Tag Archives: George W. Bush

This Is Disappointing

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When a President of the United States begins his term, he takes the following oath:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Theoretically the idea that he would defend the Constitution should follow him for life. I live in a community with a lot of military retirees. They will tell you that the oath they took when they joined the military has no expiration date. One would think that the Presidential Oath also has no expiration date. Which brings me to today’s news.

On Monday, American Greatness reported the following:

Three of the five former Presidents of the United States have started a new non-governmental organization (NGO) with the explicit purpose of chartering flights to import illegal aliens into the United States.

As reported by Just The News, the NGO Miles4Migrants, founded by former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, is teaming up with two other organizations, American Express Global Business Travel and Welcome.US, to expand upon a previous effort that focused solely on Afghan refugees following the disastrous withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in 2021.

Welcome.US was originally launched for the purpose of bringing in at least 85,000 Afghan refugees, and also has ties to the far-left billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundation. The new coalition between Welcome.US, Miles4Migrants, and American Express Global Business Travel will seek to raise money to import illegals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Ukraine.

It is very sad that these men, once elected by the American people, have formed a group to undermine the security and stability of the nation they once led. The supporting of illegal immigration is bad enough, but teaming up with George Soros is really beyond the pale. I have always been reluctant to believe in the new world order and the fact that many of our leading politicians support giving up American sovereignty, but stories like this make it hard to deny.

About That Uni-Party Concept…

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On Thursday, Breitbart posted the following headline:

Bush, Obama, Clinton Team Up with American Express to Fly Migrants into American Communities

The article reports:

A non-governmental organization (NGO) founded by former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama and backed by a litany of multinational corporations is teaming up with American Express to fly migrants into the United States.

The NGO, called Welcome.US, was initially launched to work with President Joe Biden’s administration in resettling some 85,000 Afghans across the U.S. in 2021 and 2022, as Breitbart News reported extensively at the time.

For its Afghan operation, the NGO helped fly close to 20,000 Afghans to American communities funded by millions raised from donations and supported by corporate backers like Walmart, Airbnb, the New York Times, the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Starbucks, the Washington Post, Goldman Sachs, Goodwill Industries, Microsoft, and Chobani.

The NGO also has ties to billionaire George Soros, as members of his Open Society Foundation sit on the group’s “National Welcome Council.”

The article concludes:

The NGO’s flights for migrants are meant to complement a program created by President Joe Biden’s administration this year where 360,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua will be admitted to the United States annually via an expansive parole pipeline which has already helped release about a million migrants into American communities from 2021 to 2022.

During a Senate committee hearing this week, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) estimated that the Biden administration has welcomed close to five million border crossers and illegal aliens to the United States since taking office in early 2021. This figure includes those released into the U.S. interior, known got-aways, and unknown got-aways.

I will admit, when he was elected, I thought George W. Bush was one of the ‘good guys.’ Needless to say, I was wrong. He is part of the globalist group that wants to erase our borders and our national sovereignty. The combination of Bush, Clinton, and Obama has done serious damage to our nation, and they themselves will never pay a price for the damage they have done. Unfortunately, it will be we average Americans who will suffer the consequences of their actions. We definitely need to clean out the swamp that is Washington in the 2024 election.

Saving The Taxpayers Money While Draining The Swamp

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Yesterday The New York Post reported that National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien has dramatically cut down the size of the National Security Council.

The article reports:

The job cuts are an attempt to streamline the foreign policy outfit, which ballooned under the Obama administration to almost 240 staffers — still up from 115 during Condoleezza Rice’s tenure as George W. Bush’s NSA in the early 2000s, a senior White House official said.

By the end of this summer, the NSC will consist of just 105 staff, the official said.

The changes come as O’Brien — Trump’s fourth national security adviser — tries to remake the forum in his image after replacing fiery predecessor John Bolton, who was ousted last October following a high-profile dispute with the president.

…Trump reportedly instructed O’Brien to substantially reduce the size of the agency shortly after he arrived at the White House — an effort O’Brien detailed in a Washington Post opinion piece.

At the time, the foreign policy operation was at the center of an impeachment inquiry sparked by a whistleblower complaint related to the agency’s work.

“Under previous administrations, the NSC more than doubled in size and duplicated many of the functions of DoD, State and the intelligence community,” O’Brien told The Post on Tuesday.

“Under President Trump, we have brought the NSC back to its proper size and role as a coordinating body,” he continued.

“To make that happen we require the best leaders, many of whom are women. Our goal is always to find the very best professionals for each job, and I am very proud of the team we have assembled at the NSC to further President Trump’s agenda,” he said.

In 2016, Republicans in both houses of Congress introduced bills that would have slashed the NSC staff to no more than 150 people — legislation the Obama administration opposed.

 

Created by President Harry Truman in 1947, the NSC is an interagency panel that advises and assists the president on national security and foreign policy.

It should also be noted that the President also cut 70 Obama-era holdovers from the National Security Agency in February.

The deep state is slowly being removed.

Calling His Bluff

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Jim Acosta has been very vocal during the President’s briefings on the coronavirus. At one point when President Trump stated that he thought that voting by mail is an invitation to fraud, Jim Acosta demanded evidence. Well, the President obliged.

Breitbart posted an article yesterday with some examples.

The article reports:

Trump replied, “I think there’s a lot of evidence, but we’ll provide you with some, okay?”

The president’s re-election campaign responded quickly to Acosta’s request, noting there were nine people charged in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas with “vote harvesting” and mail ballots, a political operative in New York stealing and submitting absentee ballots, and a resident in Pennsylvania receiving seven separate ballots in the mail.

The campaign also shared a Heritage Foundation document of over 1,000 proven cases of vote fraud.

“Democrats and the mainstream media always scoff at claims of voter fraud, but then completely ignore evidence from across the country,” Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “The obvious reason is that Democrats are just fine with the possibility of voter fraud. And many in the media just see the world their way.”

The Trump campaign also quoted an election expert in the New York Times who said although election fraud was rare, “the most common type of such fraud in the United States involves absentee ballots” through the mail.

President Trump cited ongoing legal action from Judicial Watch forcing states to clear millions of ineligible voter registrations within 90 days as proof of voter fraud.

