Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Climate Change: Two Devastating Facts They're Not Telling Us

FR ^ | May 31, 2017 | cc 

First - to hear Big Media and the Climate-Panic Lobby tell it, we humans are the only major source of the "pollutant" CO2. But there's actually another, even bigger "polluter" - Mother Nature. Every year, volcanoes produce about 20 times as much CO2 as humans - a whopping 95% of the total. So even if we all shut down every single engine, furnace, and fire on Earth and all went back to living in cold dark caves, total CO2 output would ONLY be reduced by 5% ... which is nothing. Worse, volcanic output is highly variable, so even any painful sacrifices we make could easily be negated by an extra-heavy year of eruptions. Obviously, any political agreement that only reduces human output by a few percentage points (and leaves out big polluters like China and India) is, in the total scheme of things, useless.
The second issue here that the Panickers don't like to talk about is that there is NO "climate-change smoking gun". That is, there is NO clear, NO direct, NO scientifically-proven linkage between human CO2 production and climate change - there's only a simplistic, inferred, implied one (a "rise" in world temps over the last ~150 years, the same time that human industry grew a lot). THAT'S why the Panickers always have to mention phrases like "the great consensus among scientists" or "95% of scientists believe", to try and impress the skeptical public. Problem is, Science is not (and never was) a popular contest or democracy where the idea with the most number of followers wins ... in fact, many times it has been the lone rebel who bucked the "established consensus" who discovered a scientific truth - Galileo, Pasteur, even the Wright Brothers. So please be aware of, and challenge, this false argument whenever the cowards try to use it to shut down the debate.

Too Young?

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DENIAL

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Exhilarating!

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Minimum Wage Raise

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Talking Shit!

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How we all felt!

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Her fault?

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He said...

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The Best Part...

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CLIMATARD!

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Let me get this straight

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I'm Glad

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Texas Body Slam

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Tuesday, May 30, 2017

No, Trump Didn't Cause Obamacare to Fail

Townhall.com ^ | May 30, 2017 | Stephen Moore 


It's finally official. The Affordable Care Act is a public-policy flop of epic proportions. That's the only possible conclusion from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City announcement last week that it will drop out of many markets in Kansas and Missouri. The firm lost $100 million under the Obamacare insurance exchanges from 2014 to 2016. This is another body blow to the government-insurance system Barack Obama created in 2010. Blue Cross is one of the biggest health insurers in the nation, and now 25 more counties in these states will have no insurer left.
Nearly every news outlet buried this alarming story and instead shouted in headlines across the country: "23 Million More Uninsured Under GOP Plan." This was based on the Congressional Budget Office's estimate of the impact of the House repeal and replace plan.
Those are troubling numbers for sure, but they're misleading given the Blue Cross news. If we stay with Obamacare, within a few years tens of millions will have no insurance that is even remotely affordable. Aetna, Humana and other major insurers in just recent months have fled Obamacare. The Titanic has hit the iceberg, and it is rapidly sinking; yet the left and the media keep fiddling on the deck. They act as though this can be fixed with "minor reforms," but there aren't enough bandages in America to stitch this back together.
Even more absurd is the idea that Donald Trump and the Republicans are the ones responsible for the insurers' leaving and the premiums' skyrocketing. If you want a bellyaching laugh, here is an excerpt from a lead story from The New York Times last week: "(Insurers complain that) the Trump administration and Congress are rattling the markets. The administration's refusal to guarantee payment of subsidies to health insurance companies, the murky outlook for the Affordable Care Act in Congress and doubts about enforcement of the mandate for most people to have insurance are driving up insurance prices for 2018, insurers say in rate requests filed with state officials."
Stop the presses! What a shock: The insurers say they want more handouts from the government. Trump is supposedly the villain because he won't force families to buy insurance that they can't possibly afford given the massive premium hikes that Obama promised would never happen. This is rich.
Then this showstopper, also from The New York Times: "Opponents of President Barack Obama's signature legislative achievement have made what may be a self-fulfilling prophecy: They repeatedly forecast the collapse of the health law, and then push it along."
Now let's get serious. Blue Cross Blue Shield Kansas is leaving the market because they lost tens of millions of dollars two and three years ago -- long before anyone even imagined Trump running for president. The Wall Street Journal, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and others predicted this exact collapse from the day the bill was enacted seven years ago. Trump isn't the one who caused the recent nationwide 25 percent increase in premiums.
It is true that many of the insurers say one reason they are leaving the exchanges is because of "uncertainty" about what will happen with the insurance market next year. But Hillary Clinton would have been facing the same crisis. It is the height of anti-Trump derangement to say that Trump caused that uncertainty. How in the world can you blame the growth of a cancerous tumor on the doctor who is brought in to treat it?
Republicans have to do a much better job of explaining their plan and providing Americans better and cheaper options.
But liberals have to get over themselves and acknowledge that Obamacare is long beyond fixable. Cynthia Cox of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a supporter of Obamacare, glumly told Business Insider last week after the BCBS retreat from the exchange markets, "If the Blue Cross Blue Shield plans or Anthem pull out of the exchanges, then that would be a serious problem for many parts of the country. ... Whenever there is one insurance company right now, it almost always is either a Blue Cross Blue Shield or Anthem plan. It goes to show how much the exchanges rely on those plans."
By the end of the year we could have nearly half the country without insurers if this spiral continues. What we have here is the domestic policy equivalent of the Bay of Pigs.
And make no mistake about it: This calamity is Obama's legacy, not Trump's.

Waiting for proof!

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Pay Up!

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Nice Going!

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Improving Economy

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Winning!

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Top Story

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Let her finish!

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The Nightly Noose!

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THE BRA!

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KILLS

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Monday, May 29, 2017

In Case You Missed It Dept


 James Comey will testify in Congress about his meeting with Trump. Comey threw the election to Trump by reciting Hillary's crimes, then targeted Trump while assuring him he was not a target. Comey just underwent a colonoscopy and all the doctor could find was an impression of his own head.

President Trump took off for the Middle East Friday where he will spend a few days in Riyadh and Tel Aviv then to Rome for a papal visit. The president offered the mainstream media an olive branch before he left. Trump invited Rachel Maddow to drive him around while he's in Saudi Arabia.

Monica Lewinsky wrote an editorial in the New York Times blasting Roger Ailes for using her sex scandal with Bill Clinton to launch Fox News. It's hard to believe she's forty-four now. It seems just like yesterday that Monica was crawling around on her hands and knees in the Oval Office.

President Trump enjoyed his trip to Israel Monday where Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu took Trump on a guided tour of Jerusalem to check out the ancient religious sites. The president was deeply impressed by the Wailing Wall. He didn't see one Mexican the whole time he was in Jerusalem.

L.A. police officers were ordered by City Hall to refuse to cooperate with U.S. immigration agents asking about the citizenship of arrested gang members. Democrats are outraged by the intrusion. First, Republicans call illegal aliens illegal, next they're going to want to take away their voting rights.

Harvard released a study Sunday showing eighty percent of President Trump's press coverage is negative. It's starting to wear on him a little bit. President Trump's first order of business in Saudi Arabia was to convert to Islam so he can legally ban himself from re-entering the United States.

The New York Times reports President Trump in a meeting with Russian officials referred to fired FBI director James Comey as a nut-job. The article admits he once hid inside the curtains in the Oval Office. Ten bucks says that Comey agreed to testify against Trump to impress Jodie Foster.

L.A. police officers were ordered by City Hall to refuse to cooperate with U.S. immigration agents asking about the citizenship of arrested gang members. Democrats are outraged by the intrusion. First, Republicans call illegal aliens illegal, next they're going to want to take away their voting rights.

-- Argus Hamilton

BECAUSE!

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Dead Horse

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CNN newsfeed

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Racism

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The Ban

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CHANCE?

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No Clothes?

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Driving

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DUCKS?

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Accept him!

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LEADING!

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Knock! Knock!

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DUMMIES!

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Excuses!

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Fore and Aft

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WTF, over?

