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April 2017

POLITICS Comments turned off

Time for John McCain to retire By J. Marsolo (Amen) see note please

By on April 11th, 2017

And he can take Lindsay Graham the undistinguished Republican Senator from South Carolina with him…..rsk

John McCain served our country in Vietnam and was subject to horrific torture as a POW.

Since then, his career as a Republican senator has been undistinguished, to be charitable. He calls himself a “maverick,” primarily because he opposes his own Republican Party. For example, he voted against the 2001 Bush tax cuts, probably because Bush beat him in the 2000 primaries.

His major legislation, McCain-Feingold, intended to restrict political contributions by corporations and others, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The Dems complain about this in every election because they do not want businesses to contribute to Republicans.

Lately, McCain seems more unhinged than usual.

First, on Sunday, April 9, he blamed the Trump administration “partially” for the chemical attack on civilians by Assad in Syria because the administration sent “mixed” signals to Assad. This is preposterous.

Second, on Sunday, April 2, he criticized House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, alleging that Nunes could not conduct an impartial investigation because he viewed and discussed intelligence reports that confirm that Trump was surveilled by the Obama administration. McCain told Martha Raddatz on ABC:

This is obviously a schism between Republican and Democrats, let alone that bizarre fashion with which all of this happened. If we’re really going to get to the bottom of these things, it’s got to be done in a bipartisan fashion. And as far as I could tell, Congressman Nunes killed that.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Swamp Diving: The EPA’s Secret Human Experiment Regime By John Dunn and Steve Milloy

By on April 11th, 2017

The authors have written numerous essays since 2010 for American Thinker on California’s Environmental Protection Agency (Cal EPA)’s and the U.S. EPA’s scientific misconduct related to air pollution human effects science, and more recently on the discovery that the U.S. EPA was sponsoring and paying for illegal and unethical experiments exposing human subjects, even children, to small particle air pollution at high levels. Small particles originate from natural and man-made sources, such as dust, smoke, and engine and industrial emissions. The U.S. EPA claims that small particles are toxic and lethal and cause cancer.

The EPA position on small particle air pollution

The issue of small particle air pollution human effects was discussed in a House of Representatives hearing in September 2011 by the U.S. EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson. In a colloquy with Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Ms. Jackson stated, “Particulate matter causes premature death. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.”

Markey asked, “How would you compare [the benefits of reducing airborne PM2.5] to the fight against cancer?”

Ms. Jackson replied, “Yeah, I was briefed not long ago. If we could reduce particulate matter to healthy levels, it would have the same impact as finding a cure for cancer in our country.”

Markey: “Can you say that sentence one more time?”

Jackson: “Yes sir. If – um – we could reduce particulate matter to levels that are healthy, we could have identical impacts to finding a cure for cancer.” (Author note: Cancer kills a half-million Americans a year – 25 percent of all deaths in the U.S. annually).

The claim stated above by Ms. Jackson is the basis for the EPA’s war on coal, fossil fuels, and internal combustion engines. All other criteria air pollutants are minimal concerns for the EPA. Surely small particles are a very toxic and lethal thing, as bad as cancer. Right?

EPA is discovered doing human experiments

The same month as Ms. Jackson’s testimony, Milloy discovered a report in Environmental Health Perspectives, a journal published online and in hard copy by the National Institutes of Health, that reported an experiment on a 57-year-old lady subjected to small particle air pollution much higher than the EPA says is safe, in a chamber at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine EPA laboratory for human research. A stunned Milloy showed the journal report to Dunn. So little had come of the decade of human experiments before that Milloy and Dunn had not known of the EPA human exposure experiments project that was at least illegal and unethical, possibly a crime against humanity. Humans are not guinea pigs.

The Nuremberg Code; the Helsinki Accords; the Belmont Report; and U.S. common law, statutes, and regulations, to include state laws and the Federal Code “Common Rule” and EPA rule 1000.17, all prohibit human experimentation that might cause harm to the subjects. Human risk can be considered only for the researchers themselves in circumstances where the research is essential and vital. The civil or criminal offense of human experimentation that risks harm to the subjects would be either exposure to harm or the fear of harm by infliction of mental distress if subjects found out that the public position of the EPA is that small particles are toxic and lethal and cause cancer. Which lie to believe? That is the twist – you can’t make these things up.

In 2011 and 2012, Milloy and Dunn wrote letters to the EPA, the NIH journal editor who published the article, the EPA inspector general, and the federal Office for Scientific Integrity. They wrote to all the physicians in Congress, all the deans of the ten domestic medical schools doing human experiments, and state medical boards in North Carolina and Michigan, all attempting to stop the human experiments.

