President Trump At The United Nations

This is the link to the full text of President Trump’s speech at the United Nations.

Here are a few highlights from the speech:

Fortunately, the United States has done very well since Election Day last November 8th. The stock market is at an all-time high — a record. Unemployment is at its lowest level in 16 years, and because of our regulatory and other reforms, we have more people working in the United States today than ever before. Companies are moving back, creating job growth the likes of which our country has not seen in a very long time. And it has just been announced that we will be spending almost $700 billion on our military and defense.

Our military will soon be the strongest it has ever been. For more than 70 years, in times of war and peace, the leaders of nations, movements, and religions have stood before this assembly. Like them, I intend to address some of the very serious threats before us today but also the enormous potential waiting to be unleashed.

We live in a time of extraordinary opportunity. Breakthroughs in science, technology, and medicine are curing illnesses and solving problems that prior generations thought impossible to solve.

But each day also brings news of growing dangers that threaten everything we cherish and value. Terrorists and extremists have gathered strength and spread to every region of the planet. Rogue regimes represented in this body not only support terrorists but threaten other nations and their own people with the most destructive weapons known to humanity.

Authority and authoritarian powers seek to collapse the values, the systems, and alliances that prevented conflict and tilted the world toward freedom since World War II.

International criminal networks traffic drugs, weapons, people; force dislocation and mass migration; threaten our borders; and new forms of aggression exploit technology to menace our citizens.

To put it simply, we meet at a time of both of immense promise and great peril. It is entirely up to us whether we lift the world to new heights, or let it fall into a valley of disrepair.

…To overcome the perils of the present and to achieve the promise of the future, we must begin with the wisdom of the past. Our success depends on a coalition of strong and independent nations that embrace their sovereignty to promote security, prosperity, and peace for themselves and for the world.

We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions, or even systems of government. But we do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties: to respect the interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation. This is the beautiful vision of this institution, and this is foundation for cooperation and success.

Strong, sovereign nations let diverse countries with different values, different cultures, and different dreams not just coexist, but work side by side on the basis of mutual respect.

Strong, sovereign nations let their people take ownership of the future and control their own destiny. And strong, sovereign nations allow individuals to flourish in the fullness of the life intended by God.

In America, we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to watch. This week gives our country a special reason to take pride in that example. We are celebrating the 230th anniversary of our beloved Constitution — the oldest constitution still in use in the world today.

This timeless document has been the foundation of peace, prosperity, and freedom for the Americans and for countless millions around the globe whose own countries have found inspiration in its respect for human nature, human dignity, and the rule of law.

The greatest in the United States Constitution is its first three beautiful words. They are: “We the people.”

…The scourge of our planet today is a small group of rogue regimes that violate every principle on which the United Nations is based. They respect neither their own citizens nor the sovereign rights of their countries.

If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph. When decent people and nations become bystanders to history, the forces of destruction only gather power and strength.

No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the wellbeing of their own people than the depraved regime in North Korea. It is responsible for the starvation deaths of millions of North Koreans, and for the imprisonment, torture, killing, and oppression of countless more.

We were all witness to the regime’s deadly abuse when an innocent American college student, Otto Warmbier, was returned to America only to die a few days later. We saw it in the assassination of the dictator’s brother using banned nerve agents in an international airport. We know it kidnapped a sweet 13-year-old Japanese girl from a beach in her own country to enslave her as a language tutor for North Korea’s spies.

If this is not twisted enough, now North Korea’s reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles threatens the entire world with unthinkable loss of human life.

It is an outrage that some nations would not only trade with such a regime, but would arm, supply, and financially support a country that imperils the world with nuclear conflict. No nation on earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles.

…It is time for the entire world to join us in demanding that Iran’s government end its pursuit of death and destruction. It is time for the regime to free all Americans and citizens of other nations that they have unjustly detained. And above all, Iran’s government must stop supporting terrorists, begin serving its own people, and respect the sovereign rights of its neighbors.

The entire world understands that the good people of Iran want change, and, other than the vast military power of the United States, that Iran’s people are what their leaders fear the most. This is what causes the regime to restrict Internet access, tear down satellite dishes, shoot unarmed student protestors, and imprison political reformers.

Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice. Will they continue down the path of poverty, bloodshed, and terror? Or will the Iranian people return to the nation’s proud roots as a center of civilization, culture, and wealth where their people can be happy and prosperous once again?

The Iranian regime’s support for terror is in stark contrast to the recent commitments of many of its neighbors to fight terrorism and halt its financing.

In Saudi Arabia early last year, I was greatly honored to address the leaders of more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations. We agreed that all responsible nations must work together to confront terrorists and the Islamist extremism that inspires them.

