trump might be a way to avoid going there. It is going to be a very interesting election–there are a lot of people who are very fond of the system the way it is and will fight with everything they have to make sure it does not change.

At any rate, are you willing to believe that the debates will be fair and unbiased?

 

Stealing From The Poor To Enrich The Rich

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This is a screenshot taken from the Observer:

bankstatementThe article reports:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is stealing from her poorest supporters by purposefully and repeatedly overcharging them after they make what’s supposed to be a one-time small donation through her official campaign website, multiple sources tell the Observer.

The overcharges are occurring so often that the fraud department at one of the nation’s biggest banks receives up to 100 phone calls a day from Clinton’s small donors asking for refunds for unauthorized charges to their bankcards made by Clinton’s campaign. One elderly Clinton donor, who has been a victim of this fraud scheme, has filed a complaint with her state’s attorney general and a representative from the office told her that they had forwarded her case to the Federal Election Commission.

…“We don’t investigate fraudulent charges unless they are over $100,” the fraud specialist explained. “The Clinton campaign knows this, that’s why we don’t see any charges over the $100 amount, they’ll stop the charges just below $100. We’ll see her campaign overcharge donors by $20, $40 or $60 but never more than $100.” The source, who has worked for Wells Fargo for over 10 years, said that the total amount they refund customers on a daily basis who have been overcharged by Clinton’s campaign “varies” but the bank usually issues refunds that total between $700 and $1,200 per day.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. The repeated charges to Mrs. Mahre are not an isolated incident. It is totally amazing to me that with the amount of money the Clintons have amassed through questionable dealings involving the Clinton Foundation they would feel the need to obtain campaign funds dishonestly. There seems to be a pattern in the actions of the Clinton family.

And The Lies Keep Coming…

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Yesterday the Daily Caller posted an article with the headline, “Media Outraged After Trump Tricks Them To Cover Endorsements From Military Heroes.” The story explains that the media went to the Trump International Hotel expecting Donald Trump to take questions about whether he still questions President Obama’s birthplace. The media is trying very hard to make this an issue in the Presidential campaign (to illustrate that Donald Trump is not a good candidate?). When they got to the press conference, they were treated to a barrage of military endorsements for Trump. It wasn’t what they wanted or expected.

The article reports:

At the very end of the campaign event, Trump finally addressed the topic the media was there to hear. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.”

“President Barack Obama was born in the United States,” Trump said. “Period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong again.”

Many reporters, some standing on chairs, began shouting questions over the applause from the guests in attendance. But Trump, having accomplished what he wanted, took none.

Meanwhile, the media has tried very hard to hang the birther controversy on Donald Trump. Unfortunately, the age of google searches has made that impossible.

Yesterday Breitbart reported the following:

The mainstream media, from Bloomberg News to MSNBC to Politico to the Washington Post and more, have all confirmed: Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 campaign for president did substantially further the birther movement.

…It’s not just Hannity, who’s opposed to Clinton’s election and is a supporter of GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, who has confirmed that Clinton’s 2008 campaign and its allies pushed this.

In fact, Politico, in 2011, published a piece from two of its top reporters at the time—Ben Smith and Byron Tau, who have gone on respectively to BuzzFeed and the Wall Street Journal—specifically detailing how the Clinton campaign was behind birther rumors spreading.

The birther thing is something the media tried to use to attack Donald Trump. It is totally irrelevant at this point. The problem is that most of President Obama’s personal records remain sealed–even after almost eight years in office. That is unusual. That is actually why the birther controversy has continued–there are some genuine questions about some documents relating to President Obama. The mainstream media is getting desperate. They have lost any objectivity or credibility that they might have had. This election will probably mark the end of their influence on the majority of Americans.

The article at Breitbart concludes:

“With Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager admitting on national television and on Twitter that they promoted the rumors surrounding now-President Obama’s heritage, Mr. Trump has been fully vindicated,” Miller (Trump campaign senior communications adviser Jason Miller) said. “Not only was a Clinton campaign worker blamed and fired over the activity, we have now been informed that Secretary Clinton was aware of what was going on, with Clinton’s campaign manager even apologizing to Obama’s campaign manager. This still does not explain why Hillary Clinton failed to fire her chief strategist Mark Penn on the spot over the memo he sent her advocating she portray Obama as ‘fundamentally’ foreign. Hillary Clinton didn’t tell the truth about her emails and she didn’t tell the truth about her campaign’s role in pushing these rumors in 2008. This pattern is never going to change, and it’s why nobody trusts Hillary Clinton.”

