The Gateway Pundit posted an article yesterday about a recent statement by Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari. Hossein Jaberi Ansari has told Western officials that if they do not pressure President Trump to reconsider withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal, he will release the names of the people who were bribed to pass the deal.
The article includes two recent tweets:
This is truly a get-out-the-popcorn moment.
The Daily Caller posted an article today about some recent statements by Virginia Senator Mark Warner. Senator Warner is the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The article reports:
The top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence acknowledged in a recent interview that contacts between Trump campaign associates and Russians could be “a set of coincidences” rather than collusion.
“I’m reserving my final judgement until we’ve seen all the witnesses we need to see, and we’ve gotten all the facts. So I’m going to hold off,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said in an interview with The New Yorker’s David Remnick when asked whether he believes that Trump associates conspired with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 presidential election.
…“I’m anxious for this to come to a conclusion,” Warner said of the investigation, adding that he is “hopeful” that the committee will be able to release sections of its final report every 30 to 45 days.
The committee plans to release four separate reports about various aspects of its investigation. The first, which dealt with election security, was released earlier this week.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has already released a report on its own Russia investigation. The report said that investigators found no evidence of collusion.
On Thursday, May 10, CNN posted the following:
Note that Democrat approval of the Mueller investigation has also dropped (as well as Republican approval). Independent approval has increased, but is still below 50 percent. I hate to be cynical here, but I believe that Senator Warner is simply responding to what his internal polls are telling him–Americans are beginning to realize that Mueller’s investigation was a sham from the beginning. I suspect you will hear more Democrats become reluctant to accuse President Trump of anything as his popularity ratings soar. It is going to be an interesting summer–for many reasons.
The Hill posted a list today of five important Supreme Court cases that we should receive rulings on beginning next week and ending in June.
The article lists the five cases:
The justices were asked this term to rule on whether Republican officials in Wisconsin unconstitutionally injected political bias into the redistricting process by drawing district lines to disadvantage Democrats.
2. Wedding cake
The court also has yet to rule in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The case centers on Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
3. Sports betting
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) could get a major win if the court sides with a challenge his state brought challenging a 1992 federal law that bans sports gambling in almost every state except Nevada.
4. Free speech and abortion
It’s a two-for-one in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Becerra, a lawsuit that pro-life pregnancy centers in California brought challenging a state law that requires licensed facilities to post information about where women can obtain a free or low-cost abortion from the state.
The law also requires unlicensed facilities to notify women that they do not employ a licensed medical professional.
5. Trump’s travel ban
The last arguments the justices heard this term were a challenge to President Trump’s ban on nationals from certain Muslim-majority countries entering the United States.
It will be interesting to see if the rulings on these cases are actually based on the U.S. Constitution or if they are simply based on what is politically correct.
From my friends at Power Line Blog:
The Gateway Pundit reported yesterday that Senator Chuck Grassley has written a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein requesting further information on the handling of the case against General Michael Flynn. The Senate has documents stating that the FBI did not believe that General Flynn lied, but later the FBI charged him with lying to the FBI. Senator Grassley wants to resolve the contradiction.
This is the letter:
It is time that the Department of Justice and the FBI recognized that Congress has oversight responsibilities over them and respected Congress’ authority. Hopefully this request will be promptly answered.
Yesterday The Boston Herald posted an article about a rather odd incident in Boston. The article deals with the confiscation of a legal gun of a private citizen because the police decided that the man was unfit to have a gun license.
The article reports:
According to Evans’ (Police Commissioner William B. Evans) filing, the man received a license to carry from BPD in March 2016, and had a gun in his car when he went to a party in Dedham that November. Shots were fired at the party and the man took the gun from an unsecured area in his trunk and put it in his driver’s side door.
Dedham police confiscated the man’s gun and BPD revoked his license. But the man appealed in West Roxbury District Court, which ruled that the man “did what most people would have done in the same circumstances” and reversed the revocation, calling it “arbitrary and capricious.”
Evans’ appeal says the court misinterpreted the law and makes the city less safe.
“The ruling of the West Roxbury Court ordering the Commissioner to reinstate (the) license to carry firearms adversely affects the real interests of the general public in limiting the access irresponsible persons have to deadly weapons,” the appeal reads.
I have a number of questions about this story. How did the police know the gun was in the driver’s side door? Did the police have permission to search the car? Were this man’s civil rights violated?
It will be interesting to see what happens next. The man committed no crimes. He had legally owned a gun for more than two years without incident. There is no evidence of a criminal record. Why did he lose his Second Amendment rights?
When the entire apparatus of government is used for political purposes, the freedom of Americans is in danger. Evidently there was a lot of that going on during the Obama Administration. It became particularly rampant during the 2016 campaign–electronic surveillance, the FBI’s ‘insurance policy’ in case Donald Trump got elected, etc. However, it was evident long before 2016.
