Feel the Bern: Communist Losers Stealing From a Communist Loser

A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices - George Orwell

By Rich Kozlovich

Silvio Canto, Jr. is a writer for American Thinker, who I've been much impressed with over the years, published an article entitled, Vlad over Caracas saying:

We know two things about Vladimir Putin and Nicolas Maduro. Putin loves to navigate in choppy waters and stick it to the U.S. Maduro is desperately looking for a sugar daddy. We learned that Russia is active down in Venezuela, to say the least.

He went on to note:

"In exchange for modest loans and bailouts over the past decade, Russia now owns significant parts of at least five oil fields in Venezuela, which holds the world's largest reserves, along with 30 years' worth of future output from two Caribbean natural-gas fields."  

"Venezuela also has signed over 49.9 percent of Citgo, its wholly owned company in the United States – including three Gulf Coast refineries and a countrywide web of pipelines – as collateral to Russia's state-owned Rosneft oil behemoth for a reported $1.5 billion in desperately needed cash."

"Russian advisers are inside the Venezuelan government, helping direct the course of President Nicolás Maduro's attempts to bring his failing government back from bankruptcy. They helped orchestrate this year's introduction of a new digital currency, the "Petro," to keep oil payments flowing while avoiding U.S. sanctions on the country's dollar transactions."

"Venezuela's still-formidable defense force, once an exclusively U.S. client, is now equipped with Russian guns, tanks and planes, financed with prepaid oil deliveries to Russian clients.  Maduro scoffed last year at President Trump's public threat to use the U.S. military to bring him down, saying Venezuela, with Russian help, had turned itself into a defensive "fortress."'

This is a bad thing why? It's a good thing for America, but it really stinks for the people of Venezuela.

First off, just how impressive can their defense force be? On August 5, 2018 Monica Showalter posted the article, Venezuela: Always a bad sign when your military scatters and runs.

During an alleged coup there were "explosions" of unknown origin as she notes:

"The military ran. It broke up like a mob of scared rabbits. They were the picture of chaos and disorder and it was all caught on camera. The whole grand parade Maduro was making a speech at the head of absolutely fell apart as the soldiers broke and fled in panic."

Unless they're brutalizing their own people, Venezuela's military is at best a leaky vessel, and I don't care whose military equipment they're using. If anyone invades, they're gone! 

Russia, just like China, is broke. Putin was great playing chess with Obama, since Obama was playing checkers.  But that horse has left the barn. Now he's trying to play chess with Trump, and Trump can add pieces to the board Putin doesn't have. It also appears he's a better chess player than Putin, playing multiple boards at the same time.

There's no bailing Venezuela out. It's a money pit with a bottomless hole. It is in such dire straits it will take decades to repair the damage done by Chavez and Maduro and that of band of thieves, cut throats and thugs. Especially the long term health consequences for children who've been starved while the military and ruling elite steal the food for themselves.   And Putin isn't going to buy into that economic and social swamp.

Furthermore, there's a problem with Venezuelan oil.  The nation's oil is thick and rich with contaminants making it hard to refine and they may become the only energy rich nation without a market because fracking oil is not only light and sweet - it's super light and sweet - and there are few refineries in the world who will take their oil - most of them are in the Gulf Coast of the U.S. And when those refineries change over for fracking oil.  What then? The vast majority of Venezuela's wealth comes from oil, and the worldwide price has dropped dramatically!  When all the refineries convert to that oil, who will take Venezuela's oil? Russia? China?

I describe just what a mess this is in my May 13, 2018 article The World as I See It: Venezuela.  Who's going to fix all that?  Russia?  China?

Make no mistake about this. Both Russia and China are in for what they can steal, and they're not going to build new refineries in their respective countries, nor are they going to fix the ones in Venezuela. And they're certainly not going to build any new ones in Venezuela.  And we also have to remember Chavez and his band of thieves stole all that made the Venezuelan oil profitable.  Will those he stole it from really accept him selling their property to someone else without taking legal action?   

On April 3, 2018 Monica Showalter published the article, Even Venezuela's sugar daddies, Russia and China, are bailing out.  Saying:

"Right under the radar, Venezuela is getting dumped by its two sugar daddies, Russia's state-linked Rosneft energy giant, and China's state-linked PetroChina. Bye-bye money, because this is a big blow. The pair of them were slated to run two of the three of Venezuela's monster-big refineries in the Paraguana complex, Amuay and Cardon, two refineries that were the crown jewel of Venezuela's global oil presence. Back in the 1990s, these were the most advanced and best-run refineries in the world.  

Today, they have fallen into such a state of shambles even the Russkis and Chicoms won't touch them. According to a report from Kallish Energy, the repair costs of the Chavista-managed socialist-run rubble is $10 billion with a 'b.' They'd have to shell that out just to get the darn things running and then would get ten years to run them and sell their products before forking them back over, free of charge, to the Venezuelan Chavista government, which ruined them"

It wasn't that many months ago when there were writers who were all worked up about the potential of Russians getting a toehold in South America via Venezuela.  I stated that wasn't going to happen since the Russians are broke and don't even finance Cuba any longer - and as bad a shape Cuba is in - it's an economic power house compared to Venezuela.  This was predictable to the most casual observer.

The cure is coming, and that fix will be total economic collapse, and there's no need for the U.S. to get involved, as there is no upside for America.

If we invade, we'll be criticized as greedy corrupt capitalists trying to steal a poor countries asset, even if we saved millions from starvation, sickness and disease. That accusation will be played over and over again.

If we don't invade, we're accused of being selfish, greedy, cold hearted capitalists, but that accusation will pass.

That makes it a no-win situation for the U.S. no matter what we do. So, if there's no upside, then let's choose to save the lives of American soldiers and the money of American taxpayers. 

If the world really thinks something needs to be done militarily, then and let the hypocrites of the United Nations, and the nations of South and Latin America do it.  Understand this.  If that happens and a new government is formed, there's only one direction that government can turn to for any real and legitimate economic support. North!  If it doesn't happen the devastation that exists will continue and even worsen.  If they do what needs to be done, we will determine the terms.  They will be saved and we will win, not only in Venezuela, but all the Northern tier South American countries, and that will also play out in the rest of South America.   

As for now, the people of Venezuela jumped on Chavez's socialist bandwagon when it was obvious who he was and what he was going to do.... and stupidly....... they loved it. Let them live with the consequences of that stupidity.

This is not America’s fight, or America’s responsibility! We owe them nothing!

You may wish to view just how bad it was by the end of 2016 in My Commentary, Venezuela "Felt The Bern" in 2016

Hillary's Russia Doomsday Scenario

By Daniel Greenfield 0 Comments Thursday, December 27, 2018 @ Sultan Knish Blog

The Steele dossier, a document produced by Christopher Steele at the behest of the Clinton campaign is ground zero for the Russia conspiracy theory that is tearing apart the country. Even the Mueller investigation has its ultimate roots in the eavesdropping carried out by the Obama administration using the dossier as evidence and the dubious and unverified claims made by Steele in the dossier.

