Sunday, January 31, 2016

What Next for the Left?

The Weekly Standard ^ | JAMES W. CEASER 

A strange period has now passed into history. Captivated by a presidential campaign in 2008, Americans by the millions came to believe that a new leader would be able to produce more than a transformed society and an era of world peace. Politics could be extended beyond its ordinary boundaries and bring about a spiritual renewal. This exhilarating prospect fed on its own spiraling expectations, surprising even its original purveyors.
Faith in this political religion eventually dissipated. Four years into the experience, many ceased to believe. Today most have forgotten. Politics has retreated to its more usual limits, focusing on the harder core of ideology.
Modern progressivism has driven much of American politics for the past seven years. It now fully owns the Democratic party. President Obama failed to achieve the general electoral realignment that many anticipated after 2008, but he succeeded in creating an ideological realignment within his own party. The result was attained by subtraction. Advocates of rival positions - New Democrats, "blue dogs," pro-lifers - were either sacrificed or induced to sacrifice themselves. The Democratic party is now divided between a progressive wing and a more progressive wing, one that openly wears the label of socialist.
Modern progressivism is a combination of three components: theories inherited from the original progressives of the early 20th century; ideas introduced since the 1960s by the intellectual movements of the left (the New Left, multiculturalism, postmodernism); and the practices and patterns of behavior that have resulted from progressivism's central role in shaping American politics and culture.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...

Republican Activists Think Donald Trump Is Their Best Shot To Win

You Gov Poll ^ |  01/29/2016 03:11 pm ET 

The most politically active members of the Republican Party have warmed to Donald Trump’s bid for the party’s presidential nomination since last summer, according to a new YouGov poll, which finds 68 percent now think he could win the general election.
While most surveys attempt to reflect the entire electorate, this one is the latest in a trio of polls focusing solely on Republican activists: well-informed party stalwarts who've run for or held office, served as party officials, worked on campaigns or volunteered their time before elections.
They provide some insight into the role of GOP political leaders in an election cycle where public opinions have repeatedly flouted the establishment. With days until the Iowa caucus and only a scattered handful of endorsements coming from elected officials in Washington, there are increasing signs that the Republican establishment is losing its grip on its activist base.
The latest survey, conducted Jan. 14-20, finds that activists now see Trump as one of three candidates, along with Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who are capable of delivering victory in November.
As in national polls, Donald Trump leads as the activists' first choice, taking 29 percent, with Cruz at a relatively close 25 percent, and Marco Rubio at 17 percent.
A gap persists between two groups: volunteers, who've donated significant time or money, and "semi-pros," who've worked in politics or run for office themselves. The volunteers split solidly for Trump, while the professionals are close to evenly divided between Trump and Cruz.
While there's little precedent for candidates who lack political experience winning a nomination, let alone the presidency, a 68 percent majority of the activists surveyed now say that Trump is capable of winning a general election.
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...

Obama (the Muslim) to visit U.S. mosque with terrorist ties!

Daily Caller ^ | 1/30/16 | daily caller 

The Baltimore mosque President Obama has chosen as the first U.S.-based mosque to visit during his presidency has deep ties to extremist elements, including to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The White House announced on Saturday that Obama will visit the Islamic Society of Baltimore (ISB) on Wednesday. He has visited several mosques overseas as president but has resisted visiting one in the homeland. The purpose of the trip, according to the White House, is to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...

Hillary: A Lie Wrapped Inside Deceit, Inside a Crime

US Defense Watch ^ | January 30, 2016 | Ray Starmann 

Oh, what a web we weave, when we practice to deceive…
Hillary’s really not very good at her main job; that of a professional liar.
Every time Hillary Clinton is asked by the media about her involvement in the Email Scandal, she continually states that she did not receive or send any information marked classified at the time.
When pressed on this, she comments that the information might have become classified at a later date, after it flowed through her non-secure server and into the hands of Putin, ISIS, Xi, Kim Jong-Un and the maniacal Mullahs of Teheran.
Anyone who knows anything about the storage and proper dissemination of classified information knows that this comment is an outright falsehood, or what they call in Texas a crock of s**t. Classified information is not an egg. It doesn’t sit unclassified under glass and an eighty watt bulb and eventually hatch to classified status one day.
Hillary has been trying to con us all since the Golden Age of Slick Willie and midnight cocaine runs in Arkansas. She’s been a little too clever this time though. Her legalese comments about not receiving or sending anything mark classified, bounce right back to her army of minions at the State Department. They were obviously following orders to liquid paper, delete and tape mask anything marked classified before it was scanned and sent to her email address, dragonlady@clinton.com.
Hillary’s answers are so rehearsed that they’d almost be laughable, if the national security crisis she’s caused wasn’t so serious. I’m sure she’ll be trying to put on a glove that’s too small and announcing to the world, that if the glove doesn’t fit, you must aquit.
The latest revelations concerning Madam Secretary saturated the media yesterday. In addition to the 1600 classified emails that Hillary mishandled, the State Department revealed that 22 above top secret, special access program emails were sent through Hillary’s non-secure server. That’s the server that was hidden behind a 12 pack of Charmin in the closet of a Boulder, Colorado, john. Of course the two pot-smoking, Whole Foods shopping, Uncle Ho sandal wearing, Taliban bearded hipsters running the computer company had no clearance to handle that information, which is another issue that hasn’t been mentioned by the media.
Hillary’s Heroes were quick to come to her defense. State Department spokesman, Rear Admiral Kirby looked like he had been pumped with embalming fluid, while the press used him as a human dart board. His previous job description at the Pentagon included lying to the world about our Five O’Clock Charlie air campaign against ISIS. He’s probably wondering how he got himself into being the front man for the wilderness of mirrors surrounding Ma Barker Clinton.
The Clinton campaign staff was trying to calm the media by stating that those Top Secret/Special Access Program documents, revealing human intelligence sources and operations all over the globe were all over-classified. According to people like Brian Fallon, her campaign manager, the system is at fault for making what should be just a standard government memorandum, above top secret information.
Uh huh…
White House spokesman and compulsive liar, Josh Earnest stated that the focus of the FBI investigation, you know the one with 100 agents, isn’t Hillary Clinton.
Who then is the focus of the investigation Josh, Yogi the Bear?
No doubt Hillary is the focus, but the FBI is surely targeting Hillary’s staff, aka the Liquid-Paper Team. I have always wondered about Huma Abedin? Born in Michigan, but raised in the Middle East to Indian and Pakistani parents, she is the perfect mole to be filtering information to Damascus and Moscow and Teheran and whoever else.
On the other hand, with the Cannabis Crew running Hillary’s non-secure server was a penetration agent even needed? The Russians probably have a harder time cracking Ashley Madison passwords then they did getting Hillary’s server information.
Obviously, anyone else who did what Hillary has done would already be on the Christmas fruitcake mail list at Leavenworth. But, maybe Hillary’s days of skating by the law have ended.
GOP sources claim that the FBI will recommend that she be indicted. The question is what will Loretta Lynch and the Justice Department do after that? What will Obama do in that case?
Socialist Bernie Sanders knows he has a chance to take New Hampshire and Iowa and to go on a Bolshevik Super Tuesday steamroll. He’s more energized now than Doctor Zhivago on a three day weekend pass in a dacha with Julie Christie. As the bad news builds for Hillary, his campaign money and followers increase.
But, if nothing happens to Hillary and she does win the election, she would be the biggest crook to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since Dick Nixon, John Mitchell and G. Gordon Liddy with his burning candle tricks lit up the White House.
How much more evidence does the nation need? Hillary Clinton is a liar. Hillary Clinton is a fraud. Hillary Clinton is a criminal who has escaped indictment time and time again.
Hillary, in her self-induced cloud of narcissistic delusion has forgotten one supreme fact. The mills of God grind slowly, but exceedingly fine.

It's Easy!

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Sorry, Donald Trump. But Megyn Kelly is a fantastic debate moderator!

The Washington Post ^ | January 29, 2016 | Callum Borchers 

There was no avoiding it, and Fox News Channel didn't really try: Megyn Kelly was the star of the show at Thursday's Republican presidential debate in Des Moines.
Kelly, of course, is a big reason that GOP front-runner Donald Trump refused to participate. Ever since their run-in at the first primary debate in August, Trump has maintained that Kelly is a "lightweight" who doesn't ask fair questions. (Never mind that he previously said she's a great moderator.) Unreasonable as Trump's critique might be, all eyes were on Kelly and her questions in Des Moines.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

In Fraud They Trust: Obama Administration's Obamacare Failures Cost Taxpayers Millions

Townhall.com ^ | January 29, 2016 | Justin Haskins 


A new report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reveals in 2014, the year the Obamacare health insurance exchanges first opened, there was a significant lack of oversight of tax-credit payments sent to insurers, leading many to question how much of the $11 billion of taxpayer money paid to insurers in 2014 was fraudulent.

