Displaying posts published in

2016

U.S. Strikes Rebel-Held Sites in Yemen Used in Attacks on U.S. Navy Ships Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from warship, marking new level of U.S. military involvementBy Gordon Lubold

WASHINGTON—The U.S. struck and destroyed three coastal radar sites in Yemen early Thursday in a significant military response to a series of attempted attacks against American warships in recent days, deepening America’s role in the country’s protracted civil war.

U.S. personnel aboard the destroyer Nitze launched a series of Tomahawk cruise missiles against the three separate radar sites along the Red Sea Coast, north of what is known as the Basb-el-Mandeb strait, Pentagon officials said in a statement late Wednesday. Initial assessments by the military indicate all three sites were destroyed, officials said.

The radar sites, all within Houthi-controlled territory in southern Yemen, were used during two separate attempted attacks against U.S. Navy ships, as well as in a third against a UAE-flagged swiftboat, over the last few days, according to Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook. The sites were ground radar installations that U.S. officials believe were used by rebels to track American ship movements.
“These limited self-defense strikes were conducted to protect our personnel, our ships and our freedom of navigation in this important maritime passageway,” Mr. Cook said in a statement issued late Wednesday evening. He added that the U.S. would respond to “any further threat” to American ships and commercial traffic in the area.

The strikes represent a potentially significant step for the U.S. in Yemen, where a bloody civil war has pitted Iranian-backed Houthi rebels against a Saudi-led coalition supported by the U.S. Before now, American strikes in Yemen only have targeted al Qaeda leaders. The U.S. is supporting Saudi Arabia in air operations against Houthi rebels, but hasn’t taken an active military role.

Washington has tried to strike an uncomfortable balance in the war, backing the Saudi-led air campaign but criticizing Saudi officials for excessive violence against civilians, especially after dozens were killed when strikes hit a funeral recently. In the aftermath of that strike, the U.S. said it would reconsider the scope of its support for Saudi’s campaign, which includes aerial refueling and some intelligence-sharing and training, and urged a negotiated settlement. CONTINUE AT SITE

Killing the Death Tax Would Resurrect Growth Because the tax reduces the stock of capital, it lowers the productivity of labor and reduces wages and employment. By Stephen J. Entin

The death tax is an inevitable point of disagreement in a presidential campaign. Donald Trump would eliminate it to promote growth. Hillary Clinton would raise it—up to 65%, while lowering the exemption for estates to $3.5 million—to promote equality. The outcomes would be as different as their intentions.

What’s less remarked upon is that estate taxes are always double taxation. Estates are built with savings that have already been taxed as income, or soon will be. Even contributions to tax-deferred retirement accounts will be subject to the heirs’ income taxes over time.

The superrich can afford to give away assets during their lives or hire estate planners to help minimize the tax. Their estates often wind up being taxed at a lower effective rate than those of merely affluent individuals. The main victims of the death tax are middle-income savers and small-business owners who die before transferring ownership to their children.

The estate tax is badly structured, with very high rates—up to 40% today—but a very narrow tax base. That’s why it produces so little revenue, only $19 billion last year. But because the tax has recoil effects, even this revenue is illusory.

Because the tax reduces the stock of capital, it lowers the productivity of labor and reduces wages and employment. Much of the burden of the tax is shifted to working people. Research suggests that the estate tax depresses wages and employment enough to actually lower total federal revenue over time.

So what about the plans offered by Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton? Analysts at the Tax Foundation, where I work, have run the numbers using two models: one of the estate tax, based on historical filings, and another to estimate the economic effects on capital formation, GDP, profits, wages and federal revenue from those sources.

Mr. Trump plans to eliminate the estate tax. As a partial offset, he would end step-up in basis—which currently excuses unrealized gains in an estate from capital gains tax—for estates over $10 million. Our models suggest that these changes would raise GDP by 0.7% over 10 years and create 142,000 full-time equivalent jobs. After-tax incomes for the bottom four-fifths of Americans would rise by 0.6% to 0.7%, mainly due to wage growth. For the top fifth of the population, after-tax incomes would rise between 0.9% and 1.7%.

The Treasury would lose $288 billion in estate-tax revenue over the 10-year budget window, assuming no effect on the economy, but only $46 billion after taking the rise in GDP, wages and other income into account. Revenue losses in the first six years would be almost entirely offset by gains later in the decade, with more gains thereafter. Both the public and the government would be net winners.

Anti-Catholics for Clinton Via email, campaign advisers show contempt for people of faith.