We will stop radical Islamic terrorism because we cannot allow it to tear up our nation, and indeed to tear up the entire world.

We must deny the terrorists safe haven, transit, funding, and any form of support for their vile and sinister ideology. We must drive them out of our nations. It is time to expose and hold responsible those countries who support and finance terror groups like al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban and others that slaughter innocent people.

…One of the greatest American patriots, John Adams, wrote that the American Revolution was “effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.”

That was the moment when America awoke, when we looked around and understood that we were a nation. We realized who we were, what we valued, and what we would give our lives to defend. From its very first moments, the American story is the story of what is possible when people take ownership of their future.

The United States of America has been among the greatest forces for good in the history of the world, and the greatest defenders of sovereignty, security, and prosperity for all.

Now we are calling for a great reawakening of nations, for the revival of their spirits, their pride, their people, and their patriotism.

History is asking us whether we are up to the task. Our answer will be a renewal of will, a rediscovery of resolve, and a rebirth of devotion. We need to defeat the enemies of humanity and unlock the potential of life itself.

Our hope is a word and — world of proud, independent nations that embrace their duties, seek friendship, respect others, and make common cause in the greatest shared interest of all: a future of dignity and peace for the people of this wonderful Earth.

This is the true vision of the United Nations, the ancient wish of every people, and the deepest yearning that lives inside every sacred soul.

So let this be our mission, and let this be our message to the world: We will fight together, sacrifice together, and stand together for peace, for freedom, for justice, for family, for humanity, and for the almighty God who made us all.

Thank you. God bless you. God bless the nations of the world. And God bless the United States of America. Thank you very much.

We have a President who loves America and is willing to use our power and might to help move the world toward freedom and peace. It was a great speech.

The Deep State Or The Police State?

Sharyl Attkisson posted an article at The Hill today about the Obama Administration’s spying on Donald Trump. I don’t care which side of the political spectrum you are on, this story should disturb you.

The article reports:

According to media reports this week, the FBI did indeed “wiretap” the former head of Trump’s campaign, Paul Manafort, both before and after Trump was elected. If Trump officials — or Trump himself — communicated with Manafort during the wiretaps, they would have been recorded, too.

But we’re missing the bigger story.

If these reports are accurate, it means U.S. intelligence agencies secretly surveilled at least a half dozen Trump associates. And those are just the ones we know about.

Besides Manafort, the officials include former Trump advisers Carter Page and Michael Flynn. Last week, we discovered multiple Trump “transition officials” were “incidentally” captured during government surveillance of a foreign official. We know this because former Obama adviser Susan Rice reportedly admitted “unmasking,” or asking to know the identities of, the officials. Spying on U.S. citizens is considered so sensitive, their names are supposed to be hidden or “masked,” even inside the government, to protect their privacy.

In May, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates acknowledged they, too, reviewed communications of political figures, secretly collected under President Obama. 

The article goes on to remind us that James Clapper assured Congress in 2013 that the NSA was not collecting data on American citizens.

The article also lists many of the violations of the rights of Congressmen, reporters, and other political figures. This is illegal.

The article concludes:

Officials involved in the surveillance and unmasking of U.S. citizens have said their actions were legal and not politically motivated. And there are certainly legitimate areas of inquiry to be made by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. But look at the patterns. It seems that government monitoring of journalists, members of Congress and political enemies — under multiple administrations — has become more common than anyone would have imagined two decades ago. So has the unmasking of sensitive and highly protected names by political officials.

Those deflecting with minutiae are missing the point. To me, they sound like the ones who aren’t thinking.

If we want to keep our privacy and our freedom, the people responsible for spying on us need to face the consequences of their breaking the law.

Undoing The Linchpin

The dictionary defines a linchpin as “something that holds the various elements of a complicated structure together.” Theoretically, if you undo the linchpin of an item, the item will fall apart. Last night I attended a presentation by a group called America’s Remedy. This is a group of people concerned about the rapid growth of government overreach in recent years. As most of you know, the federal government is currently involved in many things that have no basis in the U.S. Constitution for federal government involvement. Our union was designed to be a union of independent states working together for mutual good, but retaining their sovereignty. Somehow along the way, the states have lost that sovereignty. America’s Remedy has the goal of educating people about that sovereignty and how to regain it.

The linchpin of the loss of state sovereignty is the Reconstruction Acts put into place after the Civil War. Another aspect of the loss of state sovereignty is the Fourteenth Amendment.

Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment states:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The Fourteenth Amendment was the beginning of United States citizenship rather than state citizenship. It was a major part of taking power away from the states and giving power to the federal government.