The authors have written about the EPA project of research that exposed human beings of all ages, even children, to that same small particle air pollution to see if they could cause some harm. EPA sponsorship of these studies at ten domestic and six foreign medical schools was admitted under oath by an EPA official, Wayne Cascio, M.D., and it is unethical and illegal. Senior EPA research scientist Robert Devlin, Ph.D. admitted in a sworn affidavit that the EPA epidemiology was unreliable, the reason for human experiments.

EPA hires the National Academy of Science

The EPA, in response to a congressional inquiry and negative inspector general report, engaged and paid the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) contract subdivision, the National Research Council (NRC), to provide a whitewash investigation. The NAS National Research Council Investigative Committee was convened in secret without notice and without contacting Milloy and Dunn, the complaining parties, or the congressional committee that had demanded an inspector general report that had gone badly for the EPA.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Nikki Haley’s Role at U.N. in the Spotlight U.S. ambassador steps in to offer insight into U.S. strategy on Syria, Iran and Russia By Farnaz Fassihi

By on April 11th, 2017

UNITED NATIONS—Three months into her job as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley has emerged as a leader in articulating President Donald Trump’s foreign policy.

That role has drawn a particular spotlight in the past week. As the international community looked to Washington for a Syria strategy in the aftermath of a new chemical attack that killed scores of civilians, it was Ms. Haley who stepped in to offer insight.

On Wednesday she told the Security Council that the U.S. would be willing to act against Syria unilaterally. On Friday she warned the Council that the U.S. could take further action if necessary. On Sunday she said in a CNN interview that conversations had begun on possible actions against Iran and Russia, such as sanctions, if they don’t abandon their support of President Bashar al-Assad.

“I don’t think anything is off the table right now. You will continue to see the U.S. act when we need to act,” said Ms. Haley in the CNN interview.

Ms. Haley, the 45-year-old former governor of South Carolina who came to her job with no previous foreign policy experience, has surprised diplomats and U.N. officials since she arrived here in late January. On her first day, she pledged to take down names and overhaul the U.N. and has called herself the “new sheriff in town.”

But so far she has assumed the unlikely position of becoming a leading foreign policy face of the new administration, rather than just its attack dog at the U.N.

Diplomats and U.N. officials said that in the confusion and chaos coming from the White House over its foreign policy, they look to Ms. Haley for clarity on a wide range of policies from Syria to Iran, Israel and Russia.

Last week she announced at a press conference that the U.S. had told Israel to freeze all settlement activities to allow for negotiations, the clearest signal of Trump administration’s willingness include pressure on Israel in its foreign policy tool kit.

On Iran, Ms. Haley hasn’t given any indication that the U.S. might pull out of the nuclear deal with the country, as Mr. Trump pledged during his campaign. But she has fiercely criticized Iran’s support for U.S.-designated terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas and meddling in Syria. CONTINUE AT SITE

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Price of Obama’s Mendacity The consequences of his administration’s lies about Syria are becoming clear. Bret Stephens

By on April 11th, 2017

Last week’s cruise-missile strike against a Syrian air base in response to Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons has reopened debate about the wisdom of Barack Obama’s decision to forgo a similar strike, under similar circumstances, in 2013.

But the real issue isn’t about wisdom. It’s about honesty.

On Sept. 10, 2013, President Obama delivered a televised address in which he warned of the dangers of not acting against Assad’s use of sarin gas, which had killed some 1,400 civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta the previous month.

“If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons,” Mr. Obama said. “As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas, and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical weapons on the battlefield. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons, and use them to attack civilians.”

It was a high-minded case for action that the president immediately disavowed for the least high-minded reason: It was politically unpopular. The administration punted a vote to an unwilling Congress. It punted a fix to the all-too-willing Russians. And it spent the rest of its time in office crowing about its success.

In July 2014 Secretary of State John Kerry claimed “we got 100% of the chemical weapons out.” In May 2015 Mr. Obama boasted that “Assad gave up his chemical weapons. That’s not speculation on our part. That, in fact, has been confirmed by the organization internationally that is charged with eliminating chemical weapons.” This January, then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice said “we were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.”

Today we know all this was untrue. Or, rather, now all of us know it. Anyone paying even slight attention has known it for years.