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The Liberal Agenda

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Sunday, May 28, 2017

John Stossel Exposes New York Times 'Green Baloney' by Rich JFK Grandkid

newsbusters.org ^ | 5/28/2017 | Tim Graham 

John Stossel penned a column on the "Green Baloney" at The New York Times featuring a May 13 story headlined "In Reversal, E.P.A. Eases Path for a Mine Near Alaska's Bristol Bay." It came with a big aerial picture of Dillingham, a fishing village on an inlet of the bay. We'll get to how "near" the mine is to the bay in a minute. They have hoped to mine copper, gold, and silver at the site.

While this was just another of their stories about how Donald Trump will poison America, it caught my eye because of the big photo and because I once reported on that mine. Attempted mine, I should say. No holes have been dug.

I reported on Pebble Mine because the EPA rejected the mine even before its environmental impact statement was submitted. The Obama EPA squashed Pebble like it squashed the Keystone XL pipeline. It just said no.

This shocked CEO Tom Collier. He's a Democrat who managed environment policy for Al Gore and Bill Clinton. He was convinced Pebble could be developed safely and assumed EPA regulators would follow their own rules. They didn't.

"They killed this project before any science was done, and there are memos that show that!" Collier complained
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...

Bad news for Warmists: North Pole ice cap the same thickness as 1940!

americanthinker.com ^ | 5/28/2017 | Thomas Lifson 

The apocalyptic religion of global warming/climate change stumbled upon the best animal mascot nag since Smokey the Bear when someone snapped a photo of a polar bear on an ice floe. Of course, polar bears are great swimmers, so the notion that a poor bear could be stranded on the last piece of ice remaining from the North Pole melt-off is absurd.

 But the religious frenzy of the Warmists holds such a myth as sacred, so the picture became its icon of compassion for cute furry objects of pity, the victims of the very carbon dioxide upon which its metabolism depends.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...

Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Hillary Clinton

PJ Media ^ | 27 May 2017 | Michael Walsh 

In case you haven't noticed, the Thing That Wouldn't Leave is back yet again, and still refusing to accept the results of the 2016 presidential election.

Hillary Clinton says that she "beat" Donald Trump—and Bernie Sanders—in a lengthy feature article by New York Magazine. "I beat both of them," she said, evidently referencing her popular vote win over Trump. While Clinton did defeat Sanders, who is not a Democrat, in the Democratic primary, she did not defeat Trump, who was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States in January.

In the story, Clinton discussed her post-election status as a member of the "Resistance" to Trump, but she also reflected on the 2016 campaign, which included a harder-than-expected fight against Sanders for the nomination.
Let's start with the most salient point: it is utterly shameful for the defeated candidate to join a "resistance" against the lawfully elected winner, for no other reason than she lost. Americans despise a sore loser, and both Clinton and her entire graceless party have been wailing since last November about the cosmic unfairness of it all -- all the more because they fully expected that the fix was in, and she would cake-waddle into the White House. As Johnny Caspar complains in Miller's Crossing: "if you can't trust a fixed fight, what can you trust?"
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...

Sunday, May 21, 2017

After ‘Poll Testing’ Impeachment of Trump – Dems Backtrack on Impeachment Talk

The Gateway Pundit ^ | 5/19/17 | Jim Hoft 

For months since the election the only topic on the mainstream media (MSM) news outlets has been that President Trump somehow stole the election from Hillary Clinton by working in collusion with Russia. This fallacious argument is played around the clock by the MSM and discussed repeatedly ad nauseam by Democrats every chance they get.
On Wednesday the headline of the Drudge Report was that Democrats felt they were finally at the place where they could poll test their efforts to impeach President Trump.
Democrats can’t do anything without a poll.
The Drudge Report’s headline linked to a report from McClatchy’s DC Bureau that discussed the Democratic Party’s plans to impeach Trump and their efforts to first poll test this action with voters.
In a significant development, party operatives say they expect Democrats to poll-test the public’s views on impeachment, trying to acquire hard data about an issue that until now has not been seriously analyzed. Other strategists say that candidates and party organizations will begin conducting focus groups on the question.
The results of their polling must have been God awful shocking for the Democrats and their liberal MSM because today in every way the Democrats are retreating from impeaching Trump.
For example, three of the biggest far left publications posting fake news stories about President Trump to justify his impeachment are now backing off:
1. The New York Times is reporting that “Democratic Leaders Try to Slow Calls to Impeach Trump“.
2. CNBC reports “Chances of Trump impeachment are low, says Nomura“.
3. The Washington Post reports “Considering Impeachment? Slow Down”
The Democrats big play to remove President Trump via impeachment is backfiring. Americans are seeing more than ever before how biased the MSM in America is and are fed up. The more the MSM promotes impeachment the more Democrats and the MSM look foolish like upset spoiled little children. President Trump calling the MSM ‘fake news’ is resonating with Americans.
A significant majority of electoral college delegates, states and counties in the US voted for President Trump despite the MSM’s all out assault. Without voter fraud President Trump would have easily won the popular vote as well. Now more Americans are waking up and they don’t like their President being treated so terribly unfair.
The results must have been bad – real bad, for the Democrat/MSM complex to suddenly begin their all out retreat.

The significance of Trump’s visit (told by Muslim)

Arab News ^ | May 21, 2017 | Sheikh Mohammad Abdulkarim Al-Issa 

There is undoubtedly a positive message being sent when a US president chooses Saudi Arabia, the land of the Two Holy Mosques, as his first foreign destination. This positivity, shown by Donald Trump, deserves our sincere gratitude for choosing to endorse the moderate Islamic world.
Moderates in the Kingdom and worldwide have always wanted a serious partner to help reclaim the narrative from extremists, and a clear distinction between those who believe Islam is against terror and those who use it to justify terror. Some people with twisted minds have used our religion to create confusion and obscure its real message, which is peace for humanity.
Sadly, not many are aware that Muslims, more than any others, have been the victims of terror. We have paid the most in blood for this monstrous perversion of our religion. Yet we are the ones who bear the profanities and inanities that appear so often in Western discourse.
History is replete with examples of how the Muslim world has been a natural ally of the US. Like all good friends we have had differences in our long relationship, but we have never lost sight of the power the US can exert by standing shoulder to shoulder with us as we fight and neutralize the barbarous terrorism that has taken many shapes and forms.
(Excerpt) Read more at arabnews.com ...

Republicans Seek to Reform Medicaid by Changing How It’s Funded

The Epoch Times ^ | May 18, 2017 | Stephen Gregory 

The success of any reform of U.S. health care will stand or fall with the provisions made for Medicaid. It has the most beneficiaries of any U.S health program, takes a sizable and increasing portion of federal and state budgets, and serves the most vulnerable among us—the indigent and the disabled.

A few numbers give an idea of the size and cost of this giant program.
Medicaid’s enrollment, at 71.6 million, is larger than the population of France and includes about 22 percent of the U.S. population.

Combined federal and state spending on Medicaid in fiscal 2016 was $574.2 billion.
(Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...

How Obama is scheming to sabotage Trump’s presidency

New York Post ^ | February 11, 2017 | Paul Sperry 

When former President Barack Obama said he was “heartened” by anti-Trump protests, he was sending a message of approval to his troops. Troops? Yes, Obama has an army of agitators — numbering more than 30,000 — who will fight his Republican successor at every turn of his historic presidency. And Obama will command them from a bunker less than two miles from the White House.

In what’s shaping up to be a highly unusual post-presidency, Obama isn’t just staying behind in Washington. He’s working behind the scenes to set up what will effectively be a shadow government to not only protect his threatened legacy, but to sabotage the incoming administration and its popular “America First” agenda.
He’s doing it through a network of leftist nonprofits led by Organizing for Action. Normally you’d expect an organization set up to support a politician and his agenda to close up shop after that candidate leaves office, but not Obama’s OFA. Rather, it’s gearing up for battle, with a growing war chest and more than 250 offices across the country.
Since Donald Trump’s election, this little-known but well-funded protesting arm has beefed up staff and ramped up recruitment of young liberal activists, declaring on its website, “We’re not backing down.” Determined to salvage Obama’s legacy, it’s drawing battle lines on immigration, ObamaCare, race relations and climate change.
Obama is intimately involved in OFA operations and even tweets from the group’s account. In fact, he gave marching orders to OFA foot soldiers following Trump’s upset victory.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...