Please follow the link to the America’s Remedy website to learn more about what has happened to the plan our Founding Fathers put in place for this nation and where and when that plan was altered.

Nope–Global Warming Didn’t Do It

On Friday, The Heritage Foundation posted an article about what wasn’t the cause of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The hurricanes were not the result of global warming.

The article reports:

…Man-made warming did not cause Harvey and Irma. As carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions have increased, there have been no trends in global tropical cycle landfalls. Before Harvey and Irma, with a little bit of luck, the United States was in a 12-year hurricane drought. More importantly, the average number of hurricanes per decade reaching landfall in the U.S. has fallen over the past 160 years.

This comes not via “denier data,” but from mainstream science. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in its most recent scientific assessment that “(n)o robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes … have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin,” and that there are “no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency.”

According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, “It is premature to conclude that human activities – and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming – have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.”

The article then goes on to disprove the myth that global warming made the hurricanes more severe:

Other media outlets took a more measured approach, claiming that man did not cause Harvey and Irma but supercharged them. The reasoning is that warmer sea surface temperatures increase moisture in the air and, in turn, up the intensity of the hurricanes.

But University of Washington climatologist Cliff Mass, after examining precipitation levels in the Gulf, discredited this claim. He found that “(t)here is no evidence that global warming is influencing Texas coastal precipitation in the long term and little evidence that warmer than normal temperatures had any real impact on the precipitation intensity from this storm.”

CNN asked Bill Read, former director of the National Hurricane Center, whether man-made climate change was intensifying storms. He said no, adding, “This is not an uncommon occurrence to see storms grow and intensify rapidly in the western Gulf of Mexico. That’s as long as we’ve been tracking them that has occurred.”

Even if man-made warming were responsible for Harvey and Irma, the policies that tax or regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are costly non-solutions. The U.S. could slap a $40 tax on all carbon dioxide emissions, and the “climate benefits” would be hardly noticeable. By the year 2100, the averted warming would be less than two-tenths of a degree Celsius, and the averted sea level rise would be less than 2 centimeters.

The article concludes:

Political opportunism is distracting from what is important: helping the people in Houston, Florida and the islands. Policymakers should focus on improving natural disaster response, resilience and preparedness. Blaming man-made climate change on Harvey and Irma is truly denying the data.

Let’s keep our priorities straight!

Thank You, Representative Jones

The following was released by Congressman Walter Jones yesterday:

JONES APPLAUDS TRUMP FOR BLOCKING CHINA’S PURCHASE OF U.S. COMPANY

Potential Acquisition Posed Threat to National Security

Sep 18, 2017 Issues: Economy and Jobs, Armed Services

GREENVILLE, NC – Congressman Walter B. Jones (NC-3) is thanking President Donald Trump for blocking the sale of Lattice Semiconductor Corporation to, among others, China Venture Capital Fund Corporation Limited (CVCF).  Lattice Semiconductor is an American company that makes programmable logic chips.  These chips are critical to American military applications, and are also used in industrial settings. CVCF is a Chinese corporation owned by Chinese state-owned entities that manages industrial investments and venture capital.  In blocking the acquisition, President Trump found that the proposed deal posed a national security risk related to “the potential transfer of intellectual property to the foreign acquirer, the Chinese government’s role in supporting this transaction, the importance of semiconductor supply chain integrity to the United States Government, and the use of Lattice products by the United States Government.”

“I would like to thank the president and his administration for standing up for our national security,” said Congressman Jones.  “The American people do not want to see important domestic capabilities, particularly those that are vital to our military, sold into the hands of countries like China.”

After the proposed acquisition was first announced in November, 2016, Congressman Jones and 21 of his House colleagues urged the Obama administration to initiate a formal federal review of the transaction, and to consider blocking it due to the risks it posed to national security.  That review, conducted under the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) process outlined in section 721 of the Defense Production Act of 1950, culminated in the President Trump’s September 13th announcement blocking the deal.  It is only the fourth time in the past 27 years that a U.S. president has blocked the acquisition of a U.S. firm by a foreign entity.

Congressman Jones is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.  He has been a long-time champion for trade and industrial policies that put American workers, companies, and strategic interests, first.

A copy of the letter Congressman Jones and his House colleagues sent to then Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, can be found below.

For additional information, please contact Allison Tucker in Congressman Walter Jones’ office at (202) 225-3415 or Allison.tucker@mail.house.gov.

Thank you, Congressman, for helping keep America safe.

Totally Unacceptable Behavior

Breitbart posted an article yesterday stating that CNN had reported that the Obama Administration had wire tapped Paul Manafort before and after the election.

