The U.S. Sent Over $3 Billion to Hezbollah’s ‘Army’

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog 

In 2006, after a Hezbollah invasion, Israel launched a military campaign against the Islamic terrorist group. After a month of fighting, the Bush administration forced a ceasefire under UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that required the disarmament of Hezbollah and its replacement by the Lebanese Army and a United Nations ‘peacekeeping’ force.

How can Hezbollah claim victory, President George W. Bush wondered, when they were “going to be replaced by a Lebanese Army and an international force?”

The answer was quite obvious. The Lebanese Army and UNIFIL didn’t replace Hezbollah, they were co-opted by it. And nearly two decades later, Hezbollah had far more firepower and attempted to launch its own version of Oct 7 until Israel neutered it with its pager operation.

And then the Biden administration negotiated another ‘ceasefire’ under which Hezbollah is supposed to be replaced by the Lebanese Army and a UN peacekeeping force. Just like Hezbollah, the LAF and UNIFIL were supposed to have done 18 years ago. But didn’t.

To disarm Hezbollah, the Lebanese Army would need permission from a cabinet that includes Hezbollah. And Hezbollah is not likely to authorize a government it controls to disarm it.

Hezbollah spokesman Mohammad Afif responded by bragging that no one would be “able to sever the connection between the army” and the terror group which is “strong and solid and will remain so.” Sizable portions of the Lebanese Armed Forces are loyal to Hezbollah including officers trained by Hezbollah or in Syria so that by funding LAF, we’re funding Hezbollah.

And the United States not only made the mistake of falling for the same failed policy again, but since 2006, Americans have provided over $3 billion to the Lebanese Armed Forces.

That money was not used to disarm or replace Hezbollah. It was not used to bring peace to the region. Even the LAF and Hezbollah campaign against ISIS in 2017 ended with a ceasefire agreement between the Sunni and Shiite Islamic terror groups while the LAF looked away.

And the United States had to fight the ISIS terrorists because the LAF and Hezbollah wouldn’t.

During the same period in which the U.S. poured over $3 billion into the LAF, Hezbollah’s arsenal rose from 15,000 rockets to over 150,000. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that Hezbollah had “dramatically improved its military since 2006” and while much of that assistance had come from Iran, it is all too likely that American military training and weapons provided to the LAF also ended up directly or indirectly benefiting Hezbollah.

Israel’s 2024 conflict with Hezbollah conclusively demonstrated that UN Resolution 1701, the LAF and UNIFIL not only did not disarm the Islamic terror group, but covered up for it. Despite that, the Biden administration turned around and forced a nearly identical agreement on Israel.

What had not worked for the last 18 years was somehow going to work this time around.

After over $3 billion which did nothing but prop up Hezbollah’s front army, the Biden administration pulled money from military aid to Israel and diverted it to the LAF, reprogramming $95 million in security assistance from Egypt and $7.5 million in security aid to Israel to the LAF.

Last year, Rep. Greg Steube introduced the PAGER Act (Preventing Armed Groups from Engaging in Radicalism) to stop “sending U.S. taxpayer dollars to Lebanon when they are complicit in empowering a terrorist organization whose primary mission is to destroy America and Israel.”

“For two years I filed an amendment to the annual State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations bill to eliminate funding to the Lebanese Armed Forces, as the money goes to Hezbollah. Republicans and Democrats continue to vote it down,” Rep. Steube complained.

The State Department has spent nearly two decades selling the myth that empowering the LAF will weaken Hezbollah, but after $3 billion in spending, Hezbollah is more powerful than ever, while American taxpayers are stuck with financing its auxiliary force in the hopes of defeating it.

Hezbollah won’t disarm, nor will the LAF disarm it or prevent it from attacking Israel, because Lebanon’s entire balance of power depends on aiming Hezbollah’s weapons at Israel.

Under the 1989 Taif agreement, all of Lebanon’s militias were supposed to disarm and cede power to the LAF. That’s the basis for UN Resolution 1701 and the latest ceasefire deal. Hezbollah’s basis for an exemption from the Taif agreement is its campaign against Israel. By waging war against Israel, Hezbollah secures its legal right to run a separate army.