There will be people who will vote for Hillary Clinton regardless of how many lies she tells. That is their privilege. It is my hope, however, that Americans are tired of the lies that surround Hillary and her campaign and will make a different choice.

Letting The 3.4 Percent Rule

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There is an attempt being made by 3.4 percent of Americans to control the actions of the other 96.6 percent Americans. No–I am not talking about the wealthy–I am talking about the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender) community. I have no objection to members of that community being whoever or whatever they choose to be, but I do object when they try to impose their lifestyle on the majority of Americans. Most Americans are tolerant, but that doesn’t mean we have to condone something we believe is wrong. That battle recently came to a head in North Carolina when the City of Charlotte (in violation of the home rule provisions of the North Carolina Constitution) declared all restrooms (and locker rooms) open to whatever sex the occupant considered themselves. Aside from the problems with the law itself, only the North Carolina legislature has the power to write a law that impacts public buildings in the state. The legislature then passed a law requiring people to use the restroom (or locker room) corresponding to the sex they were at birth. Some companies and organizations have chosen not to do business in North Carolina because of this law, known as HB2. Meanwhile, many of those companies and organizations continue to do business in countries that execute homosexuals in cruel ways.

Breitbart posted a story on the continuing controversy on Wednesday.

The article reminds us:

GOP leaders in North Carolina are pushing back twice as hard against the Democrat-led alliance of business, gay and transgender advocacy groups which is now trying to damage the state’s economy in the run-up to the November gubernatorial election. 

…GOP leaders have been trying to finesse this transgender issue, because voters strongly oppose the transgender push while business leaders are pleading for an end to the Democrat-organized economic war against the state’s business community. But Gov. Pat McCrory and his deputies have now decided to go on the offensive against the far-reaching and unpopular transgender agenda, which would gradually stigmatize and outlaw the public’s recognition that the two sexes — men and women, boys and girls — want a civic society that supports their equal and different preferences. 

The problem here is not the LGBT community itself–it does not represent a danger to anyone. The problem is that there are disturbed people who will take advantage of an all-access law for their own nefarious purposes. I have no doubt that there would be abuses of the all-access law, particularly at the high school level. Do you really want the high school football team in your daughter’s high school locker room? Most Americans think that would be a really bad idea. Separate facilities for transgender students would easily solve the problem.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association issued a statement by Franklin Graham.

Here are some highlights from that statement:

The ACC website proudly features Toyota as an “Official Corporate Champion,” yet Toyota maintains factories and distribution centers in several of these discriminatory countries, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Egypt. Where is the moral outrage of the presidents of Boston College, Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami, UNC, North Carolina State, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest?

Indeed, the ACC’s member schools compete in 25 sports divided by gender—12 men’s sports and 13 women’s. Though gender issues may be becoming more complicated in higher education and other parts of society, the athletic conference you serve as commissioner doesn’t seem to have any problem distinguishing between the two genders—male and female. Yet, when a state like the one I live in seeks to make the same distinction with regard to use of public bathrooms in an effort to protect its citizens from those who would use the men’s room today and the women’s room tomorrow, the academic elites who comprise your conference fake a moral outrage that is frankly shameful.

Ironically, the NCAA is more discriminatory towards transgender people than the public policy they apparently wish to see as law in America. For example, opponents to legislation like NC House Bill 2 support permitting people to use the bathroom which corresponds to the sex they identify with on a given day—meaning someone might feel like a man today and a woman tomorrow, switching bathrooms at will.

Yet even the NCAA doesn’t allow such casual gender identity for participation in collegiate athletics. The NCAA Policy on Transgender Student-Athlete Participation states, “Any transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatment related to gender transition may participate in sex-separated sports activities in accordance with his or her assigned birth gender.” This is precisely what supporters of HB 2 have been requesting—that people use public restrooms in accordance with their assigned birth gender.

I think I represent the views of millions who would rather preserve gender-specific public bathrooms—a mainstay for generations—than to attend a football game in my state to determine the champion of a conference governed by politically-correct, morally hypocritical academics.

Mr. Graham concludes:

Commissioner Swofford, you maintain your conference’s decision is “one of principle” and that “core values…are of utmost importance.” Well, millions of us who oppose your decision do so as a matter of principle and core values—values of privacy, safety and protection of our sons and daughters in public restrooms, and the principle that God created just two genders and assigned them at birth.

Please don’t make political pawns of student-athletes who just want to play football or basketball in North Carolina, and don’t continue to offend millions of Americans who endorse thousands of years of gender-specific bathrooms while you continue to accept corporate sponsorship money from companies proudly conducting their business in countries that discriminate against homosexuals to the point of death.