In June 2014 U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power noted “discrepancies and omissions related to the Syrian government’s declaration of its chemical weapons program.” But that hint of unease didn’t prevent her from celebrating the removal “of the final 8% of chemical weapons materials in Syria’s declaration” of its overall stockpile. CONTINUE AT SITE

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Get Up, Stand Up All who cherish free expression, especially on campuses, must combat the growing zeal for censorship. Heather Mac Donald

By on April 11th, 2017

Where are the faculty? American college students are increasingly resorting to brute force, and sometimes criminal violence, to shut down ideas they don’t like. Yet when such travesties occur, the faculty are, with few exceptions, missing in action, though they have themselves been given the extraordinary privilege of tenure to protect their own liberty of thought and speech. It is time for them to take their heads out of the sand.

I was the target of such silencing tactics two days in a row last week, the more serious incident at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, and a less virulent one at UCLA.

The Rose Institute for State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna had invited me to meet with students and to give a talk about my book, The War on Cops, on April 6. Several calls went out on Facebook to “shut down” this “notorious white supremacist fascist Heather Mac Donald.” A Facebook post from “we, students of color at the Claremont Colleges” announced grandiosely that “as a community, we CANNOT and WILL NOT allow fascism to have a platform. We stand against all forms of oppression and we refuse to have Mac Donald speak.” A Facebook event titled “Shut Down Anti-Black Fascist Heather Mac Donald” and hosted by “Shut Down Anti-Black Fascists” encouraged students to protest the event because Mac Donald “condemns [the] Black Lives Matter movement,” “supports racist police officers,” and “supports increasing fascist ‘law and order.’” (My supposed fascism consists in trying to give voice to the thousands of law-abiding minority residents of high-crime areas who support the police and are desperate for more law-enforcement protection.)

The event organizers notified me a day before the speech that a protest was planned and that they were considering changing the venue from CMC’s Athenaeum to one with fewer glass windows and easier egress. When I arrived on campus, I was shuttled to what was in effect a safe house: a guest suite for campus visitors, with blinds drawn. I could hear the growing crowds chanting and drumming, but I could not see the auditorium that the protesters were surrounding. One female voice rose above the chants with particularly shrill hysteria. From the balcony, I saw a petite blonde female walk by, her face covered by a Palestinian head scarf and carrying an amplifier on her back for her bullhorn. A lookout was stationed about 40 yards away and students were seated on the stairway under my balcony, plotting strategy.

Since I never saw the events outside the Athenaeum, which remained the chosen venue, an excellent report from the student newspaper, the Student Life, provides details of the scene:

The protesters, most of whom wore all black, congregated outside Honnold/Mudd Library at 4 p.m. to stage the action.

“We are here to shut down the fucking fascist,” announced an organizer to a crowd of around 100 students. The protesters subsequently marched to the Ath around 4:30 while chanting. An organizer shouted “How do you spell racist?” into a megaphone; the marchers responded “C-M-C.”

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Silencing of Heather Mac Donald Lofty college statements on free speech are worthless without enforcement. By William McGurn

By on April 11th, 2017

No one who knows her could ever describe Heather Mac Donald as a victim.

Still, last Thursday night the Manhattan Institute scholar became the latest target of the latter-day Red Guards bringing chaos to so many American campuses. Ms. Mac Donald had been invited to talk about her book “The War on Cops” at Claremont McKenna College’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum. Among her arguments is that if you truly believe black lives matter, maybe you should recognize “there is no government agency more dedicated to the proposition” than the police who protect the law-abiding minority residents of high-crime neighborhoods.

You can imagine how well that goes over. At City Journal, Ms. Mac Donald offers a first-person account of that ugly evening. The day before, she says, event organizers told her they were considering changing the venue to a building with fewer glass windows to break. Such are the considerations these days on the modern American campus.

That evening Ms. Mac Donald ended up live-streaming her talk to a mostly empty auditorium as protesters outside banged on the windows and shouted. As a result, she could take only two questions before authorities deemed it prudent to hustle her out for her own security. As if out of central casting, the vice president for academic affairs and president of the college each issued mealy-mouthed statements supporting her.

With one hopeful difference.

In his note defending the university’s decision not to make arrests or force the hall open, CMC President Hiram Chodosh did say that students who blocked people from entering the Athenaeum “will be held accountable.” On Monday, a university spokeswoman, Joann Young, confirmed in an email that students found responsible face a range of sanctions including “temporary or permanent separation from the college.”

If true these are welcome words. For the main reason our colleges and universities are increasingly plagued by these illiberal disturbances is that there are seldom hard consequences for those who commit them.