If Hezbollah really stopped attacking Israel or if the Lebanese government secured the border, Hezbollah would lose its legal basis for having an army. Then either the Lebanese government would have to disarm Hezbollah or admit that the Taif agreement was a charade that turned over Lebanon to Hezbollah, and to its backers in Tehran. And Hezbollah would have to admit that the real purpose of its military is to dominate Lebanon’s Christians for the Shiites.

Everyone in Lebanon knows all of these things are true, but no one can say them out loud.

Allowing Hezbollah to control the border and attack Israel is the price for keeping the Hezbollah puppet regime in power in Beirut. It allows the various players in the government, including Hezbollah and its Christian Dhimmi puppets, to pretend that Hezbollah doesn’t rule Lebanon.

Actually disarming Hezbollah would lead to another civil war. One that without Israeli military intervention, the terrorist group would win, and that would officially turn Lebanon into another Iran, Syria or Iraq: a nation ruled by Shiite clerics and their terrorist militias. Eventually that day will come, but maintaining the illusion that Hezbollah is an anti-Israel “resistance” movement allows the other factions to delay the moment of truth for a few more years.

Regular wars with Israel are part of the price that they pay for this arrangement.

The $3 billion dollars that America squandered on the LAF, like the even larger sums wasted on arming and training the Iraqi military, didn’t counter Shiite Islamic rule, it enabled it.

Rep. Steube’s PAGER Act would cut off further funds to the LAF until the “Lebanese Armed Forces ceases coordination and support with Hezbollah” and the “Lebanese Armed Forces cease coordination and support with Iran”.

If the LAF is really a counterweight to Hezbollah, then why oppose the bill?

The only reason for opposing the PAGER Act is because the politicians know quite well that the LAF coordinates with Hezbollah, and are content to keep sending money based on the promise that if we arm the Lebanese military enough, it will one day be ready to take on Hezbollah.

That day has not come for 18 years. It will not come. Ever.

The LAF is perpetually short of money, renting out its helicopters for sightseeing tours and delaying payments to soldiers, forcing us to step in and write more checks, because it’s a corrupt organization of toy soldiers who do almost no actual fighting, and are there to shield the terrorists. Lebanon’s government is a Hezbollah puppet regime. The LAF is a puppet army.

It’s time to take away the shield, the excuses and stop sending more money to terrorists. Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. 

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When Katz’s Met the DOJ

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

 

In 1888, Katz’s Deli opened on New York City’s Lower East Side. A century after it adopted its current name, the Obama administration began investigating it and other popular restaurants.

Most people know Katz’s from a memorable scene in When Harry Met Sally, but earlier generations on the Lower East Side knew it for its ‘Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army’ campaign during WWII when the owner’s three sons were all serving on the front lines. Presidents, from FDR to JFK to Reagan, members of Congress and all sorts of politicians stopped by for a snack and to get a photo at an authentic Jewish deli for their campaigns.

But the Justice Department’s targeting of Katz’s Deli not only lasted longer than When Harry Met Sally, but it also lasted longer than WWI and WWII combined, and no amount of salami could get rid of the greedy government lawyers who made for a much less romantic couple than Bill Crystal and Meg Ryan, and offered a much less happy ending than the classic movie.

While China, Iran and Russia hacked us, cartel members crossed the border, and terrorists carried out attacks, the Justice Department single-mindedly dedicated itself to the much more vital task of conducting inspections of Katz’s Deli bathrooms in 2011, 2018, 2020 and 2024.

Katz’s Deli is only 18 years younger than the United States Justice Department, but its claim to fame is serving pastrami sandwiches while the federal government’s skill is destroying all that it touches. The old school deli has hosted plenty of episodes of Law and Order, but under Obama, the law showed up not to have a sandwich in between takes, but to drag the deli into court.

And finally extracted its pound of fresh hand-cut meat from the neighborhood’s last survivor.

After 13 years, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which had also taken the lead in spurious investigations of Trump, celebrated New Year’s Eve with a settlement and a $20,000 penalty because the iconic deli, which has been around in one form or another for 136 years, had not sufficiently adapted itself to the 2010 version of ADA disability regulations

No disabled people had actually complained about Katz’s. While some eateries, especially on the other side of the country in California, have been plagued by serial ADA litigants, the only ones to object to Katz’s entrance, tables and bathroom were Justice Department lawyers.

And being a government toilet lawyer is only a moral disability, not an actual physical disability.