The White House also shared details of 2005 commission led by President Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush’s secretary of state James A. Baker III that concluded mail-in ballots “remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”

“Outside those in the establishment media who are more interested in attacking the President than the facts, there’s a clear consensus that universal mail-in voting would be vulnerable to fraud,” a White House source told Breitbart News in a statement.

Every fraudulent vote cancels the vote of an American citizen who has the right to vote. The examples above are only one of many reasons why instead of voting by mail, we need voter id laws that require photo identification to vote. That will not entirely solve the voter fraud problem, but it will go a long way in that direction.

Wisdom From The Mayor Of Livermore California

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The article I am referring to is from June 2018, but it is still totally relevant. Linked in posted an article on June 16, 2018, about the success and popularity of President Trump. Obviously that popularity does not extend to the media, but it does extend to the thousands of people who attend his rallies. The article is written by Marshall Kamena, a registered Democrat who is the Mayor of Livermore, California.

The article notes:

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”

Here’s my answer: We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.

We tried statesmanship.

Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?

We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?

And the results were always the same. This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party.

I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks.

I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent.

Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”

The article continues:

The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.

With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America ’s first wartime president in the Culture War.

…Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after “the fake media” — and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri — Trump isolated CNN.. He made it personal.

Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.”… Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. … They need to respond.

This leaves them with only two choices. They can either “go high” (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery. The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive.

Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers & Bernardine Dohrn), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s church.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is extremely insightful!

Sometimes It’s The Little Things That Matter

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President Trump has given us back the freedom to choose our light bulbs. American Thinker posted an article today stating:

Score another million votes for President Trump in the coming 2020 election.

The president has gotten rid of a despicable little micromanaging regulation left over from the Obama era, restoring the citizens’ right to buy the light bulbs that fit their preferences and needs. According to The Hill:

“Today the Trump Administration chose to protect consumer choice by ensuring that the American people do not pay the price for unnecessary overregulation from the federal government,” Brouillette said in a statement. “Innovation and technology are already driving progress, increasing the efficiency and affordability of light bulbs, without federal government intervention. The American people will continue to have a choice on how they light their homes.”

Blocking the standards flies in the face of congressional intent, critics say, citing a 2007 act signed into law by President George W. Bush that requires all everyday bulbs to use 65 percent less energy than regular incandescent bulbs, which currently constitute about half of the bulb market.

Where in the Constitution does it give the government power to tell us what kind of light bulbs we can buy?

The article continues:

Way back in 2011, when the Bush-era nanny-state measure was first enacted, Virginia Postrel, then at Bloomberg (she might still be) wrote this brilliant piece on how stupid and immoral the whole thing was. She began:

If you want to know why so many Americans feel alienated from their government, you need only go to Target and check out the light bulb aisle. Instead of the cheap commodities of yesteryear, you’ll find what looks like evidence of a flourishing, technology-driven economy.

There are “ultrasoft” bulbs promising “softer soft white longer life” light, domed halogens for “bright crisp light” and row upon row of Energy Smart bulbs — some curled in the by-now-familiar compact fluorescent form, some with translucent shells that reveal only hints of the twisting tubes within.

I can’t get the whole thing on Outline, but here was her money-quote:

… the activists offended by the public’s presumed wastefulness took a more direct approach. They joined forces with the big bulb producers, who had an interest in replacing low-margin commodities with high-margin specialty wares, and, with help from Congress and President George W. Bush, banned the bulbs people prefer.

It was an inside job. Neither ordinary consumers nor even organized interior designers had a say. Lawmakers buried the ban in the 300-plus pages of the 2007 energy bill, and very few talked about it in public. It was crony capitalism with a touch of green.

Now we have our freedom to choose light bulbs back. Let’s see how many other freedoms we can reclaim!

Why Does The Establishment (Republicans and Democrats) Hate Donald Trump?

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Yesterday Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness titled, “Why Do They Hate Him So?” The article analyzes the reasons that President Trump is opposed by both the political left and the establishment right.

The article states:

Again, why the unadulterated hatred? For the small number of NeverTrumpers, of course, Trump’s crudity in speech and crassness in manner nullify his accomplishments: the unattractive messenger has fouled an otherwise tolerable message.

While they recognize in the abstract that the randy JFK, the repugnant LBJ, and the horny Bill Clinton during their White House tenures were far grosser in conduct than has been Donald Trump, they either assume presidential ethics should have evolved or they were not always around to know of past bad behavior first hand, or believe Trump’s crude language is worse than prior presidents’ crude behavior in office.

The article continues:

Had Donald Trump in his first month as president declared that he was a centrist Republican —as many suspicious Never Trumpers predicted that he would, true to past form—and promoted cap-and-trade and solar and wind federal subsidies, tabled pipeline construction and abated federal leasing for gas and oil production, stayed in the Iran nuclear deal and Paris Climate Accord, appointed judges in the tradition of John Paul Stevens and David Souter, praised the “responsible” Palestinian leaders, pursued “comprehensive immigration reform” as a euphemism for blanket amnesties, then Trump would be treated largely as a George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush: hated, of course, but not obsessively so.

More importantly, had Trump just collapsed or stagnated the economy, as predicted by the likes of Paul Krugman and Larry Summers, he would now be roundly denounced, but again not so vilified, given his political utility for the Left in 2020 as a perceived Herbert Hoover-esque scapegoat.

Had Trump kept within the media and cultural sidelines by giving interviews to “60 Minutes,” speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, bringing in a few old Republican hands to run the staff or handle media relations like a David Gergen or Andrew Card, Trump would have been written off as a nice enough dunce.

But Trump did none of that. So, the hatred of the media, the Left, the swamp, and the celebrity industry is predicated more on the successful Trump agenda. He is systematically undoing what Barack Obama wrought, in the manner Obama sought to undo with his eight years the prior eight years of George W. Bush.

But whereas the Obama economy stagnated and his foreign policy was seen by adversaries and rivals as a rare occasion to recalibrate the world order at American’s expense, Trump mostly did not fail—at least not yet. We are currently in an economic boom while most of the world economy abroad is inert. Had the economy just crashed as predicted, the Trump agenda would have been discredited and he would be written off a pitiful fool rather than an existential monster.

Again, hatred arises at what Trump did even more than what he says or how he says it.