One of the most important parts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) legislation was the creation of taxpayer-funded credits that would theoretically help offset the cost of paying for health care for millions of Americans who couldn't afford to pay for health insurance on their own and weren't receiving adequate insurance through an employer.

Although most tax credits are applied at the end of a tax year, Obamacare health insurance credits are sent automatically to health insurance companies when qualified Americans sign up for a policy through an Obamacare exchange. This is a necessary feature in ACA, because if qualified individuals or families had to pay the full cost of health insurance up front, many would be unable to make the required health insurance payments each month.

According to HHS's Office of Inspector General, in 2014 there weren't any solid mechanisms in place to ensure the subsidy payments made to health insurance companies were legally made. As The Wall Street Journal reported on January 6, 2016, "the [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is responsible for overseeing ACA,] couldn’t verify the payments to insurers were only for consumers who had paid their premiums."

Without having any way to verify subsidy payments were properly made, it was virtually impossible for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to prevent fraud and waste, two problems that have plagued Obamacare since it was first implemented.

Kristina Ribali, senior coalitions director for the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), reported for The Blaze an investigation in July 2015 revealed "defrauding Obamacare was still very easy."

"With a fake name and fake documents, the investigators were able to receive both insurance coverage and taxpayer subsidies, a year after they proved the first time that this fraud was achievable," wrote Ribali.

Ribali also recounted in her article how nearly $350 million in Obamacare tax credits had been overpaid by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by early 2015, and Ribali reported back in August 2015 the ACA made it virtually impossible to retrieve the lost cash.

What is disturbing is not that another massive government-created social program is irresponsible with taxpayer money—a problem present in virtually every federal program—it’s that the Obama administration was well aware of these problems at least as early as 2013 and chose to move forward knowing millions of dollars were likely going to be wasted or stolen.

In December 2013, Rachael Bade and Lauren French reported for Politico, "[T]he [IRS] may not yet have a system in place to stop tax cheats seeking to underestimate their incomes and fraudulently cash in on health subsidies."

Bade and French quote directly from a Treasury Department report on the possibility of fraud, "The ACA Program has not yet completed a fraud mitigation strategy. It is important for the IRS to thoroughly consider fraud threats and risks that could impact new ACA systems."

Unfortunately for taxpayers, the necessary changes made to the "ACA systems" didn't take place until it was too late. Only now are automated systems being put into place that may prevent a significant amount of fraud and waste.

While it's impossible to know how much money was wasted and how much of the taxpayer subsidies paid to insurance companies in 2014 were legitimate, it's important to note in 2014 HHS found 1.2 million people who signed up for health insurance in an Obamacare exchange had, as FoxNews.com reported in August 2014, "inconsistencies in their applications."

FoxNews.com also reported the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) claimed 85 percent of Obamacare applicants were considered eligible for some sort of taxpayer subsidy, which KFF estimated would cost "about $10 billion in subsidies in [2014]." Now that we know the total cost actually reached $11 billion, it's necessary to ask, "Where did the rest of the money go?"

It's impossible to say how much of the $1 billion difference between KFF's report in 2014 and the actual costs revealed in 2015 is the result of fraud, mismanagement, improper payments, waste, or just mistakes made by KFF and other groups calculating costs. There simply weren't any mechanisms in place to prevent or identify the waste—the result of decisions made by the Obama administration. What we do know, however, is that, at the very least, hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted, that fraud was possible and did occur, and that the Obama administration moved forward with the Obamacare system knowing in 2013 it had no way of protecting taxpayers' money.

State Department: Hillary Clinton’s email correspondence contained ‘top secret’ material

WaPo ^ | 01-29-2016 | Rosalind S. Helderman and Carol Morello 

The State Department has concluded there is "top secret" material in Hillary Clinton's email correspondence from the time she was secretary of state, indicating that some of her emails will never be released, even in heavily redacted form, because they are too sensitive for the public to view.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said the material crosses seven email chains, amounting to 37 pages worth of material.
The finding is likely to deepen the political consequences for Clinton of her decision to use a private email account, routed through a server installed in her suburban New York home, and it comes just three days before the Iowa caucuses, as Clinton remains locked in a heated battle with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for the Democratic presidential nomination.

SEIU, top Dem team up to turn 5 million Latino immigrants into voters!

Washington Examiner ^ | 01/29/2016 | By Nicole Duran 

U.S. citizens and voters as possible before Election Day.

Leading the charge is Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., who said Thursday that he believes the "stand up to hate" push can get 1 million of those Latinos naturalized by May, which would see them become citizens in time to register for the presidential election.
The campaign's mantra is "Naturalize. Register. Vote."
Gutierrez advised Latinos to "get angry" over the anti-immigrant rhetoric emanating from Republican presidential candidates "then naturalize, register and vote."
"Can you believe calling all Mexicans rapists?" he asked during a conference call announcing the New American Democracy Campaign, referring to controversial comments made by real estate mogul and former reality TV star Donald Trump. "Banning all people of one religion from the United States?"
There's nothing the groups can do to speed up the naturalization process, but the initiative is aimed at making sure the millions of legal permanent residents trade in their green cards for citizenship.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...

Tim Allen: The Clintons are like herpes, you know

Hotair ^ | 01/29/2016 | Ed Morrissey 


The man who made “more power!” a household grunt wants decidedly less power given to the federal government — and offers up a colorful metaphor about one family’s quest to grasp it for life. Tim Allen, star of the long-running sitcom Home Improvement and the new Last Man Standing, talked to the Hollywood Reporter about his conservative political orientation and its emergence in the show. Despite having a “liberal” writing staff, Allen pushes to express his own point of view, albeit somewhat more moderated than in real life:
Do you have more comedic leeway now than you did on Home Improvement?
Definitely. But you know what? I’ve earned it. I don’t say that lightly. I’ve been on a successful show and learned from the best. But I findLast Man Standing actually rougher than Home Improvement. We’re getting away with a lot of stuff. I’m really shocked. This is a meaner, sharper comedy than I’m used to. There’s a lot of times our very liberal writing staff will come up with stuff that even my character would say, “I don’t know if I can say that.”
When asked why Last Man Standing has taken slaps at Hillary Clinton but none at Donald Trump, Allen expresses skepticism about Trump’s staying power, which might make the jokes stale. The Clintons will never fade away, Allen argues memorably:
It’s a little surprising to me. We have a very liberal writing staff, so I’m surprised they haven’t taken a shot at him. But we’re not sure he’s going to last, whereas the Clintons are like herpes: Just when you think they’re gone, they show up again.
That’s the headline shot, of course, the kind of one-liner that a comedian would be expected to deliver about a politician. Allen takes his politics a little more seriously, though, and especially his disdain for what he calls “free-s**t” demagoguery:
What riles you up the most?
Unearned responses, unearned praise, unearned income: I have opinions about it. When you watch the debates, on both sides you see clowns who say shit that ain’t ever going to happen, but lately one party is the free shit party. They are just telling people they’re going to get all sorts of free shit. When you say you’re going to get free education, free health care -- f--, free brown loafers -- of course everybody’s going to say yes to that. But you don’t mean it. That’s how you rack up debt, and debt is killing us. Whatever party is going to get us out of debt is my party.
Allen isn’t backing Trump, and calls his remarks about immigrants “ignorant,” but says Trump might be a worthwhile choice for one particular area — infrastructure:
Trump can’t send everybody to Mexico or whatever the f-- he said. But give that guy the roads, bridges, infrastructure, power grid -- just have him fix that shit for four years. He’s good at that. And he’s a businessman so he understands how debt load works. Forget the stupid shit he says about immigrants. That’s just ignorant. But he might be able to do the stuff that really needs fixing.
Be sure to read it all. Perhaps Allen might get inspired to speak out more on conservative issues; he certainly feels pretty fearless at the moment. That’s remarkable enough in Hollywood for conservatives to note the moment.

Hillary’s lame excuses for her e-mail misconduct are crumbling!