Katz’s real problem was that it had been listed as a recommended restaurant by the 2011 Zagat Guide, and some bright suit at the Southern District of New York decided to use it as a guide for finding restaurants for the government to sue. This grand project, announced as the Manhattan Restaurants ADA Compliance Initiative, had DOJ employees going to restaurants at taxpayer expense and then, instead of leaving a tip, suing the restaurant for non-compliance.

The targets were multicultural and iconic, including Carmine’s Italian restaurants in the Theater District, Rosa Mexicano, and Katz’s. Rosa was shaken down by the DOJ’s best for $30,000, Carmine’s for ten big ones and now Katz’s for $20,000. The DOJ’s boastful press release notes that, “a handful of restaurants closed before the accessibility review could be completed.”

That $60,000 would have been a fraction of the cost of the destructive project to taxpayers. The price of 13 years of federal litigation would likely be in the hundreds of thousands or millions.

And you can buy a lot of turkey sandwiches and matzo ball soup for that kind of bread.

But, as a certain New York Times journalist opined about big government in the USSR, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.” And you can’t have big government in the U.S. without closing a bunch of restaurants and dragging the rest through endless litigation.

The Americans With Disabilities Act, one of the worst legacies of the first Bush administration, allows the DOJ to go after restaurants “even if no one has complained about or has been injured” which turned the ADA into the Evil Power-Hungry Lawyers With No Disabilities Act.

The restaurants first realized they were targeted when the government sent them a 17-page ‘survey’. The DOJ “inspected” some locations in the style of old Mafia goons and crooked cops.

Those that did not go along were quickly sued by the Justice Department.

The Southern District of New York’s project to destroy restaurants was associated with the era of Preet Bharara, one of the worst ambulance chasers and worst men to ever occupy a role as a federal prosecutor, whose accomplishments included setting off an international crisis with India by arresting one of its diplomats, investigating internet comments on a conservative site and indicting politicians for bragging rights in cases that would later be thrown out.

When Bharara was fired by the Trump administration, it cleaned some of the stench out of the SDNY office, and put an end to Bharara’s ambitions to clamber to public office on a trail of bodies, but the evil that federal prosecutors do lives on after them, and even with Bharara consigned to podcasting and media appearances, the DOJ’s war on a deli dragged on.

Katz’s Deli had survived two world wars and the gentrification that eliminated most other old family businesses across that stretch of Houston Street leaving behind brick, glass and steel condos where studio apartments cost millions. Katz’s also survived a surge in meat prices, the pandemic and the neighborhood deli has now endured a record 13-year federal investigation.

Not for mob ties or racketeering, but for the size of its old-fashioned doors, tables and toilets.

Katz’s is one of the last survivors of generations of Jewish delis and Yiddish theaters at nearby Second Avenue. But those delis, like the more locally famous 2nd Ave Deli, had to battle crime, blight and an influx of housing projects in the sixties and seventies: Katz’s had to fight the DOJ.

According to the DOJ, Katz’s old school double doors are not an “accessible” entrance. In reality the double doors are wide, inside is a gentle slope leading upward past a golden rail to where the counters are, and it’s hard to imagine anyone having trouble making it inside. Everything looks much the way that it would have in the 1950s and hasn’t changed much since those days.

But according to the DOJ, the distance between sidewalk and the entrance is half an inch too much and that half an inch makes all the difference. Worse still, the opening width of the doors is 29.5 inches, which falls short of the 32 inch requirement by a whole two and a half inches.

The same year that the federal authorities found Katz’s wanting by half an inch, the federal budget deficit exceeded $1.3 trillion. If you are half an inch short of federal requirements, you have a major problem, but if the feds spend $1.3 trillion in money they don’t have, that’s fine.

A half inch for us is a major crime, a trillion too much for the feds is a rounding error.

Speaking of money, the DOJ complains that “Katz’s Delicatessen utilizes an uncommon method of payment at the restaurant; when patrons enter, they are handed a blank ticket, on which restaurant staff list the prices of the items ordered. Patrons pay for their meal as listed on the ticket, before exiting through a turnstile, which a patron must pass through to exit the building.”

The method, like the deli, is uncommon today, and is part of the nostalgia of the eatery. The nostalgia comes from inhabiting a world in which the federal government’s inspectors could not randomly show up anywhere on an unconstitutional authority dreamed up by a Kafka novel.