At Yale, for example, when lecturer Erika Christakis sent an email declaring that students should make their own decisions about Halloween costumes—even when the costumes might be “a little bit obnoxious,” she wrote—it set off a storm of protest. Her husband, Nicholas Christakis, a master of one of Yale’s colleges, was surrounded by screaming students. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: ON PASSOVER

By on April 10th, 2017

Tonight Jewish families all over the world will retell the story of the Exodus from bondage and oppression in Egypt and the beginning of the journey to Israel-the Promised Land. There is more to the inspiring story. It was on this journey that Moses gave the Ten Commandments, revealed by God, to his people. The Decalogue, as they are known, provide the obligations for a decent life: to worship God, keep the Sabbath, honor parents, reject murder, adultery, the bearing of false witness, theft, and envy.

Most people do their best to follow these commandments. Except for the Second Commandment which invokes: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.” It has been roughly translated to mean “Thou shalt not worship false idols.”

Modern false idols do not take the shape of golden calves, but cults and liberal cant that people worship with equal fervor. The very people who deride Creationism continue to worship at the altar of man-made global warming, despite the glaring absence of scientific evidence.

They have instituted orthodox political correctness in lieu of honest debate and diversity; they have actively banned depictions of the Ten Commandments from schools, state houses and local courts. Most perverse of all, they use reference to the Commandments to justify their abandonment and slander of Israel.

In spite of this as in the ancient tale of the Haggadah when the Red Sea miraculously parted so that Moses could lead our people from Egypt, today Israel’s steel hulled Naval vessels part the sea to defend the most humane, most decent, most accomplished democracy in the Middle East.

And tonight, my ladle will part the soup to fetch the matzah balls.

Happy Passover to all….rsk

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IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Case Against Legalizing Unknown Millions of Illegal Aliens A supposed “solution” that would be catastrophic for America. April 10, 2017 Michael Cutler

By on April 10th, 2017

At least as far back as the administration of Jimmy Carter, the immigration debate has been waged by globalists who have, over time, succeeded in hijacking the language and terminology applied to immigration.

Consider that Jimmy Carter: Orignator of the Orwellian Term “Undocumented Immigrant,” understood that by removing the term “alien” from discussions about immigration he could, over time, subvert the debate by confounding the public’s understanding about the entire immigration issue.

Carter insisted that INS employees immediately stop using the term “Illegal Alien” to describe aliens who were illegally present in the United States but refer to them as being “undocumented aliens.”

Today many politicians and journalists claim that illegal aliens who run America’s borders, thereby evading the inspections process conducted at ports of entry, have entered the United States “undocumented.”

In actuality, aliens who evade the inspections process enter the United States without inspection. This creates a huge threat to national security and public safety, after all, Entry Without Inspection = Entry Without Vetting.

Additionally, aliens who enter the United States through ports of entry but then go on to violate the terms of their admission, depending on the category of visa they used to enter the United States, certainly are not making “undocumented” entries.

However, to the globalists and immigration anarchists, these facts are merely speed bumps that need to be overcome so that they can craft their false narrative.

One of America’s most cherished symbols is the Statue of Liberty that is equated with America’s rich and diverse immigrant heritage. Over time his strategy of altering the terminology succeeded in convincing huge numbers of Americans that anyone who would interfere with the flow of “immigrants” into the United States was acting against America’s culture and traditions.

The media was quick to jump on the bandwagon and identified to immigration anarchists who oppose secure borders and effective immigration law enforcement as being “Pro-Immigrant” while branding advocates for effective immigration law enforcement as “Anti-Immigrant.”

Of course if honest and accurate nomenclature was used the two sides should be referred as as “Immigration Anarchists” vs “Pro “Immigration Law Enforcement.”

However the agenda is to eradicate America’s borders which, to the globalists, are impediment to their wealth and political power.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Russian Patriot and His Country, Part I The extraordinary Vladimir Kara-Murza By Jay Nordlinger —

By on April 10th, 2017

Editor’s Note: In the current issue of National Review, we have a piece by Jay Nordlinger on Vladimir Kara-Murza, the Russian democracy leader. This week in his Impromptus, Mr. Nordlinger expands that piece.

Two years ago, in May 2015, Vladimir Kara-Murza was poisoned. He fell into a coma. The doctors told his wife, Yevgenia, that he had just a 5 percent chance of surviving. He survived.

Almost two years later — in February 2017 — Kara-Murza was again poisoned. This time, the doctors induced a coma, to help him survive. They again told Yevgenia that her husband had just a 5 percent chance. Again, he survived.

I’m sitting in a Washington, D.C., restaurant with him. I tell him that I’m always happy to see him. (We first met last year.) But today I am especially happy to see him.

Smiling, Kara-Murza says, “I’m very happy, and very grateful, to be sitting here with you.”

“No cane!” I say. When I met him last year, he was walking with a cane, and limping. He is in weakened condition today, understandably. But no cane …

The poisonings — the attacks — took place in Moscow, where Kara-Murza is the vice-chairman of Open Russia, a civil-society group. This is the group started by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian businessman who crossed Vladimir Putin, spent ten years in jail, and is now in exile.