The article reports:

The report said the secret court that handles the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act had authorized a surveillance warrant against Manafort for an investigation that began in 2014, looking into his firm, the Podesta Group, and another firm’s lobbying work for Ukraine’s pro-Russian former ruling party.

“The surveillance was discontinued at some point last year for lack of evidence,” a source told CNN.

However, the FBI then restarted the surveillance after obtaining a new FISA warrant that extended early into this year. The report notably does not say when the new warrant was obtained. Manafort joined the Trump campaign as its chairman in May 2016.

The article reminds us of how many times this claim was denied (sometimes under oath):

The Justice Department and the FBI denied that Trump was being wiretapped.

Comey later in March disputed Trump’s claims — in testimony that lawmakers could now find misleading.

He told the House intelligence committee, “With respect to the president’s tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the FBI.”

The New York Times also reported that Comey had said Trump’s claim was false, and that he had asked the Justice Department to publicly reject it, according to the BBC.

James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, also told Congress that intelligence agencies did not wiretap Trump, nor did the FBI obtain a court order to monitor Trump’s phones, according to the BBC report.

President Trump was mocked when he made this claim. Now we learn that he was right. Where are the apologies? Where are the people talking about the fact that the civil rights of Paul Manafort and Donald Trump were violated? Is anyone going to hold the Justice Department accountable? I guess the only positive in this is that Donald Trump won the election despite the fact that the Obama Administration interfered–it wasn’t the Russians–it was the Obama Administration!

 

Are We Sure We Want To Go Here?

The Daily Caller posted an article today about someone protesting a Hobby Lobby decoration. The decoration had nothing to do with the Christian faith of the owners or their views on marriage–it was a piece of cotton!

The objection was posted on Facebook:

The article includes some of the reaction:

The post received close to 15,000 shares and 160,000 comments. The user, Daniell Rider, then received backlash for her sensitivity and responded to her critics:

All those who are offended by cotton being a decoration need to quit buying any product made of cotton!

And other users quickly came to her defense, one adding:

What difference does it make if it’s a decoration or part of a product. You’re being hypocritical if your offended by cotton being a decoration and not offended by any product made of cotton.

Brutal grammar aside, these people are actually serious. They legitimately want consumers everywhere to stop buying cotton products because cotton “racist.”

Many Americans have lost their ability to reason and replaced it with a giant ability to be offended!

The Hate Group Supposedly Naming The Hate Groups

The following video was posted on YouTube on September 12th:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been linked to two shootings in Washington. The shooting at the Family Research Council in 2012 was linked to the SPLC having declared them a hate group and there were some questions as to whether the gunman who shot Steve Scalise was influenced by the SPLC. At any rate, when we start declaring organizations hate groups, we need to be careful. The problem with declaring groups hate groups or speech hate speech is that it involves very subjective judgement on the part of the person making the declaration.

The SPLC has every right to exist and state their views. It is the responsibility of those who hear those views to do their own research and draw their own conclusions. As Dr. Swain noted, the SPLC has done nothing for the poor. So what is their actual purpose? Based on their past performance, it appears that their only goal is to create problems between races rather than to solve them.

Quote Of The Week

Posted on Breitbart today:

Sen. Bernie Sanderson Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press:”

“The current model of the Democratic party obviously is not working. Republicans control the House, the Senate; they control the White House, they control two-thirds of the governors’ offices throughout this country. In my view, Chuck what we need to do is to reach out to independents. There are a heck of a lot more independents in this country than there are Republicans or Democrats. I’ve worked within the Democratic caucus for over 25 years. I continue to do that.”

Wow. Just wow.

A Great Idea That Will Never Work

Yesterday PJ Media posted an article about what to do with the Dreamers. Just as an aside, isn’t it interesting that ‘dreamers’ was the media’s choice of a name for this group of people?

The article suggests that whatever is decided, we don’t ever allow the Dreamers to vote. If that were honestly part of the debate, it would totally change the debate. Does anyone believe that the Democratic Party sees the Dreamers as anything other than future Democratic voters?

The article reports:

People who claim to be shocked that Donald Trump is prepared to make an amnesty deal for the”Dreamers” — most of whom are Mexicans who entered the USA at around the age of six — are being more than a tad disingenuous. The president has been hinting as much for over a year to anyone paying attention. In fact, it’s hard to conceive how he could have done otherwise, considering the (excuse the cliché) “optics” of shipping 800,000 young people back to a homeland they may never have seen.

The question is what your definition of amnesty is. It’s a vague word at best that can mean many things.