NY Post ^ | 1-29-16 | Post Editorial Board 

The State Department just knocked a gaping hole in Hillary Clinton's happy e-mail fable.
State, the Associated Press reports, won't release 22 of Clinton's messages to the public because they contain too much most-secret information.
OK: Clinton's only promised that none of her e-mails were labeled "classified" - so she's technically not a blatant liar.
But US intelligence agencies have determined these message contain enough sensitive information that even blacking out whole passages isn't enough to make them safe for public view.
These e-mails are part of a trove of 7,000 pages - the last from Hillary's private server the State Department was poring through - that were to be released this month.
But State's not done: Last week, it declared that the winter storm would cause a delay - conveniently until after Monday's Iowa caucuses.
And this week, State added another delay: It got a late start in getting clearances from various intelligence agencies, so it now won't finish until Feb. 29 - after the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.
By holding the "top secret" e-mails on her home-brew server, Clinton should be looking at 22 criminal counts. But her campaign is claiming she's just a victim - of bureaucratic overclassification.
Funny: Hillary's staffers should have no way of knowing if that's so - unless she let them view the e-mails, which would be another crime.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...

Did the NOAA Cook the Books to Show Warming During Hiatus?

P.J. Media ^ | 1-29-16 | Rick Moran 

One of the least reliable sources for data on climate change is the U.S. federal government. Now, a group of 300 scientists and academics want Congress to investigate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for cooking the books on climate data in order to erase the pause in the rise in temperature cited by, among other sources, the IPCC.
Incredibly, the NOAA accumulated data by measuring the water temperature from the engine intake valves of oceangoing cargo ships. The scientists want Congress to investigate whether the agency violated the Data Quality Act, which seeks to ensure the accurate dissemination of scientific information to the public.
Daily Caller:
"We, the undersigned, scientists, engineers, economists and others, who have looked carefully into the effects of carbon dioxide released by human activities, wish to record our support for the efforts of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology to ensure that federal agencies complied with federal guidelines that implemented the Data Quality Act," some 300 scientists, engineers and other experts wrote to Chairman of the House Science Committee, Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith.
"In our opinion... NOAA has failed to observe the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] (and its own) guidelines, established in relation to the Data Quality Act."
The Data Quality Act requires federal agencies like NOAA to "ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information, including statistical information."
Smith launched an investigation into NOAA's study last summer over concerns it was pushed out to bolster President Barack Obama's political agenda. Democrats and the media have largely opposed the probe into NOAA scientists and political appointees, but Smith is determined to continue investigating. NOAA officials surrendered emails to congressional investigators in December.
"It is this Committee's oversight role to ensure that federal science agencies are transparent and accountable to the taxpayers who fund their research," Smith told The Daily Caller News Foundation. "Americans are tired of research conducted behind closed doors where they only see cherry-picked conclusions, not the facts. This letter shows that hundreds of respected scientists and experts agree that NOAA's efforts to alter historical temperature data deserve serious scrutiny."
Of the 300 letter signers, 150 had doctorates in a related field. Signers also included: 25 climate or atmospheric scientists, 23 geologists, 18 meteorologists, 51 engineers, 74 physicists, 20 chemists and 12 economists. Additionally, one signer was a Nobel Prize winning physicist and two were astronauts.
NOAA scientists upwardly adjusted temperature readings taken from the engine intakes of ships to eliminate the "hiatus" in global warming from the temperature record.
This is a blatant attempt to politicize science by the administration and should be exposed for the dishonest research it is. The only question is who at NOAA was behind the attempt to whitewash the termperature hiatus and whose orders they were acting under.
There is yet to be a credible scientific explanation for the lack of rising temperatures despite models saying there should have been close to a one-degree increase over the last 17 years. NOAA's attempt to create an explanation out of whole cloth only shows the desperation of climate hysterics who are vigorously denying the facts in front of their face.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Obama doesn’t want to take your guns…honest!

Coach is Right ^ | 1/29/16 | Doug Book 

If Americans have learned anything about the zealots who claim to seek “common sense” solutions to the non-existent epidemic of gun violence it’s that they will never be satisfied until Big Brother has stripped every law abiding gun owner of every weapon.
Last week, Coach is Right published “Nobody Wants to Take Your Guns,” an article which reveals the true intentions of 2nd Amendment foes from the late Senator John Chafee to Handgun Control Inc, prior to its transformation into the Brady Bunch. And the agenda of the left has not changed over the years.
During a recent appearance on Boston Public Radio (WGBH), Boston Police Commissioner Bill Evans said:
“For the most part, nobody in the city needs a shotgun, nobody needs a rifle and… especially here in the city I want to have discretion over who’s getting any type of gun because public safety is my main concern.”
Evans puts the arrogance of the left on full display as he presumes to decide what gun owners need and what, if anything, they should be permitted to have. Imagine the outcry should a conservative claim the authority to decide whether liberals need to speak and what, if anything, they should be permitted to say! What? Treat First Amendment rights with the same degree of contempt liberals have for our 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms?
Most Americans have caught on to the fabrications of our Liar in Chief as he declares his respect for the 2nd Amendment. During his campaign against John McCain, Obama said “I have no intention of taking away folks’ guns.” Some three weeks ago, the left succumbed to a state of rapture over Obama’s shedding of crocodile tears as he announced his Executive Orders against
(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...

Obama administration placed children with human traffickers, report says

Washington Post ^ | January 28, 2016 | Abbie VanSickle 

The Obama administration failed to protect thousands of Central American children who have flooded across the U.S. border since 2011, leaving them vulnerable to traffickers and to abuses at the hands of government-approved caretakers, a Senate investigation has found.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, failed to do proper background checks of adults who claimed the children, allowed sponsors to take custody of multiple unrelated children, and regularly placed children in homes without visiting the locations, according to a 56-page investigative report released Thursday.
And once the children left federally funded shelters, the report said, the agency permitted their adult sponsors to prevent caseworkers from providing them post-release services.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) initiated the six-month investigation after several Guatemalan teens were found in a dilapidated trailer park near Marion, Ohio, where they were being held captive by traffickers and forced to work at a local egg farm. The boys were among more than 125,000 unaccompanied minors who have surged into the United States since 2011, fleeing violence and unrest in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
"It is intolerable that human trafficking -- modern-day slavery -- could occur in our own backyard," Portman said in a written statement. "What makes the Marion cases even more alarming is that a U.S. government agency was responsible for delivering some of the victims into the hands of their abusers."
The report concluded that administration "policies and procedures were inadequate to protect the children in the agency's care."
HHS spokesman Mark Weber said in a statement that the agency would "review the committee's findings carefully and continue to work to ensure the best care for the children we serve."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

Here’s What Genuine Tax Reform Looks Like

Wall Street Journal ^ | 22 December 2015 | John H. Cochrane 

Left and right agree that the U.S. tax code is a mess. The men and women running for president in 2016 are offering reform plans, and proposals to fix the code regularly surface in Congress. But these plans are, and should be, political documents, designed to attract votes. To prevent today’s ugly bargains from becoming tomorrow’s conventional wisdom, we should more frequently discuss the ideal tax structure.
The first goal of taxation is to raise needed government revenue with minimum economic damage. That means lower marginal rates—the additional tax people pay for each extra dollar earned—and a broader base of income subject to tax. It also means a massively simpler tax code.
In my view, simplification is more important than rates. A simple code would allow people and businesses to spend more time and resources on productive activities and less on attorneys and accountants, or on lobbyists seeking special deals and subsidies. And a simple code is much more clearly fair. Americans now suspect that people with clever lawyers are avoiding much taxation, which is corrosive to compliance and driving populist outrage across the political spectrum. ...
What would a minimally damaging, simple, fair tax code look like? First, the corporate tax should be eliminated. ... Second, the government should tax consumption, not wages, income or wealth. ...
We should also agree to separate the tax code from the subsidy code. We agree to debate subsidies for mortgage-interest payments, electric cars and the like—transparent and on-budget—but separately from tax reform.
Negotiating such an agreement will be hard. But the ability to achieve grand bargains is the most important characteristic of great political leaders.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...

CNN Stages Town Hall to Boost Clinton Candidacy

AIM ^ | January 29, 2016 | Roger Aronoff 

Who ever heard of a presidential primary debate or town hall meeting opening with a kiss on the cheek between the moderator and the frontrunner? It's safe to say that didn’t happen between Fox News' Megyn Kelly and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. And not just because he didn't show up for Thursday night's debate in Iowa.
But if you tuned in to the January 25 CNN Democratic town hall [1], you would have seen that kiss between the moderator Chris Cuomo, and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. And that was just for starters. The event featured softball after softball question in a continuous love-in for the candidates, but especially so for Mrs. Clinton. This was a far cry from the December CNN Republican debate [2].
(Excerpt) Read more at aim.org ...

