Displaying posts published in

January 2016

POLITICS Comments turned off

Hillary’s Watergate Looms By Roger L Simon

By on January 7th, 2016

Of all the welter of predictions for 2016, by far the most dramatic seems to have been given short shrift or swept under the rug — the possible indictment of Hillary Rodham Clinton while running for the presidency. Were such an event to occur, it would dominate our culture as nothing since Watergate. Yet most of us put it in the back of our minds, thinking it could never happen and focusing on the latest back and forth with Trump.

Nevertheless, as pointed out on PJM by Debra Heine, it very much could happen. Heine cited Laura Ingraham’s Tuesday radio interview with former U. S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Joe DiGenova, some of which went as follows in verbatim transcription (you can listen to the full interview here):

DiGenova: Hillary Clinton’s going to have problems because of what’s in the emails, but also the classifications. Her biggest problem right now is the FBI. They’re not going away. They have reached a critical mass in their investigation of the Secretary and all of her senior staff. And, it’s going to come to a head, I would suggest, in the next sixty days. And, I predict Hillary will not make it to the finish line. She’s not going to be able to complete her campaign. The criminal investigation must focus on her and all the people around her. And, if Jim Comey, the FBI director, is doing his job, which I expect him to do as an honorable man, she cannot be the nominee of the Democratic Party. She’s going to have to be charged with the crime. It’s going to be a very complex matter for the Department of Justice, but they’re not going to be able to walk away from it. She and her staff have committed numerous federal crimes involving the negligent and improper handling of classified information. They are now at over 1,200 classified emails. And, that’s just for the ones we know about from the State Department. That does not include the ones that the FBI is, in fact, recovering from her hard drives. (1:08)

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Candidates Ratchet Up Focus on Foreign Policy After North Korea’s Nuclear Test Republican presidential contenders lay out their plans for dealing with Pyongyang; Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton talks up her experience as secretary of state By Colleen McCain Nelson

By on January 7th, 2016

A presidential election many expected to turn on economic issues has made a sharp turn toward foreign policy, a change accelerated by North Korea’s claim this week it had detonated a hydrogen bomb.

On the campaign trail Wednesday, national-security issues dominated, with Republican contenders criticizing what they called weakness in the Obama administration, and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton talking up her experience as the nation’s secretary of state.

North Korea’s nuclear test, which the U.S. and others believe was less powerful than a hydrogen bomb, has raised questions on the campaign trail about the White House’s current policy of “strategic patience” with the regime. It joins the Iran nuclear deal, terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., and escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, as issues testing the candidates’ grasp of global affairs.

“Threats like this are yet another reminder of what’s at stake in this election,” Mrs. Clinton said in a written statement. She condemned North Korea’s nuclear test and detailed her efforts in the Obama administration to tackle this national-security challenge.

“As secretary, I championed the United States’ pivot to the Asia Pacific—including shifting additional military assets to the theater—in part to confront threats like North Korea and to support our allies,” Mrs. Clinton said.

GOP presidential candidates said North Korea’s continued nuclear buildup was evidence that the administration’s policy, which they lay at the feet of both President Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton, had failed, strengthening their case for installing a Republican in the White House.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Obama’s gun control lies By Michael Filozof

By on January 7th, 2016

In what was surely the most sickening display of presidential demagoguery in the history of the United States, President Obama wept – wept – crocodile tears in a calculated effort to gain the support of the ignorant, the clueless, and the stupid while announcing multiple violations of the Bill of Rights yesterday.

Obama’s speech alternated between effeminate weeping, pleading, and sanctimonious, holier-than-thou indignation as he presented a litany of falsehoods, straw man arguments, and outright lies as justification for his plan to strip the American public of constitutionally enumerated rights:

The “Gun Show Loophole” Lie: There is no “gun show loophole.” Contrary to leftist mythology, criminals and terrorists don’t skirt existing laws and purchase crateloads of guns at gun shows. Probably 95% or more of the vendors at gun shows are licensed dealers, who have to abide by the same federal regulations as they do in brick-and-mortar stores. Individual sellers who make an occasional sale are exempt from dealer regulations. Has Obama ever been to an actual gun show? The problem is not that there are too many individual sellers, but too few – dealers often charge inflated prices, while the individual offering a great deal because he needs a few bucks quick is a rarity.

Obama’s real plan is to ultimately ban all private sales (including between family members) so that a paper trail exists on as many firearms as possible to facilitate government confiscation.