The Justice Department also took issue with the tables which supposedly have “insufficient dining surfaces for persons with disabilities”. The tables, like everything else, look much the same that they did 80 years ago and at the delis of generations past. They can be pulled in and out. There are chairs next to them. And the lines of people crowding outside like it that way.

During the pandemic, Katz’s Deli had to introduce outdoor dining for the first time in 130 years, leaving the interior a strange ghostly assortment of empty tables with no one sitting at them.

The DOJ also poked around the bathrooms and complained that the hand dryers protrude 2 inches too far, the side grab bar is 1.5 inches too short, and, in a masterpiece of legal legerdemain, “the mirror in both toilet rooms is 45.5 inches above the floor, exceeding the maximum height requirement” in violation of the ADA’s 2010 bathroom mirror measuring code standards as determined by the DOJ’s top toilet measuring experts.

American cities, including New York City, may be overrun by criminals and illegal aliens who burn people alive on subway trains, but at least the bathroom mirrors will be at the right height.

Apart from the $20,000 fine, Katz’s will now be obligated to make all sorts of changes, including the old-fashioned ticket payment system that the DOJ’s lawyers objected to, and that will irreversibly alter the look and feel of one of the last remaining Jewish delis in the area.

That will be one more accomplishment of Barack Obama and the Justice Department.

The consent decree also allows the Justice Department to return at any time to inspect the deli. So if you’re ever at Katz’s and see people in suits and tape measures crawling around on the floor and inspecting the toilets, you know that they’re hard at work for the government.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left tells the untold story of the Left's 200-Year War against America And readers love it.

P&D Geopolitical Edition

By Rich Kozlovich

On February 12, 2023 Jeff Crouere published this piece in Canada Free Press, China: Our Teflon Enemy, saying:

The communist dictators of China are brutal authoritarians who have been repressing the basic human rights of their own people for decades. In China, citizens do not have an independent media or the freedom to speak, assemble, petition their government, or practice their religious faith. 

All of which are violations of the UN Charter.  He goes on to discuss how China viciously crushed the freedom movement in Hong Kong.  The human rights abuses against 12 million Muslims, even the children aren't safe.  The brutality of the Tienanmen Square stand off with thousand arrested and murdered. 

Sadly, China did not have to pay much of a penalty for this mass killing of peaceful demonstrators. President George H. W. Bush criticized the barbarous behavior, suspended some diplomatic exchanges, and curtailed military sales. While some minor economic sanctions were imposed, nothing significant was done to hinder the progression of U.S.-China relations.

They did nothing to stop the spying from China, the did so little to punish China for their crimes against humanity, it amounted to nothing.  The big show made by America's leaders was just that, a big show, because the economic business continued as usual.  They sold out the nation in favor of greedy and corrupt multinational corporations, and that's been made obvious by the actions and words of the leaders of the World Economic Forum at Davos this year. 

By the Clinton administration, the Chinese had ramped up massive espionage in our country. In 1995, a classified document from the Chinese government was given to the Clinton administration. It showed that the Chinese had stolen “information on the W-88 and half a dozen other U.S. nuclear warheads.” In 1999, the Congress released the “Cox Report” which determined that China had been “stealing” secrets at U.S. nuclear laboratories for “at least the past several decades.”

Communism and fascism are two side of the same coin, socialism.  For decades we've seen the corrupt cowards at the UN condemn Israel for having the "audacity" to defend itself against the most evil movement to ever to exist, Islam.  Socialism comes in second only because it hasn't been in existence as long.  Yet this evil movement and the inhuman actions by it's adherents such as Cuba, China, are Russia are not only ignored, they've actually had seats on the UN Human Rights Council.

Why are they ever admitted?  Why are they allowed to continue to be members?  The world knows China is right now guilty of perpetrating crimes against humanity.  The world knows Russia violated the security of Ukraine launching an undeclared and unprovoked war against that nation.  All violations of the UN Charter.  So, why are Russia and China on the Security Council?  Because The UN is the most corrupt and incompetent organization on the planet, and everyone knows it, so that brings me to the real question that needs answering.

If all that I've said is true, and it is!  And if every leader in the world knows it, and they do, why has the United States, the nation that pays most of the bills, chosen to still a part of the UN?    