Sales of Electric Vehicles Fall Far Short of Obama’s ‘1 Million By 2015’ Goal

Cybercast News Service ^ | January 29, 2016 | 1:55 PM EST | Barbara Hollingsworth 

In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama predicted that there would be "a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015."
But only 382,176 plug-in electrified vehicles (PEVs) have been sold in the U.S. since 2008, according to Hybridcars.com. That's just 38 percent of Obama's one million vehicle goal.
And although auto sales in the U.S. were at an all-time-high last year with 17.47 million sold, electric vehicles actually lost market share, dropping from 3.47 percent of all vehicles sold in the U.S. to 2.87 percent, according to the Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA).
Americans bought 9.7 percent more pickup trucks last year than in 2014, with Ford's F-Series remaining the top-selling vehicle for the ninth year in a row. 780,354 of them were sold in 2015, which was 14.6 percent more than the 753,851 Ford pickups sold in 2014. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...

Official: Some Clinton emails 'too damaging' to release! (and she said nothing was secret)

www.foxnews.com ^ | January 29, 2016 | By Catherine Herridge 

EXCLUSIVE: The intelligence community has now deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails “too damaging" to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a U.S. government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding.
The decision to withhold the documents in full, and not provide even a partial release with redactions, further undercuts claims by the State Department and the Clinton campaign that none of the intelligence in the emails was classified when it hit Clinton's personal server.
Fox News is told the emails include intelligence from "special access programs," or SAP, which is considered beyond “Top Secret.” A Jan. 14 letter, first reported by Fox News, from intelligence community Inspector General Charles McCullough III notified senior intelligence and foreign relations committee leaders that "several dozen emails containing classified information” were determined to be “at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, AND TOP SECRET/SAP levels."
The State Department is trying to finish its review and public release of thousands of Clinton emails, as the Democratic presidential primary contests get underway in early February.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, there is an exemption that allows for highly sensitive, and in this case classified, material to be withheld in full -- which means nothing would be released in these cases, not even heavily redacted versions, which has been standard practice with the 1,340 such emails made public so far by the State Department.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Guns Don't Kill People. The Obama Administration Kills People.

Wounded American Warrior ^ | January 24, 2016 | Benny Huang 

"I'm really good at killing people," Barack Obama once allegedly said. The origin of the quote is the 2013 book "Double Down" by veteran political journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, who cite unnamed Obama aides as their source. The two reporters have journalistic credits even a liberal would respect--The New Yorker, The Economist, and MSNBC, to name a few.
Some people choose not to give the quote credence because its source is anonymous and it wasn't caught on tape. Skepticism surrounding anonymous quotes is of course understandable though I surmise that most doubters have political motives. People who are still high on Hope and Changeâ„¢ will surely guffaw at the suggestion that their man would say such a callous thing.
Take it or leave it, I don't care. It's a true statement even if he never said it.
Though the Obama aides say that he was speaking of drone warfare when he bragged about his death-dealing, his prowess in the field of killing people is hardly limited to Hellfire missiles. Take, for example, the recent discovery of a Fast & Furious-linked .50 caliber rifle at the criminal hideout of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who was arrested in Mexico on January 8th. The rifle, which was capable of shooting down a helicopter, found its way into the drug lord's hands through a still opaque program that allowed American guns to cross the border into Mexico with the full knowledge of the Department of Justice. Federal officials have not precluded the possibility that other weapons found at El Chapo's hideout will be traced back to the ill-conceived Operation Fast & Furious. It's good to know that our DOJ is playing a role, even if only through willful negligence, in arming the most notorious narco-gangster since Pablo Escobar.
When I first read about El Chapo's .50 caliber rifle I was immediately reminded of Mr. Obama's unilateral gun control executive orders and the associated town hall meetings which were designed to leave the false impression that he sought the American people's input. The hypocrisy of it all was stunning. A man who armed El Chapo shouldn't have a say in American citizens' second amendment rights. We're not the problem. He is. This is a man who stated "I do not believe people should be able to own guns" and praised Australia as the model for gun laws. Australia does not permit private citizens to own guns so I must conclude that Obama supports an outright ban. He is not just tweaking the system a little to make sure that underworld figures don't get guns. To the contrary, he's facilitating the transaction. On the other hand, he wants your gun--even if you're a model citizen.
Unfortunately, some of those guns decided to come back across the border. A Fast & Furious gun was used to murder US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010. Terry was engaged in a firefight with drug traffickers. El Chapo's men? Perhaps. In 2014, two Muslim men drove from Phoenix to Garland, Texas, to shoot up a "Draw Mohammed" contest. The men were stopped in their tracks by armed Texas lawmen before they could kill anyone, thank goodness. When the dust settled it was determined that one of their weapons was a Fast & Furious gun.
As a consequence of Obama's and Holder's gunwalking operation, our government has armed Muslim terrorists, cop killers, and the biggest drug lord in the world. Pretty good at killing people? Don't be modest, Mr. President. You're the best.
But Obama's guns aren't just found in Mexico or in the border states. They can also be found across the Middle East and North Africa. During the 2011 war that overthrew Libyan dictator Kadafi, the Obama Administration secretly approved arms shipments from Qatar to various militant groups. After green-lighting the shipments, the Administration was shocked--shocked!--to learn that some of the weapons had wound up in the hands of Islamist fighters. From a New York Times article by James Risen et al.: "The United States, which had only small numbers of C.I.A. officers in Libya during the tumult of the rebellion, provided little oversight of the arms shipments. Within weeks of endorsing Qatar's plan to send weapons there in spring 2011, the White House began receiving reports that they were going to Islamic militant groups. They were 'more antidemocratic, more hard-line, closer to an extreme version of Islam' than the main rebel alliance in Libya, said a former Defense Department official."
These groups must have been even more stridently Islamist than the Muslim Brotherhood which the administration considered to be a moderate player in the Arab Spring. They were surely on par with al-Qaeda which I think the Obama Administration still considers extreme though that might change before the week's end. Considering the fact that most of the anti-Kadafi groups were some flavor of Islamist, it stretches credulity to think that the Obama Administration was just naïve. Or were they? In some minimally plausible scenario, the Obama Administration might have been criminally stupid. But I doubt it. In any case, the bulk of Libya's revolutionary foot soldiers were undisciplined teenaged boys in pickup trucks. Arming them and then hoping for the best was a predictable foreign policy disaster.
The funny thing about guns is that once they are handed out like participation trophies they cannot so easily be recalled. Where are those guns today? No one knows. They might have been used to kill four Americans in Benghazi a year after the coup concluded. Just speculation? I'm sure Obama's defenders would say that though it should be remembered that the guys who overran our consulate made a getaway because they won. No one was able to check the serial numbers on their guns so the mystery remains unsolved. But is it so difficult to believe that some of those guns supplied with US approval might have found their way into the hands of the terrorists who attacked our consulate? I say no.
Once loose, these guns grew legs and crossed borders. According to the same New York Times article: "Some of the arms since have been moved from Libya to militants with ties to Al Qaeda in Mali, where radical jihadi factions have imposed Shariah law in the northern part of the country, the former Defense Department official said."
Super! According to Glen Johnson of the Los Angeles Times in an article about the Malinese rebels: "Since the beginning of last year's insurgency against longtime Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, weapons have streamed out of Libya, looted from depots and sold on the black market. Difficult to track and impossible to quantify, they move in many directions."
Let's not forget Syria. Some of the Qatari guns ended up there as well and that doesn't include those weapons provided directly by the US government. In 2013, NBC News reported that the US was providing moderate Syrian fighters with $2.5 million per month, rations, radios, and would soon be providing them with weapons as well. Even if this army was "moderate" as its leaders claimed, and I doubt that it was, their weapons proved difficult to control.
Another failed Obama initiative that nonetheless introduced more weapons into Syria was the CIA-sponsored program for training mercenaries. Many of the guerillas--sixty in all, trained at the obscene cost of $500 million--quickly disappeared once in enemy territory with the military hardware provided to them by our government. Desertion is a possibility. ISIS captured or killed many others and likely still has their weapons.
Barack Obama really is adept at killing people. He's killed a lot of people "by accident," I suppose, though all of his accidents were easily foreseen and easily avoidable. He nonetheless lectures the rest of us about our guns.