We need to be tolerant, but we need to protect our citizens and our children also. It is possible to do both of these.

 

The Ambush Was Handled Graciously

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Gateway Pundit posted a story yesterday about Donald Trump’s visit to a black church in Flint, Michigan. CNN also posted a story on the event yesterday. The contrast is interesting. First of all, let’s talk about politics from the pulpit in America. It is no secret that Democratic candidates routinely speak and raise money in black churches. Republican candidates generally do not speak in churches because of concerns of the tax status of the churches. There is definitely a double standard.

So what happened when Donald Trump went into a black church in Flint, Michigan, to speak?

CNN reports:

The pastor who hosted Donald Trump at her church in Flint, Michigan, interrupted the Republican presidential nominee during his speech Wednesday to ask him to refrain from attacking his rival Hillary Clinton.

“Mr. Trump, I invited you here to thank us for what we’ve done in Flint, not give a political speech,” Rev. Faith Green Timmons of the Bethel United Methodist Church told Trump after walking to the podium while Trump was speaking.

Gateway Pundit gives us the rest of the story:

But prior to his visit to the church Pastor Timmons posted her intentions on Facebook.

She said,

“Today is the day! We have a chance to show DONALD TRUMP than this nation is filled with intelligent, wise black citizens fo integrity many of whom live right here in FLINT, MICHIGAN. What he will see is how we are braving a manmade catastrophe. HE WILL NOT USE US, WE will EDUCATE HIM!!!“

Mr. Trump handled the event graciously. He did remark later that he felt as if something was going on because the Pastor was extremely nervous.

It would be interesting to remind Pastor Timmons who created the manmade catastrophe. The Democrats have been in charge of Flint for a number of years and made the decision to stop buying water from Detroit and sign up with a regional water system; in the meantime, it was getting its municipal water from the Flint River, not noted for its pristine water quality.

The Democrats are getting support from the black churches. The Democrats are the people who have created a welfare system that has destroyed the black family, destroyed the work ethic in the black community and created generational poverty and dependence. At some point, I believe the black community and its churches will wake up to the damage done to them by Democratic policies. All of this was foreseeable–Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted the outcome of the War of Poverty policies and the negative impact they would have on the black community fifty years ago. Remember, it was Democrat President Lyndon Baines Johnson who stated, “I’ll have those n—–s voting Democratic for the next 200 years” as he confided with two like-minded governors on Air Force One regarding his underlying intentions for the “Great Society” programs.

Meanwhile, the campaigns continue.

Priorities

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The Presidential race is important. I totally understand that Hillary Clinton wants to be President and that she has people working with her on the campaign to make that happen, but I want to step back a minute and look at some recent events.

The video that went viral on Facebook on Sunday showed a woman who collapsed and had to be lifted into her van. She obviously had a serous medial event. She is back on the campaign trail today claiming to be fine. I have a problem with that. Not the problem you might expect, but a problem.

A number of years ago, when Patrick Kennedy had a driving episode in Washington, D.C., due to drugs or alcohol, he went into a rehabilitation program for a short period of time. Then he came back to work. Bob Beckel, who has been very open about his own battles with alcohol abuse, commented that he felt Kennedy’s handlers did him a disservice by not having him spend a year in a rehabilitation program. As far as I know, Patrick Kennedy has gotten his life together and is leading a fight against legalized marijuana, but the fact remains that his handlers put politics above his health and welfare. I feel strongly that Hillary’s handlers (and possibly Hillary) are making the same mistake. Campaigning (and the job of President) is strenuous. If she is recovering from pneumonia, she needs time to heal–she doesn’t need the wear and tear of a political campaign. I feel that Hillary (and her handlers) have lost their sense of priorities.

A New Low In Presidential Campaigning

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Below is an excerpt from an article posted at Hot Air today. Draw your own conclusions. I suspect this has been done before, but it is disgusting:

TrumpLeaks is an effort to uncover unreported video or audio of Donald Trump so voters can have access to the Donald Trump who existed before running for president and before his recent affinity for teleprompters. TrumpLeaks can provide some compensation to those who have usable, undoctored video or audio that has been legally obtained or is legally accessible.

Translated that means that David Brock, Hillary’s media hatchet man, has put out the word that his Correct the Record super PAC is ready to pay for dirt on Donald Trump.

The article reports:

This story is revealing in a couple of ways. First, Brock is effectively an arm of the Clinton campaign. If she found this offensive she could shut it down with a phone call. So next time you hear Clinton or the media claim she is taking the high road in this campaign, e.g. ‘we care about the issues that are important to Americans’ keep in mind that her people are eager to pay for dirt on her opponent.