It’s no secret that progressive elites despise religion, but it’s still striking to see their contempt expressed so bluntly as in the leaked email chains that include Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The source for these documents is WikiLeaks. The Clinton campaign won’t confirm or deny their authenticity, and Mr. Podesta is implying that Russian intelligence hacked his email to help Donald Trump. Maybe so, and these hacks should be met with a forceful U.S. response. But the emails are now in the public domain, and the left celebrated WikiLeaks that damaged the U.S. effort in Afghanistan.

The emails show that in 2011 Mr. Podesta and Jennifer Palmieri, who is now a senior Clinton campaign official, received a note from their Center for American Progress colleague John Halpin. Mr. Halpin notes a media report that our News Corp. superiors, Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch and CEO Robert Thomson, raise their kids Catholic. Mr. Halpin observes that many leading conservatives are Catholic and opines that they “must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations.”

Ms. Palmieri responds, “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”

This is a window into the intolerant secular soul of the Democratic establishment and perhaps explains why it has done so little to accommodate requests for religious liberty from the Little Sisters of the Poor. Team Clinton apparently views religion merely as a justification people adopt for their views on politics and gender. Don’t Clinton campaign advisers think it’s at least possible that a person might be motivated by sincere belief?

Mr. Halpin’s response to Ms. Palmieri was: “Excellent point. They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about.”

We’ll leave Thomism to the theologians, but subsidiarity is a concept that the left would do well to consider. It is the idea that social problems are best addressed by the nearest and smallest competent authority, rather than by a faraway state. Individual acts of charity can be highly effective, but the Clinton platform sees virtue only in a centralized bureaucracy sending out welfare checks regardless of results.

Clinton advisers would also rather force the church to accept their teachings. In 2012 activist Sandy Newman emailed Mr. Podesta to say there “needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship.” As if people are forced to believe at the point of a gun. Mr. Podesta responds with an update on what he’s been doing to prepare “for a moment like this.”

The Naked Truth about Russia and Putin. An “edge of your seat” interview. see note by Janet Levy

The interview below by Frank Gaffney of Russia expert, author, filmmaker and think tank scholar, David Satter, will have you on the edge of your seat. You’ll feel like you’re listening to a great spy thriller. You won’t believe your ears on Beslan, the Moscow theater episode, the war in Chechnya, the Russian apartment bombings of the late 90’s, etc.!
The video is comprised of 5 segments of 9 minutes each (skip the ads). (If you listen to it on Stitcher and increase the time signature to 1.25x, you can hear it all (minus the commercials) in 36 minutes in your car while you’re driving to an appointment).

http://securefreedomradio.podbean.com/e/with-david-satter/

Rhodes Scholar, David Satter, was a Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times of London, a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for the Wall Street Journal, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a visiting professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Today, the accomplished author of four non-fiction books on Russia is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a fellow of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. In 2013, he was expelled from Russia by the government.

Satter’s latest book is The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship Under Yeltsin and Putin. Janet Levy,

Closing Out 2016’s ‘Summer of Terror’: Over the Past 90 Days, 20 Terror Attacks in Western Countries By Patrick Poole

On the evening July 14, citizens and tourists gathered on the promenade in Nice, France, to celebrate Bastille Day, but the night would end in horror as the celebrations turned into the largest terrorist attack during 2016’s ‘Summer of Terror.’

The Nice attack, which took place just 90 days ago, would mark the midpoint of a near-constant stream of terror attacks in the West that began with the June 12 mass shooting at The Pulse night club in Orlando by Omar Mateen.

Since the Nice attack at least 20 terror attacks in Western countries have been committed—one nearly every 100 hours.

That pace is just slightly off from how this year’s “Summer of Terror” began. Two weeks after the Nice attack I noted that the pace was nearly one every 84 hours:

ISIS inspired or directed attacks outside Syria/Iraq occurring once every 84 hours since June 8 https://t.co/0Lh5LgphhF

— Patrick Poole (@pspoole) July 26, 2016

That statistic ended up widely circulated in the media, and the attacks would continue up through this past weekend, with this year’s recently concluded summer earning its moniker.

Hillary’s Leaked Memo Accuses Saudi Arabia and Qatar of Supporting Terror Groups Clinton’s explosive memo accuses the Saudi and Qatari governments of terror support and refers to past U.S. plans to arm Syrian fighters. By Andrew C. McCarthy

As has been widely reported this week, Hillary Clinton has accused the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar of “providing financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups.” She made this explosive claim in a memorandum outlining what is portrayed as her nine-point plan to defeat the Islamic State (the jihadist network also known as “ISIL” and “ISIS”) in Iraq and Syria.