The obvious conclusion:

The bipartisan Washington establishment? If an outsider Manhattan wheeler-dealer without military or political experience can at last call an appeased China to account, can avoid a Libyan fiasco, can acknowledge that America is tired of a 18-year slog in Afghanistan when others would not, or believes ISIS thrived as a result of prior arcane restrictive U.S. rules of engagement—and he is proven largely right—then what does that say about the credentialed experts who dreamed up the bipartisan conventional wisdom that with a few more concessions China would eventually become Palo Alto or that Libya would bloom at the heart of the Arab Spring?

The Left detests Trump for a lot of reasons besides winning the 2016 election and aborting the progressive project. But mostly they hate his guts because he is trying and often succeeding to restore a conservative America at a time when his opponents thought that the mere idea was not just impossible but unhinged.

And that is absolutely unforgivable.

Be prepared for a very nasty year before the election in 2020. There are a lot of very unhinged people in politics and in the media.

Wait For The Boomerang

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The headlines are screaming today–“Paul Manafort Indicted.” Well, before the Democrats celebrate too loudly, they might want to take a look at the indictment.

The New York Post posted an article today listing the charges:

The indictment says Manafort and Gates worked as “unregistered agents” for Ukraine and the Party of Regions, a political party run by Yanukovych.

​They “generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of their Ukraine work” and hid the payments from US authorities, the indictment says.

From 2006 through 2016, Manafort and Gates laundered $75 million through “scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts,” it says.

The 31-page indictment does not mention Trump or the 2016 election.

There are a few things that need to be noted about the indictment of Paul Manafort. Wikipedia lists a few positions Paul Manafort held in the past. Between 1978 and 1980, Manafort was the southern coordinator for Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, and the deputy political director at the Republican National Committee. After Reagan’s election in November 1980, he was appointed Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office at the White House. Paul Manafort worked as an advisor to the presidential campaigns of George H.W. Bush in 1988 and Bob Dole in 1996. Manafort was someone used by the Republican establishment in the past, it is quite likely that establishment Republicans had something to do with Manafort being chosen to work on the Trump campaign. It is also important to note that Manafort was hired in March 2016 and fired in August 2016.

So what can we conclude from this? It is quite likely that Robert Mueller has indicted Manafort as an attempt to bring down President Trump. All Mueller has to do is promise leniency to Manafort if Manafort will blow the whistle on the President.

The fact that the special prosecutor indicted someone who worked on the Trump campaign for a matter of months on charges that were in no way connected to the campaign or Donald Trump is an indication that Mueller is not finding what he needs to find in order to go after President Trump. It is becoming very obvious that Mueller is conducting an extensive witch hunt that is only yielding shady characters not related to the President.

In a nutshell, if this is all Robert Mueller can come up with, he needs to go away. He is a very expensive distraction.

 

Ignoring Facts For Political Purposes

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President Trump has introduced his tax reform plan. It’s not a truly conservative plan, but it is a plan that will ease the tax burden of many Americans. It will also eliminate the ‘death tax,’ which has resulted in the sale of many family farms and small family businesses. The Democrats are making their usual noises–tax cuts for the rich, etc., choosing to ignore the fact that the top 10 percent of earners pay 80 percent of federal income taxes. Obviously, if that is the case, those are the people who are going to benefit from lower taxes. Actually, President Trump’s tax cuts are aimed more at the middle class and at corporations, two groups that have been negatively impacted by the current tax code. As it stands now, the tax code is a recognition of the hard work of lobbyists. That needs to change.

One of the needed changes that will get the most opposition is the elimination of the deduction for state taxes. Under the present tax code, states with low taxes are currently subsidizing states with high taxes. Congressmen from New York, California, Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and other high-tax states love this. The residents of these states grumble less when their taxes go up because they can deduct them on their federal income taxes. You may not hear this discussed a lot in the debate on the tax plan, but it is a major issue. Expect a lot of opposition from Congressmen from high-tax states. Those states may be forced to become more fiscally responsible if this change is made.

Yesterday The New York Post posted an article listing some of the lies we can expect to hear from those opposed to the proposed tax reform. The article also includes some of the past history of the impact of lowering taxes.

The article reports:

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy slashed investment taxes. After his assassination, his broader tax cuts were enacted, producing eight years of soaring growth — 5 percent a year.

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan slashed rates again, giving the nation nearly a decade of robust 3.8 percent growth.

In 2003, George W. Bush’s tax cut boosted the economy, producing 4 percent growth for six straight quarters.

Compare this vigorous growth with President Barack Obama’s eight years of stagnation. Obama’s economy lumbered along at around 2 percent growth because high taxes and over-regulation discouraged companies from investing. Democrats still insist that 2 percent growth is the new normal. Nonsense. Roll back regulations and taxes, and the economy will surge.

So why would anyone oppose something that would grow the economy and increase the spending power of working Americans. There are a few reasons. There are people who simply refuse to learn the lessons of history–the simply do not understand the economics of lowering taxes. There are people who oppose the plan for political reasons–Democrats have made it clear that they have no intention of cooperating with anything President Trump proposes. And last of all, there are establishment Republicans who are determined to protect the status quo. Expect a lot of political posturing in the near future about the tax reform. The thing to remember here is that Washington does not need more of our money to spend–Washington needs to learn how to be responsible with the taxpayers’ money.

The History Of The Judicial Filibuster

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The following is taken from a transcript of the Rush Limbaugh Show:

All that is happening today is that the Senate is being returned to the rules that lasted for 100 years prior to 2003.

The judicial filibuster was invented by the Democrats in 2003. The point is there was no filibuster anywhere… It’s not even mentioned in the Constitution. It’s a Senate rule. The Senate can make whatever rules it wants. The Democrats… I just listened to Dick Durbin. (paraphrased) They’re talking about decades and centuries of Senate tradition being wiped aside by these evil Republicans! The Republicans didn’t do anything but stand aside while the Democrats changed the rules. So all that’s happening is that Democrat rules that created filibustering judicial nominees are now being removed.

That’s all that’s happening. The Senate is being returned to normal. That’s all that’s happening. There is no great earthquake happening here. The Senate is not being forever undermined and changed. But that’s the media’s story, and so the Democrats are going along with it. The media’s devising all this strategy, and they’re showing by virtue of controlling the news how the Democrats should act and what the Democrats should say.

…The Senate has just affirmed the nuclear option on the Gorsuch confirmation. To prove the point that prior to 2003 judicial filibusters didn’t exist, look at Clarence Thomas! Clarence Thomas — after all of that crap that was his confirmation hearings — was confirmed to the court with fewer than 60 votes. So was Samuel Alito, and there have been others.