Eternally Shifting Sands of Obama's Biography

OC Register ^ | 21 May 2017 | Mark Steyn 

It used to be a lot simpler. As E.C. Bentley deftly summarized it in 1905:
“Geography is about maps...But Biography is about chaps.”

But that was then, and now Biography is also about maps. For example, have you ever thought it would be way cooler to have been born in colonial Kenya?

Whoa, that sounds like crazy Birther talk; don’t go there! But Breitbart News did, and it turns out that the earliest recorded example of Birtherism is from the president’s own literary agent, way back in 1991, in the official bio of her exciting new author: Yes “Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...

Saturday, May 20, 2017

The 5 Biggest Things Liberals Get Wrong About Themselves

Townhall.com ^ | May 20, 2017 | John Hawkins 


If self-delusion were magic, average liberals would be David Blaine, David Copperfield and Houdini all rolled up into one. Most of what they say has no relation to what they’re doing, the policies they push rarely work and logic might as well be a strange, alien language to them. Since that’s the case, explaining all the things liberals get wrong about themselves could easily be the topic of my second book (Here’s a link to my first one), but since we only have so much space to work with in a column, here are the top five.

1) Liberals Are Better Than Everyone Else: If there’s one thing that liberals are sure of beyond all others, it’s that they are better, smarter and more capable than everyone else by virtue of being liberals. As the great Thomas Sowell has noted:
“The presumed irrationality of the public is a pattern running through many, if not most or all, of the great crusades of (liberals) in the twentieth century–regardless of the subject matter of the crusade or the field in which it arises. Whether the issue has been ‘overpopulation,’ Keynesian economics, criminal justice, or natural resource exhaustion, a key assumption has been that the public is so irrational that the superior wisdom of (liberals) must be imposed, in order to avert disaster. The (liberals) do not simply ‘happen’ to have a disdain for the public. Such disdain is an integral part of their vision, for the central feature of that vision is preemption of the decisions of others.”
No matter who you are or what you do, there are always tens of millions of liberals who believe they have a better idea of what you should be thinking, feeling and spending your money on. Of course, that sense of smug superiority coupled with the disastrous results of liberal policies would almost be comical, except for the destruction in real people’s lives that is left in the wake of liberal policies.
2) Liberals Are Victims: Wrong. Liberals are bullies. In fact, they’re the worst kind of bullies -- bullies who believe that they’re the victims. Those are the worst kind of bullies because they believe they’ve already been wronged and therefore almost anything they do in “retaliation” is justified. Of course, “being wronged” may mean someone disagreed with them, voted for a candidate they don’t like or simply didn’t want to give up more of his income for a liberal program. Liberals are the epitome of the “Stop Bullying Song” from South Park -- aggrieved bullies looking for a victim they can claim wronged someone so they can try to destroy him in the name of “tolerance.”
Bullying isn't cool. Bullying is lame.
Bullying is ugly and has a stupid name.
For a healthy world, bullying's unfit.
And I think I know what we should do to i-it.
Do do do do do to i-it.
Let's all get together and make bullying kill itself.
Bullying's an ugly thing
Let’s shove its face in the dirt and make bullying kill itself.
3) Liberals Are Rebellious: If some nerd standing in the middle of a Star Trek convention shouted, “Star Wars is inferior to Star Trek” and then wanted everyone to pat him on the back and tell him how courageous he was for doing it, people would laugh. Yet liberals surround themselves almost entirely with other liberals, get liberalism served up to them at school, watch liberalism on TV at home, hear liberal messages from their favorite celebrities and musicians, get their news from MSNBC and the Daily Show and then want all the other libs doing the same thing to laud them for their courage because they say, “I don’t like Donald Trump” or “Good for Colin Kaepernick for protesting during the national anthem!” “Look at how I’m fighting the power” by saying the same thing as the New York TimesWashington Post and Lady Gaga! As Greg Gutfeld said, “Liberalism is the one-way ticket to backslapping approval among the cool kids, which makes it about as rebellious as a divorced dad getting an earring from the local mall’s Piercing Pagoda.”
4) Liberals Are Tolerant: The LEAST TOLERANT people in America outside of maybe the God Hates F*gs wackos are liberals. Don’t believe that? Try being a conservative who’s invited to speak on a college campus, a black man who likes Donald Trump or a gay American who opposes gay marriage and see how that goes for you when you interact with liberals. Think about the fact that there are college professors, actors and reporters who have to hide their ideologies because it would hurt their careers to have their liberal colleagues know they don’t agree with everything Michael Moore has to say. The most abusive people in America when it comes to women? They’re liberal men talking to conservative women. Incidentally, the second most abusive group are liberal feminists who claim to represent all women. Liberals are habitually nasty, dishonest and vindictive toward people for no other reason than because they’re incapable of tolerating even a politely offered dissenting viewpoint.
5) Liberals Are In Favor Of Progress: Liberals are so sure that they’re in favor of progress that they call themselves “progressives.” Meanwhile, they’ve been pushing variations on the same economic agenda for 80 years even after socialism became so discredited that even the “red Chinese” started moving toward capitalism. Their ideas on free speech at college campuses? They believe in shutting down the speech of people that disagree with them, with violence if necessary, just like Mussolini. By the way, did you know Mussolini was widely acknowledged as a lefty even by other liberals until WWII kicked off? Liberal Democrats finally reached the same place on race in the 1960’s as conservative Republicans were during the Civil War, then pretended they were the good guys all along. Once you get beyond that, what do you have? A reflexive hostility toward morals and Christianity that has been around for decades and a bunch of libs who aren’t sure what gender they are trying to come up with creative new things to be offended about.

Remember When Obama Gifted Vital U.S. Intelligence to Cuban Spies?

Townhall.com ^ | May 20, 2017 | Humberto Fontova 


The deepest and most damaging penetration of the U.S. Defense Department by an enemy agent in recent history was pulled off by a spy working for the terror-sponsoring, drug-smuggling Castro regime.
The spy’s name is Ana Belen Montes, known as "Castro’s Queen Jewel" in the intelligence community. In 2002 she was convicted of the same crimes as Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and today she serves a 25-year sentence in Federal prison. Only a plea bargain spared her from sizzling in the electric chair like the Rosenbergs.

Promptly upon Montes’ conviction a Cuban spy named Gustavo Machin, who worked under diplomatic cover in Washington D.C. (and thus enjoyed “diplomatic immunity”) along with 14 of his KGB-trained Cuban colleagues, were all booted from the U.S.