The allegation against these two regimes is far from the only bombshell in the memo, which Mrs. Clinton sent to the White House in August 2014, a year and a half after she had stepped down as secretary of state. She sent it to John Podesta, who was then a top adviser to President Obama and is now the chairman of Clinton’s presidential campaign. The memo is included in the trove of e-mails hacked from Podesta’s accounts and published by WikiLeaks in recent days.

Another passage that has thus far received little attention is this one (the italics are mine):

We should return to plans to provide the FSA [i.e., the Free Syrian Army], or some group of moderate forces, with equipment that will allow them to deal with a weakened ISIL, and stepped up operations against the Syrian regime.

There has been no small amount of controversy regarding Obama-administration plans to arm so-called rebels fighting Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria — including questions about Mrs. Clinton’s knowledge of those plans. In particular, Congress has inquired about the administration’s participation in the shipment of weapons from Libyan Islamists to the Syrian rebels, including in 2012, while Clinton was still secretary of state.

As I noted in a recent column, one major weapons shipment from Benghazi to Turkey for eventual transit to Syria occurred just days before jihadists affiliated with al-Qaeda murdered four American officials in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. One of the officials killed was J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador to Benghazi who reported directly to Clinton — both in that capacity and in his earlier capacity as Obama-administration liaison to Islamist groups the Obama administration was supporting in Libya’s civil war. Siding with Islamists against the regime of Moammar Qaddafi, which was previously touted by the State Department as a key counterterrorism ally, was a policy spearheaded by Secretary Clinton.

The September 2012 weapons shipment was coordinated by Abdelhakim Belhadj, an al-Qaeda–affiliated jihadist with whom Stevens had consulted during the uprising against Qaddafi. Belhadj, one of the Islamists empowered by the Obama-Clinton Libya policy, took control of the Libyan Military Council after Qaddafi was overthrown. The 400 tons of weapons he dispatched from Benghazi arrived in Turkey the week before Stevens was killed. The ambassador’s last meeting in Benghazi, just before the September 11 siege, was with Turkey’s consul general.

While under oath in early-2013 Senate testimony, Clinton denied any personal knowledge of weapons shipments from Benghazi to other countries.

CLINTON FOUNDATION TIES BEDEVIL HILLARY’S CAMPAIGN FROM THE NY TIMES!! AUGUST 20, 2016

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia donated more than $10 million. Through a foundation, so did the son-in-law of a former Ukrainian president whose government was widely criticized for corruption and the murder of journalists. A Lebanese-Nigerian developer with vast business interests contributed as much as $5 million.http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/politics/hillary-clinton-presidential-campaign-charity.html?_r=0

For years the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation thrived largely on the generosity of foreign donors and individuals who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the global charity. But now, as Mrs. Clinton seeks the White House, the funding of the sprawling philanthropy has become an Achilles’ heel for her campaign and, if she is victorious, potentially her administration as well.

With Mrs. Clinton facing accusations of favoritism toward Clinton Foundation donors during her time as secretary of state, former President Bill Clinton told foundation employees on Thursday that the organization would no longer accept foreign or corporate donations should Mrs. Clinton win in November.

But while the move could avoid the awkwardness of Mr. Clinton jetting around the world asking for money while his wife is president, it did not resolve a more pressing question: how her administration would handle longtime donors seeking help from the United States, or whose interests might conflict with the country’s own.

The Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars from countries that the State Department — before, during and after Mrs. Clinton’s time as secretary — criticized for their records on sex discrimination and other human-rights issues. The countries include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Brunei and Algeria.

Saudi Arabia has been a particularly generous benefactor. The kingdom gave between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation. (Donations are typically reported in broad ranges, not specific amounts.) At least $1 million more was donated by Friends of Saudi Arabia, which was co-founded by a Saudi prince.

Saudi Arabia also presents Washington with a complex diplomatic relationship full of strain. The kingdom is viewed as a bulwark to deter Iranian adventurism across the region and has been a partner in the fight against terrorism across the Persian Gulf and wider Middle East.

At the same time, though, American officials have long worried about Saudi Arabia’s suspected role in promoting a hard-line strain of Islam, which has some adherents who have been linked to violence. Saudi officials deny any links to terrorism groups, but critics point to Saudi charities that fund organizations suspected of ties to militant cells.

Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said the Clintons and the foundation had always been careful about donors. “The policies that governed the foundation’s activities during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state already went far beyond legal requirements,” he said in a statement, “and yet the foundation submitted to even more rigorous standards when Clinton declared her candidacy for president, and is pledging to go even further if she wins.”

BIG APPLE NEWS FROM EMPIRE REPORT

http://empirereportnewyork.com/
Wikileaks: Hillary Hearts Goldman Sachs…
Chris Cuomo: “Trump is going to get me arrested”…
Page Six: Billy Bush negotiating exit from Today Show…
Wikileaks: Hillary has NY Times in her pocket…
Spitzer’s squeeze Svetlana sobs in court… squeezed Spitz for $400k…
Kuomo Krony Kaloyeros Kwits… Kind of…
NYPOST: Albany Dems have horrendous record on sexual harassment…
Ed Cox: Where were Albany Dems during Lopez, Silver, Weiner?
Top lobbyists share secrets: how to get Cuomo on your side…
JCOPE is a joke: reporting outside income rarely enfoced by state ethics regulators…
Clueless GOP candidate wants to bring Kool Aid, Fried Chicken, Watermelon to Harlem…
Ross Barkan exposes: Why SEIU is supporting Trump-loving Senate GOP?
Crying at Press Conference, Broome County Exec admits using town credit card for personal expenses…
Paladino responds to petition calling for removal from school board…
Smart! lobbyist Todd How was getting paid on both sides of no-bid contracts…
Health department: 1 out of 3 New Yorkers binge drink…
Drunk Rochester judge allegedly had daughter blow on ignition interlock device…
Upstate NY teen named first male Covergirl…
Saratoga resident fight new location of homeless shelter…
Video: Bronx nerd high school fight club ** warning: graphic**…
NOW HIRING: Under De Blasio, NYC govt. grows to record level… 287,000 employees!!!
NYDailyNews: De Blasio casts New Yorkers as heartless racists…
Replacing Brooklyn DA will set off game of political musical chairs…
Trump-style Zolter fortune telling machine appears in NYC…

WikiLeaks: Emails Appear to Show Clinton Campaign Spokesman in Contact With DOJ By Debra Heine

Reince Priebus: Revelation “raises even more questions” about Bill Clinton’s tarmac meeting with Loretta Lynch.

One of the email chains from the latest WikiLeaks document dump indicates that the Hillary Clinton campaign had a contact at the Obama Department of Justice that fed them information about one of her court cases. The revelation now has Republicans wondering if the Clinton camp colluded with the DOJ on the entire email investigation.

The email chain in question reveals that the Clinton camp got a heads up in May of 2015 about one of the lawsuits seeking the production of Clinton’s emails while at the State Department.

On May 18, 2015, Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon received an email from an unnamed DOJ official saying, “Hey Brian, this was filed tonight.” Fourteen minutes later Fallon, a former spokesman for the DOJ, emailed Clinton confidante Cheryl Mills to pass along a tip: “DOJ just filed a briefing saying the gov’t proposes releasing HRC’s cache of work-related emails in January 2016,” he wrote.

The actual date was January 15 — two weeks before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Government lawyers had disclosed the date in court documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by VICE News.

Mills responded, “Get out!???”

The next day, May 19, Fallon emailed to say, “DOJ folks inform me there is a status hearing in this case this morning, so we could have a window into the judge’s thinking about this proposed production schedule as quickly as today.”

Christianity is Rattling: “Lights Out” in Germany by Giulio Meotti

The fall of German Christianity leaves an emptiness that seems likely to be filled by a more multicultural and Islamic society. Germany today houses Europe’s largest Muslim community.

Christians in Germany, Die Welt reports, will become a minority in 20 years.

The falling birth rate will remove a piece of Germany larger than the former communist East Germany. It will result in a demographic loss equivalent to the population of Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne and Frankfurt combined.

The German army just spent 428 million euros on various operations relating to migrants during the past year. It has been the costliest mission within German borders that the army of the Federal Republic of Germany has ever undertaken.

In the decades after WWII, Germans have turned into hard-core pacifists, enjoying their role on the sidelines of global conflicts. The army was then turned into a humanitarian organization.

“Contemporary historians … right now, have failed to find a single historical example of a society that became secularised and maintained its birth rate over subsequent centuries,” the former UK chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, recently argued.

“Falling fertility has coincided so closely with massive secularization that we must at least ask whether the two phenomena are related, even if not in a neat one-to-one relationship”, the scholar Philip Jenkins also said.