The “Internet Gun Sales” Lie: Criminals do not buy guns on the internet. It is literally impossible to buy guns direct on the internet and have them shipped to your house. Even James Comey, director of the FBI, was ignorant of this fact when testifying before Congress recently. Like gun shows, 95% or more of the guns advertised on the internet are advertised by licensed dealers who must comply with federal law. Any transaction between private individuals that crosses state lines must be performed by a licensed dealer in the buyer’s state. Under existing law, the internet can be used only to advertise guns, not supply them directly to a non-dealer.
The “Background Check” Lie: The Constitution does not actually use the phrase “innocent until proven guilty”; that concept is articulated by the Fifth Amendment, which says that the government shall not deprive citizens of “life, liberty, or property” without “due process of law” – meaning that the burden of proof always rests with the government before one’s rights can be suspended. Background checks on gun buyers, which have been in effect for 20 years, are a violation of the Due Process Clause because they require the individual to get clearance from the government before he exercises his Second Amendment rights. Can you imagine government requiring a background check before you vote? Before you publish a newspaper article? Before you preach a sermon? Before you hire a lawyer? Of course not. The leftist emphasis on background checks is merely a foot-in-the-door enabling the government to steadily expand the criterion by which it may preemptively suspend your rights. This is precisely the danger posed by Obama’s plan to conscript physicians into agents of the government for the purpose of entering your medical diagnoses into the background check system.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

A Chance to Save America By Paul Schnee

By on January 7th, 2016

Beneath the Treasury building in London is a large underground bunker fortified with over 9ft. of reinforced concrete holding the Cabinet War Rooms used by Winston Churchill and his Cabinet during the Blitz and throughout the duration of World War II. It is now a museum, but in its day it was the nerve center for operations against the Axis powers and the location where Churchill spent many arduous nights and from which he made many of his wartime speeches becoming the world’s symbol of resistance to Nazi tyranny.

Now framed and on prominent display is the letter written to Churchill by FDR in his own hand in January of 1941 quoting a verse from Longfellow’s poem, “The Building of the Ship”. It reads:

Dear Churchill

Wendell Willkie will give you this — He is truly helping to keep politics out over here.

I think this verse applies to you people as it does to us:

‘Sail on, Oh Ship of State!
Sail on, Oh Union strong and great.
Humanity with all its fears
With all the hope of future years
Is hanging breathless on thy fate.’

As ever yours,

Franklin D. Roosevelt

It has been seven long years since Barack Obama scrambled into the imperial box and it is impossible to read Longfellow’s lines without thinking of how they apply to America today due not only to Obama’s tragically flawed stewardship based on his devotion to the cultural Marxism of Saul ‘Red’ Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals but also due to the strong sentimental attachment to the Islam of his youth which, disastrously for the security of our republic, still exerts a domineering influence in a nostalgic chamber of his mind.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Victory Over ObamaCare Congress puts a repeal bill on the President’s desk.

By on January 7th, 2016

Congress returns to work this week, and for once those words shouldn’t trigger a panic attack. As early as Wednesday the House will vote to send a bill repealing most of ObamaCare to President Obama, and this may become a consequential moment, assuming Republicans are prepared to make an argument.

Some on the left and right are dismissing the move as pointless because Mr. Obama will veto the measure, and of course he will, but repeal has never before reached his desk. Since the GOP won the House in 2010, Senate Democrats have filibustered health-care improvements and shielded the President, and their obstruction has continued even after they were reduced to a minority.
Republicans are now using the special “reconciliation” procedure that allows a budget bill to pass with a simple majority—which can only be used once a year—to get around Harry Reid’s bone yard. Kvetchers on the right who say the Congress never does anything should be pleased, unless their griping was merely for political show.

This achievement is all the more notable for traveling through the regular channels of constitutional government, without Armageddon-style confrontations or blowing up century-old Senate rules, as some activists have demanded. The bill passed through patient, unglamorous legislative work, with House and Senate Republicans working together to make policy advances instead of degenerating into infighting and recriminations as usual.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Revolt of the Politically Incorrect Donald Trump and Ben Carson popped the valves on decades of pent-up PC pressure. By Daniel Henninger

By on January 7th, 2016

Soon we’ll all be camped in the fields of primary politics, as that great threshing machine called the American voter methodically separates the contender wheat from the candidate chaff. Let’s not go there, though, without recording 2015 as the year that political correctness finally hit the wall.

Many thought political correctness lived on in our lives now as permanently annoying background noise. In fact, it has been more like a political A-bomb, waiting for its detonator.

On Dec. 7, Donald Trump issued his call for a ban on Muslim immigration into the U.S.—“until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” It’s hard to recall a statement by a public figure that was met, instantly, with almost universal condemnation, including from most of the Republican presidential candidates.
Between that day and the end of 2015, Donald Trump’s support in the national opinion polls went up to nearly 37%, a substantial number by any measure.

Welcome to the revolt of the politically incorrect.

Forget the controversy over Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. This unique political campaign is about more than that. Donald Trump and indeed Ben Carson popped the valves on pressure that’s been building in the U.S., piece by politically correct piece, for 25 years. Since at least the early 1990s, a lot of the public has been intimidated into keeping its mouth shut and head down about subjects in the political and social life of the country that the elites stipulated as beyond discussion or dispute. Eventually, the most important social skill in America became adeptness at euphemism. It isn’t an abortion; it’s a “terminated pregnancy.”