Why Did George W. Betray Team GOP?

June 12, 2021 By Jack Cashill

"In 2020 I boldly declared that Trump was the only thing standing between our country, the American people, and socialism.  I turned out to be correct," said George P. Bush in announcing his candidacy for Texas attorney general.

Nearly 75 million Americans agreed, but his uncle, George W. Bush, was not among them.  It is likely that if George W. had said what George P. did, the Democrats could not have "harvested" enough votes to put their man over the top.  But he didn't.  The result, as George P. pointed out, "was over 30 trillion dollars in total spending and 6 trillion in next year's annual budget."  And that is just the fiscal damage.

In the year 2000, some 50 million people elected George W. Bush president.  Despite his failings, almost all hung with him and re-elected him in 2004.  They understood that politics is a team sport.  They may not have loved their captain, but they understood he was better for the country than the other guy.   The sports enthusiast Bush is, one would think he'd get the concept of teamwork.

He did not.  At least, he did not seem to.  In his bestselling campaign book, Battle for the Soul, Edward-Isaac Dovere gives us a glimpse into what Bush was doing and saying to sabotage Trump and betray the millions of Americans who had backed both men during their presidencies.

"The two presidents hadn't talked much in the months since Obama left office," writes Dovere of Bush and Barack Obama, "though their staffs, along with Clinton's and George H.W. Bush's, were on email chains that featured rapid-fire Trump mocking and consoling one another over the state of the republic."  As someone who voted for both Bushes, reading this made me cringe..................To Read More....

As rabid Dems run rampant, George Bush decides that now's the time to attack the Republican Party

By Monica Showalter

George Bush has quite the gift for timing. Just as Democrats whip up riots, threaten juries, plot to pack the Supreme Court, beaver away to end the filibuster, force Critical Race Theory down schoolchildren's throats, open the border to a cartel profit bonanza with untold migrant misery, and spend up a storm, out he comes, loudly criticizing his own party. mAccording to Politico:

Former President George W. Bush described the modern-day GOP as "isolationist, protectionist, and to a certain extent, nativist" in an interview Tuesday that was packed with implicit criticism of the most recent Republican president.

"It's not exactly my vision" for the party, Bush told NBC's "Today" show in a rare live TV appearance. "But, you know, I'm just an old guy they put out to pasture." He also threw in this:

As for the Jan. 6 insurrection perpetrated by supporters of former President Donald Trump, "it did make me sick. I felt ill. And I just couldn't believe it," Bush said.

"What's really troubling is how much misinformation there is and the capacity of people to spread all kinds of untruth," he added. "And I don't know what we're going to do about that."

Well, leftists do.  They're censoring conservative thinking of all stripes on social media and creating a cancel culture that makes any American with a viewpoint different from the wokesters into pariahs, silencing them, keeping them out of schools and jobs, cutting off their access to e-commerce, expelling them from retail contracts, tearing down statues, rewriting history to their leftist specifications, imitating Mao Zedong on brainwashing and re-education, and doing everything possible to make the idea of free speech and open debate a sorry joke. 

Bush?  He just likes the result, even if he can't quite bring himself to demonstrate the kind of brazen "courage" the leftists have to say so openly.  Any question as to why people despise him?.......To Read More...

How Can You Be Reluctant and Unhesitating?

By Rich Kozlovich

Today I posted a piece by Daniel Pipes entitled, A Reluctant but Unhesitating Vote for Donald Trump.  There's much in this piece that I like and completely agree with.  There's much with which I disagree.

I find the author to be a bit self serving, being afraid to be the rock in the current with those with whom he fraternizes.  A quality if find is unfailingly common among talking heads and writers involved in social issues and geopolitics.  I wonder if they ever read history books?

The article's title is, in my opinion, the give away.  How can you be reluctant and unhesitating? Reluctant but willing possibly, or even reluctant but resolved maybe, but you can't be reluctant and unhesitating.  Look up the definitions, the words are contradictions in concept.

I also wonder if these writers ever read dictionaries?

While he praises Trump a great deal, which is another reason I'm posting this.  Other than Trump's personal character almost everything he complains about Trump is a demonstration of what's wrong with the NeverTrumper talking heads.  He makes an important point about the debt load, but at this point the need to fix the overspending and debt can't be addressed as long as the Democrats hold the House, and this writer has to know that.