I suggest we keep it simple. In the case of the “Dreamers” amnesty should allow for just about anything citizenship entails, for them to work and study here as long as they wish, except for that most precious of all things in a democratic republic —  the vote. Under no circumstances can or should someone who has arrived in our country illegally, no matter at what age, be allowed ever to vote in our elections at any level — federal, state or local.

I love this idea, but how long would it take for Democrats in Congress to begin efforts to allow the Dreamers to vote?

The article further points out:

It would be to the benefit of the Democratic Party as well to separate amnesty from voting and thus strike a blow against “identity politics.”  As was clear from the election of 2016, the public is becoming disgusted with it.  Identity politics now actually works against the Democrats in the long run and, frankly, makes them seem quite dumb and self-destructive. Democrats aren’t the cool kids anymore.  We’re in the era of Kid Rock and progressives are stuck on Linda Sarsour.  As liberal Columbia professor Mark Lilla noted in a recent Wall Street Journal essay:

As a teacher, I am increasingly struck by a difference between my conservative and progressive students. Contrary to the stereotype, the conservatives are far more likely to connect their engagements to a set of political ideas and principles. Young people on the left are much more inclined to say that they are engaged in politics as an X, concerned about other Xs and those issues touching on X-ness. And they are less and less comfortable with debate.

The generation now reaching voting age is going to have a profound impact on American elections if they choose to be involved. The results will be somewhat unpredictable and totally interesting.

 

Learning From The Mistakes Of Others

The debate on single-payer healthcare in America has been going on for a while. ObamaCare was designed to fail and be a step in the direction of single payer. So how well does single-payer healthcare work?

On September 8, 2016, Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about nationalized healthcare in Britain. There were some serious warnings in the article about nationalized healthcare.

The article reported:

Before you embrace the idea (single-payer healthcare), you might want to look at what’s happening in Britain right now.

There, some hospitals are moving to ration care for those who are officially deemed obese — that is, anyone who has a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more. Oh, and while they’re at it, they will also ration care for smokers, too.

Why? “To plug a funding black hole,” as the British Telegraph newspaper put it. Translation: Britain’s National Health Service faces such a serious financial crisis that it now has to deny care to some people, despite its claims of “universal care.” And who better to deny care for than two of the most despised groups in today’s modern society — those who are obese and smokers?

This new plan to bar overweight people and smokers from most surgery for up to a year is getting its first tryout in North Yorkshire. But, as Britain’s Royal College of Surgeons has warned, rationing will soon become the norm across Britain as the health care system deals with soaring costs and failing care delivery for its patients. And the impact will be broad: The Telegraph, working off population data, estimates more than half of Britain’s population will be considered obese in the coming decades.

The nightmare stories of bungled care and needlessly dying patients are already legion for the NHS, which is notorious for delivering substandard service to its patients.

The article explains the impact of ObamaCare on insurance companies:

The problem isn’t ObamaCare per se,” wrote Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor for the Clinton administration, in a blog post. “It lies in the structure of private markets for health insurance — which creates powerful incentives to avoid sick people and attract healthy ones. ObamaCare is just making this structural problem more obvious.”

This is a classic example of blaming the victim for your own crimes. Aetna takes a hit of nearly half a billion dollars from a system Reich’s leftist pals in the Democratic Party created, and then Reich blames insurers for greed.

The Democrats who wrote the ObamaCare law knew they would be destroying the private market for health care. But they don’t care. And they don’t care to learn from others, like Britain’s National Health Service, that have already gone down this dangerous path.

Americans would be very wise to heed Britain’s warning, and just say no to single-payer.

Good advice.

Should We Make These People Work For A Living So That They Will Be Too Busy To Do This?

This is not a joke–this is not fake news–this is real news.

On Tuesday The Daily Wire reported the following:

Starbucks‘s Pumpkin Spice Latte may be the drink of choice for the yoga pants-wearing, Ugg boot-sporting, autumn-loving “basic” white girls of the world, but according to one feminist group. it’s also responsible for perpetuating white supremacy.

UltraViolet, a group that claims to be “a powerful and rapidly growing community of people mobilized to fight sexism and create a more inclusive world that accurately represents all women,” though this might be the first time you’ve ever heard of it, is leading a campaign to banish the PSL, claiming the drink “funds white supremacy” and “racism in the White House.”

First of all, President Trump is not a racist–he received a number of awards for improving race relations before he became a Republican and ran for President. He literally fought city hall to allow black Americans and Jews into his resorts in Florida. That is simply a false charge.