In December 2017, I posted an article about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which funneled penalties they levied on corporations into Democrat aligned community organizer groups. We all know about the IRS’s targeting of conservative political groups to stifle free speech during the 2012 election. In 2008 most Americans watched a video of the New Black Panthers standing outside a polling place in Philadelphia with billy clubs looking very menacing. Despite the video evidence, they were never convicted of voter intimidation. There has been a problem with our federal justice system for a while.
Scott Johnson posted an article today at Power Line which cites the latest example of misuse of the government for political purposes. The article is based on a Wall Street Journal article (which is behind the subscriber wall).
Kimberley Strassel writes in The Wall Street Journal:
The Department of Justice lost its latest battle with Congress Thursday when it allowed House Intelligence Committee members to view classified documents about a top-secret intelligence source that was part of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. Even without official confirmation of that source’s name, the news so far holds some stunning implications.
Among them is that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation outright hid critical information from a congressional investigation. In a Thursday press conference, Speaker Paul Ryan bluntly noted that Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s request for details on this secret source was “wholly appropriate,” “completely within the scope” of the committee’s long-running FBI investigation, and “something that probably should have been answered a while ago.” Translation: The department knew full well it should have turned this material over to congressional investigators last year, but instead deliberately concealed it.
House investigators nonetheless sniffed out a name, and Mr. Nunes in recent weeks issued a letter and a subpoena demanding more details. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s response was to double down—accusing the House of “extortion” and delivering a speech in which he claimed that “declining to open the FBI’s files to review” is a constitutional “duty.” Justice asked the White House to back its stonewall. And it even began spinning that daddy of all superspook arguments—that revealing any detail about this particular asset could result in “loss of human lives.”
This is desperation, and it strongly suggests that whatever is in these files is going to prove very uncomfortable to the FBI.
The bureau already has some explaining to do. Thanks to the Washington Post’s unnamed law-enforcement leakers, we know Mr. Nunes’s request deals with a “top secret intelligence source” of the FBI and CIA, who is a U.S. citizen and who was involved in the Russia collusion probe. When government agencies refer to sources, they mean people who appear to be average citizens but use their profession or contacts to spy for the agency. Ergo, we might take this to mean that the FBI secretly had a person on the payroll who used his or her non-FBI credentials to interact in some capacity with the Trump campaign.
This would amount to spying, and it is hugely disconcerting.
Congress has legal oversight over the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice was created by Congress in 1870. Originally, there was simply an Attorney General who gave legal advice to Congress and the President. Eventually that was limited to Congress because of the workload. The Department of Justice is a creation of government.
Either Congress has not been properly exercising its oversight authority over the Justice Department or Congress is as corrupt as the Justice Department. It is one of the other. All of the information regarding the relationship between the Justice Department’s spying and otherwise interfering with the Trump campaign needs to be made public–immediately. The American voters are entitled to see where the corruption was (and is).
Obviously some elections are more important than others. However, in keeping our focus on national elections, we sometimes forget the words of Tip O’Neill, “All politics is local.” The phrase was originally used by Washington AP bureau chief Byron Price in 1932. Tip O’Neill first used the term in 1935. We also need to remember that some local races are more important than others. That fact is not lost of those who pour exorbitant amounts of money into political races (see Rocky Mountain Heist). George Soros has evidently figured out that the District Attorney race in San Deigo will be key in the future (destruction) of California.
Yesterday FrontPage Magazine reported:
Leftist billionaire George Soros is injecting big money into a San Diego district attorney race as part of his larger effort to install extremist prosecutors across America who will refuse to enforce inconvenient laws that liberals and progressives don’t like.
Soros, who turns 88 in August, has been underwriting district attorney races across America in an effort to dismantle the criminal justice system, empty the prisons, and sabotage the enforcement of immigration laws. Soros supports state and local efforts to resist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and wants to cripple police in order to advance the neo-Marxist abstraction known as social justice that simplistically breaks the world down into race, class, and sex or gender. Radicals claim that American laws and institutions are inherently corrupt and that these systems protect, for example, wealthy, white, native-born, non-disabled males at the expense of everyone else.
Getting people who share Soros’s worldview into public office at every level is key to promoting his ugly vision of how America, which he calls “the main obstacle to a stable and just world order,” should look.
Months ago Soros saturation-bombed his Open Society Foundations philanthropy with an $18 billion donation, likely guaranteeing OSF will remain one of the most important players in left-wing activism for decades to come. According to the New York Times, this was “one of the largest transfers of wealth ever made by a private donor to a single foundation.” (Click here for a brief video primer on Soros narrated by yours truly. Click here for an in-depth Discover The Networks profile of Soros.)
George Soros is putting the money into the race through the California Justice & Public Safety PAC.
The article details some of the positions of the candidate George Soros is funding:
The current DA, Summer Stephan (R), launched a website called ThreatToSanDiego that provides a laundry list of leftist positions embraced by Jones-Wright. The site states that “anti-law enforcement $$$ is coming into San Diego,” and highlights quotations from Soros, such as his statement that he has “always harbored an exaggerated view of self importance” and that he thinks of himself as “some sort of god.”