As normal in these cases, the FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency were circumspect in describing the cause for Gustavo Machin’s expulsion from the U.S. But given that it came shortly after Ana Montes’ conviction and sentencing—and especially as her escape from the Rosenberg’s fate stemmed from her cooperating with prosecutors (singing)—given these circumstances it’s pretty much a slam-dunk that Machin was her accomplice in espionage. Hence his prompt expulsion.
Well, back in January shortly before Obama vacated the White House, this very Gustavo Machin was invited by the Obama team to personally participate in a U.S. security brainstorming session involving the U.S. Southern Command, which serves as our nation’s “command center on the war on drugs.”    
You see, amigos:  In one of his closing acts as president, Obama ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to “share” information with the terror-sponsoring, drug-smuggling Castro regime.  Here’s how the AP described the executive orders:
“The Obama administration and Cuba’s Interior Ministry (KGB and STASI-trained spy and secret police apparatus) have agreed to share information on international criminal activity such as terrorism, human trafficking and money laundering despite Republican objections to U.S. law-enforcement cooperation with President Raul Castro’s government.”
Here’s the official White House announcement:
“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) will support broader United States Government efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, with Intelligence Community elements working to find opportunities for engagement on areas of common interest through which we could exchange information on mutual threats with Cuban counterparts.”
I suppose there’s something to be said for “exchanging” intelligence on terrorism, drug-smuggling, etc. with the hemisphere’s top terror-sponsor and drug smuggler. “Better to have the skunk inside the tent p*ssing out,” LBJ described his partnership with J. Edgar Hoover, “than outside p*ssing in.”
“Keep your friends close” goes the famous adage. “Keep your enemies closer.”
But something tells me Obama and his people didn’t view the “exchanges” with the Castro-Family-Crime-Syndicate (habitually mislabeled as “Cuba” by the media and Obama State Dept.) like Vito Corleone viewed his exchanges with his fellow Mafiosi.  Instead Obama’s crackerjack team viewed them as Bernie Maddoff’s clients (initially) viewed their “exchanges” with the master swindler—or like Oliver Douglas viewed his “exchanges” with Mr. Haney.
The proof of such appalling U.S. bone-headedness (if not something worse) was not long in manifesting. To wit:
Obama’s “Kumbaya - with- Castro” directive came on January 2017 (and remember that it included “exchanges” of information on drug-smuggling.) Well, here’s what was discovered in April 2017:
“Panamanian authorities have intercepted over 401 kilos of cocaine in a shipment from Cuba en route to Belgium. The cocaine was found in a container camouflaged by molasses tanks.”
Note that the story (so hideously embarrassing for Obama) was broken by a European newspaper, then spread throughout Latin American newspapers. The U.S. media (the same ones hysterically blowing gaskets about Trump’s dubious “leaks”) studiously “overlooked” it.  Yes, the mainstream media carefully tippy-toed around reporting a gigantic drug-bust by a criminal organization located barely 90 miles from U.S. shores which was making daily headlines because of Obama’s “historic” partnership with it.
Here’s the scandalous story in English.
And oh!  Almost forgot! …Two years earlier terror-sponsoring Cuba was caught red-handed smuggling weapons (including missiles) to North Korea, who you’ve probably noticed has been much in the news lately.  North Korea’s newsworthiness, I’m given to understand, involves something about missiles.
Well, imagine the media feeding frenzy if a sophisticated U.S. missile suddenly went missing-- and popped up in Russian hands precisely during President Trump’s sensitive security meetings with Russian officials embracing them as trustworthy U.S. allies.
Imagine the Saturday Night Live and skits depicting President Trump as vainglorious and a pathetic wuss if he meekly asked for the return of the valuable missile --and the Russians laughed in his face.
Imagine the Jimmy Kimmel monologues ridiculing President Trump as a doofus or dangerous buffoon (if nothing worse) for insisting that—despite all of the above—the Russians were all sweetness and light and our trustworthy partners in national security.
Imagine  the media/deep-state uproar if  (after all of the above)  the president then invited the terror-sponsoring thieves of U.S. military technology to vital U.S. military brainstorming sessions and to inspect vital U.S. military installations!
In fact, everything above occurred,  but with a very faint and dainty response from the mainstream media—the same one hysterically blowing gaskets about President Trump’s (very dubious) “leak” of intel to the Russian ambassador.
I realize the above all sounds like a Twilight Zone episode, a Kafka novel or a Pink Panther sequel, so –as usual—I’ll provide thorough documentation (please follow links.)
The case of Cuba stealing U.S. missile technology precisely during Obama’s “Kumbaya with Castro”  last year was reported by your humble servant (and with thorough documentation) here.
Apparently, given the contrasting media/deep-state reactions, it’s not a scandalous security “leak” if instead of involving (an alleged) slip of the tongue by a U.S. official, the vital U.S. security information is transmitted to terror-sponsoring enemy officials between coffee and donuts during lengthy and detailed Powerpoint presentations.

Planned Parenthood Closing Facilities Because Customers are Going Elsewhere!

Townhall.com ^ | May 20, 2017 | Kristan Hawkins 


While headlines blared today that four of Iowa’s 12 Planned Parenthoods are closing due to state cuts, there’s another story about the abortion giant shutting their doors in the Rocky Mountain region for an entirely other reason: lack of customers.

Half of the Planned Parenthood facilities in New Mexico are closing plus the last facility in Wyoming, for a total of five throughout the Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains region.

And the decision was not completely financial, like the Iowa closings claim to be.

Meet Adrienne Mansanares, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains Chief Experience Officer, who unexpectedly is honest about why the abortion giant is closing these facilities.
She said that in Wyoming, the closing of the facility dealt with their patients going to other providers, including the Community Health Center of Central Wyoming.
And about the closings in New Mexico, which fall under her same organization, she said that “[F]unding is one thing that we look at, but we also look at whether our patients will receive excellent care at another provider…”

Wait, what?

Planned Parenthood is plainly admitting that their patients are going to other federally-funded health centers. It’s likely because these Federally Qualified Health Centers are in convenient locations, many of which serve low-income populations, and provide a much wider range of comprehensive healthcare than Planned Parenthood.

FQHCs outnumber Planned Parenthoods by at least 20-to-1. They served more than 22.9 million people in 2014 versus Planned Parenthood, who served 2.7 million during the same time. Based on numbers crunched by Live Action, who pored over the annual reports of Planned Parenthood, “98 percent of women in the U.S. will never visit a Planned Parenthood facility in a given year.”

Better choices for women are usually right around the corner. Alternative women’s health options are on average less than five miles away from the nearest Planned Parenthood.

At all three of the Planned Parenthood locations that are being shuttered in New Mexico, there are dozens of comprehensive federally-funded healthcare facilities within 25 miles, according to getyourcare.org.

These are the health centers that will get more taxpayer dollars if Planned Parenthood is defunded and be able to help even more women and their families receive healthcare.

But Planned Parenthood needs to be defunded first. It’s appalling they still receive over half a billion in tax dollars every year yet serve less people each year. By their own annual reports, between 2006 and 2015, the number of clients served by Planned Parenthood dropped 19% while their revenue rose by 24%. Under Cecile Richards’ leadership, cancer screenings and prevention services have been cut in half and abortions have skyrocketed from 289,750 in 2006 to over 324,000 in 2015.

Yet they continue to receive government funding because they spend millions of dollars in the political arena and are a force to be reckoned with. Just this past election cycle, Planned Parenthood had a ground operation larger than Hillary Clinton’s paid staff and pledged to spend $30 million to elect her. They also gave 99% of their donations to Democrats.

Planned Parenthood is voluntarily closing their doors because women are finding out that they have better options than the nation’s largest abortion provider. Thanks to Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains for finally admitting that we don’t really need them anymore.

Don't Bet Against Tax and Health Care Reform in 2017

Townhall.com ^ | May 20, 2017 | Larry Kudlow 


If the smart money folks on Wall Street think a special counsel to oversee the Russian probes spells defeat for business tax cuts, they're leaning well over their skis.