As for loyalty.  That's a canard.  It's the hired help that has to be loyal to the President or resign.  Those who were fired were either not loyal, or failures.  And they wouldn't resign.  What's a leader supposed to do when the hired help, who are supposed to salute and say "Yes Sir", refuse to follow his instruction and bolt off on their own?  If you're the boss, and you're a "real" leader, you fire them.

This isn't a private company Trump's running.  It's a nation filled with seriously vile people attempting to destroy the American identity, the American cultural, the American economy and destroy the Constitution, all in order to impose a socialist state on America.  He can't afford disloyal failures surrounding him. 

So, a real leader fires them, and that includes Sessions.  Much has been made of Trump firing Sessions, as he was the first Senator to support Trump, which at that time was gutsy. But that gutsiness was an illusion.  He was clearly over his head and drowning, and taking Trump down with him.  Trump needed a blood and guts Attorney General but ended up with a no guts, no glory failure! I would have fired him earlier.

The President is "the" executive, not the staff, he determines policy, not them.  This is especially true since in Trump's case he came to the White House with absolutely no support from the Republican party, which is a demonstration of just how screwed up they are, including George Bush.

As Monica Showalter notes in her piece, Watch for it: Strange new respect for George Bush as Bush minions form PAC to boost Joe Biden, saying:

The embittered camp of former President George Bush, a man who never defended himself against the left's demonization of him while he was president, has formed a super-PAC to support Joe Biden.

Former officials from the George W. Bush administration have formed a super PAC to support former Vice President Joe Biden’s White House campaign. The super PAC, dubbed 43 Alumni For Biden, referring to the 43rd president, was formed Monday, according to a Tuesday filing with the Federal Election Commission. Karen Kirksey, a former Treasury Department official from the Bush administration, is listed as the group’s treasurer and custodian of records.

Bush is also shooting his mouth off about "America's Failures".  Once again, this was a man "who never defended himself against the left's demonization of him while he was president", and he kept his mouth shut when attacked even after he was no longer President.  Well, two of those failures was the election of his dad and him, but now since that's been fixed, and it wasn't repeated by electing his brother.  As for now - George - go back to sleep!

Then we have idiots like Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, who has declared "Trump Is the 1st President in My Lifetime Who Does Not Try to Unite the American People."  Really?  What does that mean?  What if the opposition wanted to impose a dictatorship?  How exactly would Mattis find a united front with them?  Oh, wait, I know, I know.  He would give up and surrender.

Was he asleep all during the Obama years where Obama laid the ground work for the outrages going on right now?  Isn't this Obama's Army, because for eight years he continually undermined national cohesiveness with race baiting and the victimization of different groups?  All blaming "white privilege".  Or perhaps Mattis is just too stupid to know what's going on around him?

Either way,  I would have fired him too, only I would have fired him much earlier also.  Here's an update on this ridiculous and petty little man, The embarrassing nonsense of General Mattis. Ignorant, self-serving or just plain stupid? I go for stupid!

Trump has had to find his own replacements, and that required a lot of hiring and firing until the right people were in place. People who were there to serve the President.  In fact, for some time there were, and still may be, Obama appointees in positions of authority because of that lack of support.

Solution? Fire anyone who's in opposition to the boss.   Trump is the boss.  Get over it.  They need to do as their told, quit or get fired.  Those are the options.

It's clear, by this author's comments about trade, he doesn't grasp that the Bretton Woods Era is over, and it takes a leader like Trump to get it done.  As for his character, the difference between Trump and so many of these others, his life has been an open book.  Obama, Biden, the Clintons and a host of others have led two lives, and one of them, filled with corruption.  Corruption they're desperately are trying to hide, including Obama.

Not all "real" leaders have the sterling character of Ronald Reagan.  Get over it.
 
Since I disagree with so much of what he's saying, why did I post this piece?  Because he represents what I believe is a large segment of the population that has become so disenchanted and frightened by the opposition they'll either not vote, or vote for Trump.  In that group I include women, blacks, Asians, Catholics, Hispanics, and believe it or not - gays.  All of whom have consistently voted for Democrats in very large numbers.

The alternative?  Antifa and a dystopian socialist state.