1 Mexican peso is now worth 5 cents

cnn money ^ | 1-22-2016 | Heather Long 

Investors are dumping emerging market stocks and currencies as they flee to assets that appear safer like U.S. government bonds.
"It's not just the peso. The [Russian] ruble hit a record low this week. The [South African] rand last week. It's a broad based sell-off in emerging markets," says Win Thin, global head of emerging markets strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman.
But the Mexican peso has been hit the hardest of them all in 2016.
The problem for Mexico is that it's one of the easiest emerging market currency to trade. So investors have been selling it as a proxy for emerging markets overall. "It's a 'risk off.' People are selling anything that looks risky," says Thin.
Mexico is also suffering from the dramatic crash in oil prices. Crude oil plays a large role in the Mexican economy, accounting for 11% of exports. As oil fell to its lowest level since 2003 on Wednesday, traders soured even more on the Mexico's currency.
Mexican leaders have been trying to stop the pain. Mexico's central bank has been intervening in the market by selling dollars and telling anyone who will listen that it believes the peso is oversold.
"My sense is the peso will return from the levels it is right now," Mexico's central bank Governor Agustin Carstens told Bloomberg this week in Davos.
Mexico's economy was one of the best performers in all of Latin and South America last year. Despite all the headwinds, it still grew 2.3%.
The final fear factor driving the peso down is the U.S. Federal Reserve.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...

Why I’m Rooting for Ted Cruz to Win Iowa and New Hampshire

The Nation ^ | January 22, 2016 | Leslie Savan 

I'll put it out there-I'm rooting for Ted Cruz to win Iowa and New Hampshire and anywhere else he can do damage to Trump before the Joe McCarthy lookalike self-immolates in a bonfire of biofuel, birth certificates, and Goldman Sachs loans.

Cruz, the only GOP candidate to come close to Trump in the polls, is in a bad way. Sarah Palin may have endorsed Trump in gibberish, but popular Iowa Governor Terry Branstad denounced Cruz for opposing ethanol subsidies in plain Iowa greedlish, and constitutional lawyers are raising serious questions about whether the Canadian-born senator is eligible to become president. And now, in a kind of SwiftChurching, accusations are flying that Cruz is a "phony" Christian.

(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...

Hillary Getting a Pass on Dems' Turn Left to Socialism

Real Clear Politics ^ | Jamnuary 24,2016 | Sale a Zito 

She was burned once before by being the second most liberal Democrat in a presidential race – when she ran against Barack Obama in 2008 – and she isn't going to let that happen again.
Meanwhile, the national media allows her to get away with such a strategy by not asking what separates her from Sanders.
Where are the newspaper columns suggesting that Bernie is dragging Hillary to the left? There aren't any. No one is forcing Clinton to take a more moderate stance because, if she has to pitch as far left as Sanders does to win the nomination, then Democrats certainly will not win the general election with a candidate who campaigned to be more socialist than the socialist.
Which leads to an underlying question that is rarely discussed: Have Democrats gone so far left that socialism really is their prevailing view? Is that what is being hidden from the public, by not forcing Clinton to express her true worldview instead of the far-left pitch that Sanders embodies?
Certainly the press and pundits are glossing over the possibility that the party's base has embraced the notions that it is OK to be complacent, that government should run everything in our lives, that safe zones are OK to suppress free speech and that government's giant safety-net beats individual creativity or responsibility as incentives to achieve success.
Both political parties are realigning and allowing their furthest wings to drive the clown cars.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...

Hillary on FBI Investigation: ‘I Can’t Control What the Republicans and Their Allies Do’

nationalreview.com ^ 

Hillary on FBI Investigation: 'I Can't Control What the Republicans and Their Allies Do' Katherine Timpf
Hillary Clinton says she “not concerned” about the FBI investigation into her handling of highly classified material “because I know what the facts are.” Appearing this morning on Meet the Press, Clinton blamed Republicans for the latest reports her server contained material beyond top secret.
“I never sent or received any material marked ‘classified,’ I cannot control what the Republicans leak and what they are contending,” Clinton said.
She then echoed her campaign manager, Brian Fallon, who said the intelligence community’s inspector general is conspiring with Republicans to bring down her campaign:
And I thought it was interesting, Chuck, you’ll as a political observer understand why, back a couple months ago Kevin McCarthy spilled the beans that the Benghazi investigation was all about bringing me down, something that I suspected but I went ahead, testified for 11 hours, answered all their questions and even they admitted there was nothing new. Now, Senator Grassley shows up at a Trump rally yesterday in Iowa. He’s the chairman of the Judiciary Committee who has — and his staff have been behind and pushing a lot of these stories, and announces he’s there for the simple reason, to defeat me. I can’t control what the Republicans are doing. But I know what the facts are and I will just keep putting them out there. This is something that I think is very clear about what happened and I know it will be over and resolved at some point but I can’t control what the Republicans and their allies do, but I think it’s important for voters to know what are they doing.

Former AG: It’s time to charge Hillary!

Hot Air.com ^ | January 23, 2016 | ED MORRISEY 

Hey kids, what time is it?* According to former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, it’s time for Loretta Lynch and the Department of Justice to do their jobs and charge Hillary Clinton with mishandling classified information — at the least. Nodding to the expansion of the FBI’s probe into areas of corruption, Mukasey argued in Friday’s Wall Street Journal that the 1300-plus pieces of evidence already on hand more than justifies initial charges — and cites David Petraeus as a precedent:
No criminality can be charged against Mrs. Clinton in connection with any of this absent proof that she had what the law regards as a guilty state of mind--a standard that may differ from one statute to another, depending on what criminal act is charged.
Yet--from her direction that classification rules be disregarded, to the presence on her personal email server of information at the highest level of classification, to her repeated falsehoods of a sort that juries are told every day may be treated as evidence of guilty knowledge--it is nearly impossible to draw any conclusion other than that she knew enough to support a conviction at the least for mishandling classified information.
This is the same charge brought against Gen. David Petraeus for disclosing classified information in his personal notebooks to his biographer and mistress, who was herself an Army Reserve military intelligence officer cleared to see top secret information.
Actually, under 18 USC 793, prosecutors don’t necessarily need to show a “guilty state of mind” (or mens rea) for a conviction, or even show that information had previously been classified. It would be easier to get a conviction if they could show both, but nothing in this statute requiresinformation to have been classified — only that its exposure would do damage to national security. Subsection (f) only requires “gross negligence,” not malice of purpose. Mukasey more than makes a case for gross negligence in the second paragraph of the excerpt.
But prior to this excerpt, Mukasey’s already made a pretty good case for mens rea, or at least eliminated the argument that Grandma Clinton thought comms security involved wiping things with cloths:
Further, Mrs. Clinton's own memoir, "Hard Choices" (2014), apparently written at a time when she wished to stress how delicate were the secrets she knew, and how carefully she handled them, reports that she "often received warnings from Department security officials to leave our [BlackBerrys], laptops--anything that communicated with the outside world--on the plane with their batteries removed to prevent foreign intelligence services from compromising them.
"Even in friendly settings we conducted business under strict security precautions, taking care where and how we read secret material and used our technology," Mrs. Clinton tells readers. She even read classified material "inside an opaque tent in a hotel room. In less well-equipped settings, we were told to improvise by reading sensitive material with a blanket over our head."
Try to square this with the 1,300-plus transmissions of classified information through an unsecured, home-brew server. The same woman who bragged about her adept compliance with classified access under unusual circumstances also forced her aides to send information based on Top Secret/Compartmented programs through an e-mail server located at one time in a bathroom in an unsecured and unauthorized location. Note too that Mukasey and the WSJ published this before news broke that the Inspector General informed Congress that at least one e-mail involved extremely sensitive human intelligence classified at the SCI/HCS level — information that conceivably get intelligence sources killed if exposed. Hillary knew full well about the need to secure this information, but she wanted to evade legitimate Congressional oversight more than she wanted to comply with the law. And that is a case for criminal intent, even if prosecutors don’t actually have to make one.
The question isn’t just why charges haven’t already been filed against Hillary Clinton. It’s also why no charges have been filed with the expanding universe of people who were aware of this system and yet did nothing to alert authorities to its use, people such as Stephen Mull, who warned Huma Abedin of the issue in 2011. There are a number of legitimate targets for prosecution. And it’s time that the Department of Justice began lining them up.
* – This opening is nothing more than a naked bid to get into James Taranto’s BotW column on Monday. Also, for those of you who are too young to recall, it’s the opening of The Howdy Doody Show.