But in the modern era, those are two prominent justices confirmed with fewer than 60 votes. The filibuster didn’t exist. The Democrats invented the judicial filibuster in 2003 to stop the nominees to lower courts of George W. Bush. Harry Reid pulled it again in 2013 to include all presidential judicial nominations except those nominated for the Supreme Court. What McConnell has done today is not alter the Constitution.

McConnell and the Republicans have not nuclearized the Constitution. They have not actually triggered a nuclear option. That’s just words. All that’s happened here is that Mitch McConnell has returned to the Senate its rules that existed prior to the Democrats changing them in 2003. And, by the way, the Senate can make whatever rules it wants. And if a majority votes on the rules change, then it’s changed. The Constitution does not say anything about filibusters, because the filibuster was not actually invented until long after the country was founded and began operating.

So what is this actually about? This whole exercise was nothing more than a political game of chicken. I am still not convinced that the Democrats thought the Republicans would use the nuclear option. There will be Senate and House seats up for grabs in 2018. The recent track record of the Democrats in Senate and House elections is abysmal. It is hoped that all this fuss about the nuclear option (and forcing the Republicans to use it) will energize the Democratic voter base. It has nothing to do with the qualifications of Judge Gorsuch (and it doesn’t even have anything to do with Judge Merrick Garland). Judge Garland is a good excuse for the Democrats to throw the temper tantrum they are currently throwing. It’s all about the next election. That shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Sometimes The Internet Just Makes Politics Difficult

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On Sunday, Lifezette posted an article about Senator Elizabeth Warren‘s plan to obstruct the firing of U.S. Attorneys. Evidently Senator Warren has a short memory. Yesterday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article quoting California Democrat Representative Maxine Waters complaining that Barack Obama did not get rid of Bush-era U.S. Attorneys fast enough in May of 2009.

The Gateway Pundit quotes Representative Waters:

Maxine Waters: “As we understand it, the protocol has been that U.S. attorneys hand in their resignations and would give the new administration an opportunity to make new appointments, we don’t see that happening quite fast enough.”

Lifezette posted some tweets from Senator Warren:

Lifezette further reminds us:

While it is true that the Senate confirms any U.S. attorney appointees that a president names, neither the act of firing nor the appointment of replacements is something unusual in the transfer of presidential power.

I guess Senator Warren has forgotten recent history. Please follow the link to read the entire Lifezette article. Senator Warren’s tweets are totally over the top.

 

 

 

This Needed To Be Done

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The New York Post is reporting today that the Trump Administration is beginning to make major changes in State Department personnel.

The article reports:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is cleaning house at the State Department, according to a report.

Staffers in the offices of deputy secretary of state for management and resources as well as counselor were shown the door Thursday, according to CBS News.

Many of those let go were on the building’s seventh floor — top-floor bigs — a symbolically important sign to the rest of the diplomatic corps that their new boss has different priorities than the last one.

The staffing changes came as Tillerson was on his first foreign trip — attending a G-20 meeting in Bonn, Germany.

“As part of the transition from one administration to the next, we continue to build out our team. The State Department is supported by a very talented group of individuals, both Republicans and Democrats,” State Department spokesman RC Hammond told CBS.

There are some of us who felt that the State Department worked against George W. Bush when he was president. It is encouraging to see the Trump Administration taking steps to prevent that from happening during the Trump Administration. This is just another appropriate part of draining the swamp.

Is This Really Necessary?

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On Saturday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the confirmation hearings for President Trump’s cabinet.

The article reports:

Trump has now been president for a full three weeks, and the number of approved members in his cabinet stands at seven—a number that was boosted by three contested confirmations last week that were opposed by almost the entire Democratic caucus.

Senate Democrats, vowing to use “everything” they can to stop Trump‘s nominees, have used procedural tricks like boycotting committee meetings to slow the confirmation process to a historically slow pace.

Recent administrations have had many more nominees approved at the three-week mark. Barack Obama had 12 out of 15 nominees approved, George W. Bush had his entire cabinet approved, and Bill Clinton had all but one approved in less than a day.

For most of history, approving cabinet nominees has been a non-issue. Presidents John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter had their entire cabinet approved in the first days of their presidency—a brisk pace that has been the norm for most of U.S. history.

As noted by historian Robert David Johnson, the only confirmation process at all comparable to the current situation was that of President George H.W. Bush, and even he had 10 of his 14 nominees confirmed by the three-week mark.

The article reminds us that in the case of President H.W. Bush, the Democrats controlled the Senate and had the power to stop his cabinet choices. The Republicans currently control the Senate, and even then the Democrats are successful at slow-walking President Trump’s cabinet choices. Odds are that all cabinet members will eventually be confirmed. It doesn’t make sense to obstruct, and obstruction may have a political price.

The article further reports:

The continuing obstruction of even uncontroversial cabinet choices is being driven by demands from the liberal base of the Democratic Party, which is demanding that Democratic lawmakers not cooperate with Trump on anything.

“Democrats, pushed by their base, are under pressure to not cooperate with the new president—on anything,” wrote the Wall Street Journal following reports that Democrats boycotted committee hearings for multiple nominees.

“Gone are the concerns about appearing overly obstructionist,” Politico reported. “Officeholders are now chasing a base that will not tolerate any sign of accommodation.”

The White House has complained that Democrats are “working overtime” to stop the administration from putting qualified nominees in place at agencies.

The Partnership for Public Progress, a nonpartisan group that promotes public service, has said the slow pace of confirmations is damaging the country.

“They are running the most important organization on the planet, and they don’t have their team on the field,” said the organizations CEO. “They don’t have their critical people in place and that’s vital to being able to do their jobs appropriately.”

This is ridiculous. I am waiting for the Democrats who are slowing the confirmation process to start complaining that the Trump Administration isn’t doing anything. Meanwhile, the Democrats are planning on obstructing anything that is attempted. This is not what the American people signed up for. We want a government that gets things done. We want a government that will do what is needed to restart the economy. We want a government that will get out of health insurance and let the free market work. Simply stated, we want a government that will let us live our lives. This obstructionism is not appreciated by anyone except the extreme left, and candidates running for re-election need votes from all groups of voters. The current actions of the Senate Democrats may please the base, but we will see in 2018 if they actually helped the party or hurt the party.