Stephan campaign strategist Jason Roe told the Washington Free Beacon that Jones-Wright “has fully embraced his [Soros’s] positions on decriminalizing sex crimes, closing jails and prisons, and eliminating bail.” Roe added that the Democrat candidate is “committed to not enforcing what she calls ‘quality of life crimes’ like breaking and entering and other things that are not necessarily violent crimes.”
Money can’t buy elections (Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush proved that), but voters around the country need to be aware of who is funding various candidates. Open Secrets is a good source for that information. You might want to bookmark that link for the 2016 primary campaigns.
I am sure politicization of government bureaucracy was not invented under President Obama. We all remember the Clinton White House file controversy when Craig Livingstone, director of the White House‘s Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background reports concerning several hundred individuals without asking permission. We also had the IRS scandal under President Obama, and we are still sorting through FISA abuses under President Obama. However, the anti-Trump people have taken this to a new level.
The Conservative Treehouse posted an article yesterday about some recent activities in the Washington swamp.
The article reports:
Michael Avenatti is the sketchy lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels. Following a similar approach deployed by Fusion-GPS, in a rush to spread rumors and accusations Avenatti has pushed stolen documents from Treasury Department filings to his allies in the media.
The documents appear to come from frequently submitted bank filings and treasury notifications known as Currency Transaction Reports (CTR’s), and Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR’s). SAR’s and CTR’s are compliance forms filed by organizations who engage in financial services.
…Somehow the sketchy lawyer for Stormy Daniels obtained a list of treasury filings attached to the name Michael Cohen; the same name as President Trump’s lawyer. It is likely someone within the Treasury Department, or the DOJ with search access to the Treasury Department, leaked this list to Michael Avenatti in an effort to assist his dubious motives.
Unfortunately, at least two of the people Avenatti is now accusing of scurrilous financial transactions are not the same Michael Cohen the dubious lawyer is seeking to attack. One is a Canadian Michael Cohen, the other is an Israeli Michael Cohen; both have financial transactions in the United States. The latter just sending his brother money.
The article explains how a previous search of documents connected the wrong Michael Cohen with travel to Prague:
The previous incorrect search result on ‘Cohen travel’, contained in the Clinton-Steele Dossier, likely came from unlawful FISA-702(17) “about” queries (opposition research) and was passed along from Fusion-GPS to Steele -laundered into an intelligence product- and later passed back to the FBI via the dossier. Today’s incorrect search results likely came from a U.S. government agency with access to Treasury Department records.
The article explains why the Washington swamp has to be drained:
Agents, employees, private contractors, and entities within government agencies with political motives and agendas, how have the ability to weaponize information against people they consider their political opposition.
This was always the danger of allowing corrupt left-wing ideologues to have the ability to control the mechanics of government. This is part of Obama’s “fundamental change” that people allowed in 2009 through 2017.
After eight years of access and promotion of the processes, there are now thousands of like-minded political ideologues within government that will abuse their access to data in an effort to assist their allies. Leaking information has evolved into specific targeting as the process has become more refined and frequent.
It is time for the criminalization of political speech that the political left disagrees with to stop. The concept that conservative political thought was a crime has been brewing for a while and needs to be dealt with before we lose our republic.
On Saturday, The New York Post posted an article titled, “White House admits it played us for fools to sell Iran deal.”
The article reports:
In an astounding New York Times piece by David Samuels, senior White House officials gleefully confess they use friendly reporters and nonprofits as public relations tools in the selling of President Obama’s foreign policy — and can do it almost at will because these tools are ignorant, will believe what they’re told, will essentially take dictation and are happy to be used just to get the information necessary for a tweet or two.
Their greatest triumph, according to Samuels, was selling a misleading narrative about the nuclear deal with Iran — the parameters of which were set a year before the administration claimed and which had nothing to do with the fact that a supposedly more accommodating government had risen to power.
The mastermind of the Obama machine is Ben Rhodes, a New Yorker who joined the Obama campaign as a speechwriter in 2007 and has risen to become the most influential foreign-policy hand in the White House.
Rhodes drips with contempt for almost everyone but his boss. He consigns all those who do not share every particular of the Obama-Rhodes foreign-policy perspective to a gelatinous mass called “The Blob” — including, Samuels writes, Hillary Clinton.
I have previously written an article about this New York Times piece. However, as the media panic over ending the Iran deal continues, I would like to add a few thoughts to the discussion. First of all, many of the Democrats now yelling that the sky is falling because President Trump pulled out of the deal did not support the deal in the first place. The Iran deal was never given to the Senate as a treaty because the Obama Administration understood that it did not have the votes to pass. So I am not sure if the work of Ben Rhodes was actually successful–the treaty (or non-treaty as it was) never really gained majority approval.
The article at The New York Post concludes:
It was, Samuels says, a deliberately misleading narrative. The general terms were actually hammered out in 2012 by State Department officials Jake Sullivan and William Burns, rooted in Obama’s deep desire from the beginning of the administration to strike a grand deal with the mullahs.