But why did the Clinton campaign ever set out to create such a document?

The Steele dossier has been described as opposition research and it was certainly circulated among reporters in order to spread the Russia conspiracy theory in the media, but its contents were circulated more in the Obama era FBI and the DOJ, and its media rounds seemed more geared to creating stories that would justify a FISA warrant than to any serious effort to sway the electorate with its attacks.

The dossier was never convincing opposition research because its central claim, that Trump was a Russian agent, was too farfetched and detached from election issues to ever connect with voters. It required the complicity of the FBI and the DOJ, and Mueller’s sanction, to give it any credibility.

The dossier’s real role was legal, not political. It wasn’t meant for the tabloids, but to create a pretext for an investigation of Trump and his associates. And so it’s easy to see its usefulness to the Dems today.

But why create a pretext for a secret investigation of Trump before the election was even done?

The FISA warrants had always raised the possibility that the investigation was used to collect information on a rival campaign. And, because of the slow pace of declassification and the lack of a thorough release of information about exactly what was done and who was responsible, that remains a real possibility. But a recent statement by Christopher Steele raises an even more disturbing possibility.

Steele had been hired by Fusion GPS, a smear firm, which in turn had been hired by the Clinton campaign through Perkins Coie.

In response to a lawsuit, Steele admitted that, “Fusion’s immediate client was law firm Perkins Coie. It engaged Fusion to obtain information necessary for Perkins Coie LLP to provide legal advice on the potential impact of Russian involvement on the legal validity of the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election.”

“Based on that advice, parties such as the Democratic National Committee and HFACC Inc. (also known as ‘Hillary for America’) could consider steps they would be legally entitled to take to challenge the validity of the outcome of that election.”

The Steele dossier would have been mostly worthless in a conventional legal challenge of the election outcome, but it was used to launch a very different brand of “legal challenge” that is more often seen in banana republics in which police powers are abused to target the political opposition.

It is highly implausible that the Clinton campaign had hired a firm to investigate the possibility of Russian election tampering as far back as April or June. But it could have been laying the groundwork for a variety of scenarios, including a doomsday scenario in which Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.

It’s a matter of faith among both Democrats and Republicans that Hillary Clinton never expected to lose. And there’s certainly plenty of evidence of arrogance and complacency by the Clinton campaign. But Steele’s reply offers evidence that some people in the Clinton campaign had a doomsday plan.

To understand why, consider the unique natures of both the Clinton and Trump campaigns.

The Clinton campaign wasn’t just a candidacy thrown together a year or two before an election. It was Clintonworld, a political network going back decades, an interface between government, charity and political campaigns, with loyalists whose entire careers had been built around the Clintons. There’s been nothing quite like it in American history. And it all depended on one unappealing politician. Hillary.

Clintonworld had been badly burned by Hillary’s loss to Obama. The Clinton Foundation wasn’t just about Bill and Hillary. It gave Clintonworlders their own embassy with an international presence, employment opportunities and networking. It was the royal court in exile of the Clintons and it allowed them to maintain an army of loyalists to launch yet another bid for the White House.

A second defeat would be catastrophic because it would kill Clintonworld leaving behind an army of unemployed and unemployable Clintonites with egg on their face after having lost yet another expensive election and burned through another vast fortune of donor cash. And few in the golden halls of Clintonworld wanted to take the fall for Hillary’s poor people skills and lack of popular appeal.

They needed a potential election defeat to be illegitimate even before it happened.

But there was something even bigger at stake. Shortly after Steele got to work on his dossier, Trump was cheering the “Lock her up” chants directed at Hillary. The Clintons had done plenty of things to be locked up for. But Clintonworld staffers knew that Bill and Hillary were unlikely to ever go down. If a new DOJ were to seriously go after them, it would be the minions of Clintonworld who would take the fall.

The Steele dossier became Plan B. A doomsday scenario in case the impossible truly happened.

Was Plan B meant to be Hillary’s revenge by bringing down her rival even if he defeated her? Was it a conspiracy to cripple any possible investigation of the Clintons by instead enmeshing Trump in legal troubles? Was it an excuse to eavesdrop on the Trump campaign? A last ditch effort by Clinton staffers to justify their loss? It could be any and all of the above. But the tactics do reveal certain clues.

The Russia theme enabled abuses like the FISA warrant. Any scandal short of foreign espionage would not have allowed the Obama administration and its Clinton allies to pull off their own Watergate. Being able to eavesdrop on Trump allies was crucial to the conspiracy. But false accusations are also revealing. The accusers tend to slander their targets by accusing them of their own crimes to cover them up. What Trump and his allies have been accused of, is what Clintonworld most feared being accused of.

General Michael Flynn was a special target. The NSC had been abused, and so had to be secured. But one obvious personal reason was the "Lock her up" chants. Revenge is a cliché, but it should never be overlooked when it comes to the famously spiteful Clintons. An ongoing investigation building to impeachment looks a lot like the Clintons seeking revenge for Bill.

Would the Clintons have diverted effort and energy from the campaign to plot a doomsday scenario? We don’t know, but a group in the campaign and integrated within the government certainly did.

There’s been a lot of talk about the ‘deep state’. But anyone who knows Washington D.C. also knows that there are many deep states. Some are ideological, most are careerist. Moving up the ladder is about making the right connections. Political patronage isn’t just a necessary evil, but a way of life. Transactional opportunism defines the microscopic political universe of the city that runs the country.

“Lock her up” was less of a threat to Hillary Clinton than to the people who had been doing her dirty work, and everyone who had been doing their dirty work. Even more than the threat of prison, the fall of Clintonworld was a blow to countless careers. And then there were the Obama people who weren’t invested in Clintonworld, but were concerned about the light being shined under their particular rock.

The Steele dossier was a clumsy instrument, but it got the job done. And if it was clumsy, that may be because no one ever thought that it would be truly needed or ever see the light of day. It was badly made because it wasn’t a priority. But then it was truly needed, and it was too late to fix it, so it had to be put into action as it was, with all its errors and absurd nonsense.

The Clinton campaign spared enough resources to create a post-election doomsday weapon. It built the weapon and detonated it. And the radioactivity from the blast has poisoned our political system.

Dirty tricks are part of politics. But few presidential candidates have the spite and hubris to create a dirty trick that blows up the presidency even when it can no longer benefit them in any obvious way.

Hillary Clinton never made history the way she wanted to. But she made history anyway.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine at the above link.

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Thank you for reading.

New Poll: No, Pelosi Doesn't Have a Mandate

Katie Pavlich | December 24, 2018 |

 

We're just days away from the new Congress beginning on Capitol Hill and Nancy Pelosi plans on being in charge.  