Second, it was a big story when Trump off-handedly said he hoped Russia would find Hillary’s 30,000 missing emails. The Clinton campaign instantly ran with the claim that Trump was calling on a foreign government to conduct “espionage” against Hillary. That never made any sense given that Hillary’s long ago deleted emails would be on a defunct server now in the possession of the FBI. But the fact that it was nonsense didn’t stop the media from running with it for days. It will be interesting to see if the media even bothers to make the Clinton world effort to pay for dirt on Trump a story.

Second, the fact that this is being called TrumpLeaks suggests just how much WikiLeaks has Democratic insiders spooked. The DNC has already lost a party chairwoman, a CEO, a CFO and several other high ranking figures because of embarrassing leaks. Julian Assange promises there will be more to come.

Donald Trump may be smarter about what he writes down than Hillary.

Why This Election Is So Important

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President Obama has been in office almost eight years. During that time he has appointed numerous judges. Needless to say, the judges he has appointed tend to be liberal judges who believe that the U.S. Constitution is a ‘living’ document that can be twisted in a variety of different ways. Those judges appointed by President Obama are already playing a role in the November election.

USA Today posted an article today explaining how the judges President Obama has appointed are influencing the vote.

The article explains:

Judges named by Obama to federal appellate and district courts overseeing North Carolina, Texas, Michigan and Wisconsin have in recent months voted to strike down restrictions on voting imposed by Republican legislatures. In Michigan and North Carolina, his Supreme Court nominees helped block efforts to restore the restrictions for this fall’s elections.

The rulings could help hundreds of thousands of voters — mostly minorities who vote Democratic — get to the polls in November by removing impediments such as photo IDs and making it easier to register and vote.

First of all, let’s deal with the spin in the article. In the March primary election in North Carolina, photo ID was required. USA Today reported in March:

North Carolina election officials also said their primary turnout was the second highest in the past 28 years. The turnout was about 35% on Tuesday. A record turnout of 37% was set in 2008.

There are a lot of activities that require photo ID. Requiring an ID to vote does not limit turnout–it limits fraud. Minorities are not stupid–they are perfectly capable of obtaining photo ID’s. In fact, if you are over eighteen and want to work, you need some form of identification to be put on the payroll, if you are on welfare, you need a photo ID to sign up or open a bank account. Requiring a photo ID neither suppresses voter turnout or puts an undue burden on voters. It does help prevent fraud.

Today’s article at USA Today reports the following:

But Nicholas Stephanopoulos, an assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School specializing in elections and voting rights, says judges tend to view the cases “through ideological and partisan prisms.”

At the federal appeals court level, those prisms have shifted left since Obama came to office. While only one federal circuit court had a majority of judges named by Democratic presidents in January 2009, nine do now. The percentage of appellate judges named by Democrats has risen from 39% to 55% during that period.

So far this year, judges nominated by Obama and Bill Clinton have sided with civil rights groups and Democratic lawyers every time. Those named by Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush have split their votes.

If you would like to see America governed according to the Constitution we were founded with, you need to vote for Republicans this November. Otherwise there is serious danger of America morphing into a country none of us will recognize.

More Bad News From ObamaCare

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Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air today about some of the recent developments in ObamaCare. As ObamaCare quietly implodes, it is deeply impacting the cost of healthcare and health insurance in America.

The article reports:

Just over half of employees this year have a health insurance policy with a deductible of at least $1,000, according to a survey of employers from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

It’s the continuation of a multiyear trend of companies passing more of the costs of employee health care back onto workers.

Overall, health insurance premiums for a family covered by an employer health plan rose an average 3 percent this year to $18,142. Of that, employees pay an average of $5,277.

The thing we need to remember is that insurance companies are in business to make a profit. If they don’t make a profit, they won’t be in business. The percentage of profit of insurance companies is well within the range of other businesses. If you want to complain about the salaries paid to heads of insurance companies, also take a look at the salaries of other corporations–including nonprofits. You may argue that you think the salaries are out of line, but remember that stockholders make those decisions in public companies.The decisions about insurance rates are based on actuary tables which predict their cost of the coverage they provide to their policy holders. When the federal government gets involved and chooses to ignore those actuary tables, they skew the business model and things do not work the way they would in a free market.

The solution to health insurance costs is to go back to the free market. The competition will bring the price down faster than any government program. We need health insurance that goes across state lines, that follows the insured, rather than being provided by an employer, and that provides only the insurance the person being insured wants or needs–sixty-year-old grandmothers do not need pediatric dental coverage or birth control coverage. ObamaCare has been a disaster–it is time to replace it with a free market system.