Why on Earth was such conduct remotely acceptable? Because, Samuels makes clear, Rhodes and Obama believe they’re the only sensible thinkers in America and that there’s no way to get the right things done other than to spin them. “I mean, I’d prefer a sober, reasoned public debate, after which members of Congress reflect and take a vote,” he tells Samuels. “But that’s impossible.”
Impossible? There was a sober, reasoned public debate over the Iran deal. Its opponents were deadly serious. In the end, 58 senators voted against it on sober, reasoned grounds.
What the Samuels piece shows is that the Obama administration chose to attempt to get its way not by winning an argument but by bringing an almost fathomless cynicism to bear in manipulating its own clueless liberal fan club.
Would a Hillary Clinton presidency have been any different?
I realize John McCain is dying. I am sorry about that. His family has my sympathies, and I pray that his suffering is alleviated. However, that does not excuse petty, damaging things he has done in the recent past. Possibly the brain cancer has interfered with his better judgement for a while, and I need to give him the benefit of the doubt, but some of his past actions have had a detrimental impact on America‘s government.
Yesterday The Daily Beast posted an article about a recent action taken by John McCain that has consequences that are still reverberating. The only good thing I can say about what he did is that his actions may be partially responsible for revealing the depth of the Washington swamp (of which he is a member) and making it more easy to drain.
The article reports:
In his new book, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) defends his decision to give a controversial dossier about President Trump to former FBI chief James Comey.
“I agreed to receive a copy of what is now referred to as ‘the dossier,’” McCain writes in the upcoming book, titled The Restless Wave, referencing information compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. “I reviewed its contents. The allegations were disturbing, but I had no idea which if any were true. I could not independently verify any of it, and so I did what any American who cares about our nation’s security should have done.”
If you had no idea if the allegations were true, why didn’t you investigate who paid for the dossier and check the background of Christopher Steele? The statement in the book is designed to put a positive spin on one of the nastiest political stunts ever pulled. McCain has previously stated his intense dislike for Donald Trump and had no problem passing on questionable information that had the potential of destroying the Trump presidency (if that information had actually been true). I have no doubt that McCain wanted Hillary Clinton elected and Donald Trump destroyed. He knew James Comey was aligned with the Clintons (not known for playing fair in the political game) and could have guessed what would happen next.
As I said, I am sorry that John McCain is dying, I acknowledge that he is a war hero, but his recent actions were just plain sleazy.
CNBC (and most of the rest of the internet) are reporting today that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is headed home with three Americans recently released from North Korean prisons.
The article reports:
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that three American prisoners released from North Korea were headed home, a sign of potential good will ahead of Trump’s planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
In a tweet, Trump said “the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting” were accompanying Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on his way back from a visit to North Korea.
…Trump said Wednesday that the released prisoners “seem to be in good health.”
Tony Kim, an accounting professor who had been working at a university in Pyongyang, was detained in April 2017. Kimg Hak-Song, who also worked at the university, was detailed in May 2017 for “hostile acts” against North Korea, while Kim Dong-Chul was sentenced in April 2016 to 10 years in prison with hard labor for charges of espionage and subversion.
South Korea hailed the release of the three U.S. prisoners as a development that would have a “positive effect” on the upcoming summit between Kim and Trump – and also called for the release of six South Korean prisoners to “reinforce reconciliation” efforts.
This is wonderful news.
Walter Williams posted an article at Townhall today about welfare.
The following information about Walter Williams is posted on his Facebook page:
Born in Philadelphia in 1936, Walter E. Williams holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from California State University (1965) and a master’s degree (1967) and doctorate (1972) in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles.
In 1980, he joined the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and is currently the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics. He has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College (1967-69), California State University (1967-1971) and Temple University (1973-1980). From 1963 to 1967, he was a group supervisor of juvenile delinquents for the Los Angeles County Probation Department.
More than 150 of his publications have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review and Social Science Quarterly and popular publications such as Reader’s Digest, The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. He has made many TV and radio appearances on such programs as Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose,” William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line,” “Face The Nation,” “Nightline” and “Crossfire.”
Walter Williams is one of the leading economists in America.
These are some highlights from his Townhall article:
Before the massive growth of our welfare state, private charity was the sole option for an individual or family facing insurmountable financial difficulties or other challenges. How do we know that? There is no history of Americans dying on the streets because they could not find food or basic medical assistance. Respecting the biblical commandment to honor thy father and mother, children took care of their elderly or infirm parents. Family members and the local church also helped those who had fallen on hard times.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, charities started playing a major role. In 1887, religious leaders founded the Charity Organization Society, which became the first United Way organization. In 1904, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America started helping at-risk youths reach their full potential. In 1913, the American Cancer Society, dedicated to curing and eliminating cancer, was formed. With their millions of dollars, industrial giants such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller created our nation’s first philanthropic organizations.