The Dow Jones industrial average sold off over 300 points on Wednesday, but it may have come back to its senses with a 140-point gain on Friday. And while there's never 100 percent probability in forecasting political risk, it seems the likelihood of health care reform by the summer and tax reform by year's end (or early 2018) is quite high.
Paradoxically, special counsel Robert Mueller will provide cover for President Trump, as it will take him many months to complete his investigation. The leaks are going to dry up. By law, information on the probe must be protected. So, whatever the outcome, Trump will have months without the attack headlines in which to sell his tax-cut plan.
Meanwhile, amid all the controversies, the GOP Congress knows it could get whacked in next year's midterms if it doesn't govern -- a big incentive.
And Trump still has the backing of his core base, which is at least 40 percent of the electorate. These disenchanted voters may not agree with everything he says. But they still strongly believe Trump is their best chance to drain the swamp -- to overturn the Beltway elites, to deliver border security, to improve trade deals and to cut taxes and regulations to deliver the full-fledged deeply rooted sustainable prosperity we haven't seen in 20 years.
Warts and all, Trump and his polices is still their vote. (He needs to go out there and rally these folks.)
And all this talk of impeachment based on obstruction of justice is just Democratic political pap. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who is no partisan, calls it "an awfully thin soup." Former federal prosecutor and National Review contributor Andrew McCarthy says, "the basis for claiming at this point that President Trump obstructed justice is not there." Acting FBI director Andrew McCabe told Congress there's been no interference in the FBI's investigations and no request for additional funding.
And if Comey did write a memo about obstruction of justice, he is legally obligated to report it to the highest levels of the Justice Department. Failure to do so could invoke criminal charges.
Why did he wait until he was fired to have his leakers put this out?
Yet behind all this mess, House Speaker Paul Ryan keeps telling people that Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time. He's right.
Look, the House has already passed a replacement of Obamacare. And a Senate health care working group led by top Republican leaders, including Sens. Lamar Alexander and Ted Cruz, is making progress resolving key issues between moderates and conservatives. There's no reason why the American Health Care Act can't become law by the August recess.
And that opens the door for taxes.
House Ways and Means Committee chair Kevin Brady just began expert tax hearings. After the recess, Brady will likely convene a markup session.
Rep. Peter Roskam, who chairs the congressional tax policy subcommittee, said last week, "I'm of the view that 2017 is the year." He thinks tax reform is easier than replacing Obamacare.
So, following a markup, Ways and Means can report out a bill. And because prosperity is America's No. 1 issue, it will pass the floor relatively easily. And that will put pressure on the Senate to get moving.
It's likely that a tax cut working group will again convene to hash out important details. The border-adjusted tax, or BAT, will have to go. But the very core of the tax bill is a simple three steps: a deep corporate tax-rate cut, immediate expensing for new equipment of all kinds and the repatriation of offshore cash. This is the tonic that will restore capital formation, productivity, real wages and growth.
Both Senate and House leaders have to understand how flexible reconciliation is. It can be nearly anything you want it to be. The key player is Senate President Mike Pence, who can overrule the parliamentarian.
Congressional leaders should heed the words of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has become the administration's leading spokesperson for economic growth and lower tax rates. He told the Senate Banking Committee last week, "What I have said repeatedly is that any plan we put forward we believe should be paid for with economic growth."
He is estimating a 3 percent growth rate by 2021. I suspect it will arrive faster. And the difference between growth of less than 2 percent from the Congressional Budget Office and 3 percent growth is well over $3 trillion in additional revenue. It's the mother of all pay-fors.
And lowering marginal tax rates across the board, especially on large and small businesses, will foster the mother of all prosperities -- the one for which middle-class Americans in all those red counties that voted for Trump have been yearning.

How Republican Lawmakers Can Halt the Democrat Zombie Apocalypse

Townhall.com ^ | May 20, 2017 | Joy Overbeck 


Here come the blood-lust Democrats, lunging stiff-legged after President Trump, their rags of lies flapping as they stretch their clawing hands out to wrestle him down. Beware, Republicans -- Trump’s fate is your fate. Remember when you didn’t own the House, the Senate, or the presidency? What happened is Trump happened. You may disdain his hair and his tweeting but most of you wouldn’t have been elected except for his message.
Because Trump’s agenda – job opportunities, tax reform that brings jobs back home, actual affordable health care for families, secure borders, America first not cowering and “leading from behind” –this is what the American people want. That’s why they elected him.
So do this now: grab any available microphone and tell the world over and over that Democrats, in trying to destroy Trump, are trying to crush the fervent desire of the American people for the president to help their families prosper.
Every time you help the Dems take bloody chunks out of Trump’s hide whether by your squishy comments or your silence, you are colluding in their attacks and hindering the swamp-draining Americans want. And you are defeating your own party and re-election prospects because your voters will not forgive you for deserting Trump’s promise to make America great again. If you refuse to support Trump, you are literally sabotaging your own party’s chances for keeping its majorities in the next election.
Know this about the Democrats: as we have abundantly seen, they and their poodle media will stop at nothing to turn Trump the stallion into a gelding. They will continue their chop chop chop. So anytime they demand anything – a recusal by a Trump official, a special counsel or prosecutor, a special commission or a staff member firing – you should say hell no. Anytime Democrats are celebrating these capitulations, they are celebrating another Republican scalp, another lefty win.
Know that every time they reach across the aisle it will be to hit you on the head with a brick. Anything Schumer and Pelosi are for, you must stand firmly against. Anytime Democrats are celebrating any of these capitulations, they are celebrating another Republican scalp, another lefty win.
You must view every word you say and every trip to a microphone or TV show as a potential defeat or a win for the leftist coup attempt to overturn this legitimately elected president and undermining our democracy. They are watching your every word for weakness. No longer can you say, “Well, if this allegation is true, it’s very serious.” No more, “It’s starting to look kind of like Watergate.” No more being “troubled” by the fake news pouring out of unnamed NYT operatives. Stop giving the coup-masters ammo. Just stop it.
Instead, when asked about President Trump allegedly leaking “classified information” to Russian diplomats at their recent White House meeting, say “So the intel wasn’t classified in March when the New York Times told millions that ISIS plans to use laptop bombs to bring down airplanes -- and we then banned laptops for travelers from 10 Muslim-majority nations? But if the president tells the Russians about it, suddenly that’s illegal? Would you rather President Trump NOT tell the Russians that ISIS wants to use exploding laptops to take down their planes? Next question.”
Regarding the “Comey memo” that Trump allegedly told the former FBI Director he “hoped” Comey would go easy on General Mike Flynn, say: “An anonymous phone call to the New York Times by a friend of Comey, a disgraced fired employee seeking revenge, is not proof of anything. If this happened, and Comey thought he was being pressured, why didn’t he do his duty as FBI director and tell the Department of Justice? As far as we know there is no memo. Let’s see the alleged memo. And let’s see all the memos Comey wrote about his meetings with Loretta Lynch and Barack Obama. Next question.”
In the fake scandal about whether Rod Rosenstein’s memo about Comey’s unfitness came before or after Trump’s decision to fire the then-FBI director, say: “That’s a non-issue. The president has the power to fire his FBI Director anytime for any reason, with or without the advice of anybody. Next question.”
Defeating the Democrat zombie attack also means you must put all your energy into doing your jobs and giving the American people what they want. A new healthcare bill so Americans can actually choose their own doctors while not bankrupting their families. And a big tax reform bill that puts more of their hard-earned cash in Americans’ pockets, at the same time lowering corporate taxes, bringing back their jobs from offshore to our nation.
Whether you’re purist Freedom Caucus, Dem-ish RINOS, or somewhere in between, you must overcome your differences for the good of the nation. When Republicans fight among themselves, Democrats win. Get it together or the American people will never again trust you with their futures. Believe it.
To prove your commitment to what Americans want done you must go big -- suspend all your upcoming summer vacations and stay on the job. Let the Dems frolic for photos at Memorial Day barbecues. You stay in DC and pass the big bills. The Dems will look silly and you will be serious about making America great again.
One more thing. Unmask the Obama leftovers and sneaky leaky never-Trumpers in the administration and all the government alphabet agencies who are shoveling info to the left press. Most of you senators and representatives have been roaming the halls of Congress and the White House for decades. You, better than anyone, know who the stealth Obama operatives and nefarious Trump-haters are. Expose these busy buzzing leakers to the president so he can fire them. Reverse-engineer the witch hunt. Do it now.
Become the heroes of the people that American voters crave. Be the promise-keepers they elected. If you can’t find the courage, binge-watch Clint Eastwood films in the Congressional lunch room. This may be your last chance; Republicans haven’t been totally in charge as you are now since 2007. And zombies tend to multiply. <

The Underreported Success of the Trump Presidency

American Thinker.com ^ | May 20, 2017 | David Prentice 

Something is afoot. Even the circumspect Tucker Carlson has been warning how divided and close to losing it we are. The left is full of “passionate intensity” (a euphemism), while many of us on the right are lacking conviction to fight for good.

However, there are a lot of positive moves coming from Washington, and it’s important that we highlight them, since the media won’t. We have a gifted group in power, they are doing what is necessary to allow us to hold. As conservatives, it’s important to understand what their accomplishments are, how they are helping, and do what we can in support.