If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough, It Becomes The Truth

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The above quote is attributed to Vladimir Lenin. It has been used successfully by the political left for a very long time. The Wall Street Journal posted a story on Wednesday illustrating how the political left is repeating a lie in order to gain advantage in the efforts to confirm a Supreme Court Judge.

The article reports:

…But Democrats are still itching for a fight, and their first line of offense is the myth of the “stolen” seat.

“This is a seat that was stolen from the former President, Obama, that’s never been done in U.S. history before,” declared Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley in announcing that he will attempt to filibuster Judge Gorsuch. “To let this become normal just invites a complete partisan polarization of the Court from here to eternity.” The “stolen” line is echoing across Progressive Nation, but it’s a complete political invention.

The “theft” is supposedly the GOP Senate’s refusal last year to vote on President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat. But the standard of not confirming a Supreme Court nominee in the final year of a Presidency was set by . . . Democrats. And by no less a Beltway monument than the current Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer.

 

“We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances,” Mr. Schumer declared in a July 2007 speech to the American Constitution Society. Democrats then held the Senate and Mr. Schumer was putting down a marker if someone on the High Court retired. George W. Bush didn’t get another opening, but Mr. Schumer surely meant what he said.

Ah, but that was then and this is now. We had a Republican President then. Last year we had a Democratic President.

The article continues:

The Democratic theft standard goes back further to Joe Biden’s days as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In June 1992 in President George H.W. Bush’s final year, Robber Joe opined that the President “should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not name a nominee until after the November election is completed.”

Naming a new Justice, he said, would ensure that a confirmation “process that is already in doubt in the minds of many will become distrusted by all.” If Mr. Bush made an election-year nomination, Mr. Biden said his committee should consider “not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over.”

Does anyone outside the MSNBC audience think that had the roles been reversed in 2016, and a Democratic Senate faced a Republican Court nominee, Harry Reid would have held a confirmation vote? As John McEnroe liked to shout, “You can’t be serious!”

It must be frustrating to the Democrats (and at times to the Republicans) than anyone can google a subject and find out what politicians have said in the past. What we need now is an honest mainstream media that will report previous statements.

Is The Government Really Trying To Keep Us Safe?

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Judicial Watch was founded in 1994 by Larry Klayman. They are a non-partisan group the essentially files Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in an attempt to foster transparency in government. They have been pretty much equally disliked by the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama Administrations. However, they have a pretty good track record of getting what they want.

They posted an article on their website on Tuesday about some recent security briefings given to Somalis.

The article reports:

Judicial Watch today released 31 pages of records from U.S. Customs and Border Protection revealing that the Department of Homeland Security has given Somalis “community engagement tours,” including security briefings, in secured areas at least three major U.S. airports – Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Columbus, Ohio.

The records came in response to a May 2016 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which sought records, documents and communications regarding a “Community Engagement Tour” in Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport on February 18, 2016.

The briefings provided to the Somali groups were so sensitive that in 14 instances the agency redacted portions of the records under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemption (B)(7)(e), the law-enforcement “risk circumvention” exemption, which reads:

Exemption 7(E) of the Freedom of Information Act affords protection to all law enforcement information that would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law.

In another instance, Customs and Border Protection exempted under (B)(7)(e) a portion of a February 16, 2016, “Minute by Minute Agenda” provided during a tour/briefing of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP). The material that was withheld from Judicial Watch as too law-enforcement sensitive – but provided in full to the Somali group – included a section entitled: “TSA Overview — Processing [Redacted].”  The invitees were provided briefings of the Global Entry system, APC [Automated Passport Control] system, secondary screening procedures, baggage-screening procedures and given tours of the holding cells/interview rooms.

Notes from the February Minneapolis St. Paul Airport tour include: “Current CBP and TSA job vacancies were discussed. Attendees responded with requests for DHS outreach efforts during Somali community events to further advertise these positions to interested individuals.”

Minneapolis has historically had a problem with members of the Somali community going overseas to train as terrorists and then return home. I seriously question the wisdom of showing them our security measures at airports or recruiting them for the TSA.

The article concludes:

Eight senior ranking Homeland Security and Customs officials were tasked with accompanying and briefing the Somalis on the February 18, 2016, Minneapolis Airport tour, including the Minneapolis Area Port Director, the Assistant Port Director, the Watch Commander, a Homeland Security Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Senior Policy Advisor (flown in from Washington), the TSA Federal Security Director and TSA Deputy Federal Security Director.

The documents show Customs officials reporting that one of the invited individuals had given “CBP Chicago a hard time” following the last tour and noted three of the invitees had had investigations against them, which had since been closed.  Another invitee had an active investigation pending.

“Logically, information that is too sensitive to provide to Judicial Watch and the public should not have been given to a ‘community engagement tour,’” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “The U.S. government has been aware for years that Minnesota is a hotbed of Somali terrorist-cell activity. The behind-the-scenes tours and security briefings of the Minneapolis airport very well could have created a threat to public safety.”

In August 2016, the Judicial Watch blog, Corruption Chronicles, reported on the Muslim airport tour story: “The Obama administration gave Somali Muslims behind-the-scenes tours at a major U.S. airport after the group complained to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about feeling harassed and profiled, government records obtained by Judicial Watch reveal. The special security tours not offered to any other group occurred at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after Department of Homeland Security roundtable meetings with local Somali leaders to obtain feedback for ‘modifications to practices that would allow for operations to be more culturally sensitive.’”

I don’t think we need to be more culturally sensitive–I think we need to be more safe!

Lied To Again

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The Federalist Papers reported today:

Maybe Barack Obama thinks if he says something that’s completely false, perhaps they’ll believe it if he tweets it.

So speaking to troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, when Obama said “Over the last eight years, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland,”

Sorry, that is a lie.

The article includes the list of attacks during Obama’s Presidency:

Little Rock, Arkansas, June 1, 2009. Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad shot and murdered one soldier, Army Pvt. William Andrew Long, and injured another, Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, at a military recruiting station in Little Rock. Muhammad reportedly converted to Islam in college and was on the FBI’s radar after being arrested in Yemen–a hotbed of radical Islamic terrorism–for using a Somali passport, even though he was a U.S. citizen. In a note to an Arkansas judge, Muhammad claimed to be a member of al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, the terror group’s Yemen chapter.