One by one, Kara-Murza’s colleagues have been exiled, like Khodorkovsky. Or imprisoned. Or killed. Kara-Murza is determined to press on, however, believing that he has important work to do. And if people shrink from doing it, how will it get done?

He is 35 years old, born in 1981 to a distinguished family. His peculiar name — Kara-Murza — means “Black Prince.” In all likelihood, it comes from Golden Horde days, centuries back.

Vladimir was just shy of ten in August 1991. That was a pivotal month in the history of Russia. Hard-liners in the Soviet government attempted a coup against the party leader, Gorbachev. Kara-Murza will never forget it. Those few days in August are stamped on him indelibly.

Tanks were in the streets of his hometown, Moscow — just as they had been sent to Budapest in 1956, as he says. And to Prague in 1968. And to Vilnius, earlier that same year, 1991 (January).

Thousands and thousands of people poured into the streets of Moscow — armed with nothing. They were fed up. Fed up with oppressive rule. They stood in front of the tanks — their own tanks, Russian tanks, or Soviet tanks. Those tanks turned around and left.

At the end of the year — Christmas — the Soviet Union dissolved.

“No matter how powerful the forces against them,” says Kara-Murza, “when people are prepared to stand up for what they believe, they succeed.” In fact, “that’s the basis of my hope for the future of Russia.”

We talk a little about Yeltsin — Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russia in the ’90s (1991-99). He is widely remembered as an alcoholic buffoon. But he was a lot more than that, as Kara-Murza says.

“He was in power for eight years — two terms — and then he left. Compare that with what we have now.” (Putin has been entrenched since 2000: 17 years.)

“We had a real parliament, not a rubber-stamp parliament. Compare that with what we have now.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How to Craft an Effective, Politically Viable Repeal-and-Replace Bill It’s easier than you think. By Aaron Hedlund

By on April 10th, 2017

The collapse of the American Health Care Act in the House did nothing to change one fundamental reality: Republicans simply don’t have the luxury of failing when it comes to repealing and replacing Obamacare. No other campaign promise has galvanized conservative voters more over the past seven years; failure to keep it will irreparably sever trust and demoralize the grassroots as the 2018 midterms approach.

Given the united Democratic opposition, inside-the-bubble D.C. thinking has made the tug-of-war between Republican moderates and the Freedom Caucus into an impossible zero-sum game. But a viable path for free-market health-care reform still exists — if Republicans in Congress can coalesce around some key ideas, such as pursuing smart insurance deregulation that puts families back in charge, creating a targeted and robust free-market safety net, and unleashing productivity and innovation by unshackling the health-care-delivery system.

Separating Insurance from Redistribution

True insurance spreads the risk of unknown future events and sets premiums individually based on projected claims. Imagine two groups of people, Group A and Group B. Those in Group A have a 5 percent chance of experiencing a severe health episode that generates $100,000 in claims and a 95 percent chance of zero health expenses. Ignoring profit margins — which, despite the wild hyperbole, are quite small — Group A’s annual premiums should equal 5 percent of $100,000, or $5,000. The lucky 95 percent pays the $5,000 premium despite generating no actual expenses. The unlucky 5 percent faces $100,000 in claims, but insurance kicks in to cover the bill. Those in Group B, meanwhile, face a 10 percent chance of experiencing a severe health episode. In a properly functioning insurance market, their annual premiums would be twice as high as Group A’s — $10,000 — because they present twice the risk to insurers.

Unfortunately, the market created by Obamacare does not function properly because the law enacts community-rating restrictions to subsidize the higher-risk Group B at Group A’s expense. In practical terms, Obamacare forces Group A to overpay for insurance so that Group B underpays, subjecting both groups to an individual mandate as a way of preventing Group A from walking away. Essentially, the law taxes the young and healthy to subsidize the old and sick under the pretext of “consumer protection.” This de facto insurance-premium tax is worse than even a typical tax because it destabilizes insurance markets by causing a cascade of rising premiums and fleeing customers, which then forces market consolidation as many insurers follow suit and depart.

The best way to fix this problem, restoring affordability and stability to the health-care sector, is to unleash market competition by stripping away Obamacare’s insurance mandates. But while deregulating insurance markets is likely to win the support of the Freedom Caucus, moderates may worry — not without reason — that removing these “protections” will make insurance unaffordable for people with preexisting conditions, even as it dramatically lowers premiums for the vast majority of Americans. Which means that deregulation of the market can’t be the only feature of any repeal-and-replace proposal.

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