The underreported:
While the Democrat/media complex tries to whip their base, and the country into a frenzy, this administration is putting good things in place. First and foremost for our culture is the restoration of law and order. That begins with giving the respect due to our law enforcement officials, which has been a hallmark of this administration. The outrageous demonization of law enforcement by the previous administration is gone. The ongoing praise of and cooperation with our police from Trump et al is not only refreshing, it’s going to have a long term positive effect. Violent demonstrators are no longer being coddled (except in Berkley), instead they are prosecuted. Eventually, they won’t even get away with being lawless thugs in Berkley.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...

The war you’ve never heard of

Vice News ^ | 18 May 2017 | Nick Turse 

Six years ago, a deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Special Operations Command gave a conservative estimate of 116 missions being carried out at any one time by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other special operations forces across the globe.

Today, according to U.S. military documents obtained by VICE News, special operators are carrying out nearly 100 missions at any given time — in Africa alone. It’s the latest sign of the military’s quiet but ever-expanding presence on the continent, one that represents the most dramatic growth in the deployment of America’s elite troops to any region of the globe.

In 2006, just 1 percent of all U.S. commandos deployed overseas were in Africa. In 2010, it was 3 percent. By 2016, that number had jumped to more than 17 percent. In fact, according to data supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command, there are now more special operations personnel devoted to Africa than anywhere except the Middle East — 1,700 people spread out across 20 countries dedicated to assisting the U.S. military’s African partners in their fight against terrorism and extremism.
“At any given time, you will find SOCAFRICA conducting approximately 96 activities in 20 countries,” Donald Bolduc, the U.S. Army general who runs the special operations command in Africa (SOCAFRICA), wrote in an October 2016 strategic planning guidance report. (The report was obtained by VICE News in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and is published in its entirety below.) VICE News reached out to SOCAFRICA and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) for clarification on these numbers; email return receipts show an AFRICOM spokesperson “read” three such requests, but the command did not offer a reply.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.vice.com ...

All fossil-fuel vehicles will vanish in 8 years! (SURE THEY WILL)

Financial Post ^ | 16 May 2017 | Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 

No more petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will be sold anywhere in the world within eight years. The entire market for land transport will switch to electrification, leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of the petroleum industry as we have known it for a century.

This is the futuristic forecast by Stanford University economist Tony Seba. His report, with the deceptively bland title Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030, has gone viral in green circles and is causing spasms of anxiety in the established industries.

Seba’s premise is that people will stop driving altogether. They will switch en masse to self-drive electric vehicles (EVs) that are ten times cheaper to run than fossil-based cars, with a near-zero marginal cost of fuel and an expected lifespan of 1 million miles.

Only nostalgics will cling to the old habit of car ownership. The rest will adapt to vehicles on demand. It will become harder to find a petrol station, spares, or anybody to fix the 2,000 moving parts that bedevil the internal combustion engine. Dealers will disappear by 2024.
Cities will ban human drivers once the data confirms how dangerous they can be behind a wheel. This will spread to suburbs, and then beyond. There will be a “mass stranding of existing vehicles”. The value of second-hard cars will plunge. You will have to pay to dispose of your old vehicle.
It is a twin “death spiral” for big oil and big autos, with ugly implications for some big companies on the London Stock Exchange unless they adapt in time.
(Excerpt) Read more at financialpost.com ...

Dark Days in May – The Deep State Coup to Overthrow Trump

US Defense Watch ^ | May 19, 2017 | Ray Starmann 

The Deep State, the mysterious cabal consisting of intelligence personnel, sundry government officials, high-ranking military officers and politicians is not something out of a Robert Ludlum novel; but most distressingly, a living, breathing, monstrously evil entity out for blood.
The Deep State, a body of traitors, to America, to the American people, to American history is determined to assassinate Donald Trump, as they did to a young President in 1963. But, this time the murder of the President won’t be done by triangulated 7.62mm fire. This time the Deep State weapons of war are not rifles and bullets, but a constant stream of disinformation and lies spread by the liberal mainstream media, Democratic politicians and worthless GOP establishment hacks.
A coup d’etat is underway and the evil machinations seemed to accelerate to light speed in the last week and a half. Every move the President makes and every word he says is twisted with a sickening Machiavellian cunning.
The following events were completely distorted by the Deep State minions who call themselves the mainstream media.
Tuesday, May 9: President Trump fires FBI Director Comey. Immediately the Deep State propaganda forces in the alt left media claim that the President is trying to stop the FBI from uncovering POTUS’ ties to Russia.
Wednesday, May 10: Trump holds a closed-door meeting with the Russian foreign minister and Moscow’s ambassador to the U.S. at the White House. The liberal mainstream media is irate that they are not invited to the meeting and claim a Kremlin-friendly news agency from Russia is present.
Monday, May 15: The Washington Post erroneously reports that Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russians in the closed-door meeting. The fake news outlet, the NY Times, ‘confirms’ the report. The White House says the Washington Post report is totally false, National Security Adviser HR McMaster holds an impromptu press conference and states, “I was there. He didn’t do it.”
Tuesday, May 16: President Trump states that he did give the Russians unclassified information concerning ISIS’ ability to manufacture laptop bombs. He also states quite correctly, that he is the highest declassification authority in the country and can declassify anything he desires, regardless of what Kate Bolduan thinks.
Meanwhile, lying mainstream media lackeys such as Joe Scarborough and his globalist co-host Mika Brzezinski claim the President put American lives at risk.
Thursday, May 18: The alternate media world led by Alex Jones publishes James Comey’s testimony from May 3rd where he clearly states that there was no attempt to obstruct justice by President Trump or any member of his administration. This contradicts Comey’s claims that he has a ‘memo’ (which no one has seen) detailing President Trump’s apparent attempts to obstruct justice concerning the General Flynn investigation.
Friday, May 19: It is announced that Vice President Mike Pence is establishing a super PAC. This lends credence to the impeachment talk on Capitol Hill. This afternoon the dishonest rag sheet, the NY Times claimed that President Trump told the Russians he fired ‘nut job’ Comey to clear the way on the Russian investigation.
This, like everything else coming out of the anus of the liberal media is a lie. The Russian investigation is continuing with or without James Comey’s corrupt keyster parked in an FBI office.
And, it goes on and on and on: the constant attacks, the leaks, the talks of impeachment, the idiotic Watergate parallels, lies about his staff, fabrications that he is insane and of course the Russia collusion fairy tale, the greatest bit of maskirovka every created, a gargantuan fairy tale concocted to soothe incompetent liberal egos and to destroy a sitting President. It’s an endless liberal filibuster to overthrow a President.
Tonight, the President is on the way to the Middle East and Europe on a nine day foreign jaunt. Just as they did, 900 years ago, when Richard the Lion Hearted was off to the fight the Crusades, traitors at home are plotting the king’s demise.
What do these Deep State people want?
They want nothing more than to control the narrative and the narrative is globalism: open borders, unvetted Islamic immigration, train wreck free trade deals that crucify the American worker and endless, unwinnable wars. They want the United States of America to become the EU and the EU is a lifeless, soulless, tyrannical super state with no regard for the rights and values of its citizens. They want nothing more than to make trillions while the rest of us are reduced to modern day serfs under the guise of Marxist ideologies like diversity and political correctness.
Globalism is death, to US national sovereignty, to the US economy, to every American and to the very future of this land.
The Deep State is death and the American people better wake up and realize that their government has been hijacked by Quisling scum.
Be in no doubt, the Deep State and their willing liberal media executioners are the enemies of every American who believes in national sovereignty, capitalism and American values. There is no going back with these people. They wish to destroy the President and our way of life to implement policies which are destructive to the nation.
This weekend the President is out of the country and the Preakness is running. It’s all starting to look like a real world version of the film, Seven Days in May.

Journalists drink too much, are bad at managing emotions, and operate at a lower level than average…

Business Insider ^ | 05/19/2017 | Lindsay Dodgson 

Journalists’ brains show a lower-than-average level of executive functioning, according to a new study, which means they have a below-average ability to regulate their emotions, suppress biases, solve complex problems, switch between tasks, and show creative and flexible thinking.
The study, led by Tara Swart, a neuroscientist and leadership coach, analyzed 40 journalists from newspapers, magazines, broadcast, and online platforms over seven months. The participants took part in tests related to their lifestyle, health, and behavior.