Fort Hood, Texas, November 5, 2009. Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot up a military base in Fort Hood and murdered 14 people. Hasan was in contact with al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki prior to the attack and shouted “Allahu Akbar!” as he fired upon the soldiers on the Fort Hood base. After being sentenced to death, Hasan requested to join ISIS while on death row. It took six years for Obama to acknowledge the shooting as a terror attack instead of “workplace violence.”

Frankfurt, Germany, March 2, 2011. Arid Uka, a Kosovo Albanian Muslim, shot and murdered two U.S. airmen who were headed to fight in Afghanistan at a Frankfurt airport and injured two others. Uka was sentenced to life in prison and is believed to have been radicalized through jihadist propaganda on the Internet, as his Facebook page was laced with jihadist statements. He is also believed to have acted alone.

Benghazi, Libya, September 11, 2012. Ansar al-Sharia, an Islamic terror group, attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blamed the attack on a video, a blatant lie.

Boston, Massachusetts, April 15, 2013. Tamerlan and Dhozkar Tsarnaev set off two bombs at the 2013 Boston marathon, killing three and injuring over 260 people. The Tsarnaev brothers later shot and murdered Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier. The Tsarnaev brothers were self-radicalized through online jihadist propaganda and through a mosque with ties to al-Qaeda.

London, Britain, May 22, 2013. An off-duty British Army solider was murdered by Islamic fundamentalists.

Brussels, Belgium, May 24, 2014. Islamic terrorist Mehdi Nemmouche murdered three people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.

Hamas starting war with Israel, July 8, 2015. Islamic terror group Hamas started a war with Israel, launching rockets into the Jewish state.

Moore, Oklahoma, September 24, 2014. Alton Nolen beheaded a woman, Colleen Huff, at a Vaughan Foods plant and stabbed and injured another person. While Nolen’s motives are unclear, he appears to have been another radicalized Muslim who was obsessed with beheadings.

Queens, New York, October 23, 2014. Zale Thompson, another self-radicalized Muslim, injured two police officers with a hatchet before being shot dead by other cops. Thompson reportedly indoctrinated himself with ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Shabab–a Somali jihadist terror group–websites and was a lone wolf attacker.

Brooklyn, New York, December 20, 2014. Ismaayil Brinsley shot and murdered two police officers execution-style and his Facebook page featured jihadist postings and had ties to a terror-linked mosque.

Paris, France, January 7, 2015. Two Islamic terrorists murdered 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French magazine that had published cartoons mocking Mohammed. Al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Paris, France, January 9, 2015. A gunman who pledged allegiance to ISIS held people in a kosher supermarket hostage and killed four of them.

Copenhagen, Denmark, February 23, 2015. A gunman who swore loyalty to the leader of ISIS opened fire at a free speech forum and at people outside a synagogue. The terrorist murdered two people.

Garland, Texas, May 3, 2015. Two gunmen shot up the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, where a Mohammed cartoon contest was taking place, and were killed by a police officer. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, France, June 26, 2015. A French ISIS fanatic beheaded his boss.

Chattanooga, Tennessee, July 16, 2015. Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez shot and killed four Marines and a sailor at a military base in Chattanooga and was believed to have been inspired by ISIS.

Palestinian Intifada against Jews, September 13, 2015. A wave of Palestinian terror attacks toward Jews in Israel began in September, which only worsened after the incitement from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Paris, France, November 13, 2015. ISIS launched a massive, coordinated terror attack in the city of Paris that resulted in at least 129 dead and 352 people injured.

San Bernardino, California, December 14, 2015. Two radical Islamists, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, shot and murdered 14 people and injured 22 others at an office holiday party.

Brussels, Belgium, March 22, 2016. ISIS set off bombs and gunfire at a Brussels’s city airport and a subway station, killing 30 people and injuring at least 230 people.

The article points out:

In fact, under Barack Obama, worldwide terrorism deaths have risen four-fold.

Obviously, President Obama is not solely responsible for the increase of terrorism around the world, but there is an aspect of this that needs to be looked at. America has been looked to as a force that kept law and order around the world. It was understood that if a country was consistently causing trouble, they might experience the wrath of America on some level. In 1986, the United States bombed Libya in response to the terrorist bombing of a Berlin discotheque and other terrorist attacks Libya had been involved in. There was a price to be paid for engaging in terrorism. The attack had only a limited effect on the terrorism activities of Libya, but the message was sent that America would attack states that sponsored terrorism. Unfortunately that has not been the case during the Obama Administration. He has made it possible for billions of dollars to flow to Iran, a country that routinely funds terrorism and arms America’s enemies in the Middle East.

Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviet Union partially because he was considered a cowboy, and the Russians feared him.

According to a recent article at RightWingGranny, President George W. Bush had a similar effect:

According to one of the world’s most deadly and infamous terrorists, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, President George W. Bush wiped out plans for other imminent attacks by quickly invading Afghanistan after 9/11/2001. 

According to a new book detailed by The Federalist and former Bush staffer Marc Thiessen, KSM admitted during enhanced interrogation the President’s swift “shock-and-awe” action not only thwarted plans for follow up attacks to 9/11, but changed Al Qaeda‘s entire strategy. 

…Far from trying to draw us in, KSM said that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as we had the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut — when, KSM told Mitchell, the United States ‘turned tail and ran.’

‘Then he looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’’ Mitchell writes. ‘KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.’ He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned ‘by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.’

I do not support overseas fighting unless it is absolutely necessary, but those who criticize President Bush for his handling of Iraq and Afghanistan forget that there was no follow-up attack to 9/11. They also forget that it was President Obama who prematurely withdrew troops from Iraq, allowing for the growth of ISIS.

I am hoping that Donald Trump will be a President in the mold of President Reagan–not anything like President Obama.

 

 

The Trump Cabinet So Far

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This chart is from The Daily Signal showing how the Trump cabinet is progressing:

cabinet-picksI guess things were not as chaotic as the press was reporting.

The article notes:

Trump’s selection of Jeff Sessions as attorney general on Nov. 18 made him the second-fastest president-elect in recent history to pick a Cabinet nominee. He added another on Nov. 23 with Besty DeVos as education secretary.