But while Democrats took back a number of congressional seats from Republicans during the 2018 midterm elections, Americans haven't handed them a mandate. In fact, according to a new Rasmussen Survey, they want President Trump driving the agenda.

When given a choice between the two, 46% of Likely U.S. Voters think Trump should set the direction of the country for the next two years. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 31% believe that job should go to Pelosi who is expected to be the speaker of the incoming Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. Nearly one-out-of-five voters (18%) say neither one should set the direction of the country in the near future.........To Read More.....

Breaking: DOJ Colluding With Clinton Email Scandal Witnesses To Thwart Court-Ordered Discovery Efforts By Judicial Watch

December 26, 2018

 

(Gateway Pundit) – Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch revealed on Wednesday that the DOJ is colluding with Hillary Clinton email scandal witnesses to thwart court-ordered discovery to stop the watchdog’s efforts to gather evidence.   Judicial Watch appeared in a DC federal court last month on a motion to compel more testimony from Hillary Clinton as well as to make public video recordings of depositions of top Clinton aides such as Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.  The court ruled that Hillary Clinton must answer more questions about the setting up of her private server.............Judge Lamberth said Hillary Clinton’s private server was “One of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”...............

Although Judicial Watch refuses to back down, the Justice Department is actively working to stop the watchdog’s efforts to gather evidence in federal court.  Tom Fitton was furious that the DOJ is working to block their discovery efforts...........To Read More....

Dear Pope Francis

Derek Hunter Dec 27, 2018

Dear Pope Francis,

I write this not only as a conservative, but as a Catholic. It’s time to give it a rest and get your house in order.

There isn’t a week that goes by without some kind of declaration from you condemning western civilization for some ill somewhere. Climate change, income inequality, health care, you name it and you’ve weighed in on it, and always on the left. No offense, and don’t take this the wrong way, but riding a bike to lower your “carbon footprint” never saved anyone’s soul.

A lot of what you spend your time condemning are veiled swipes at the United States and capitalism. I know you come from a socialist background, but you weren’t elected President, you were elected Pope. As such, maybe you should focus your energy on religious matters and leave governing to the people elected to those jobs...........To Read More....

Iran Won’t Outlaw Marriage of Under-13 Girls, as Islamic Countries Fare Worst in Annual Gender Survey

By Patrick Goodenough | December 25, 2018

Lawmakers in Iran have defeated a bid to outlaw the marrying of girls aged nine to 13, just days after the findings of a new global report indicate, once again, that women fare worse in Islamic countries.

A female lawmaker described as a reformist expressed regret at the decision, which was taken by the parliamentary committee dealing with legal and judicial affairs, saying forcing children to marry young was akin to “killing them.”  “We intended to allow little girls to enjoy their childhood but unfortunately the motion failed,” the ISNA news agency quoted Tayebeh Siavashi as saying.

Currently, girls in Iran may be legally married at 13 although those as young as nine may be married with the permission of their fathers or a court.  The rejected motion had aimed to lift the legal marriage age to 16, and to enable marriage between 13 and 16 only with the approval of a legal guardian.  Siavashi was quoted as saying that between 30,000 and 40,000 Iranian girls are married under the age of 13, and some 300 at even younger than nine years of age...........To Read More...

Democrats React To Martha McSally's Appointment To U.S. Senate

Matt Vespa | December 18, 2018

 

Well, it looks like Martha McSally will be a U.S. Senator after all. Despite reports that McSally’s stock was falling among Arizona Republicans, Gov. Doug Ducey decided to appoint her to fill the remainder of the late Sen. John McCain’s term. She will be serving with her 2018 opponent Senator-elect Kyrsten Sinema (via AZ Governor’s Office):..........To Read More.....

 

My Take - The real story?  The McCain's were opposed to her being appointed, as if the seat belonged to the McCain family and it was their right to have a say in who got the appointment.   When the son in law, Ben Domenech,  shot off his mouth over this I sort of expected him to make the choice he did.  Ben Domonech, has some issues with credibility by the way. 

 

It was the thinking among some that when McCain was dying and wouldn't resign it was because he was trying to get the Gov. to appoint his wife to fulfill his term.  Gov. Ducey didn't, and as a conservative, it's was assumed his attitude was "that's just what the nation needs, another McCain in the Senate for two more years."

 

Well, Gov. Doug Ducey told the McCain family to take their views and shove em and appointed a conservative.  Now, I think that's the real story.  I think that's the end of the McCain's in Arizona politics, and hopefully his daughter Meghan will go home also.  She only appears to be a conservative because she's on the View and the rest are so far left she almost appears sane.  What I wonder at - who watches that show?

Hmm: After Weeks of Bruising Headlines, Why is Support for Impeachment...Dropping?

Guy Benson | December 18, 2018

It's essentially impossible to argue that it's been a good stretch of news cycles for the president, as the public has watched people in his orbit getting indicted, sentenced, and accused of further misconduct over recent weeks.  The conventional wisdom among the political class is that Robert Mueller's endgame is drawing near, and that a constricting noose is getting closer to the president's political neck.  But a fresh CNN poll produces a somewhat counterintuitive statistic: Since September, public support for impeachment has fallen considerably, particularly among independents.  Some conservatives are celebrating:.............To Read More.....

Incoming Muslim Congresswomen Mock Pence’s Christian Faith

By Patrick Goodenough | December 13, 2018 @ CNSNews.com

One of the first two Muslim women elected to the U.S. Congress took a snide dig on Twitter at Vice President Pence for sitting with eyes closed during a heated Oval Office meeting, posting a photo with the caption, “Jesus take the wheel!” – and the other incoming Muslim congresswoman applauded the insult.  Ihlan Omar’s (D-Minn.) tweet ended with the hashtag #BorderWall, a reference to the contentious issue discussed during President Trump’s meeting Tuesday with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

The second Muslim woman elected to the House, Palestinian-American Congresswoman-elect Rashida Tlaib, “liked” Omar’s Pence tweet.  Pence, whose strong Christian faith has become fodder for liberal critics, was also mocked on social media for sitting impassively during the meeting as the president’s wrangled with Schumer and Pelosi.

Omar, a Somali-American from Minnesota, will take a seat in the U.S. House next year, as will Michigan’s Tlaib.

Breaking: Judge Richard J. Leon Denies DOJ Request to Postpone January 3 2019 Hearing!