He further observes:
Before the welfare state, charity embodied both a sense of gratitude on the behalf of the recipient and magnanimity on the behalves of donors. There was a sense of civility by the recipients. They did not feel that they were owed, were entitled to or had a right to the largesse of the donor. Recipients probably felt that if they weren’t civil and didn’t express their gratitude, more assistance wouldn’t be forthcoming. In other words, they were reluctant to bite the hand that helped them. With churches and other private agencies helping, people were much likelier to help themselves and less likely to engage in self-destructive behavior. Part of the message of charitable groups was: “We’ll help you if you help yourself.”
The article concludes:
There is virtually no material poverty in the U.S. Eighty percent of households the Census Bureau labels as poor have air conditioning; nearly three-quarters have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more. Two-thirds have cable or satellite TV. Half have at least one computer. Forty-two percent own their homes. What we have in our nation is not material poverty but dependency and poverty of the spirit, with people making unwise choices and leading pathological lives, aided and abetted by the welfare state. Part of this pathological lifestyle is reflected in family structure. According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, that year 11 percent of black children and 3 percent of white children were born to unwed mothers. Today it’s respectively 75 percent and 30 percent.
There are very little guts in the political arena to address the downside of the welfare state. To do so risks a politician’s being labeled as racist, sexist, uncaring and insensitive. That means today’s dependency is likely to become permanent.
Restoring the work requirement to welfare is a partial answer to the problem. However, the real answer is to restore the family, the moral values we have lost, and the value of parenting.
In March 2013, The Brookings Institute posted an article titled, “Three Simple Rules Poor Teens Should Follow to Join the Middle Class.”
These are the rules:
Let politicians, schoolteachers and administrators, community leaders, ministers and parents drill into children the message that in a free society, they enter adulthood with three major responsibilities: at least finish high school, get a full-time job and wait until age 21 to get married and have children.
Encouraging children to follow these rules is the way we could actually end the welfare state.
Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article debunking some of the recent attacks on Scott Pruitt. The article reports that recently Democrats had claimed that Scott Pruitt asked his staff to establish a new EPA office in Tulsa, Oklahoma (his home town). This was characterized as a misuse of taxpayer dollars. The House Democrats stated, “This most recent case of questionable financial management adds to the growing concerns about Administrator Pruitt’s misuse of taxpayers’ funds and potential ethical lapses in judgement.” The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) investigated and found out that this was a total misrepresentation of the actual events.
The article reports:
EPA officials asked questions about how Pruitt could periodically work from his hometown, Tulsa, in a way consistent with past administrators, utilizing existing office setups or working with federal officials to find suitable office space, emails show.
Pruitt is under fire for alleged overspending and ethical lapses, including flying first class at taxpayers’ expense and renting a room from the wife of a D.C. lobbyist. Congress and EPA’s Office of Inspector General have investigations into Pruitt’s actions.
House Democrats are claiming Pruitt wanted to put his own convenience over taxpayers’ money by establishing an EPA office in his hometown.
Democrats based their claim on emails from EPA officials, including Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson, who at the time was still working for the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
The Daily Caller notes that the Democrats never disclosed how they discovered the emails and did not release the emails to the public.
The article explains exactly what the emails were about:
The DCNF obtained emails that likely encompassed those cited by Democrats based on descriptions detailed in their letters to EPA and GSA. Democrats’ letter described two emails sent in January and February of 2017.
What the emails do show is Pruitt asked Jackson “where he could work” while home in Oklahoma.
Emails sent primarily between Jackson and Senior Policy Advisor James Blizzard show the two working to find Pruitt office space to rent while he was in Oklahoma, where his family and permanent residence are.
Jackson asked Senior Policy Advisor James Blizzard if the Office of Administration and Resources Management and GSA “could put their heads together and get something prepared for him.” Blizzard provided Jackson with a solution in a follow-up email sent Jan. 31, 2017.
Pruitt would need an “episodic telework agreement” so he could periodically conduct official business while in Tulsa, Blizzard said. Former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has a similar arrangement, Blizzard suggested.
Lied to again by the mainstream media.
On Monday, The Washington Times posted an article about a Congressional Budget Office report on April tax revenue.
The article reports:
The federal government took in a record tax haul in April en route to its biggest-ever monthly budget surplus, the Congressional Budget Office said, as a surging economy left Americans with more money in their paychecks — and this more to pay to Uncle Sam.
All told the government collected $515 billion and spent $297 billion, for a total monthly surplus of $218 billion. That swamped the previous monthly record of $190 billion, set in 2001.
CBO analysts were surprised by the surplus, which was some $40 billion more than they’d guessed at less than a month ago.
It will be interesting to see if the CBO changes its predictions on future deficits as tax revenues increase.
The article further states:
April is always a strong month for government finances, with taxpayers filing their returns for the previous year and settling up what they owe, even as expenditures often dip for the month.
But this year was particularly strong, with receipts jumping 13 percent compared to a year ago.
The news couldn’t come at a better time for President Trump and congressional Republicans, who were facing major questions about the damage last year’s tax-cut package might do to future deficits. Just a month ago the CBO projected that the deficit would quickly soar back to $1 trillion a year.