The article continues:

The problem here, though, is that Starbucks, like Nike and Tiffany, has a location in Trump Tower, which means Starbucks — at at least one of its locations — pays a pittance in rent to the Trump Organization, which owns the building. “Starbucks and Nike — both companies that seek to profit off of a progressive and inclusive brand — have stores in Trump Tower in New York City. They have likely paid millions of dollars in rent to Trump over time — money that has given him a platform to spew hate for years,” UltraViolet claims.

But aside from the fact that Trump has routinely distanced himself from white supremacists, it doesn’t even appear that the Trump Tower Starbucks is a corporate store. It’s a franchise, which means that the franchise owners — not Starbucks itself — pays cash to Trump Org.

Of course, it’s not as though feminists are well known for letting the facts get in the way of their feelings.

Aside from the stupidity, why are these people wasting so much energy on hate when they have no idea of the facts?

There Are Two Things In Play Here

Special interests are important in Washington; lobbyists and lobbyists’ money have a lot of power. However, educated voters also have a lot of power. We are about to see a clash between special interests (lobbyists, big business, the political establishment, etc.) and educated voters. The clash is going to take place before September 30 and will involve the repeal of ObamaCare.

ObamaCare is a nightmare for many Americans–their insurance premiums and their deductibles have risen drastically over the past six years, and some middle-class Americans are forced to choose between paying their mortgage or paying their health insurance bill. ObamaCare has failed, and the Republicans in Congress have thus far broken their promise to repeal it. Democrats are offering single-payer healthcare which will break the bank, but at least the are offering something. Voters have given Congress an approval rating of about 15 percent.  Next year is an election year for all of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate. Congressmen (and Congresswomen) have a choice–who do they represent? Some Republicans may be getting the message that voters are important.

The Washington Examiner posted an article today with the following headline:

Mitch McConnell asks CBO to score Obamacare overhaul

That is the sound of a Congressman who is beginning to feel the impact of the grassroots of the Republican party. Someone in Washington is beginning to understand that the Republican party will go the way of the dinosaur if they do not start listening to their base. Lobbyists may have money, but there are a lot of angry voters out there.

The article reports:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has asked the Congressional Budget Office to quickly score an Obamacare overhaul bill introduced this week, his office confirmed Friday.

The bill would take revenues from Obamacare and distribute them as block grants to states so they could write their own healthcare plans. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., introduced the bill along with Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Dean Heller of Nevada, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

This is not a perfect bill, but it may have conservative support because it moves money out of Washington and back to the states.

The article states:

Supporters hope the bill can be passed through the reconciliation, would need just 50 votes to advance and pass in the Senate, assuming a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Pence. Reconciliation is a budget measure that allows passage with a simple majority rather than the 60 votes needed to block a filibuster. The Senate faces a Sept. 30 deadline to use reconciliation, according to the Senate parliamentarian.

There are three choices–leave ObamaCare in place, single-payer healthcare or this bill. This bill is not perfect, but it is the best choice of the three. If the Republicans do nothing, they will lose badly in the mid-term elections.

It is ironic that many Republican Congressmen are spending more time opposing President Trump than they did opposing President Obama.

The Media Is Ignoring This Story

There is a major news story currently being ignored by most of the media. On Tuesday, The Daily Caller News Foundation posted the following:

A secret server is behind law enforcement’s decision to ban a former IT aide to Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz from the House network.

Now-indicted former congressional IT aide Imran Awan allegedly routed data from numerous House Democrats to a secret server. Police grew suspicious and requested a copy of the server early this year, but they were provided with an elaborate falsified image designed to hide the massive violations. The falsified image is what ultimately triggered their ban from the House network Feb. 2, according to a senior House official with direct knowledge of the investigation.

The secret server was connected to the House Democratic Caucus, an organization chaired by then-Rep. Xavier Becerra. Police informed Becerra that the server was the subject of an investigation and requested a copy of it. Authorities considered the false image they received to be interference in a criminal investigation, the senior official said.

Data was also backed up to Dropbox in huge quantities, the official said. Congressional offices are prohibited from using Dropbox, so an unofficial account was used, meaning Awan could have still had access to the data even though he was banned from the congressional network.

Awan had access to all emails and office computer files of 45 members of Congress who are listed below. Fear among members that Awan could release embarrassing information if they cooperated with prosecutors could explain why the Democrats have refused to acknowledge the cybersecurity breach publicly or criticize the suspects.

House Democrats employed Awan and four family members for years as IT aides. After learning of the House probe, Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, frantically transferred money to accounts in their native Pakistan.

Awan and Alvi were indicted in August on fraud charges related to the transfers, but they have not yet been charged with criminal cybersecurity violations partly because some of the 45 Democrats have been passive about helping build the case, the House official said.