• Mueller Continues Illegal Persecution of Dr. Jerome Corsi
• First Court Hearing in 350 Million Dollar Corsi Lawsuit to Occur Next Week

From Klayman Law Group

Date: January 3, 2019
Time: 3:00 P.M.
Place: Courtroom 18 Before the Honorable
Richard J. Leon
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
333 Constitution Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001

(Washington, D.C., December 27, 2018). Today, Larry Klayman, Esq., a former U.S. Department of Justice trial attorney and prosecutor and the founder of both Judicial Watch and now Freedom Watch, issued this statement on behalf of his client Dr. Jerome Corsi:

"The illegal if not criminal persecution of Dr. Jerome Corsi by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his pro-Clinton, pro-Democrat, anti-Trump and rabidly leftist prosecutorial staff marches on unabated. Not to be undone by having previously criminally threatened Dr. Corsi with indictment if he did not lie under oath to try to incriminate President Donald J. Trump, and then when Dr. Corsi refused to accept an illegal plea deal, having criminally smeared him with leaks of grand jury information in retaliation, the less than 'Special Counsel' is now sending FBI agents to intimidate and effectively threaten my client's family members as well as continuing to illegal surveil them without any probable cause to do so.

"For example, just recently reporter Chuck Ross of the nominally conservative publication 'The Daily Caller' told Dr. Corsi that the Special Counsel's office had leaked grand jury information about my client's efforts to raise funds for cancer victims, falsely claiming that this was a fraud. This criminal leak, intended to intimidate and harass Dr. Corsi, is now proof positive of the allegations contained in the $350,000,000 plus complaint for damages which he has filed against Mueller and his accomplices. Ross has now become a material witness in this case.

"Further, just over the last few days, black FBI SUVs, obviously on the orders of Mueller and his lackeys at the FBI, have been sent to the homes and workplaces of Dr. Corsi's family members and friends and parked outside for days in order to scare and threaten them. This is intended to coerce my client to accept the fraudulent plea deal and testify falsely under oath against the president. Particularly coming during this joyous and holy Christmas, and now New Year's season, this despicable misconduct effectively constituted a legally actionable assault on these family members.

"Previously, Mueller and his dishonest leftist hack prosecutors, including Jeannie Rhee, who before joining the Special Counsel's office has been a lawyer for the Clinton Foundation, had mocked in closed door settings Dr. Corsi's Christian beliefs requiring him not to lie under oath, and also ordered him not to report any agreed sealed plea deal to government regulators, which he would have been required to do under his license to sell and market securities. Thus, Jeannie Rhee and others in Mueller's office incredibly counseled Dr. Corsi to commit more crimes in addition to perjury.

"There is much more, and Dr. Corsi and I urge you to be present in courtroom 18 of Judge Leon at 3:00 P.M. on January 3, 2019, for the first hearing in his case against the criminally minded Mueller and his unethical and lawless prosecutorial staff."

For more information, contact daj142182@gmail.com or (424) 274 2579.

The Compromising Background of Jamal Khashoggi’s Work

By Jim Geraghty

Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi speaks at an event hosted by Middle East Monitor in London, England, September 29, 2018. (Middle East Monitor via Reuters ) Making the click-through worthwhile: how customs and border-patrol agents can make the argument for a security fence, three easily overlooked comments from President Trump’s visit in Iraq, and some surprising revelations about Jamal Khashoggi that complicate the initial narrative about his work. Finally, Trump Will Make His Fencing Argument at the Border.............Three Observations about Trump in Iraq...........

Once the Senate works through a deal to reopen the government, it has a huge pile of work to get to: confirmation hearings for at least five cabinet officials; about 30 judges awaiting a confirmation vote; 45 nominees to be ambassadors; and about 150 other nominees for positions throughout the executive branch, including director of the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Marshals Service, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and inspector generals for the Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, HUD, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and White House director of National Drug Control Policy.

Oh, and the debt ceiling is reinstated March 2, meaning that they need to raise it sometime in the months after that..........To Read More...

The War On Trump Is All About Keeping Liberals And Their Lackeys In Power

Kurt Schlichter  Dec 27, 2018

And this year ends with our loser ruling class shedding any pretense of legitimacy in its quest to reclaim the power we took back from it in 2016. The reaction to Donald Trump by our alleged betters - SPOILER: They are much, much worse than us - is instructive. They have abandoned all the principles they once claimed to support - democracy, civil rights, due process, and equality. None of those principles help them to keep or regain power anymore, so they are expendable. As are you.

Liberalism was always a lie and a scam, right from its sordid beginnings among the progressives with their creepy messianic fervor, their infatuation with “expertise” (and hence, their embrace of evils like eugenics), and their contempt for the Constitution. Liberals consider themselves the anointed, divinely entitled to rule over us lesser folk, and they aren’t going to let anything get in the way of retaking the throne.

And this time, they mean never to give it up again.......You must be silenced, while they never shut up. Anyway, if you are talking you can’t be listening to them, and if you aren’t listening to their commands how can you expect to obey?...........To Read More......

Iraqi Lawmakers Are Upset Over President Trump's Impromptu Visit With U.S. Troops

Beth Baumann Dec 26, 2018

Political leaders and lawmakers in Iraq are upset with President Donald Trump over his impromptu visit with U.S. troops on Wednesday. They say that his visit is a "violation of Iraq’s sovereignty" and Trump's meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi was canceled because the two couldn't agree on a location, Reuters reported. Trump wanted to meet at the Ain al-Asad military base but Abdul Mahdi refused.

Both wings of the parliament agreed on one thing: they didn't like how President Trump visited Iraq.
The leader of the Islah parliamentary bloc, Sabah al Saadi, called for an emergency parliamentary meeting “to discuss this blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and to stop these aggressive actions by Trump who should know his limits: The U.S. occupation of Iraq is over.”

The Bina bloc, which is led by Iran-backed militia leader Hadi al-Amiri, had similar sentiments about Trump's visit............To Read More.....

My Take - This is just one more example of how there's no way to fix the Middle East. Nation building will not work in Islamic nations. The nation building we undertook after WWII with Germany and Japan was clearly a one on thing. In most of the world, especially the Middle East, there's no way to bring actual democracy to these people because as soon as they get the right to vote they vote in the very same kind of people that were forced out militarily. It's been that way forever and as long as Islam exists, it will continue to be that way forever.

No matter what the Neo-cons think these people aren't just waiting to bust out and be just like Americans. American republican democracy is unique in all of world history, and the social paradigms that mold the actions of the world's peoples aren't in any way harmonious to the foundational social paradigms of Americans. We really do need to get that!

The only solution is to keep them over there, keep them isolated, keep them poor and keep them unarmed as much as possible. Eventually they'll destroy themselves. In days gone by one strong nation could conquer the rest, as was done by the Ottoman Turks. But that's not possible now with modern communications, transportation and weaponry. The Muslim world is sharply divided beyond repair. Each sect thinks it represents Allah as "True Islam", making all the rest heretics. Sharia law demands they kill heretics.

There's no love lost between Muslims and other Muslims.  These are medieval tribal societies with modern trappings.   All the violence that's been going on between them, and all other peoples of the world, is testimony to the fact that Islam exists to bring hatred, intolerance, murder, rape, theft and tyranny to the world in the name of Allah. And that must continue until the whole world submits to Allah.