The deficit is a problem and will be a problem in the future. Hopefully the rescissions package that President Trump sent to Congress will pass (article here), and Congress will begin to trim the out-of-control spending it is accustomed to. Our future depends on it–we are not undertaxed–Congress is overspending.
Yesterday First Lady Melania Trump launched her “Be Best” campaign to encourage healthy behaviors in children. You would think there would not be a lot to complain about in that, but the mainstream media loves to complain about anything connected to President Trump, and complain they did. Many of the complaints had to do with the fact that Mrs. Trump speaks English with an accent. That shouldn’t be a surprise–it’s her fifth language! How many Americans speak five languages? How many Americans speak two languages? How many Americans speak proper English?
Townhall posted an article today about one of the complaints.
The article reports:
While discussing the initiative and President Trump’s own shortcomings on behavior Monday night, CNN contributor and White House correspondent April Ryan argued Mrs. Trump isn’t “culturally American.”
“There are a lot of realities that she is dealing with. This is a First Lady who is not culturally American but she is learning the ways,” Ryan said.
This is how the First Lady described the program:
“There are too many critical issues facing children today, so the three main pillars of Be Best will include wellbeing, social media use, and opioid abuse.”
“Together, I believe we should strive to provide kids with the tools they need to cultivate their social and emotional health,” she continued. “We can and should teach children the importance of social and self-awareness, positive relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Once a child understands these vital skills, they will be able to communicate openly with one another and instill positive feelings of mutual respect, compassion, and self-esteem.”
How is that culturally not American?
Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about the behavior of people who sincerely believe in climate change (or at least claim to).
The article reports:
We keep hearing how global warming is the biggest crisis facing mankind today. But a new yearlong study finds that those ringing the alarm bells the loudest are the least likely to change their own behavior. They just want everyone else to.
The study divided 600 adults who reported on their climate-change beliefs into three groups: “skeptical,” “cautiously worried” and “highly concerned.”
Then the researchers — from the University of Michigan and Cornell University — tracked how often they reported doing things like recycling, using public transportation, buying environmentally friendly consumer products, and reusing shopping bags. And they asked about support for government mandates like CO2 emission reduction, gasoline taxes and renewable energy subsidies. The Journal of Environmental Psychology published the findings.
The findings are not a surprise to many of us.
The article reports the results:
The researchers found that the “highly concerned” group was the least likely to take individual action, but they were the most insistent on government action. The “skeptical” group, in contrast, was the most likely to recycle, use public transportation and do other environmentally sound things all on their own. Skeptics were least likely to endorse costly government regulations and mandates.
“Belief in climate change,” the researchers explained, “predicted support for government policies, but did not generally translate to individual-level, self-reported pro-environmental behavior. ” (emphasis mine)
Two notable examples of spouting climate change rhetoric but creating an unbelievable carbon footprint are Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio. Both live in luxurious homes which use much more electricity than the average American, and both travel on private jets. I have no problem with this–they have earned what they have. However, if you are going to support government regulations that negatively impact people earning a fraction of what you make, you really should practice what you preach.
One America News posted an article today about what is happening this week in Washington, D.C..
The article listed the following votes:
The House will vote Tuesday on whether to repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s guidance on auto-finance.
CIA Director nominee Gina Haspel will testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee for her confirmation hearing Wednesday.
Lawmakers are set to vote Thursday on the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2018.
Republicans plan to continue their efforts to confirm at least six more of President Trump’s nominees for several key positions.
The article also notes that House Chaplain Patrick Conroy returns to work Monday. As noted in a previous article, President Trump will introduce his rescissions package to Congress tomorrow. Congress has 45 in-session days to respond to his request. The reaction to this request will tell the American people which Congressmen are actually fiscal conservatives and which are simply claiming to be fiscal conservatives in order to get elected.
The Friday-night news dump is a tradition of politicians and Washington types who are forced to release information they don’t want to release and are hoping no one will actually notice it. The latest Friday-night news dump has to do with redactions made on the FBI Russia report that have more to do with protecting the mistakes of the FBI than protecting national security (as claimed by those doing the redacting).
Andrew McCarthy posted an article at The National Review today citing some of the redactions and why the reasons for them are invalid.
The article cites a number of examples:
When the House first issued its report on the Russia investigation, a heavily redacted portion (pp. 53–54) related that Trump’s original national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, had pled guilty to a false-statements charge based on misleading statements to FBI agents about his December 2016 conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
…But there was one intriguing disclosure in the redacted report: Flynn pled guilty “even though the [FBI] agents did not detect any deception during Flynn’s interview.” There was no elaboration on this point — no discussion of why Flynn was interrogated by FBI agents in the first place; no insight on deliberations within the FBI and Justice Department about whether Flynn had deceptive intent; no explanation of how he came to be charged months later by Mueller’s prosecutors even though the trained investigators who observed Flynn’s demeanor during the interview did not believe he’d lied.