Are You A Racist If You Believe Something That Is True?

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Hillary Clinton has gotten some rather unfavorable publicity in recent days because of her comment that at least fifty percent of Donald Trump’s supporters belong in a ‘basket of deplorables.’ Some of the media, being at times less than unbiased, has decided to back up her claim. Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article today illustrating how easy it is for the media to use statistics to create a totally false impression.

The article cites the reporting of a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll which measured the views of Americans toward blacks.

This is how the poll was reported at Slate Magazine:

A significant slice of Americans expressed racist views against blacks, and those who identify as Donald Trump supporters are more likely to fall into that group, though Hillary Clinton supporters are definitely there too.

Well, that’s not exactly what the poll showed.

The article at Power Line reports:

What were the “racist views against blacks” that so many Americans expressed? The only ones that garnered anywhere close to 50 percent assent from Trump supporters (and 33 percent from Clinton’s) were that blacks are (1) more criminal and (2) more violent than whites.

But these opinions are true. Crime statistics show that the rate of criminality per capita, including violent criminality, is much higher among blacks than whites. In fact, blacks commit as many murders as whites even though they represent only a around 12 percent of the U.S. population.

It’s obviously unfair to infer racism among those who hold the correct view of the comparative criminality and violent criminality of blacks and whites. Some who hold this view may be racist, but they aren’t racist by virtue of holding the view.

A fairer statement would be that those who believe blacks and whites are equally criminal and equally violent are poorly informed.

Shouldn’t we be more interested in finding the cause of the problem than calling those who acknowledge the problem racists? Until we correctly identify the cause of the fact that blacks commit more crimes and are more violent than whites, we are not going to solve the problem.

As usual, I have a few ideas on the subject–we need to look at the breakdown of the family in the black community (and in the white community, but to a lesser degree) and the lack of fathers in the home. We also need to look at a culture that has somehow turned its back on setting a goal for its young people to be law-abiding, productive members of society (also a problem in the white community, but to a lesser degree). We need to look at what we are feeding our children on television, in music, and in video games. We need to make it fashionable for all young people to be a good student and find a way to provide a good education for promising students regardless of their family’s financial situation. We need to find a way to make being a successful black person (both in life and business) a desirable goal. I am not sure the federal government can do this, but local governments could be helpful in encouraging church and community programs to help children do better in school. These can be done with volunteers, retired teachers, and other adults who want to help.

Meanwhile, it accomplishes nothing to skew statistics in order to label your political opponents racists.

The Experiment Of The States

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America is made up of 50 different states. Each state is unique–politically, economically,  geographically, ethnically, etc. So if people could live anywhere they wanted to, where would they live? Actually, the age of the internet has made that somewhat possible–telecommuting has grown in recent years. So let’s look at where people live.

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article yesterday about a study of trends in population growth in states within America. The data for the study came from the IRS. The results were not really surprising.

The article reports the findings of the study:

To measure the states that are most attractive to Americans on the move, we developed an “attraction” ratio that measures the number of domestic in-migrants per 100 out-migrants. A state that has a rating of 100 would be perfectly balanced between those leaving and coming.

Overall, the biggest winner — both in absolute numbers and in our ranking — is Texas. In 2014 the Lone Star State posted a remarkable 156 attraction ratio, gaining 229,000 more migrants than it lost, roughly twice as many as went to No. 3 Florida, which clocked an impressive 126.7 attraction ratio.

Most of the top gainers of domestic migrants are low-tax, low-regulation states, including No. 2 South Carolina, with an attraction ratio of 127.3, as well as No. 5 North Dakota, and No. 7 Nevada.

…Overall, many of the most affluent states are the ones hemorrhaging high-income earners the most rapidly. As in overall migration, New York sets the standard, with the highest outmigration of high income earners (defined as annual income over $200,000) relative to in-migrants (attraction ratio: 53). New York is followed closely by Illinois, the District of Columbia and New Jersey, which are all losing the over-$200,000-a-year crowd at a faster pace than California.

The big winners in terms of affluent migration tend to be historically poorer states, mainly in the Sun Belt and the Intermountain West. Florida has an attraction ratio for people earning over $200,000 a year of 223, the highest in the nation, followed by South Carolina, Montana, Idaho and North Carolina.

Given the opportunity, Americans move to states with lower taxes and less regulation over their businesses and daily lives. Now if we could only teach them to vote that way in national elections…

 

Vetting The Candidates

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Tim Kaine is the Democratic candidate for Vice-President. He is a former governor of Virginia and seems to be well-liked. However, there are some elements of his background that are troubling.