The problem is they don't agree what that means. If you decide to convert, but you pick the wrong sect to follow, then you're not following “True Islam”, and therefore you’ve not submitted to Allah. That means you need to be killed as a heretic, and the instability and violence would continue. We really do need to get that because it’s history and that history is incontestable.

Oh, Brother: CNN Believes Trump Violated Ethics, Campaign Laws During Visit to Iraq

Beth Baumann | Dec 27, 2018

Everyone's favorite reporter, CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta, filled in for Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday. During the program, Acosta went into detail about why he thought President Donald Trump violated ethics and campaign laws during his trip to Iraq to visit American troops.  Troops lined up to meet the president and some of them had Make America Great Again hats and flags, which the president signed for them.

And now, CNN has an issue with it, as evidenced by their constant coverage and the remarks made by their reporters and contributors.

“It is, in fact, a campaign slogan, that is a campaign item, and it’s completely inappropriate for the troops to do this,” former Obama administration official and retired Rear Admiral John Kirby said. “Not supposed to do this. And I’m sure their boss is seeing that. They’re not going to be happy about it.”...........To Read More.....

Fake News and Race

When Fake News becomes deadly.

December 27, 2018 Jack Kerwick 

Though many people, particularly the opponents of Donald Trump, would prefer not to remember this, the truth is that it is they, the President’s enemies, who first coined the term, “Fake News.” And they used it to refer to pro-Trump social media coverage.

To repeat, it is not Trump or any of his supporters who manufactured this nomenclature.

Brilliantly, the President commandeered the label and slapped it on the left-leaning press, forever ensconcing within the popular imagination the identification of Fake News with what conservatives formerly called “the liberal media.”

But “Fake News” isn’t merely an effective piece of rhetoric.  It’s also an accurate assignation for an endemic phenomenon. Fake News is real—and it long predates the political rise of Donald Trump.

To be sure, to say of a news item that it is fake news is not, necessarily, to say that it is a blatant lie.  In fact, Fake News is powerful precisely because it normally does contain some truth.  About a century ago, G.K. Chesterton, an English academic and essayist who converted to Roman Catholicism, wrote that what made the “journalism” of his day especially dangerous is not that it consisted of flagrant untruths; rather, its danger stemmed from the fact that it was a pack of “half-truths.” Things haven’t changed. And nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of race.............These black children who tormented another black child for being friends with a white child were doing nothing more or less than what black teens and adults have been doing to other blacks who they convict of lacking racial authenticity: to summarize, McKenzie Nichole Adams was hounded to her death by peers who tormented her for “acting white.”............To Read More.....

American Criminals’ Lobby Unlimited

ACLU: the faithful friend to America’s foes.

December 27, 2018 Lloyd Billingsley

“The ACLU is creating more national immigration policy than the federal government.” That was Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones back in 2015, after the American Civil Liberties Union sent letters to sheriff’s departments across the country explaining that immigration detainers are requests, not commands, and threatening legal action with those sheriffs who comply.

Since more than 200 jurisdictions failed to honor all ICE detainers, Jones said, “we’ve become a de facto sanctuary state.” California is now an actual sanctuary state, and has made false-documented illegals, even violent criminals, a privileged, protected class. The ACLU still takes measures to ensure that no criminals ever get deported.

Of the 1,303 immigrants at Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department facilities in 2017, 83 percent of those detainees were Hispanic. That year ICE conducted 51 interviews at county facilities, barely 2 percent of all law enforcement interviews that took place. Yet ACLU attorney Sean Riordan expressed concern about, “the experiences people have had in being transferred from sheriff’s custody to ICE custody.”

The ACLU also strives to keep the U.S. border open for virtually anybody who wants to cross it, for any reason. In August, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its decision to remove asylum protections for victims of domestic and gang violence............This from a supposedly non-partisan organization dedicated only to civil liberties. In reality, the ACLU always had a problem with America.

ACLU founder Roger Baldwin, wrote that the Soviet Union “has already created liberties far greater than exist elsewhere in the world.” Baldwin was “for Socialism, disarmament, and ultimately the abolishing of the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion.” Baldwin headed the ACLU until 1950 and in later years explained, “I wanted what the communists wanted and I traveled the United Front road to get it.”

On January 16, 1981, President Jimmy Carter awarded Roger Baldwin the Presidential Medal of Freedom, ...........To Read More....

How America Can Liberate the West Again

By Robert Miller| December 26th, 2018

America’s domestic debates over immigration, and Democrats’ hysteria over Trump’s tweets, obfuscates the larger crisis unfolding in the West.  Trump’s traditional nationalism is pitted against the technocratic elites of the New York-D.C. corridor, but this is only one theater of a political and philosophical struggle taking place across the West.

Americans should be aware of the growing turmoil Europe, not only because of our previous interventions there but also because it serves as a warning of what can happen to America if Trump fails at implementing his reforms.

Fortunately once again for Europe, the United States has a chance to liberate it from supranational authoritarianism.

Incrementally weakening the European Union in favor of national determination can and should be a hallmark of American foreign policy in the region. Through strategic diplomacy and economic statecraft, the United States can offer European states opportunities to exit the European Union safely............. The universal religious aims of Europe long ago were replaced with philosophical proxies such as socialism, neoliberalism, and globalism. Each idea is hostile towards national territorial sovereignty. .............To Read More.....

Why (Most) Right-Wing Intellectuals Hate Trump

By Deion Kathawa| December 25th, 2018

More than two years into President Trump’s historic presidency, it behooves us to think more deeply about a persistent sticking point in the political life of the nation: Why do (most) right-wing intellectuals loathe him? This kind of nearly unified opposition cries out for explanation. After all, it is not simply that all left-wing intellectuals oppose him; that is baked into the political cake, a totally banal reality. (Is water wet?) What is more interesting is why most right-wing intellectuals despise him, wish for his failure, derive such glee from “dunking” on him on social media and in their think pieces, and the like.

To understand this phenomenon, the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick’s essay, , “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?” is a veritable treasure trove of insight. Nozick’s 1998 explanation of intellectuals’ opposition to capitalism is remarkably relevant and can be transplanted with only minor cosmetic changes to understand why the vast majority of right-wing intellectuals oppose Trump..........To Read More.....

Mueller Investigation Stirring Up More Trouble Than It’s Finding

By Victor Davis Hanson| December 26th, 2018

After 19 months, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has charged a number of targets with almost every conceivable sin—except collusion with Russia to throw an election. Yet suspicion of collusion was the reason that Mueller was appointed in the first place.  President Trump’s former consigliere, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. But as part of his plea deal, Cohen also confessed to a superfluous charge of a campaign finance violation.

Cohen allegedly negotiated a nondisclosure agreement concerning a supposed past Trump liaison with porn star Stormy Daniels. Yet no one alleges that Trump used cash from his 2016 campaign account to buy Daniels’ silence..............Apparently, Cohen was leveraged by Mueller’s team to plead guilty to a crime that was likely not a crime. And in circular fashion, his confession was used as proof that the non-crime was actually a crime after all — and thus could serve as yet another way to find something on Trump.  Retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty to giving false testimony about a “crime” that also apparently did not exist.