Hoping Donald Trump doesn't make the same mistake George Bush, Sr. did

August 15, 2019 By William Marbury

In late 1990, the Democrats, who had majorities in both houses of Congress, maneuvered President George H.W. Bush into signing a budget reconciliation act that raised income and other taxes. The president thereby broke his repeated pledge not to raise taxes. Many believe that this betrayal of his promises played a large role in his failure to win re-election in 1992.

Now the Democrats, without a majority in the Senate, but with an overwhelming advantage in the fake news media, are setting a similar trap for President Trump. They are trying to maneuver him into signing some version of a so-called "Red Flag" law that would authorize the government to seize firearms of American citizens. If the president takes the bait, he will break faith with his supporters, potentially setting up a replay of President Bush's 1992 reelection loss.

Aside from the howling, yowling, and caterwauling of the Democrats and their fake news claque, nothing has changed about so-called "Red Flag" laws. They are still unconstitutional. The president, and the citizenry, would be mistaken to allow such a law onto the books in the expectation that the courts will invalidate it. The courts are unreliable as guardians of the Constitution. It is equally the duty of the people, the Congress, and the Executive to uphold the Constitution, regardless whether the Judiciary is derelict in its duty........To Read More.....

George H.W. Bush: Good Man, Bad President

December 11, 2018 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

 

I’m not a fan of President Bush. The first one or the second one.

Both adopted policies that, on net, reduced economic liberty.

Today, let’s focus on the recently deceased George H.W. Bush (a.k.a., Bush 41). By all accounts, he was a very good man, but that doesn’t mean he was a very good president. Or even a mildly good one.

Steve Moore’s column in the Washington Times is a damning indictment of his infamous read-my-lips tax betrayal.

Liberals love George H.W. Bush for the very tax increase betrayal that destroyed his presidency. …This was not just the political blunder of the half-century, it was a fiscal policy catastrophe. …What the history books are writing is that Mr. Bush showed political “courage” in breaking his “Read my lips: No new taxes” pledge, and he was thrown out of office for doing the right thing. Wrong. The quick story is that the Reagan expansion — in no small part due to the reduction of the highest tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent — was shrinking deficit spending dramatically by the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The budget deficit had fallen in half down to 2.9 percent of GDP by 1988. It was headed to below 2 percent if Mr. Bush simply had did nothing. …the 1990 budget deal became a license for Democrats to spend and spend. …Government expenditures accelerated at a faster pace than at any time in 30 years. In two years time, the domestic budget grew by almost 20 percent above inflation. …The tax increases either caused the recession or exacerbated it — ending the Reagan expansion. The economy lost 100,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rose and the unemployment rate rose from 5.5 percent to 7.4 percent. Real disposable income fell from 1990 to the eve of the 1992 election. If this tax hike was a success, so was the Hindenburg.

There’s a lot of good analysis in Steve’s column.

But I want to emphasize the part about the budget deficit being on a downward trajectory when Reagan left the White House. That’s absolutely accurate, as confirmed by both OMB and CBO projections.

All Bush needed to do was maintain the Gipper’s pro-market policies.

Unfortunately, he decided that “kinder and gentler” meant putting Washington first and giving politicians and bureaucrats more power over the economy.
And not just on fiscal policy.

Jim Bovard points out in USA Today that Bush 41 also had some very unseemly bouts of protectionism.

Bush was the most protectionist president since Herbert Hoover. Like Trump, he spoke of the need for level playing fields and fair trade. But Bush-style fairness gave federal bureaucrats practically endless vetoes over Americans’ freedom to choose foreign goods. Bush’s Commerce Department ravaged importers with one bureaucratic scam after another, using the dumping law to convict 97 percent of imports investigated, claiming that their prices were unfairly low to American producers (not consumers). Bush also ordered the U.S. International Trade Commission to investigate after ice cream imports threatened to exceed one percent of the U.S. market. And he perpetuated import quotas on steel and machine tools. …he slapped new textile import quotas on Nigeria, Indonesia, Egypt, the Philippines, Burma (now Myanmar), Costa Rica, Panama, Pakistan and many other nations. Mexico was allowed to sell Americans only 35,292 bras in 1989 — part of a byzantine regime that also restricted imports of tampons, typing ribbons, tarps, twine, table linen, tapestries, ties and thousands of other products.

To be fair, George H.W. Bush played a key role in moving forward NAFTA and the WTO/GATT, so his record on trade is mixed rather than bad.