The Center for Security Policy reminds us that in 2010 then Democratic National Chairman Tim Kaine attended the annual fundraising banquet of the Islamic Center Dar Al Hijrah in the Washington DC suburbs.

The article reports:

The reasons the others (seven elected officials were “invited”: former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, now Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Sen. James Webb (D-VA), Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Sharon Bulova, Fairfax Supervisor Penny Gross, and Virginia State Delegate Kaye Kory….Within a few days, Senator James Webb and State Delegate Kaye Kory‘s names were removed from the invitation.)  should not legitimate the Dar Al-Hijrah fundraiser, we had written them, included the Islamic Center’s continued support for the Dar al-Hijrah imam in 2001, Anwar Al-Awlaki, the senior al-Qaeda recruiter for three 9/11 hijackers, imam and mentor to the accused 2009 Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan who killed 13 people, and online mentor to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the Christmas Day 2009 attempt to blow up  Northwest Airlines Flight 253.   We described several other Dar Al-Hijrah leaders linked to terrorism and supporting violent jihad against America, including the current imam who will host the April 3 event.

This is not the kind of company American political leaders should be keeping.

The Hill posted a story about some of Tim Kaine’s background and beliefs on Friday.

Here are some excerpts:

According to the media, Tim Kaine took a life transforming “mission” trip to Latin America in 1980. Conveniently left out of these stories, are the radical reality of the Cold War in Latin America and Tim Kaine’s Soviet sympathizing mentors. In fact, whatever Kaine’s intentions, he more likely met Karl Marx than Jesus Christ while there. 

Connect the dots with a little history, and an alarming picture emerges of Kaine’s adventures with radicals and revolutionaries in 1980s Latin America.

Reports indicate that in Honduras, “Mr. Kaine embraced an interpretation of the gospel, known as liberation theology…”

Liberation theology is not standard Catholic doctrine–it is more in line with the preaching of President Obama’s friend Reverend Wright.

The article reports:

Journalistic and academic research has now shown that Liberation Theology itself was quite possibly a product of a Kremlin disinformation campaign designed to undermine the Church and bring Catholic countries into the Soviet sphere. The top-ranking Soviet Bloc defector of the Cold War, Gen. Ion Pacepa admits that he was personally involved in the operation.

And contrary to the myth, this was never Pope Francis’ theology of choice.

The article concludes:

In Virginia he ran as a moderate and ruled as a liberal. Today he runs as a “Pope Francis” Catholic but on abortion and marriage, Kaine opposes Francis.

On the conscience rights of groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor, Kaine sided with Obama. Francis sided with the Little Sisters, whom he visited in Washington a year ago to publicly show his support.

As in the 1980s, Kaine’s “Catholicism” serves neither his Church nor his country, but a Leftist political agenda that has proven to be on the wrong side of the Church, on the wrong side of history, and against the interests of freedom and the United States.

I struggle with people who claim to be Catholic and support abortion. The Catholic Church has been on the front lines of the abortion issue since Roe v. Wade. They have set an example that I wish the other churches in America would embrace–the idea that your faith influences your moral and political choices. Tim Kaine may call himself a Catholic, but it is obvious that he does not believe the teachings of the Catholic faith.

Compromised Justice

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Last Wednesday The Wall Street Journal ran an article about the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton and her emails. There are some genuine concerns about some aspects of the email investigation that the FBI chose to ignore.

The article reports:

The calculated release before the long Labor Day weekend suggests political favoritism, and the report shows the FBI didn’t pursue evidence of potential false statements, obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence.

Mr. Comey’s concessions start with his decision not to interview Mrs. Clinton until the end of his investigation, a mere three days before he announced his conclusions. Regular FBI practice is to get a subject on the record early then see if his story meshes with what agents find. In this case they accepted Mrs. Clinton’s I-don’t-recall defenses after the fact.

The notes also show the G-men never did grill Mrs. Clinton on her “intent” in setting up her server. Instead they bought her explanation that it was for personal convenience. This helped Mr. Comey avoid concluding that her purpose was to evade statutes like the Federal Records Act. Mr. Comey also told Congress that indicting her without criminal intent would pose a constitutional problem. But Congress has written many laws that don’t require criminal intent, and negligent homicide (for example) has never been unconstitutional.

The article also notes that Clinton advisors may have participated in a cover-up to stonewall any investigation.

There is contradictory testimony by Mrs. Clinton’s aides:

Consider page 10 of the FBI report: “Clinton’s immediate aides, to include [Huma] Abedin, [Cheryl] Mills, Jacob Sullivan, and [redacted] told the FBI they were unaware of the existence of the private server until after Clinton’s tenure at State or when it became public knowledge.”