Mueller seemingly wanted Flynn to testify about something that might prove that the Trump administration colluded with Russia. When that did not work, Flynn was later leveraged to “confess” to having lied to FBI investigators, who originally thought that he had not lied about a “crime” of talking about foreign policy with a Russian ambassador—an act that in itself was not illegal................Add it all up, and we have reached the point where the Mueller team may be constructing more crimes than it is finding............To Read More....

My Take - I keep coming back to this: Why isn't Mueller and his cabal of criminal misfits, which would include the Clintons, the DNC, and a host of other Deep Staters and Obama administration people, being investigated under RICO.

Trade Wars and China

December 27, 2018 By Peter Skurkiss

As President Trump's MAGA policies start to undo the unfair trade practices of China and Europe, he faces a wall of criticism from the global elite who personally benefit from the current arrangements. One of the most commonly heard arguments used to sustain the status quo is that 'nobody can win a trade war.' This line is formulated by highly credentialed economists and then picked up and spread by TV talking heads.

The problem is that line is false.

What is accurate to say is that a trade war, say between the America and China, cannot be won by the U.S. without some short-term pain and sacrifice. That much is true. But as far as winning a trade war, giving the immense advantages America has, it is as Trump said: "Trade wars are good and easy to win." And when the president says that trade wars are good, he means that the long-term benefits far outweigh the initial costs.

With regard to China, without belaboring that country's particular vulnerabilities for now, let's look a fairly recent trade war that America won rather handily. This was with Japan in the 1980s............ To Read More....

My Take - I've been saying this for some time.  We don't need the rest of the world....they need us.  This isn't 1929 and the world's economy isn't the same as it was then and the Smoot Hawley Tariff signed in by Hoover was the real driving force leading to the Great Depression.  We can now feed ourselves, fuel ourselves, arm ourselves, defend ourselves and we're capable of creating our own market, no matter what the rest of the world is suffering.  If the world's economy collapses, which I think it will, America will take a hit, but the recovery will be quick and singular.  As long as the globalist traitors are kept out of power. 

All that 's been said in this article is not new information, nor is it hidden information, so why is it we see all this panic from the media, politicians and "economists"?  Because it doesn't fit their narrative that Trump is an idiot and multiculturalism is essential to America's economic and social health.  In short, they want America to be as economically and socially dysfunctional as the rest of the world. 

Jihad: Islam's Engine

December 27, 2018 By Amil Imani

Right from the start, violent jihad served as the engine of Islam under the command and supervision of Muhammad himself.  To understand how quickly Islam spread around the world, we must see the timeline of Islam.

After Muhammad's death in 632 A.D., his friend Abu Bakr was named caliph and ruler of the Islamic community, or Ummah. Muhammad's followers in a short time occupied a vast geographic area; conversion to Islam was heightened by Islamic missionaries, who intermingled with local populations to promulgate theIslamic teachings. It resulted in Islam's spread outward from Mecca toward both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the creation of the Muslim world........

Here is the truth, as bitter as it may be. Islam is the culprit. Islam is anything but a religion of peace. Violence is at the core of Islam. Violence is institutionalized in the Muslim's holy book, the Qur'an, in many verses:...........

It is not "fanatical," "radical," or "extreme" Islam that we are fighting, but normal, orthodox, canonical, typical, accepted, traditional Islam, straight from the mouth of Muhammad. Islam is violent in direct proportion to its mission and scripture. The so-called fanatics and terrorists are only upholding the truth of their principles.

In short: We must begin to declare Islam evil, not from a sectarian perspective, but from a universal, humanist one.  Every encroachment of Islam as a religion must be rejected and discouraged by all people everywhere. Any leftist who attempts to give aid and comfort to this religion of hate must be denounced and frustrated at every turn. Otherwise, get used to your radioactive suit and your fallout shelter, a standard of living – and a level of freedom – one tenth of what you have today........To Read More

Scripture Scholar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, SJW

December 27, 2018 By Jeannie DeAngelis

To advance policy, and to ensure the future of the Democrat Party, liberals love to don the religiosity cap and quote Scripture. Barack Obama was famous for it, although, to protect the easily offended sensibilities of non-Christians, before a speaking engagement, the former president once requested crucifixes be draped at Georgetown University.

During his secular presidency, inclusive Obama banned the Nativity from the East Room at Christmas and sided with Muslims at a prayer breakfast. But then, when politically expedient, the most pro-abortion president to ever call Bible-believing Christians ‘bitter clingers’. Despite all this, he repeatedly attempted, although poorly, to cite Scripture to justify things like gun control, same-sex marriage, and illegal immigration.

Now accepting the Bible cudgel from Barack Obama’s sin-soaked hand is newbie Democrat Socialist, U.S. representative-elect for New York's 14th congressional district in the Bronx, the most uninformed know-it-all ever scheduled to grace the halls of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC....................... To Read More

We Care About The Children, Really We Do

December 24, 2018 By Michael D. Shaw @ HealthNewsDigest.com

 

According to the World Health Organization, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. Indeed, it is well established that the procedure has no health benefits for girls and women.

There are four major types of FGM:

Type 1—Often referred to as clitoridectomy, this is the partial or total removal of the clitoris, and in very rare cases, only the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris).
Type 2—Often referred to as excision, this is the partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora (the inner folds of the vulva), with or without excision of the labia majora.
Type 3—Often referred to as infibulation, this is the narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the labia minora, or labia majora, sometimes through stitching, with or without removal of the clitoris.
Type 4—This includes all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing, incising, scraping, and cauterizing the genital area.

Reasons for performing FGM involve regional social norms, and various beliefs about how a woman should be more suitable as marriage material. According to UNICEF, the practice of FGM is mostly limited to central Africa. It is not common in Algeria, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, or Syria. FGM is concentrated in a small swath of states in western Africa and another swath of states along the Red Sea. Except for a handful of countries, only a small percentage of women who undergo FGM believe the practice is required by religion.

While usually identified with Islam, participation by members of Christian religions in these countries is nearly as high. FGM is also practiced by an Ethiopian-based group of Jews, known as the Falashas.

A host of health conditions are associated with FGM, including menstrual, vaginal, sexual, and urinary problems, along with increased risks of complications in childbirth and psychological issues. There are also immediate risks during the procedure itself, including excessive bleeding, infection, shock, and even death.

Some try to compare FGM to male circumcision, but this is a fool’s errand. The advantages of circumcision are well-documented, and include decreased risk of penile cancer, decreased risk of sexually transmitted infections, decreased risk of urinary tract infections, easier hygiene, and prevention of penile problems. There may even be derivative benefits—with respect to lower rates of STD infection to the partners of circumcised men.