In the fourth week of the transition, Trump has named five nominees: Rep. Tom Price at the Department of Health and Human Services, Elaine Chao at the Department of Transportation, Steven Mnuchin at the Treasury Department, Wilbur Ross at the Commerce Department, and retired Marine Gen. James Mattis at the Department of Defense.

The speed of Trump’s choices is even more surprising given that Bush enjoyed the continuity of Republican government in 1988; two of Bush’s three nominations in November 1988 were holdovers from the Reagan administration. With his selection of Price and Chao, Trump is now the fastest president-elect in 40 years to fill four Cabinet roles.

Some of these choices have not met with overwhelming approval from conservatives, but we need to remember a few things. All of these picks have been successful in their areas of expertise. Theoretically, Trump is in charge and will set the agenda. I would like to ask that my conservative friends hold their fire until someone actually does something that  impacts some policy. Republicans (and sometimes conservatives) have a gift for forming circular firing squads. Let’s not form one now. Let’s stop adding to the media frenzy.  We need to give Donald Trump a chance to make the changes he believes will move the country in the right direction. We may not agree with all of those moves, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Take a deep breath, relax, and let’s see what happens next.

 

How Much Does It Cost?

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The one thing that the Obama Administration should be famous for is the amount of regulations imposed on the American people through the Executive Branch of government–not through Congress, the body that is supposed to make laws–but through the Executive Branch. There is a cost on these regulations. The Washington Examiner posted a story today detailing that cost.

The article includes the following chart:

costofregulatoinsThe article reports:

The new high in regulatory costs, said Batkins (AAF’s Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the watchdog group), came after new fuel standards for trucks were implemented.

His study goes back to 2005, when George W. Bush was president, and said that Obama is responsible for about three-quarters of the added regulatory costs.

“The Obama Administration surpassed 500 major regulations last summer, imposing $625 billion in cumulative costs. Earlier this year, regulators published the administration’s 600th major rule, increasing burdens to $743 billion. Now, thanks to data from the last term of the Bush Administration and another billion-dollar rule from EPA, the regulatory tally has surpassed $1 trillion. These figures are direct estimates from federal regulators, but it will take more than an effort from these regulators to amend hundreds of major regulations. Congress, the next president, and even the courts must participate in the next generation of regulatory modernization,” he reported.

The reason that Congress is charged with making laws is that they are accountable to the voters. The Executive Branch (other than the President) is not elected and cannot be held accountable to the voters. However, as illustrated by November’s election, the voters do have a certain amount of power in terms of who controls the Executive Branch. Hopefully the Inauguration of Donald Trump will signal the end of over-regulation in America at least temporarily.

Today’s Shiny Object

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One of the main weapons the press uses to manipulate the American public is the choice of which news stories to spend time on and which news stories to ignore. When you look at some of the coverage in this election campaign, it becomes very obvious that the media has taken sides.

Last Friday, The Federalist Papers website reported the following:

Between ABC News, NBC News, and CBS, they covered the Trump tape for 23 minutes during one night of coverage. The Clinton WikiLeaks revelations got just 56 seconds of coverage — with NBC News omitting it altogether.

There are two major differences between the Trump tape (and subsequent spurious allegations) and the Clinton revelations.

First, what Clinton has done has enormous implications for the country and our lives individually. She was First Lady, a senator, and secretary of state. What she’s done as a public servant affects us greatly. What she has said she will do as president if she’s elected has massive implications for the future of this country and the western world.

What Trump said 11 years ago, lewd as it was, has little effect on any of us personally or the future of this country. It’s not terribly likely to have much of an effect on any of our lives — not in the way Clinton’s scandals and policies will.

Today the focus is on an answer to a question Chris Wallace addressed to Donald Trump, but never to Hillary Clinton.

Today The Wall Street Journal reported:

Charges that election results might be rigged have moved from the fringes of U.S. politics to a central issue in the closing days of the 2016 campaign as Republican Donald Trump has repeatedly and without corroborating evidence suggested a fair outcome may be impossible.

You will find some form of this story in all of the major news sources. There is no mention of the times in recent history that Democrats claimed fraud.

From an October 2002 issue of Newsweek (posted at prnewswire)::

At a private fund-raiser in Los Angeles for Democratic Sen. Jean Carnahan of Missouri, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton told the crowd that President Bush merely had been “selected” president, not elected, Newsweek reports in the current issue. “You know, I’m a fan of Clintonomics,” she told the crowd while standing from a perch on the staircase of movie producer Alan Horn’s art-filled Bel Air home, “and this administration is destroying in months our eight years of economic progress.”

This was two years after the election, and Hillary Clinton was still complaining that the election has been rigged. John Kerry is on the record as saying similar things. There was a definite effort by the Democrats to delegitimize both elections of George W. Bush. The media needs to remember this in their criticism of Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Project Veritas has released videos showing illegal activity on the part of the Clinton campaign and wikileaks has released emails showing corruption within the campaign and the media has provided very little information on the subject. It is a safe bet that many voters have little or no idea of any of the information contained in those videos or documents. How are voters going supposed to make an informed decision when the media chooses not to inform them?

Character Counts

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When George W. Bush was sworn in as President and moved into the White House, there were rumors about some destruction in various offices in the White House by the departing Clintons and their staff. I never posted anything about those rumors because I could never find a reliable source. Well, I found one–the Government Accounting Office (GAO). They were the ones that had to clean up the mess. The full report is here. I haven’t seen a source I respect detailing the items the Clintons allegedly stole from the White House, so I will let that story lie for now.

Below are some screenshots from the GAO Report:

gaopage-51gaopage69gao-page-70gaopage-59gaopage-60I have linked to the report above. It is 220 pages long. Reading through the report leaves me with a very negative impression of the Clintons and the people they brought into the White House with them. There is simply no excuse for vandalism.

 

Why This Election Is So Important

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

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

The article explains:

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s article at USA Today reports the following:

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

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

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

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

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

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As I have previously mentioned, I am no longer a registered member of the Republican Party. That has nothing to do with Donald Trump although he was not my choice for President–it has to do with the way the Republican establishment routinely behaves. They have reached the point where they are no different than the Democratic Party. They are all about power, and power includes controlling as much of the taxpayers’ money as possible. The Republican platform is still good–it is pro-life, pro-family, and supports the things that made America great. However, the actions of the establishment Republicans in many cases do not line up with the platform. Also, recently in North Carolina, the actions of the establishment Republicans were unethical and a disgrace to the party. No wonder the voters are angry (on both sides of the political spectrum).