That’s amazing given that Ms. Abedin had her own email account on the private server. It is also contradicted by page 3: “At the recommendation of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s long-time aide and later Deputy Chief of Staff at State, in or around fall 2008, [ Bill Clinton aide Justin] Cooper contacted Bryan Pagliano . . . to build the new server system and to assist Cooper with the administration of the new server system.”

The FBI must also have ignored two emails referred to by the State Inspector General showing Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin discussing the server while they worked at State: “hrc email coming back—is server okay?” Ms. Mills asked Ms. Abedin and Mr. Cooper in a Feb. 27, 2010 email.

The article concludes:

The FBI’s kid-glove treatment of Mrs. Clinton raises serious doubts about the seriousness of Mr. Comey’s probe. His July 5 public rebuke of her “extremely careless” handling of secrets has masked that Mrs. Clinton and her aides were given a pass on much of their behavior and dubious answers. The entire episode is another Jim Comey scar on the FBI’s reputation.

So why the kid-glove treatment? Breitbart posted an article on Saturday that might provide a few clues.

A few nuggets from the Breitbart article:

When President Obama nominated Comey to become FBI director in 2013, Comey promised the United States Senate that he would recuse himself on all cases involving former employers.

But Comey earned $6 million in one year alone from Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin became a Clinton Foundation donor that very year.

…In 2013, Comey became a board member, a director, and a Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee member of the London bank HSBC Holdings.

“Mr. Comey’s appointment will be for an initial three-year term which, subject to re-election by shareholders, will expire at the conclusion of the 2016 Annual General Meeting,” according to HSBC company records.

HSBC Holdings and its various philanthropic branches routinely partner with the Clinton Foundation. For instance, HSBC Holdings has partnered with Deutsche Bank through the Clinton Foundation to “retrofit 1,500 to 2,500 housing units, primarily in the low- to moderate-income sector” in “New York City.”

“Retrofitting” refers to a Green initiative to conserve energy in commercial housing units. Clinton Foundation records show that the Foundation projected “$1 billion in financing” for this Green initiative to conserve people’s energy in low-income housing units.

The article at Breitbart then goes on to list some of the connections with Peter Comey, the brother of James Comey, and the Clintons.

The obvious conclusion is that the number of honest people in Washington who actually care about the interests of the American people rather than their own wealth could probably be counted on one hand with fingers left over. The only way to clean up this mess is to bring in an outsider who will thoroughly shake up this mess. Hillary Clinton is obviously not that person as she seems to be at the heart of at least half of the scandals and undercover deals going on.

Where Are The Fact Checkers?

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On Saturday, John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story about one of Hillary Clinton’s recent stories. For whatever reason, the mainstream media never bothered to fact check the story. The article at Power Line pointed out some of the more obvious errors.

The story had to do with Hillary Clinton taking the LSAT (the exam required to get into Law School). She claims that she took the LSAT at Harvard where she encountered a barrage of male chauvinism. The first obvious problem with the story is that Hillary attended Wellesley College. Did Wellesley students take the LSAT at Harvard? Maybe. Maybe not.

The second problem with the story is that she claims that she and her friend were some of the only women in the room and were subjected to heckling by the men in the room.

The article reminds us:

Hillary was a senior during the 1968-1969 school year, and presumably took the LSAT in the fall of 1968. Women were not exactly pioneers in the law business at that time. Seven percent of the first year law class of 1969 was female, a percentage that rose rapidly over the next few years.

She included the following statement in her story:

One of them even said: ‘If you take my spot, I’ll get drafted, and I’ll go to Vietnam, and I’ll die.’ And they weren’t kidding around. It was intense. It got very personal.

Either the man was misinformed or she is lying. Take your pick. This is the background:

Her senior year began in autumn, 1968. She says she was a senior during this harrowing experience, which is when the LSAT is normally taken. But the LBJ administration ended all graduate school deferments on February 16, 1968, except for medical, dental and divinity students, when Hillary was still a junior in college.

Hillary also told this story to New York Magazine in 2016.

Hillary Clinton’s relationship with the truth is even more questionable than her relationship with Bill Clinton.

 

Fifteen Years Later (Originally posted September 10, 2016)

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This article was originally posted on September 10, 2016. Has anything changed?

This is the fifteenth anniversary of the day before 9/11. It is the anniversary of a day when Americans were going about their business—getting children ready to start school, beginning to put away summer clothes and get out fall clothes, and doing fall housekeeping. It was not in any way a noteworthy day. However, there were Americans who understood the threat hanging over us. Unfortunately, those Americans did not have the ability to wake up either our government or the American people.