As to the practice of FGM in the United States, it had been illegal since 1996, in accordance with 18 U.S. Code § 116. There are anti-FGM laws in several states, as well. And, Michigan is on this list, but its law was enacted in June, 2017.

Which brings us to the celebrated recent case of US v. Jumana Nagarwala, et al. In April, 2017, Dr. Jumana Nagarwala of Northville, MI was arrested and accused of heading a conspiracy that lasted twelve years, involved seven other people and led to mutilating the genitalia of nine girls. (The prosecution held that Nagarwala may have performed the procedure on up to 100 girls.) The defendants were said to be in violation of the federal law prohibiting FGM.

However, in a November 20, 2018 ruling that can only be called bizarre, US District Judge Bernard Friedman (a Reagan appointee) dismissed all charges under the federal anti-FGM law, but did leave intact the conspiracy and obstruction charges. Even though several of the affected children were transported from other states to receive FGM, Friedman held that the law did not involve interstate commerce. And, he declared the law unconstitutional.

Of course, missing in all of this was the basic rationalization of Roe v. Wade. In that case, women should not have to travel out-of-state to receive their abortion. Thus, the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause would apply, and the procedure should be legal in all states. The same reasoning was used to legalize gay marriage in all states. As such, protection from FGM should be upheld in all states.

The Societies for Pediatric Urology issued this statement, in reaction to the ruling:

“While respecting the federal judge’s ruling, the Societies for Pediatric Urology (SPU) repudiates the ruling that deemed the federal genital mutilation law as unconstitutional. The procedure of female circumcision, for which there is no medical justification, is traumatic both physically and emotionally, and serves only to make sexual relations for women unpleasurable. The medical community is well aware of the significant risks inherent to this procedure which are potentially permanent, and life altering.” 

“It should be noted that pediatric urologists were among the first doctors to call attention to this tragic practice when the girls of Middle Eastern and African origin began arriving in the United States as a form of child abuse. It is our responsibility as doctors who care for the genitourinary system in children to ensure their safety.”

As you can imagine, most of the reaction to the decision was negative, typified by this tweet. Oh yes, we live in interesting times.

Feel the Bern: Socialism Can Kill You, But It Won't Bury You

Posted by Daniel Greenfield 0 Comments Tuesday, December 25, 2018 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Venezuela, a failing socialist state, has gifted its people with the sixth minimum wage hike in one year. The 150% increase last week won’t help too much because inflation is up to 1.7 million percent.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Minimum wage hikes don’t help when your currency isn’t worth the cost of the paper it’s printed on. That’s literally true in Venezuela, which has tried switching to an even more worthless cryptocurrency.

Forget the #Fightfor15, in Venezuela it’s a fight to afford basic food supplies or even a cup of coffee.

The cost of a cup of coffee rose 285614% in a year and doubled in seven days. Under the new currency, you can grab a cup of the good stuff for 400 bolivars. Too bad that the minimum wage is 4,800 bolivars and 90% of the population is impoverished. It isn’t looking to buy a cup of coffee, but is starving because it can’t actually buy food. Alternatives have included eating zoo animals, pets and wild donkeys.

“Juntos: todo es possible”, the Obamaesque slogan of the regime declaring, “Together, anything is possible”, looms over a frightened starving population from billboards decorated with socialist icons.

The trouble is that anything really is possible. It’s possible to starve to death, to sit in the dark because there’s no power, to be unable to go to work because there’s no fuel, to be killed in food riots by government thugs, to have your savings wiped out, or to die of a treatable illness because there’s no medicine. Socialism has made “anything” possible in Venezuela. But all the possibilities are horrifying.

The regime’s other election slogan was, “Vamos Venezuela”. And Venezuelans are going.

10% of the population has fled Venezuela escaping through Simon Bolivar Airport, which has no water, no working toilets, no air conditioning and barely any power, where government thugs demand money and jewelry from passengers, or just marching on foot to escape the socialist mess any way they can.

Those Venezuelans who remain can’t find medicine, lack drinking water and can’t even afford to die.

The death rate in Venezuela is high. Between gang violence, outbreaks of disease and food riots, the corpses are piling up, and no one can afford to bury the dead.

Two years ago, a public cemetery charged 240,000 bolivars for a burial, while private cemeteries charged 400,000. The casket alone could cost 100,000 bolivars. Not that it matters because caskets have become hard to obtain due to shortages of wood and metal.

The number of zeroes may have changed with the new currency, but has become no more affordable.

Meanwhile, cemeteries, like every business, have seen employees vanish to wait on food lines or work in the black market, which means that not only can’t you bury the dead, but there’s no one to do the burying. Not only did socialism force Venezuelans to wait on line to buy food to live, they also had to wait on line after they were dead. Socialism is defined by the line. You are born into it and die on line.

After funerals became unaffordable, Venezuelans settled for cremating the dead. But the iron law of supply and demand quickly fell into place. As demand for cremation increased, so did the cost.

It wasn’t just the cost of a cup of coffee that doubled in a week: the cost of cremation rose 108%.

Major General Manuel Quevedo , the 2019 president of OPEC, is Venezuelan even as the country’s mourners can’t afford the cost of the gas with which to burn their dead.

Quevedo, a leftist Lenin-praising thug, was dispatched to take control of Venezuela’s collapsing oil industry, but instead dealt it a fatal blow. Protests were put down by force. Anyone who committed the crime of actually knowing anything about the industry was locked up and replaced by a regime loyalist.

The socialist thug ordered workers to denounce anyone who opposed the government. Instead, 25,000 workers out of 146,000 resigned last year. And it’s worse than the numbers make it look because many of those resigning are engineers and managers who can’t be replaced by hiring just anyone.

Under the socialist military regime, oil production fell 29% as drilling rigs lacked crews and fires broke out in refineries. Those workers that haven’t quit have been selling their uniforms in exchange for food.

Fuel shortages broke out in an OPEC nation as its former production of 2 million barrels of oil dropped to 1.2 million. The situation is now so bad that Venezuela will import 300,000 barrels.

Venezuela is so broken that one of the world’s top oil producers and exporters is now forced to import oil to be able to sell it at artificially subsidized low prices to its population and to repay Russia and China. The Maduro regime keeps touting Russian and Chinese deals as the answer, but the problem is that Venezuela only has one thing that Russia and China want, and it’s too socialist to even get at it.

With a worthless currency, Venezuela is paying America, Russia and China in crude and buying back barrels of oil because under military socialist control, its refineries are no longer functional.

It’s also trading natural gas for barrels of oil, and so Venezuela may have the eight largest gas reserves in the world, but the families of the dead can no longer manage to get natural gas to burn the bodies.

There’s no cooking gas, long lines at gas stations and no way to even cremate the dead.

In the final triumph of socialism, Venezuela’s energy industry has collapsed. There isn’t even enough gas left to burn the corpses left in the aftermath of the failed socialist experiment forcing loved ones to dump them in pits and mass graves.