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Cruz’s plan to beat Clinton: Tell the truth!

The Hill ^ | January 23, 2016 | Bradford Richardson 

Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz says he hates the conventional wisdom that the only way for a conservative to win a general election is to run as a "Democrat-lite."
"How do we win?" Cruz asked voters at an Exeter, N.H., rally earlier this week, according to the Associated Press.
"Washington consultants always say 'the way you win is you run to the middle.' You run to the mushy middle, you blur the distinctions," he added. "Every time we do that, we lose."
The Texas senator said he prefers his approach, which he characterized as "telling the truth with a smile."
"That's how we win - with a clear contrast," he said.
Cruz pointed to the failed candidacies of Bob Dole, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Mitt Romney, who were all perceived to be moderates in the party, to support his position.
"What they did didn't work," he said. "We've got to do something different."

DHS is investigating a full .05% of millions of visa overstays

 Hotair ^ | 01/23/2016 | Jazz Shaw 


Earlier in the week we discussed the disturbing fact that not even half of “visitors” who come to the United States with a legally obtained visa actually leave when their allotted time is up. At the time I was wondering how many of these visa overstays actually have a warrant issued for them and, even more to the point, how many are actively investigated to see what they’re up to and tap them on the shoulder as Chris Christie once said. If you finished reading that article and found yourself guessing that the numbers might be depressingly low, give yourself a cookie. Turns out that DHS doesn’t have anywhere the resources required to track them all down and are currently investigating only a tiny fraction of them. (Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon)
The Department of Homeland Security is actively investigating just 3,000 of the 6 million individuals who have overstayed their visas and now reside in the United States illegally, according to disclosures made before Congress.
Craig Healthy, Homeland’s assistant director for national security investigations, admitted that there are just 3,000 active investigations, or .05 percent, into some six million aliens who have illegally overstayed their visas in the United States during the past 20 years.
Investigators have additionally "exhausted" 1,626 "leads" into these individuals, Healy disclosed under questioned by Sen. David Perdue (R., Ga.), a member of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee.
In some ways I almost hate to have these figures released in public because it just seems like an advertisement for anyone considering coming here illegally. Just apply for a tourist visa, show up, toss it in the trash and you’re on your way! But since it’s already been announced it’s too late to do anything about it now. This isn’t a blanket condemnation of the Department of Homeland Security, by the way. There’s obviously no way that they could track down that many visa overstays without adding the entire Chinese army to their ranks. Perhaps the problem here is that we’re simply far too free and easy handing out these visas in the first place.
On that front there may be some very small bit of relief on the way. As part of the horrendous spending bill compromise last year, the White House was forced to put some new visa waiver guidelines in place. As of this week, those changes are going into effect. (WaPo)
The Obama administration announced on Thursday that it has begun to implement restrictions to the visa waiver program Congress passed as part of the budget deal last month.
The restrictions prevent nationals of 38 countries who have either traveled to Iraq, Syria, Iran or Sudan since March 1, 2011, or those who hold citizenship from those countries, from coming to the United States under the program. The visa waiver program offers expedited electronic processing and short-term visa-free travel to tourists and business travelers.
Instead, dual nationals and travelers who have spent time in the listed countries will be required to go through the full vetting of the regular visa process, which includes an in-person interview at a U.S. embassy or consulate.
As I said, you don’t have to read very far into this to see that it’s a small change indeed. It’s not really even a reduction in the number of visas, but simply restrictions on how many people we’re allowing to come here from terrorist infested areas without bothering to get a visa in the first place. (And yes, the question you’re supposed to be asking is, wait… we were doing that?) But I suppose it’s better than nothing, so let’s give the White House credit for holding up their end of the deal.
Airport

Homosexuals can change!

World Magazine ^ | 1/23/16 | CALEB KALTENBACH, DENNY BURK & HEATH LAMBERT 

Two books relate how grace and the power of the Holy Spirit can overcome same-sex attraction
Caleb Kaltenbach's new book, Messy Grace (WaterBrook Press, 2015), has a tantalizing subtitle: How a Pastor With Gay Parents Learned to Love Others Without Sacrificing Conviction. Kaltenbach states that "profound change is just as possible for a homosexual sin as it is for any other"-but it has to come through grace. Kaltenbach argues that Christians should emphasize a change of heart, and let that change then influence minds (and use of sex organs). It seems to me that churches should welcome but not affirm gays, so I found Kaltenbach's thinking useful.
I also found Denny Burk and Heath Lambert's argument in Transforming Homosexuality: What the Bible Says about Sexual Orientation and Change (P&R Publishing, 2015) helpful in debunking the myth that change is not possible for those struggling with same-sex attraction. The authors use Scripture to show how the same power that resurrected Jesus from the dead can lead to moral change. Just like Kaltenbach, Burk and Lambert believe, "This is just as true for same-sex attraction as it is for any other sin."
(Excerpt) Read more at worldmag.com ...

Clinton Foundation took massive payoffs, promised Hammond Ranch and other publicly owned lands to...

Intellihub.com ^ | 23 Jan 2016 | Shepard Ambellas 

PRINCETON, Ore. - As it turns out there's a lot more to the story behind the Malheur Wildlife Refuge-a whole lot more-and this article is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
As you may or may not know, Intellihub reported on Jan. 4, that the Hammond's ranch and other ranch-lands surrounding the refuge sit atop a vast swath of precious metals, minerals, and uranium that's heavily desired by not only the federal government, but foreign entities as well.
However, at the time of the article's publication the federal government's full motive to seize the land was not yet known other than the fact that these elements do exist in the vicinity and are invaluable.
Now, after further investigation, more pieces of the puzzle have been put in place and you're not going to believe what characters are involved.
I'll give you a hint–one of them is currently being investigated by the FBI and is also running on the Democratic ticket in hopes of becoming the next President of the United States. That's right, you guessed it–none other than Hillary Rodham Clinton of the notorious Clinton crime family.
Hillary and her foundation are implicated in the dastardly scheme along with the Russian State Nuclear Energy Corporation, Rosatom, and a few dubious Canadian elite, which is where the news gets really bad.
(Excerpt) Read more at intellihub.com ...

Are Global Warmers Intellectually Challenged?

By reasonmclucus

If a person with normal intelligence enters a warm room with a fire in the fire place, he will say the fire is heating the room. A global warmer will say that the room is warm because carbon dioxide is trapping heat.
Before you say warmers couldn’t be that dumb consider that they make the same claim about earth’s temperature. If their calculations indicate earth is getting warmer, they ignore the fact that humans keep increasing the amount of heat they produce and claim that the increase must be because of minute increases in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Any average person knows that if you turn up the heat in a room it will get warmer unless someone opens a door or window to let in cooler air. It would be logical to think adding heat to the atmosphere, such as by increasing the number of vehicles producing hot exhaust gases, would raise air temperature. Simply increasing the number of people can raise temperatures because, except in desert and tropical areas, the human body usually has a higher temperature than the air.
Unfortunately the global warmers seem to lack the intelligence necessary to understand that adding heat can make a room or the atmosphere warmer. They believe carbon dioxide has a magical power to control the temperature of the air. If the temperature of the atmosphere goes up the only reason they can conceive of is an increase in carbon dioxide.
Some people have accused the warmers of using inflated temperatures. It doesn’t make any difference whether their temperature figures are accurate or not because the most logical explanation for a temperature increase is the increased heat produced by human activity.

Reasons Why Donald Trump Will Make the Best President Ever

Today'sInfo.net ^ | NA | Todays Info 

Why would Trump make the best president of all time?

He will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created. He will bring back our jobs from China, from Japan, from Mexico.
Trump is not politically correct. He is not afraid to say what he thinks. If he has an issue with you, he will say it to your face. It would be nice to have a politician in office with that level of transparency.
Trump is undeniably a great negotiator, he knows how to navigate complex deals and convince a wide variety of industries, businesses, and investors to work with him to achieve goals.
He has emphasized beliefs in free enterprise and a strong military. He repeatedly highlights his ability to get things done, and understanding of finances
Trumps loyalty will only be to America and Americans, not any political party, special interest group or foreign entity. Like his slogan reads, Make America great again!
Trumps track record for financial success proves that he knows how to build a successful empire. With the U.S. trillions of dollars in debt, this is the sort of leader that might be able to turn it all around.
Trump has a confidence and is self-assured, Unlike other politicians who tend to be swayed by lobbyists and special interests.
No one will be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump.
Trump is planning to build a great wall on our southern border between the U.S. and Mexico, and will get Mexico pay for it!
Trump gets it. He believes in American exceptionalism, he is committed to education, an he demands high performance. After all, he has been know to fire anyone that does not meet his high standards.
(Excerpt) Read more at todaysinfo.net ...