It was launched in association with the London Press Club, and the objective was to determine how journalists can thrive under stress.
Each subject completed a blood test, wore a heart-rate monitor for three days, kept a food and drink diary for a week, and completed a brain profile questionnaire.

The results showed that journalists’ brains were operating at a lower level than the average population, particularly because of dehydration and the tendency of journalists to self-medicate with alcohol, caffeine, and high-sugar foods.

Forty-one percent of the subjects said they drank 18 or more units of alcohol a week, which is four units above the recommended weekly allowance. Less than 5% drank the recommended amount of water. …
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...

Alan Dershowitz: Special Prosecutor Will Help Trump

newsmax.com ^ | 17 May 2017 

The appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller to oversee the agency's Russia investigation will aid President Donald Trump, Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Thursday.

"The special prosecutor is supposed to investigate crime," he explained. "Most of the things leveled at the Trump administration are not criminal acts.

"Collaborating with the Russians to get yourself elected, not a criminal act," he added.

"Terrible. But not criminal.

"The same thing is true with leaking information to the Russians."

Dershowitz added that "Mueller has no jurisdiction to explore whether he made political mistakes, did terrible things, engaged in wrongdoing – only criminal conduct."

Because his investigation would be conducted in secret, "we will never find it out," the retired professor said.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...

A Coup Attempt, Not a Constitutional Crisis

PJ Media's Spengler ^ | May 18, 2017 | David P. Goldman 

A ranking Republican statesman this week told an off-the-record gathering that a “coup” attempt was in progress against President Donald Trump, with collusion between the largely Democratic media and Trump’s numerous enemies in the Republican Party. The object of the coup, the Republican leader added, was not impeachment, but the recruitment of a critical mass of Republican senators and congressmen to the claim that Trump was “unfit” for office and to force his resignation.

It’s helpful to fan away the psychedelic fumes of allegation and innuendo and clarify just what Trump might have done wrong. Trump will not be impeached, and he will not be harried out of office. But he faces a formidable combination of media hostility—what the president today denounced as a “witch hunt”—and a divided White House staff prone to press leaks. The likely outcome will be a prolonged dirty war of words that will delay Trump’s domestic agenda and tie down his loyalists with the chores of fire-fighting.....
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...

Friday, May 19, 2017

Fox News Fires ‘The Five’ Co-Host Bob Beckel Over Racist Comment

Variety ^ | 05/19/2017 | Brian Steinberg 

Fox News Channel is parting ways – again – with Bob Beckel, the co-host of its primetime program, “The Five.”
“Bob Beckel was terminated today for making an insensitive remark to an African-American employee,” the network said in a statement.
The dismissal opens — or perhaps closes 0- another chapter in an off-and-on relationship Beckel has had with the 21st Century Fox-owned cable-news outlet over the years. Beckel, a longtime political consultant as well as a former campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale, joined Fox News in 2000, and had a years-long tenure on “The Five” when it aired in the late afternoon. Indeed, he was one of the program’s original co-hosts.
He departed in 2015 while recuperating from back surgery in a split that was seen as less an amicable. “We tried to work with Bob for months, but we couldn’t hold ‘The Five’ hostage to one man’s personal issues,” said Bill Shine, who was then the network’s executive vice president of programming, in a statement at the time. “He took tremendous advantage of our generosity, empathy and goodwill and we simply came to the end of the road with him.”
But Beckel returned to Fox News in 2017 after doing a stint at CNN, and was greeted with open arms. “Bob was missed by many fans of ‘The Five’ and we’re happy to welcome him back to the show,” said Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of Fox News Channel and its corporate parent, 21st Century Fox, in a prepared statement, in January.
Fox News’ human-resources department was made aware of a complaint about what one person familiar with the situation characterized as a “racially insensitive remark” on Tuesday evening. Executives conducted an internal investigation, this person said, and decided to part ways with Beckel Friday morning.
(Excerpt) Read more at variety.com ...

Harvard Study Reveals Huge Extent of Anti-Trump Media Bias

Heat Street ^ | 19 May 2017 | Heat Street Staff 

A major new study out of Harvard University has revealed the true extent of the mainstream media’s bias against Donald Trump.

Academics at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzed coverage from Trump’s first 100 days in office across 10 major TV and print outlets.

They found that the tone of some outlets was negative in as many as 98% of reports, significantly more hostile than the first 100 days of the three previous administrations:
See link for graphic...
The academics based their study on seven US outlets and three European ones.
In America they analyzed CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
They also took into account the BBC, the UK’s Financial Times and the German public broadcaster ARD.
Every outlet was negative more often than positive.
Only Fox News, which features some of Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters and is often given special access to the President, even came close to positivity.
(Excerpt) Read more at heatst.com ...

After Mueller, Trump Critics Worry: Maybe There’s No Scandal

The American Interest ^ | May 18, 2017 | Jason Willick 

Eli Lake is right: The DOJ’s appointment of widely-respected former prosecutor Robert Mueller to lead the special inquiry into the Trump campaign’s potential collusion with Russia is a reprieve for a Trump Administration in crisis—a reprieve that it will almost certainly squander, but a reprieve nonetheless.
How do we know? Because the responses from Trump’s most dogged critics on the Russia question betray a kind of anxiety about the Mueller appointment—an anxiety that the no-nonsense law enforcement wise man will lower the temperature in Washington without actually uncovering enough damaging material to bring down the President.
Take, for example, Josh Marshall declaring that while he has confidence in Mueller to identify and expose any criminal activities undertaken by Trump or his associates, he won’t be able to prosecute the real Trump-Russia wrongdoing: a labyrinthian “conspiracy” which may not even involve any illegal behavior.
It is critical to understand that the most important details we need to know about the Russian disruption campaign and the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with it may not be crimes. Indeed, I would say that the crimes we’re likely to discover will likely be incidental or secondary to the broader actions and activities we’re trying to uncover. Just hypothetically, what if Russia had a disruption campaign, Trump campaign officials gave winks and nods to nudge it forward but violated no laws? That’s hard to figure but by no means impossible. (Our criminal laws are not really designed for this set of facts.) The simple point is that the most important ‘bad acts’ may well not be crimes. That means not only is no one punished but far, far more important, we would never know what happened.
And here’s David Frum in the Atlantic making a similar objection:
The special counsel will investigate whether people in the Trump campaign violated any laws when they gleefully leveraged the fruits of Russian espionage to advance their campaign.
By contrast, what happened in plain sight—cheering rather than condemning a Russian attack on American democracy—will be treated as a non-issue, because it was not criminal, merely anti-democratic and disloyal.
Since the summer before the election, Trump’s critics have been suggesting or sometimes stating outright that Russia is involved with a criminal conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of Trump’s inner circle. But now that an unimpeachable bulldog prosecutor has been named to probe these very allegations, the critics seem to be trying to move the goalposts, saying that the real problem isn’t criminality, but the sleaze and outlandish behavior of the Trump campaign more generally—behavior that was already obvious to voters when they went to the polls in 2016, and will be even more obvious when they go to the polls in 2018.
Trump’s outrageous and indefensible conduct around the Russia investigation—his firing of Comey to attempt to quash the inquiry, along with the subsequent allegations that he demanded Comey’s loyalty early on and leaned on him to drop the investigation of Mike Flynn—cries out for a special counsel, and Mueller, by all accounts, is a consummate choice. Any wrongdoing related to the Trump campaign, from the President himself to bottom-feeders like Carter Page, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
But the Trump-Russia hounds now seem to be realizing the limits of the scandal they have been pursuing—yes, maybe someone like Manafort will go down for money-laundering, and yes, Trump had shady deals with Russian banks as a real estate tycoon in the 1990s. But this is simply not as big of a scandal as they would like it to be.
Mueller seems well-equipped to do what the country sorely needs right now: Determine if there was criminal collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and hold any wrongdoers accountable. He is not, however, equipped to do what Trump’s most relentless critics seem to want: Launch a wide-ranging and essentially political investigation into Donald Trump and his associates with the aim not of bringing the matter to a resolution, but of creating a steady stream of media frenzies that paralyzes an administration they loathe.