Let’s return to the tax issue. Alan Reynolds explains that the Bush 41 tax hike was a painful example of the Laffer Curve in action.

 

The late President G.H.W. Bush famously reneged on his “no new taxes” pledge… The new law was intended to raise more revenue from high-income households and unincorporated businesses.  It was supposed to raise revenue partly by raising the top tax rate from 28% to 31% but more importantly by phasing-out deductions and personal exemptions… Treasury estimates expected revenues after the 1990 budget deal to be higher by a half-percent of GDP.  What happened instead is that revenues fell from 17.8% of GDP in 1989 to 17.3% in 1991, and then to 17% in 1992 and 1993.  Instead of rising from 17.8% of GDP to 18.3% as initial estimates assumed, revenues fell to 17%. …A recession began in October 1990, just as the intended tax increase was being enacted.  To blame the weak revenues of 1991-93 entirely on that brief recession begs the obvious question: To what extent was a recession that began with a tax increase caused or at least worsened by that tax increase?  …When discussing tax increases (or tax cuts), journalists and economists must take care to distinguish between intended effects on revenue and actual effects.

We’ll never know, of course, how the 1990 tax increase impacted the economy. As a general rule, I think monetary policy is the first place to look when assigning blame for downturns.

But there’s no question that the tax increase wasn’t helpful.

That being said, my biggest complaint about Bush 41 was not his tax increase. It was all the new spending.

Not just new spending in general. What’s especially galling is that he allowed domestic spending to skyrocket. Almost twice as fast as it increased under Obama and more than twice the rate of increase we endured under Clinton and Carter.

The opposite of Reaganomics, to put it mildly.

The Only Good Republican Is A Dead Republican

Kurt Schlichter Dec 03, 2018

The death of President George H. W. Bush provided liberals and their Fredocon houseboys yet another opportunity to lament the fact that all Republicans aren’t dead. Their feigned amnesia about what libs were saying while Bush 41 was still in the arena, and their latest hack attempt to tsk tsk tsk tsk about how the Bad Orange Man isn’t like [Insert Name of Dead Republican Here] serves to justify the prophylactic cynicism that we Normals should strive to cultivate.

President Bush was an imperfect man and a frustration to hardcore conservatives like me, but he was also a WW II hero and patriot, and he was my Commander-In-Chief when I went to war for the first time. I knew he would stand behind my troops and he did, and the good things I have to say about him on the occasion of his passing are proper and sincere. Patriot, war hero and my commander: that is how I choose to remember him.

The difference is that when conservatives like us focus on his positives, we are not trying to exploit his passing to score cheap points on the present president. Liberals are. They hated Bush 41 with a cold fury. Now, most of the juice box nimrods on social media or piping up on MSNBC were maybe three years old when he was the prezzy, so maybe they don’t remember that the liberals slimed him mercilessly. From the grocery scanner lie to the Willie Horton racism lie, to the wimp lie, it was all lies, all the time. In fact, even today, some libs are off-message and celebrating on Twitter.

Shhhh. You’re supposed to be pretending to revere him!.............To Read More…..

Clinton Calls Trump Remarks On Accepting Election Horrifying, But She And Gore Were Questioning 2000 Election Even Last Week

Hypocrisy, always a Democratic strong suit. She claimed Bush wasn’t elected, but ‘selected’ in 2000 and even seemed to still be putting out that nonsense as late as last week.

Via NRO:

It is completely irresponsible to argue that a president who reaches 270 electoral votes is not “elected” and legitimate, right, Hillary Clinton? Only a shameless partisan with no concern for democracy or our system of government would insist that president is not elected, long after he’s taken the oath of office. Trump is insanely irresponsible to suggest that this election may be rigged and the outcome fraudulent. Why, who on earth would ever make such a charge?  

At a private fund-raiser in Los Angeles for Democratic Sen. Jean Carnahan of Missouri, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton told the crowd that President Bush merely had been “selected” president, not elected, Newsweek reports in the current issue. Oh. That’s from October 2002.

Democrats cultivated that lack of acceptance, many still call Bush ‘illegitimate’.   John Kerry even questions the election of George Bush in 2004.   Debbie Wasserman-Schultz even claimed today that Al Gore actually won Florida.   Talk about ‘not accepting the result’….This appeared here