This is what the unredacted Russian report reveals:
Meanwhile Flynn’s reputation has been ruined, his finances wrecked, and his life turned upside down. I recently posted an article about the Special Prosecutor‘s dealings with Michael Caputo, a campaign worker for President Trump. He has also had his life ruined and his financial stability destroyed by the Mueller investigation. The Mueller investigation has now reached the point where its goal is intimidating and ruining the lives of people who hold political views different from those on the investigating team. It is long past time for this charade of an investigation to stop.
Please follow the link above to the article at The National Review to see what else the FBI really didn’t want the American public to know.
President Trump is not a politician (although he obviously has a fairly quick learning curve). He is a businessman. We are about to see exactly what that means.
The Daily Signal posted an article today about President Trump’s request to Congress to cancel $15 billion in spending. First of all–I love the request. We will see what happens next.
The article reports:
“Tomorrow the president is going to be using his authority under the Impoundment Control Act to send up the largest rescissions package in history from a president,” a senior administration official said Monday evening on a conference call.
“This first package will be the first of several,” the senior official said. “It will be designed to go after unobligated balances, things that have not been spent and programs from prior years.”
Although the White House Office of Management and Budget does not seek to rescind spending in Congress’ recently passed $1.3 trillion omnibus bill, the official said, the administration will do that later.
The article noted that rescission on the most recently passed omnibus bill will come later.
The article explains how the process works:
To start the rescission process, a president must send a request or requests to Congress. Once he does so, the lawmakers have 45 in-session days to act.
Lawmakers introduce rescissions as legislation in both the House and Senate and refer them to a committee; if the committee doesn’t act in 25 days, the rescissions may be thrown out.
Debate is limited to two hours in the House and 10 hours in the Senate, the Conservative Partnership Institute notes in a report.
The process cannot be used to cut mandatory spending, including for entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and food stamps.
Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, said rescinded spending ought to reduce the deficit and pave the way for a bill to repair the nation’s infrastructure.
“I would like to see a commitment to say, everything that we save over and above this $11 billion will go 50 percent for debt reduction and 50 percent toward an infrastructure bill,” Davidson said before the number was finalized. “And I think that would be a great start to a infrastructure [bill] and a great way to make sure the president doesn’t have to sign another bill that is at the same level.”
All members of Congress need to understand that the massive spending bills that increase our debt are a national security risk. It is time that Congress began to take action to mitigate that risk.
The Daily Caller reported yesterday that Amazon has barred the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom from taking part in their Amazon Smile program.
The article reports:
Amazon allows the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center to determine which groups are and aren’t allowed to take part in Amazon Smile
The article lists some of the groups who will be participating in the program:
Unlike ADF, hardline Islamic groups are allowed to participate in Amazon Smile. That includes the Islamic Center of Jersey City, whose imam called Jews “apes and pigs” and requested Allah’s help in killing them “down to the very last one,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is able to take part in Amazon Smile, despite a 2009 federal court ruling the U.S. government has “ample evidence” of ties between the group and Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.
The similarly named Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is also an Amazon Smile member. ICNA promotes the establishment of an Islamic caliphate and has ties to a radical Pakistani political group, Jamaat-e-Islami. The ADL has criticized ICNA for giving a platform to extremists.
Amazon’s spokesperson declined to comment to TheDCNF on the eligibility status of individual organizations but stressed the diversity of the more than one million participants in the program.
ISNA is listed as an unindicted co conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Trial which began in July 2007. The Holy Land Foundation Trial dealt with groups funding money to Islamic terrorists. These are the people Amazon is allowing to participate in their charity programs while keeping Christian organizations out. This is definitely backwards.
The unemployment numbers just released are good–they are not great because of some of the underlying factors. Investor’s Business Daily reported that in April the unemployment rate dropped to 3.9 percent. That is good news, but there are some other numbers that are cause for concern.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the workforce participation rate in April was 62.8 percent. That number has roamed between 62.7 and 63 percent since the end of 2015.
The article at Investor’s Business Daily reports:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the economy added 164,000 jobs in April, and the unemployment level dropped to 3.9%. It was 4.8% when President Trump took office.
Since Trump took office, the economy has added a total of 2.7 million jobs, and since his tax cuts took effect we’ve seen an average 200,000 new jobs each month. Initial jobless claims are at decades long lows as well.
That’s unquestionably good news.
The report also finds, however, that wages rose slightly less than expected in April — with hourly earnings climbing at a 2.6% annualized rate.
…According to the Census household survey, the biggest contribution to the drop in the unemployment rate wasn’t people getting jobs — that survey registered a gain of just 3,000 in April. It’s due mainly to the fact that 410,000 dropped out of the labor force — and no longer count as unemployed.
The article cites some figures explaining changes in the Workforce Participation Rate in various age groups:
The labor force participation rate in Dec. 2000 was 67%. Today it is just 62.8%.
The employment-to-population ratio then was 64.4%. Now it’s 60.3%.
The population not in the labor force — they don’t have jobs and aren’t looking — has climbed a stunning 25.3 million over those years.
Think about it this way. If the labor force participation rate were the same today as it was in December 2000, the unemployment rate wouldn’t be 3.9%. It would be 10%!