John O’Neill was one of the people who understood the threat. In 1995 John O’Neill was appointed chief of the FBI’s counterterrorism section. When he arrived at FBI headquarters initially, he stayed there for three days. O’Neill was not very diplomatic, but he got things done. He also had the ability to tie loose ends together to see what was coming. Early on in his career, O’Neill became very interested in the activities of Osama Bin Laden to the point where his colleagues began to question his judgement [The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright Page 237 (paperback)]. He retired from the FBI early in 2001 to become chief of security at the World Trade Center. I have heard stories of the evacuation drills he led at the World Trade Center that probably saved many people’s lives on 9/11. John O’Neill understood that the terrorists would try to destroy the World Trade Center again. He was right. Unfortunately, due to personalities in the FBI, he was no longer in a position to connect the dots and possibly avoid the attack on the Trade Center.

So where are we today? What have we learned and what have we done about it? One of the best sources on the failure of the Obama Administration to deal with terrorism is the book Catastrophic Failure by Stephen Coughlin. In that book, Mr. Coughlin details the Obama Administrations inability to understand the root of the threat; and therefore, its inability to counter the threat. I strongly suggest you read the book, but I will try to summarize the main points here.

In October 2011, elements of the American Muslim Brotherhood wrote the White House demanding an embargo or discontinuation of information and materials relating to Islamic-based terrorism. The letter was addressed to John Brennan, who at the time was Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.  Days later John Brennan agreed to create a task force to address the problem by removing personnel and products that the Muslim Brotherhood deemed “biased, false, and highly offensive.” This move in effect allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to control the information given to the people charged with stopping the terrorism initiated by groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. At this point, the 9/11 reports and other actual historic documents were altered to make them compliant with the new paradigm. (I thought only the Russians rewrote history.)

Just a note—Stephen Coughlin is no longer briefing the Pentagon and our law enforcement communities. His briefings were not in compliance with the standards the Muslim Brotherhood placed on such briefings and were no longer permitted. That fact along should give all of us pause.

There are some real questions as to whom President Obama listens to on matters of terrorism. Those same questions apply to Hillary Clinton. Would you have put someone with family ties to Hitler in an advisory role to Franklin Roosevelt during World War II? I realize you can’t choose your family, but would the FBI hire a secretary whose father was a Mafia Don to work in their domestic crime bureau?

There is substantial evidence that the upper levels of our government have been compromised by the Muslim Brotherhood. One of the most reliable sources for this information is The Center for Security Policy. There are many resources available on their website.

So as we look back on this time fifteen years ago, we need to realize that we are still in danger and that the danger we face is getting more serious. The attacks in Europe (reported and unreported) should awaken us to the dangers of allowing refugees into America without proper vetting and the dangers of allowing immigrants who have no intention of assimilating into American culture to set up enclaves within our country.

Unless we want to experience a terror attack far worse than 9/11, Americans need to inform themselves about the enemy we are facing. It is obvious that the government is not going to inform us or take care of us.

A Solution That Will Make Things Worse

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This week there has been some rumbling about the integrity of American elections. Voter fraud is a problem, particularly in our large cities (for example–Chicago in the 1960 Presidential election). True the Vote in Houston found thousands of voters registered to one fictitious address in that city. In many states there is no proof of citizenship required to register to vote, and in California, a law has been passed allowing non-citizens to vote. I am not sure how the California law will play out, but I believe there is a constitutional problem there.

So where are we? There have been rumors of hacking into voting machines and voting machines that change votes. There have been accusations aimed at the Russians. There has been talk of Department of Homeland Security observers or even United Nations observers. Both of these are really bad ideas for one reason–either solution tens to federalize the election rather than letting local cities and communities police their elections.

One of the foundations of our representative republic is the integrity of our elections. If the Russians or other foreign entities wanted to undermine that, they wouldn’t have to do anything except cast doubt on the integrity of the election.That is something to keep in mind.

Meanwhile, the local control of elections helps protect their integrity. Local observers, judges, etc., are much more aware of the people in their communities. Not all local elections are computerized–making them impossible to hack.

Every year at midnight on election day, the voters of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire cast their ballots. In this years presidential primary, the nine votes were cast and counted quickly. It is almost impossible to interfere with a vote held on paper ballots.The fact that our elections are not federalized makes it more difficult to steal an election. Bringing in Homeland Security of the United Nations will federalize our elections and will make it easier–not harder–to compromise election integrity.