The underline is mine. One wonders what kind of information Awan had on some of our Congressmen that they are so willing to protect him.

What Is True vs. What Is Reported

Media bias is old news, but every now and then it can be really interesting. The following story illustrates why President Trump needs to hold on to his Twitter account.

This morning the Associated Press reported:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The top House and Senate Democrats said Wednesday they had reached agreement with President Donald Trump to protect thousands of younger immigrants from deportation and fund some border security enhancements — not including Trump’s long-sought border wall.

The agreement, the latest instance of Trump ditching his own party to make common cause with the opposition, was announced by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi following a White House dinner that Republican lawmakers weren’t invited to attend. It would enshrine protections for the nearly 800,000 immigrants brought illegally to this country as kids who had benefited from former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which provided temporary work permits and shielded recipients from deportation.

Fox News reported today:

President Trump on Thursday denied reports that he struck a “deal” overnight with top Democrats to protect so-called “Dreamers,” while insisting “massive border security would have to be agreed to in exchange for consent.”

Trump’s Twitter post was in response to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announcing after a dinner meeting at the White House that they had “agreed to a plan to work out an agreement to protect our nation’s DREAMers from deportation.”

They also said “we would review border security measures that didn’t include building a wall.”

The president clarified Thursday morning that he intends for the wall to be built — and while he wants to helps Dreamers, there’s no deal yet. 

The political consequences for President Trump if he does not build a wall would be enormous.

On Tuesday The Hill posted an article about support for the wall among Americans.

These are a few highlights from the article:

Last February, Pew reported similar findings: 62 percent of Americans oppose building a wall. Only 35 percent support it.

But are we telling the whole story?

First, it’s worth looking at what Pew asked: “All in all, would you favor or oppose building a wall along the entire border with Mexico?” To me, it’s a confusing question. After all, there already is a wall or fencing along approximately 700 miles of the southern border. It might make more sense to ask, “Would you favor or oppose building a wall along the remaining, unwalled portion of the border with Mexico?”

…While we’re in the weeds, assuming there’s value to asking a poll question about something that nobody is proposing, there’s additional nuance to consider. Pew ended up with a Democrat-heavy sample: 38 percent Republican/Republican leaning and 52 percent Democrat/Democrat leaning. The 14 percentage point difference means Pew interviewed 38 percent more Democrat thinkers than Republican thinkers. I can’t find any estimate that says the actual U.S. population is politically lopsided along those lines.

That is how you skew a poll.

The article at The Hill concludes:

There are two things we could do to provide more meaningful reporting. First, when addressing polls on political topics, we should disclose the breakdown of Democrats and Republicans upfront. To state the obvious: findings from a sample that’s made up of 98 percent Republicans will be entirely different than findings from a sample of 98 percent Democrats. How can meaning be put behind results on any political topic without the partisan makeup of the sample being considered?

Second, our reporting could include opposing findings and trends, if they exist. For example, in the most recent Pew poll, “three-quarters (74 percent) of Republicans and Republican-leaners supported a border wall” and that support had grown substantially in recent months. Conservative Republican support for a wall was up nine points since Trump was elected President (from 71 percent to 80 percent).

Support also grew among moderate and liberal Republicans (from 51 percent to 60 percent). An accurate headline could just as well have been: “Poll shows growing Republican support for a wall under a Trump presidency.”

All things considered, I came up with my own headline that’s more transparent than many of the ones I saw: “In polls with Democrat-heavy sampling, there’s overwhelming opposition to building a wall along the ‘entire’ border; a concept that nobody is, in fact, proposing.”

The article at The Hill was written by Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson), an Emmy-award winning investigative journalist, author of the New York Times bestsellers “The Smear” and “Stonewalled,” and host of Sinclair’s Sunday TV program “Full Measure.” If you are not familiar with her story, please search for her on the Internet and read her history. She definitely knows what she is talking about.

Securing Our Elections

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted a story about voting in the Netherlands.

The article reports:

Mickey Kaus notes that the Netherlands is going to go back to conducting its elections with paper ballots. “Dutch go old school against Russian hacking,” he notes, linking to a Politico Europe story. Kaus adds an appropriate shout-out to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, who has been calling for paper ballots for years.

Going back to paper ballots may strike many people, as it used to strike me, as retrograde. Isn’t it a lot faster to count electronic votes? Isn’t there a danger that paper ballots can be altered, defaced, and burned? Isn’t electronic voting cooler and more up to date?

As I have stated before, technical things mystify me. However, it does seem to me that having a paper record to verify voting totals is a good idea. It may not be necessary to go back to counting paper ballots by hand if we can scan them by machine and have the physical ballots to verify the totals.