TO All Voters

http://We Republicans Democrats and Liberal's would like to ring in 2016 by letting the World know that Donald J. ^ | unknown 

Trump did not steal your money.
Trump did not raise your taxes.
Trump did not quadruple the price of food.
Trump is not stirring a race war.
Trump did not leave any US soldiers in Benghazi to be slaughtered and desecrated by Muslims.
Trump did not send the US Navy to fight for Syrian Al-Qaeda.
Trump did not arm ISIS and systematically exterminate Christians throughout the Middle East.
Trump did not betray Israel.
Trump did not provide financing and technology to Irans nuclear weapons program.
Trump did not give our military secrets to China.
Trump did not remove our nuclear missile shield in Poland at the behest of Russia.
Trump did not shrivel our military, and betray our veterans.
Trump did not cripple our economy.
Trump did not increase our debt to 20 trillion dollars.
Trump did not ruin our credit, twice.
Trump did not double African American unemployment.
Trump did not increase welfare to a record level for eight years.
Trump did not sign a law making it legal to execute, and imprison Americans.
Trump did not set free all of terrorists in Guantanamo bay!!!


Saturday, January 23, 2016

Whoopi Goldberg Won't Stay In U.S. Soil If Trump Becomes President (another reason to vote Trump)

Parent Herald ^ | Jan 22, 2016 09:26 PM EST | Snow 

Veteran actress Whoopi Goldberg is making plans to leave the U.S. in case Donald Trump is elected as president on November. The 60-year old comedian openly expressed her sentiments over Trump's blaming immigrants for U.S. problems.
Fox News reported that on the Wednesday episode of "The View," Goldberg, a co-host of the show said, "I've always been an American, and this has always been my country, and we've always been able to have discussions."
Goldberg further elaborated on her statement saying, "And suddenly now it's turning into, you know, 'not them, not them.' And you know, we have a lot of friends whose parents saw this already." To this she added, "They don't want to relive this. They don't want to relive this. So I need all the candidates to get it together. Get back to American values."
According to Goldberg, she does not think that Trump's views reflect what America is all about. People must stop blaming others for the problems that hound U.S. For Goldberg, these troubles must not be attributed to immigrants.
Breitbart has reported on the sentiments of another co-host, Joy Behar, where she said, "That's scapegoating. It's as old as the hills. What do you think World War II is all about?" Behar believes that what transpired in World War II where Jews were blamed is happening all over again. This time around it is the Muslims and the Mexicans.

Bombshell: Hillary e-mails may have exposed human intel source!

Hotair ^ | 01/22/2016 | Ed Morrissey 

If true, the latest revelation about Hillary Clinton’s secret e-mail system goes way beyond “smoking gun.” It reaches the level of full core meltdown when it comes to US national security and the safety of American intel sources. Fox News reporters Catherine Herridge report that the Inspector General has noted that information in one or more e-mails contained information classified as “HCS-O,” denoting extraordinarily sensitive material that could put a human intel source at high risk if exposed:

At least one of the emails on Hillary Clinton’s private server contained extremely sensitive information identified by an intelligence agency as “HCS-O,” which is the code used for reporting on human intelligence sources in ongoing operations, according to two sources not authorized to speak on the record.
Both sources are familiar with the intelligence community inspector general's January 14 letter to Congress, advising the Oversight committees that intelligence beyond Top Secret — known as Special Access Program (SAP) — was identified in the Clinton emails, as well the supporting documents from the affected agencies that owned the information and have final say on classification.
According to a December 2013 policy document released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence: "The HSC-0 compartment (Operations) is used to protect exceptionally fragile and unique IC (intelligence community) clandestine HUMINT operations and methods that are not intended for dissemination outside of the originating agency."
It is not publicly known whether the information contained in the Clinton emails also revealed who the human source was, their nationality or affiliation.
According to the Authorized Classification and Control Markings Register, the HCS classification applies to human intelligence (HUMINT) that is also classified at the SCI level — Sensitive Compartmented Information. The SCI classification is itself another form of higher classification; we first saw this come up in the context of Hillary’s e-mail system last summer, when Top Secret/Compartmented data from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and NSA showed up in her e-mails. That dealt with satellite data about North Korea’s nuclear program, and the exposure of that data could have allowed our enemies the ability to render our satellite data-collection capabilities useless.
If Hillary’s server transmitted and retained SCI/HCS in an unsecured and unauthorized manner, the US would be very lucky to still have that source available to us. This goes beyond gross negligence; it demonstrates an utter contempt not only for national security, but for the risks faced by those who gather intelligence and cooperate with the US to safeguard the country.
Herridge and Browne also report that IG Charles McCullough has briefed key members of Congress on just how much this was not just an “interagency dispute” over publicly discussed topics:
The source said that the “several dozen” refers to the main or principal email thread identified by reviewers, not the number of times that classified information was forwarded, replied to or copied to people who did not have a "need-to-know" using unsecured communication channels — in this case a personal server. More than one Special Access Program was affected. …
The two declarations provided to the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence committees — as well as the leadership of Senate Foreign Affairs with oversight for the State Department — include the emails containing SAP intelligence, as well as supporting documents from the agency affected, showing how they reached the determination it came from one of its sources, and not from publicly available information.
The originators of this information would know precisely what came from sources in the clear, and which came from their most sensitive data. The question will be whether the FBI has also mapped out the manner in which this information got manipulated into unsecured systems so that the Secretary of State could hide her communications from Congress and the courts, and whether the Department of Justice will prosecute what might be the worst spillage outside of a purposeful espionage effort in recent memory, if not ever.
Update: Robert Gates told Hugh Hewitt yesterday that the “odds are pretty high” that Russia, China, and Iran had compromised Hillary’s home-brew server:

HH: One of your colleagues, Mike Morell, said on this program, or actually agreed with my assertion that almost certainly, Russians, Chinese and Iranians had compromised the home brew server of the former Secretary of State. He agreed with that. Do you agree with his assessment of my assessment?
RG: Well, given the fact that the Pentagon acknowledges that they get attacked about 100,000 times a day, I think the odds are pretty high.
HH: And so if they had real time access to her server, would that have compromised national security?
RG: Well, again, it would depend entirely on what she put on there. And I just, I haven't read any of these emails, so I don't know what was on those servers.

If it’s SCI and HSC information, then the clear answer is yes.

National Review just handed Donald Trump the Election

Republican Newswatch ^ | 1/22/16 | DOUG IBENDAHL 

National Review's publication of the collective anti-Donald Trump missives from 22 self-appointed conservative potentates has caused quite a stir in Republican circles.
The nationwide responses range from, "Wait, I thought National Review went out of business years ago," to "Ed Meese? Seriously?"
The Gang of 22 have officially become parodies of themselves. One would have to reach back to the days of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew to lift an adequate quote to describe them.
"Nattering nabobs of negativism," "vicars of vacillation," "pusillanimous pussyfooters," "the decadent few," "ideological eunuchs," "the effete corps of impudent snobs," or "the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history" - take your pick, because they all apply about equally well to each and every one of them.
So clueless is the Gang of 22 they can't even see how they've stumbled right into the narrative Trump's been communicating so successfully for months. Just like the elected officials from both parties, the Gang of 22 has been GREAT at complaining about stuff, year, after year, after year.
But getting anything accomplished? Not so much.
Many of the Gang of 22 have been hanging around and chattering for decades, and some are active cogs in the Conservative Entertainment Complex, deriving their income by pandering to conservative anger while offering no real solutions.
Donald Trump represents a threat to these ineffectual poohbahs in the same way he represents a threat to do-nothing public officials.
Jealousy is also seriously at work here. Trump is inspiring and exciting a broad spectrum of the country like no member of the Gang of 22 ever has, or ever will.
In just seven months of campaigning, Trump already has more Americans listening to a Republican message than the entire Gang of 22 could muster over decades. Trump understands that before you can advance the ball, you have to convince people to take time from their busy lives to listen. No one on the GOP side since Ronald Reagan has accomplished that like Trump.
No one else has come close, and certainly no one from that "effete corps of impudent snobs" to which the National Review thinks we should defer.
The Gang of 22 had their chance. They've done a lot of bitching over the years, and it paid well for some.
But Americans care about results. They can plainly see that all of the empty talk from the Gang of 22 got us eight years of Barack Obama, and a loss in pretty much every conservative battle there was to lose.
At the same time when Americans look at Donald Trump's life they get a lot of assurance that here is finally a man who shares their focus on actually getting results. And Trump returns the respect by recognizing regular hard-working Americans are a lot smarter than any of the "ideological eunuchs" in all of their pontificating glory.
The "pusillanimous pussyfooters" love to nitpick Trump's words, but what voters are looking for this year is competence and accomplishment. Donald Trump has an actual record of delivering both in spades.
The Gang of 22 is right to be terrified. A President who could get things done would expose them as the irrelevant creatures they truly are.
It can't happen fast enough.