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Big Short A Review by Peter Wallison –

By on January 7th, 2016

The arrival of The Big Short in theaters a few weeks ago has reignited interest in the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. If you believe that the crisis was caused by greed and recklessness on Wall Street then you’ll like this film. Paul Krugman, writing on the op-ed page of the New York Times, liked it immensely, apparently thinking a Hollywood version of reality was fact.

http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/wall_street_financial_district_bull_market_2020_500x293.jpg
Twenty20 License

We can all agree that the financial crisis was caused by a “mortgage meltdown” mostly among subprime and other risky mortgages. What neither this film nor the greed narrative tells us, is why there were so many of these mortgages in the financial system to begin with. The answer: Sorry Dr. Krugman, it was not Wall Street.

In June 2008, just before the crisis, more than half of all US mortgages—31 million loans—were subprime or otherwise risky. Of these, 76 percent were on the books of government agencies, primarily the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This shows, without question, that the government—a sophisticated buyer—created the demand for these deficient loans.

The remaining 24 percent of these loans were on the books of private sector entities, such as banks, investment banks, insurers, and investment funds of all kinds.

Because of their government backing, Fannie and Freddie were the dominant players in the US mortgage market, and had been for more than a quarter century. They did not make loans themselves, but acquired mortgages from banks and other lenders. These were held in their portfolios or sold off to investors with a GSE guarantee.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Former Navy SEAL to Hillary Clinton: ‘You Are An Ignorant Liar’

By on January 7th, 2016

Former U.S. Navy Seal officer Dom Raso this week slammed Hillary Clinton and commenced his campaign to educate Americans that she really is a dishonest and fraudulent politician. During his career as a special forces hero, Raso faced some of the world’s worst bad guys in his 12-year career as a Navy SEAL and he’s killed more than his share of enemies.
Several law enforcement counterterrorism operatives have told the Conservative Base’s Jim Kouri that Raso knows what he’s talking about when it comes to protecting lives and property from terrorists, rogue military forces, drug cartel members and other dangerous human beings.
Raso has begun his”truth campaign” by boldly doing what the nation’s journalists have refused to do: Calling Clinton out for her lies, such as when she told an audience how she bravely dodged enemy fire in Bosnia. “in order to make herself appear as courageous as American soldiers.”
Even when it was revealed by dozens of witnesses that Hillary once again uttered yet another one of her whopping lies, the news media treated it as his she simply forgot someone’s name. “I remember landing under sniper fire,” Clinton said. “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicle to get to our base. It was a moment of great pride for me.”
Dom Raso points out that a videotape proves Mrs. Clinton was greeted warmly with handshakes that day. She tried to blame her lie on a mistake, calling it a “misstatement.” “In my 12-year military career, I never heard an excuse like that from my leadership,” Raso told reporters. “It’s impossible to even imagine that happening.Only someone completely arrogant, ignorant and disrespectful of what happens in war could say something like that,” he concluded.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The New Nuclear Proliferation Age North Korea’s test shows the continuing failure of arms control.

By on January 7th, 2016

The temptation in most world capitals will be to denounce North Korea’s Wednesday nuclear test but do little beyond attempting to bribe dictator Kim Jong Un with more cash in return for more disarmament promises. The more realistic view is to see this as another giant step toward a dangerous new era of nuclear proliferation that the world ignores at its peril.

Pyongyang says the explosion, its fourth so far and first since 2013, was a “completely successful” test of a miniaturized hydrogen bomb. That would represent a technological leap, as H-bombs can be thousands of times stronger than the atomic weapons that North Korea tested previously. Pyongyang often lies, and the White House said Wednesday the initial U.S. analysis suggests it wasn’t an H-bomb.

But even an upgraded atomic bomb using boosted fission would give Kim a more powerful weapon than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kim is estimated to have enough uranium and plutonium production for 50 to 100 bombs by 2020.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

S.O.S. for a Declining American Navy Today’s 272-ship fleet isn’t nearly enough. The U.S. needs 350 ships to meet the rising global dangers. By Seth Cropsey

By on January 7th, 2016

Late last week China confirmed that it is building its first aircraft carrier from scratch, adding to a fleet that includes a Russian-made carrier. The news cast U.S. military policy in a particularly unsettling light: While China’s naval power expands, America has deliberately reduced its presence on the seas. The Navy—after nearly $1 trillion of Defense Department cuts, in part mandated by the 2011 budget-sequestration deal between Congress and the Obama administration—is already down to 272 ships. That means the U.S. fleet is less than half its size at the close of the Reagan administration nearly 30 years ago (and down by 13 ships since 2009).

The Navy had intended to increase the fleet to 308 ships, including 12 that will replace the nation’s aging ballistic-missile submarine deterrent. But in a mid-December memo, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told the Navy to cut the number of ships it plans to build in favor of placing more-advanced technology aboard the existing fleet.

Secretary Carter’s plan implies that the deterrent effect of a constant U.S. presence in the world is less important than the Navy’s ability to fight and win wars with the advanced weapons he favors. That assumption is mistaken. We need both the ability to be present, which demands more ships than we have, and the related power to win a war if deterrence doesn’t work. Even the Navy’s now-endangered plan for 308 new ships was far below the approximately 350 combat ships needed to achieve this aim.

Continue reading →