Democrats Are Colluding With The Media to Create Chaos

Washington Examiner ^ | May 18 2017 ast | by Emily Jashinsky 

Camille Paglia is much more worried about the media than about the steady string of Trump-related scandals they claim to be uncovering.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Paglia excoriated the press for its coverage of Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey and his alleged sharing of classified information with Russian officials.
Fresh off a spirited panel with Christina Hoff Sommers hosted by the Independent Women's Forum, the iconic feminist dissident, who serves as a professor of media studies at the University of the Arts, accused journalists of colluding with the Democratic Party in an effort to damage the Trump administration.
"Democrats are doing this in collusion with the media obviously, because they just want to create chaos," she said when asked to comment on the aforementioned stories. "They want to completely obliterate any sense that the Trump administration is making any progress on anything."
The popular author, whose latest book was released in March, pointed to early struggles experienced by previous presidential administrations to illustrate the media's bias against Trump. "Obama's administration for the first six months was chaos," Paglia recalled. "Bill Clinton's was chaos for six months. Nobody holds that against a new person."
"Those two guys had actually been politicians!" she continued, noting Trump's relative inexperience with government operations.
Paglia's assessment of media bias in the Trump era leaves little room for optimism. "I am appalled at the behavior of the media," she declared. "It's the collapse of journalism."
As the Examiner reported in April, Paglia, who cast her ballot for Jill Stein last November, is predicting Trump will win re-election in 2020. "I feel like the Democrats have overplayed their hand," she said at the time.
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Though the news cycle has moved through plenty of additional scandals in the past month, it appears as though Paglia's assessment of the president's prospects has not changed.
"I'm looking forward to voting Democrat again," the acclaimed philosopher explained. "But the point is I feel that the media has so utterly lost its credibility that I think people are going to vote against the media again."

BUILD THAT WALL!Why the World’s 2nd Deadliest War Means We Need Stronger Borders Now More Than Ever!

IWB ^ | Robert Carbery 

While Syria and other far off conflicts in Asia garner most of the world’s attention, there is a war underway at our very doorstep and no one is talking about it.

Mexico’s drug war claimed the lives of 23,000 people in 2016. This death toll was second only to Syria, where 50,000 died last year in its six-year long civil war. Compared to previous years, drug-related deaths in Mexico hit 17,000 in 2015 and 15,000 in 2014, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). This upward trend in casualties and the 35% year-over-year jump in casualties is cause for alarm, if anyone was sounding it.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were right behind at 17,000 and 16,000 lives lost respectively and received much more attention from the media around the world as these are both much more visible conflicts. An eye opening fact is that most of the deaths from Mexico’s drug war were from small arms fire as opposed to air strikes. What is going on in Mexico is seeping into the United States as gangs such as MS-13 and other violent criminals (many of whom are here illegally) are spreading into cities and states where you never thought they would be.
(Excerpt) Read more at investmentwatchblog.com ...

Throwing Shade: Maxine Waters Town Hall in Inglewood, CA

Townhall.com ^ | May 15, 2017 | Arthur Schaper 


Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a.k.a. “The Crazy Black Lady” has dirtied up Congress for 28 years. UGH! This noxious witch has gotten a lot of press in the last four months. She gets lots of attention because she likes to throw shade (urban slang for constantly insulting someone) at Donald Trump, Republicans, and just about anyone else you can think of.
A wrecking ball of stupidity, Waters has faced token opposition all her career. For all of her bluster, Maxine Waters has run the South LA, Hawthorne, Inglewood, and Gardena regions into the ground for nearly 3 decades. What does she have to show for it? Zero.
I have long wanted to confront Waters on her record of professional failure. Then four days ago, I got word that Waters was hosting a town hall in Inglewood. Unlike previous town halls, I took clear steps to ensure that I would be protected ahead of time. Trump supporters don’t just find themselves behind enemy lines, I have sadly found that any outcry of displeasure or disapproval means that I get escorted out. This is the fate of the First Amendment in deep blue sections of California.
Or is it? Election 2016 was a rousing success for Republicans across the country, and even in deep-blue California, Trump did better than Romney in 2012. Where? Oakland—Governor Moonbeam’s stomping ground; Compton, which has not elected a Republican to Congress since the late 1970s.
And Inglewood. Check this article from the Sacramento Bee if you do not believe me. How to explain this? Trump resonated with black voters because of his vocal opposition to illegal immigration, which is eviscerating black communities.
Before arriving at Inglewood High School, the site of the event, I saw a great poster: “Impeach Maxine Waters” at the bus stop. Waters’ head was superimposed on a picture of James Brown’s body—when he was in a police line-up wearing a bathrobe. What can I say? Bill O’Reilly was right about Waters’ hairdo! After lining up for the town hall, the heat and the hate were already turned up. Some of Waters’ most vocal supporters were calling me “Demon-possessed” and “Satanic” because I was protesting. I had signs reading “Muddy Waters” and “Dirty Waters”, and my all-time favorite “Maxine Waters, Go to Hell.” That last one was for her emphatic hatred toward the Tea Party Movement in 2011: “The Tea Party can go straight to hell!”
There’s a long list of other things that should go straight to hell: The EPA, Obamacare, the NSA snooping on law-abiding citizens—and Maxine Waters’ political career.
Before Waters showed up, I had to handle the hate from her die-hard, brainwashed supporters. One lady behind me kept claiming that she was “Eve”, that she could trace her DNA back 50,000 years. She called me a “Neanderthal”, because I have hair on my arms. Yes, Maxine Waters’ supporters are actually crazier than she is! La Raza Nativists now follow me, claiming that white people need to “go back to Europe.” They get funnier and funnier the more that they confront me. It’s time to expose these fools for what they are: overburdened liberals taught to hate everything, since they see themselves as victims who cannot break free.
The Inglewood High School Band brought in the tuck and roll like no other band I’ve seen. They ended up playing for at least an hour and a half. I wondered out loud: “Is Maxine Waters afraid of me? She couldn’t be! She’s not afraid of anybody, right?” Funny. I live-streamed as much as I could, and people all over the world were seeing how insane, abusive, and just plain vile her supporters can be. One man in an all-black suit kept threatening me: “I’m keeping an eye on you!” And I told him the same. I pointed at him repeatedly during the town hall, and he couldn’t do a thing about it.
Finally, Auntie Maxine showed up. Maddening applause filled the auditorium. I booed as loud as I could. Waters was unfashionably late, as usual. What kind of a representative is this? Fire Maxine! That’s what I say! She spoke for the first fifteen minutes about the American Health Care Act—and how Republicans were going to push people out of health care. She actually claimed that pregnancy was a “pre-existing condition.” Being pregnant is a sickness, Maxine? Seriously? Yes, she said that, along with a host of other stupid, false, and incendiary things. Are we supposed to sit back and let her lie to us? Not me. I booed, along with other Trump supporters who had joined me.
One La Raza Nativist started yelling at me, though: “Shut up, Nazi! Shut up!” The Inglewood Unified School Police told him to leave—then another officer—Martinez, Badge #232—told me to leave too. That’s the new “fairness” in Democratic districts. “Everyone, leave!”
While I waited to speak with Inglewood PD, I confronted the same crazy liberals who had been following me around in Cudahy, Huntington Park, and even Glendora. Major fail! One of the outspoken Bernie supporters who has been following me for the last year (from Cudahy) tried to batter me about Trump, Obamacare, and everything else. Then he switched, and actually listened.
At least someone was willing to talk.
For the next hour, I kept protesting Mad Maxine and her craziness, along with two other Latinos for Trump. One young Latino, an ROTC cadet at Inglewood, greeted me and shared his support for Trump. “You are the minority here!” I answered back, “I am the minority of the minority!”
Am I glad that I went? Heck yeah! Will I be confronting Dirty Waters and her corrupt career? You bet! Because I am not afraid of anybody. This is a tough game. We can’t be intimidated, we can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned, racist political hacks like Rep. Waters and her cronies can go … well, you know the rest!

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