Friday, January 22, 2016

Dear Trump Haters

13 Hours Benghazi Film Nails Clinton, Obama Betrayal Without Saying a Word!

Townhall.com ^ | January 22, 2016 | Joy Overbeck 

In the last moments of this incandescently tragic but brilliant film, the camera lingers on an American flag, torn and blackened by fire, weighed down by chunks of the once-lavish consulate, sinking in the trash-strewn pool of the Benghazi residence where just a few hours earlier Ambassador Chris Stevens was dipping his toes.
A gut-rending symbol of how our rodent-hearted "leaders" have sunk our once-great nation; the noble flag drowned literally in the rocket's red glare of Islamic terrorist bombs bursting in air.
Thirteen Hours: the Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is a war movie about the Libyan terrorist attacks on September 11, 2012 that will take its place among the iconic war movies of all time.
I sat open-mouthed, clutching the arms of my seat and spilling my popcorn as the screen illuminated in flashes from massive explosions the breath-taking heroism of the former Marines and Navy Seals defending the U.S. Benghazi assets. Their names are Tanto (Kris Paronto), Oz (Mark Geist), Tig (John Tiegen), Rone (Tyrone Woods) and Glen Doherty.
The film also illuminates with night vision goggle precision the treachery of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama who did nothing to save them. Never are the secretary of state or the commander in chief (uh, Obama) even mentioned, which in itself screams volumes. Just as they were absent from duty the night of the attacks, they are AWOL in the movie itself.
We now know that Hillary Clinton spent a little time in the Situation Room that night, presumably watching the live feed from the drone that captured the life-and-death siege of first the ambassador's residence and a few hours later, the second attack on the CIA annex a mile or so away. We know that the president wasn't there, likely busy picking out the suit he would wear for his campaign fund-raiser in Nevada next day.
We know now that the night of September 11 Secretary of State Clinton told her daughter and the Egyptian prime minister that this was a coordinated planned attack by Islamic terrorists marking the September 11 anniversary and had nothing to do with any video. So we know that she and Mr. Obama deliberately lied when they told the grieving relatives as their loved ones' flag-draped coffins were being unloaded on the tarmac that a video was to blame for their deaths. We know that the security for which Ambassador Chris Stevens repeatedly begged was denied, and actually down-scaled in one of the world's most dangerous posts that most nations' embassies and even the Red Cross had already fled.
As they saw the consulate burning in the distance, the small former special forces team assigned to protect the CIA Annex (purportedly to secure weapons from the deposed Quadaffi regime) disobeyed several stand-down orders from the on-scene CIA station chief and ran to help. They said in the film and later in TV interviews (on Fox News; the mainstream media won't touch this) that if the CIA bureaucrat would not have delayed their leaving, they are sure they could have saved two lives. But despite furious attacks, they did succeed in rescuing many at the consulate.
After the embassy was demolished and Sean Smith and Ambassador Stevens were dead, the five-man team returned to combat positions on the roofs of the CIA buildings, defending the 25 or so CIA personnel inside against the fierce onslaught of incoming rocket propelled grenades and mortar fire from the Islamic terrorists.
In one scene, Rone (Tyrone Wood) face bloodied and streaked black with machine gun soot, climbs down to the office complex and asks one of the CIA operatives if there's anyone she can call to get some air support - not bombs, but just a low fly-over "to put the fear of God and the USA into them." She says she has some contacts and gets on the phone.
In fact, according to a CBS news report by investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson:
"The Pentagon says it did move a team of special operators from central Europe to the large Naval Air Station in Sigonella, Italy, but gave no other details. Sigonella is just an hour's flight from Libya. Other nearby bases include Aviano and Souda Bay. Military sources tell CBS News that resources at the three bases include fighter jets and Specter AC-130 gunships, which the sources say can be extremely effective in flying in and buzzing a crowd to disperse it."
So a fear-of-God airborne testosterone display could have been mounted yet for unknown reasons was not. The film has a short scene captioned "AFRICOM" showing a gaggle of military brass talking about a possible air mission, and then we briefly see rows of American soldiers sitting on airplane benches in full readiness combat gear. They never took off .
Not long after the debacle, then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Pentagon reporters it wasn't clear enough what was occurring on the ground in Benghazi to send help.
"(The) basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on; without having some real-time information about what's taking place," Panetta told Pentagon reporters. "And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham (head of AFRICOM, the crisis-responding combat command for Libya and other African nations), Gen. Dempsey (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation."
So the on-site drone giving them real-time eyes-on plus the Benghazi CIA calling desperately for help with the deafening soundtrack of bombs and machine gun fire in the background simply didn't provide enough info about what was going on? These men are in charge of the "no man left behind" ethic of the U.S. armed services. Panetta's excuse is simply preposterous. .
Panetta also serves up a banquet of red herring by claiming those pinned down in Benghazi demanded a rescue force. They would be grateful for a bone-rattling, cockroach-scattering fly-by. But even that was too much for the Defense Secretary.
Later in the battle, Rone Woods returns to the CIA office complex to ask the woman who called her contacts for help if she'd had any response. Negative. Nobody would be coming.
That no-go decision had to be deliberate. AFRICOM's General Ham told the House Armed Services Subcommittee on June 26, 2013, that he learned about the terrorist attack on the consulate only 15 minutes after it started. He headed down the hall to General Dempsey's office and informed him about the onslaught. The two immediately went to meet with Panetta and the three "headed across for the meeting at the White House" according to Ham.
Their meeting with the president started at 5:00, about an hour and 18 minutes into the terrorist siege so the president knew about the attack at that time. The meeting lasted a mere half hour. Now things get blurry. According to then White House press secretary Jay Carney, Obama didn't phone Clinton until 10 p.m. that night, more than six hours after the attack began. But Carney's statement didn't line up with a letter released by the White House to Congress stating that Obama made no phone calls the night of the attack. And it turns out a month earlier Clinton had testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that she learned of the attack on Benghazi at 4 p.m., not 10:00.
Clinton told the Senators that "we were in continuous meetings and conversations, both within the department, with our team in Tripoli, with the interagency and internationally. ..I spoke with President Obama later in the evening to, you know, bring him up to date, to hear his perspective," she testified.
Internet sources including The Gateway Pundit and RedState have reported that both General Hamm and Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette, who commanded the Carrier Strike Group Three (CSG-3), then deployed in Middle Eastern waters during the attack on Benghazi, disobeyed stand-down orders from higher up and readied rescue plans. These stories are supported by the president suddenly removing Ham from duty (firing) just about a month after Benghazi, followed by Ham's premature retirement.
Also in October 2012 after the Benghazi disaster, Admiral Gaouette was fired as the Navy announced it was "replacing the admiral in command of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Middle East, pending the outcome of an internal investigation into undisclosed allegations of inappropriate judgment." Could Gaouette's "inappropriate judgment" be choosing to do the honorable thing by rescuing the Benghazi warriors?
Back to the movie, the CIA roof and a hail of hell as ex-Navy Seal Glenn Doherty and Tyrone Woods die in a savage mortar attack. Finally the CIA survivors are saved, not by American military but by the Libyan Army's phalanx of military trucks. And now the woman who shrilled, "what difference does it make", who lied to the parents of the dead, who abandoned our Americans in order to support the president's faux hawkish re-election slogan, "G.M. is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead," is running for president. Memo to America: be sure you have your life insurance paid up if you think Hillary Clinton will "fight for you" as her good friend Ambassador Stevens believed. And don't you dare vote for her.

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