Yes, many who’ve left the labor force over the past 18 years are baby boomers entering retirement. But that doesn’t come close to explaining the massive increase in labor dropouts.
For example, the labor force participation rate among 20- to 24-year-olds was 78% in December 2000. It’s just 71% today. For those 25-34 years old, the rate declined from 85% to 83%.
In contrast, among those 55 and older, the participation rate increased — going from 33% in December 2000 to 40% now.
From my perspective, there are a number of reasons for this change–the federal government has made not working too comfortable. Our safety net has gotten too comfortable for many people, creating multi-generational welfare recipients. We did go through a recession after the housing bubble burst, but we are coming out of that now, and it is time for people to resume their job searches. Another reason for the fact that the workforce participation rate is so low might be that we are graduating students from college with no marketable skills or with the idea that since they just graduated, they can start their careers at the top of the corporate ladder. Some of these graduates refuse to look for jobs outside of their chosen degree field or refuse to begin any place other than at the top. There is also the matter of whatever work ethic students may or may not have learned in college.
The economy is looking better, but we have a long way to go before we can be considered actually prosperous–we need to deal with the debt and we need to shrink government drastically.
From my friends at Power Line Blog: (please excuse some of the language–I couldn’t edit it out)
The Conservative Treehouse reported yesterday that Admiral Mike Rogers has retired as National Security Agency Director. He will be replaced by Army General Paul Nakasone. Ordinarily this would not be a particularly newsworthy event, but there are some things that have been going on behind the scenes that make this noteworthy.
The article reminds us:
It does not seem coincidental that today, in the background of events, there is also a great deal of activity within the aggregate intelligence community (FBI/DOJ). As DNI Dan Coats and NSA Director Mike Rogers are together in a formal and official capacity for the final time, the FBI was purging usurping agents (Page, Baker). Indeed with Admiral Rogers exit from service, he is now able to testify regarding his knowledge of prior FISA issues.
You might remember it was DNI Dan Coats and NSA Mike Rogers who worked together to investigate the FISA abuses and declassify the FISA court opinion presented by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer in April 2017. It was also Mike Rogers who went to see President Elect Donald Trump in November of 2016 and alerted him to the counterintelligence surveillance being conducted by FBI and DOJ officials within the Obama Administration.
The most important aspect of Admiral Rogers’ retirement:
Indeed with Admiral Rogers exit from service, he is now able to testify regarding his knowledge of prior FISA issues.
Stay tuned.
On Wednesday, Bill Gertz posted an article at The Washington Times which provided some of the details on the Iranian nuclear program. The information presented by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was truly an intelligence coup. Secretary of State (and Former CIA Director) Mike Pompeo noted that much of the information Israel had obtained was new to the United States.
The article reported:
An Israeli government PowerPoint briefing on the documents showed Iran moved the files in 2017 to a secret warehouse in an industrial area of southern Tehran called Shorabad. Inside the warehouse were numerous safes protecting some 55,000 pages of documents in binders, and 183 CDs containing 50,000 more digital files.
An Israeli official told reporters the daring operation by Mossad agents to steal the documents was carried out on Jan. 31, and included Iranians discovering the break-in as it was happening. The Iranians flew a drone aircraft into Israeli airspace 11 days after the document raid, possibly in response to the operation.
The documents reveal Iran’s nuclear arms program was called “Project Amad” and operated from 1999 to 2003.
An Iranian presentation in Farsi revealed in the Israeli presentation said that the goal of Project Amad was to “design, produce and test” nuclear weapons. Under the plan, the Iranians were to build five warheads with yields of 10 kilotons that would be designed “for integration on a missile.”
That is not a peaceful nuclear program to provide energy for Iran (as was claimed by Iran).
The section of the article dealing with Iran concludes:
The Israeli presentation included documents showing that Iran deceived the International Atomic Energy Agency in its final report on Iran’s past and present nuclear program that was required as part of the 2015 nuclear deal. The documents show that — contrary to Iran’s denial to the IAEA of a coordinate arms program and denying the existence of Project Amad — Iran in fact carried out a coordinated nuclear weapons programs.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this week the documents obtained by the Israelis from Iran were “authentic.” He called the documents that are being reviewed by U.S. intelligence agencies an “arsenal of knowledge.”
“It’s not just in the minds of people whom they have. It’s the actual calculations that they’ve done, the blueprints, the measurements,” he said.
The Pentagon’s latest nuclear posture review said the Iran nuclear deal has constrained Tehran’s arms program, “many of the agreement’s restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program will end by 2031.”
“In addition, Iran retains the technological capability and much of the capacity necessary to develop a nuclear weapon within one year of a decision to do so,” the posture review said.
On May 10, 2016, I wrote an article about the role that Ben Rhodes had played in securing positive public opinion about the Iran deal. The deal was seriously flawed from the beginning. I am not sure that it can be changed in any way that would make the world safer from Iranian nuclear weapons. If it can’t be changed, it needs to be scrapped. At that point someone needs to pinpoint all locations of the Iranian nuclear program and make them disappear.