The New Boston Post is reporting today that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney will not be attending the Republican Convention this year. Governor Romney has stated that he does not support Donald Trump as the candidate and would rather write someone in.

This infuriates me. If Governor Romney had taken as strong a stand against President Obama, he might have won the 2012 election. I like Governor Romney. I believe that he is a good man, but this is ridiculous. I also like George W. Bush and his father. They have stated that they will sit out the 2016 Presidential campaign. What a bunch of sore losers. As I have said before, Donald Trump was not my choice in the primary election. However, he is the only candidate left standing other than Hillary Clinton. I hope the grass roots elect him just to remind the Republican establishment that the voters are supposed to have some say in the process.

If the average American voter wants to take their country back from establishment politicians, they will support Donald Trump. That was not my first choice, but right now it is the only choice we have. It’s not that I am convinced that Donald Trump will make a great President, I just think that he has had enough experience choosing good people to work with him to turn America around. I also think that he has enough wealth invested in America to want to restore our financial health. He is not my first choice, but right now he is the only choice. A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to put Barack Obama on the Supreme Court. Between the two of them, they will rewrite the Constitution to take away many of the basic freedoms Americans enjoy. Think carefully before you vote in November.

This May Get Very Ugly Very Quickly

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Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about the 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report that still have not been released. Did anyone really believe that in the almost 15 years since the attack some of the information in those 28 pages wouldn’t leak out? The question is, “Why are they leaking out now?” In my years of blogging, I have become rather cynical. There will be consequences to the leaking of this information. One consequence will be to make George W. Bush look bad (in an election year), interesting. Another consequence will be to damage our relationship (such as it is) with Saudi Arabia (oddly enough this happens at a time the Obama Administration is cozying up to Iran, the arch enemy of Saudi Arabia). The sword that the Saudis have always held over America’s head is the stability of the U.S. dollar. The Saudis have been the OPEC member that has insisted that oil be traded in American dollars. That is one of the few reasons America’s debt has not collapsed the American economy. Since Congress (and most of our recent Presidents) are responsible for that debt, they have an interest in not collapsing the economy–they would be blamed. Therefore, Washington looks the other way when the Saudis are involved in terrorism–even when the terrorism is aimed at America.

The article at The New York Post reports:

Case agents I’ve interviewed at the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Washington and San Diego, the forward operating base for some of the Saudi hijackers, as well as detectives at the Fairfax County (Va.) Police Department who also investigated several 9/11 leads, say virtually every road led back to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, as well as the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.

Yet time and time again, they were called off from pursuing leads. A common excuse was “diplomatic immunity.”

…9/11 Commission member John Lehman was interested in the hijackers’ connections to Bandar, his wife and the Islamic affairs office at the embassy. But every time he tried to get information on that front, he was stonewalled by the White House.

“They were refusing to declassify anything having to do with Saudi Arabia,” Lehman was quoted as saying in the book, “The Commission.”

Did the US scuttle the investigation into foreign sponsorship of 9/11 to protect Bandar and other Saudi elite?

“Things that should have been done at the time were not done,” said Rep. Walter Jones, the North Carolina Republican who’s introduced a bill demanding President Obama release the 28 pages. “I’m trying to give you an answer without being too explicit.”

A Saudi reformer with direct knowledge of embassy involvement is more forthcoming.

“We made an ally of a regime that helped sponsor the attacks,” said Ali al-Ahmed of the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs. “I mean, let’s face it.”

Because of the recent leaks, the release of the 28 pages may be somewhat anti-climatic by the time it happens. I do, however, suspect that there are many less than obvious reasons why President Obama will release these pages (as he has promised to in the next sixty days).

If You Don’t Like What Someone Is Saying, Change The Meaning Of The Words Used

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One of the things I miss about New England is Howie Carr. He has always had an ability to hit the nail on the head when discussing politics. He posted an article in the Boston Herald today discussing how the political class and the media have changed the meaning of words to suit their needs. Evidently the English language is something of an ever-changing, growing thing (like the way Democrats see the U.S. Constitution).

Some examples from the article.

On Friday night, Obama referred to an airstrike as a “kinetic action” and his sock puppets in the media nodded. If George W. Bush had said the same thing, they would have described it as a “war crime.”

…Bernie Sanders lashed out at Hillary Clinton, saying that she took money from “the fossil-fuel industry,” which was formerly known as “Big Oil.” But now the big tent of bad energy must be expanded to include coal.

…With these people, every day is 1984 and they’re the Ministry of Truth. Obamacare is the Affordable Care Act — and it’s unaffordable. And when your income-tax return is docked because you couldn’t afford affordable care, it’s not a fine, it’s a “shared responsibility tax.”

How about the word “settled”? Settled science is in fact religion, and any researcher who dares dissent from the various cults’ orthodoxies will lose his research grant and any chance for tenure, and eventually may even be prosecuted. (Ask Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.)

The article reminds us that settled law is anything the Democrats decide it is. The Second Amendment, which goes back to the origins of America, is not settled law, yet abortion is. Five minutes after the concept of marriage was redefined by our government, the new definition became settled law. Settled law is obviously in the eye of the beholder.

The article continues:

Higher taxes are an “investment in the future” — their future, not yours. A teachable moment — an opportunity to lecture you on your shortcomings. Dialogue — see teachable moment. Affirmative action — racial discrimination on behalf of Democrats.

Drunkards and drug addicts now have substance-abuse disorders. They are chemically dependent.

Illegal aliens are undocumented workers, even though most of them don’t work. They live in the shadows, except for when they’re going to the State House on weekdays during business hours to issue non-negotiable demands for more handouts.

An earned income tax credit is a welfare payment for someone who doesn’t pay taxes, and thus cannot receive a “credit.” A subsidy is likewise a handout if it goes to any industry that actually produces something, in which case it’s “crony capitalism.” But if the subsidy goes to Democratic bundlers running bust-out “green” energy companies that produce no energy — that’s a “smart” investment.

The article also points out the differences between the way things Democrats do and things Republicans do are reported. Republicans lie; Democrats misspeak. When a Republican changes his mind, he ‘flip-flops.’ When a Democrat changes his mind, he is ‘evolving.’

Please follow the link above to read the entire article–there are some amazing examples of misuse of the English language in it.