The article concludes:

The fact is that sacrificing a bit of speed for reliability is probably a good trade. The strongest argument for paper ballots is that they can’t be hacked. The second strongest is that there is an independent record of each ballot cast, which some computerized systems lack.

It may take a long time to count ballots in some states where they include many offices and ballot propositions, but people can wait. And recounts of paper ballots can result in disputes over hanging chads and the like, but these are difficulties our republic has been handling for over 200 years. My vote is for paper ballots.

Good idea.

Benghazi Drip, Drip, Drip

Fox News posted a story today that sheds some light on the reason the outpost at Benghazi was so poorly defended. It seems that decisions made by the State Department regarding security were not based on reality.

The article reports:

Brad Owens and Jerry Torres, of Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions, say they faced pressure to stay silent and get on the same page with the State Department with regard to the security lapses that led to the deaths of four Americans.

They spoke exclusively with Fox News for “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” revealing new information that undermines the State Department’s account of the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, where Islamic militants launched a 13-hour assault from Sept. 11-12 that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALS Ty Woods and Glenn Doherty.

The article explains that the State Department awarded the Benghazi compound security compound to a company in Wales that had no experience in diplomatic security. I need to say here that I am all in favor of allowing security companies to gain experience, but they need to start in a place that does not have a major terrorism problem.

The article continues:

According to Torres, the Blue Mountain Group came in 4 percent lower than their bid – and they challenged the decision, claiming the American company should have been preferred over the foreign one.

Torres said State Department contracting officer Jan Visintainer responded that the State Department had the “latitude to apply” that preference or not.

And there was more: The Blue Mountain Group hired guards through another company who were not armed.  

Problems soon arose. One month before the attack — in August 2012, with The Blue Mountain Group still in charge of compound security — Ambassador Stevens and his team alerted the State Department via diplomatic cable that radical Islamic groups were everywhere and that the temporary mission compound could not withstand a “coordinated attack.” The classified cable was first reported by Fox News.

Why would you put security in a troubled area in the hands of people who are not armed?

The article concludes:

“Let’s just say there’s been a change at management at Department of State,” Owens said. “I feel now that, given that the politics has been taken out of the Benghazi situation, now that there’s no longer a candidate or anything related to it, a change of administrations, that actually, we have an opportunity here to fix the problems that made it happen.”

On the fifth anniversary, Torres said he thinks about the four families who lost a father, a brother or a son in the 2012 attack, and feels sorry “for not bringing this up earlier. For not actually being there, on the ground and taking care of these guys.”

I’m not sure the politics has been taken out of the Department of State, but I definitely wish President Trump luck in his efforts to drain the swamp.

Don’t Look For Me On The First Page Of A Google Search

Yesterday PJ Media posted an article about a new research paper from Leo Goldstein.

The article reports the following:

Google Search is found to be biased in favor of left/liberal domains and against conservative domains with a confidence of 95%,” Goldstein found. “Further, certain hard-Left domains have such a high [percentage of domain traffic, referred by Google Search, net of brand searches] that their standing raises suspicions that they have been hand-picked for prominent placement,” he says, adding that “certain respected conservative domains are blacklisted.”

The article includes the following chart:

Conservatives need to realize that they are going to have to get smarter in their research about the news. I strongly recommend DuckDuckGo as a search engine. Not only are their searches unbiased–they don’t keep track of your searches. It’s time for google to lose its users and its advertisers. That is one way conservatives can make their voices heard.

The Hazards Of Lying

No one will ever accuse the Clinton Family of being entirely honest, but sometimes they just seem to go over the top. Hillary Clinton is currently making her ‘put the blame on everyone else’ book tour. In a CBS interview, Mrs. Clinton claims that she made the ‘deplorables’ remark in response to the leaking of the Hollywood access tape showing President Trump engaging in locker room talk. Well, she should have fact checked her lie before she lied.

Yesterday The Daily Caller reported some of her comments:

“I thought Trump was behaving in a deplorable manner. I thought a lot of his appeals to voters were deplorable. I thought his behavior, as we saw on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape was deplorable. And there were a large number of people who didn’t care. It did not matter to them,” Clinton said.

But there’s a gaping hole in that defense: Clinton attacked Trump’s “deplorable” supporters on September 9 — almost a full month before the Washington Post published the “Access Hollywood” tape on October 7.

In other words, Trump’s “behavior” on the “Access Hollywood” tape couldn’t have been the reason Clinton associated the word “deplorable” with Trump supporters.

She is commenting on what Donald Trump said. Has she ever commented on what her husband has done?