You can’t live under socialism. You can die under it. But you can’t be buried under socialism.

Socialism killed Venezuela as it will kill any country given enough time. First, you run out of other people’s money. Then wage and price controls destroy the supply and demand of the marketplace. And when there’s nothing left in the stores, a government takeover will consolidate the destruction.

It happened in Venezuela. And it can happen here too.

Seven years ago, Senator Bernie Sanders wrote an editorial, claiming that the, “American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger.”

“Who's the banana republic now?” he asked.

It’s the socialist dictatorship with no food, no power, no water, no hope and true income equality.

Incomes are more equal in Venezuela. Everyone, except the regime and its loyalists, has nothing. Not even a grave in which to bury the dead. That’s not the American dream, that’s the socialist nightmare.


Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine at the above link.

Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.

Thank you for reading.

Tiny Ecuador demonstrates world's stupidest idea: Dumping America to become China's running dog

December 25, 2018 By Monica Showalter

If there was ever an example for nations worldwide of What Not To Do, take a look at what socialist Ecuador has done to itself in dumping the U.S. and turning to align its interests to China. The New York Times has a superb (albeit stomach-churning) report about how Ecuador sold itself out as a vassal of China, getting for itself a junk dam that is already collapsing, and turning over 80% of its oil production to the communist behemoth in order to pay its massive, massive debts from it. That, in exchange for scrapping its military ties to the U.S. and skipping out on its tab with western banks.

According to the Times report:

“The Chinese put the hook in,” said Steve Hanke, a Johns Hopkins economist. “At the end of the day, what do these countries have? A pig in a poke.” ................

He loudly kicked the U.S. out of its tiny air base in Manta by 2009, and at the same time embraced China, which got it on the hook for billions in loans for junk infrastructure projects, in exchange for pretty much all of Ecuador's oil. As for the oil-is-king strategy, well, we all know how that worked out for Venezuela............. They sure taught gringo a lesson, didn't they?........

And the Times notes that Ecuador is not the only country out there with this kind of strangling embrace from China. According to the Times: China, now South America’s top trading partner, has seeded the region with infrastructure and a staggering trail of loans.

It has reaped political benefits, too, getting Latin American nations to sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Pakistan is reportedly in similar straits over Chinese debt, and so is much of Africa, again, another case of the capture of the resources. There are likely other places, too.........To Read More.....

My Take - All, and I mean all, of our Southern neighbors will have to look North to get out of this mess, and they'll not get good terms, but the terms will be better than what the Chicoms have duped them with.  Socialists are going down the tubes everywhere and that includes China. 

What?  China's going down the tubes?  Yes! 

They don't have the money they're loaning, and those borrowing don't have the money to repay them.  Time isn't on their side, it's on America's side, so don't get all worked up over this because the more they do this kind of thing the sooner they all go broke.

Quote of the Day!

I’m going to start out with a grievance against the entire foreign policy establishment of Washington DC, who 2 years ago were swearing that Donald Trump was going to start multiple nuclear wars or something.  Now they are mad because he is STOPPING two wars. How about you just admit you hate the President, love war and have been wrong for the last 20 years on every part of foreign policy?

Many of these people hold these two views:

1 - that it was horrible to leave the war in Syria and  

2 - that it is horrible that General Mattis left, since he was what kept the President from starting WWIII or something.

I don’t understand how you hold both of those views. - Senator Ron Paul

Thought For the Day

Is It Too Late for America?

December 23, 2018 DrHurd @ Dr.Hurd.com

Let’s be brutally honest. It might be too late for America. One of the two major parties is literally Communist. A century of government intervention in the economy has made prosperity fragile at best. If President Trump doesn’t get a second term, have you considered the tortured mediocrity of a President Biden or President Sanders? Their policies of wealth redistribution and nationalization are identical to those of Venezuela, Cuba and the old Soviet Russia. And they care nothing for the First and Second Amendments, the last pillars of our diminishing liberty. The next Democratic administration will probably finish us off, or create a civil breakdown. Career Republicans care nothing for anything. They are zeroes. President Trump is the only fighting chance we have, like it or not, and he’s buying the US at least a little more time. 

Medicare For All

December 17, 2018 By Michael D. Shaw @ HealthNewsDigest.com

 

The Kaiser Family Foundation lists eight current proposals in Congress under the headings of Medicare-for-All and Public Plan Buy-In. As KFF summarizes it…

• Two proposals would create Medicare-For-All, a single national health insurance program for all U.S. residents.
• Three proposals would create a new public plan option, based on Medicare, that would be offered to individuals and some or all employers through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
• Two proposals would create a Medicare buy-in option for older individuals not yet eligible for the current Medicare program.
• One proposal would create a Medicaid buy-in option that states can elect to offer to individuals through the ACA marketplace.

Medicare-For-All—as exemplified by S.1804—is the most radical of the proposals, given its “No Cost Sharing” (other than a small amount for prescription drugs) provision. (Title II, Sec. 202)   Current Medicare, of course, does have cost-sharing, which is paid monthly whether or not services are used. Deductibles and co-pays also apply.

During any discussion of socialized medicine, it is worthwhile to remember that what started in the 1880s as a beneficent program under Bismarck deteriorated into the blindingly autocratic system under Hitler. With full control of all doctors, Hitler could then force them into the ghastly Aktion T4 program, mandating that untold thousands of “unfit” individuals be euthanized.

A significant number of Germans opposed these killings, and the program was officially stopped in 1941, around the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, it continued in secret, and certainly provided the groundwork for the unimaginable killings occurring in the concentration camps.

Think Aktion T4 couldn’t happen here? As reported by the Hospice Patients Alliance, The Euthanasia Society of America changed names, and is now the hospice industry trade organization. Outrageous abuses have been reported in the media—so far mostly in Europe.

I recently interviewed Marilyn Singleton, MD, JD, outspoken advocate for medical freedom, patients’ rights, and preserving the doctor-patient relationship. At one point she commented on how the relatively new medical specialty of palliative care is growing. To be sure, there are plenty of aging boomers around who may soon be candidates. However, creepy situations occur, such as when her mother with no serious chronic conditions (and not on any meds) was admitted to a hospital for pneumonia…and the hospice team was brought in. How reassuring.

Moving back to S.1804, here are some of the criticisms that have been raised:

1. A study from George Mason University’s Mercatus Center estimates that the bill would add $32.6 trillion to federal spending in its first ten years, with costs steadily rising from there. Note that a doubling of all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan.

Mercatus feels that this estimate is conservative since it assumes that all of the bill’s dodgy precepts (massively lowering payments to providers, lowering drug prices, and lowering administrative costs) would come true. As a provider, why wouldn’t you want your fees to be reduced by 40 percent (per typical Medicare rates)? I guess that the brain trust behind this bill doesn’t know that the current low reimbursements on Medicare can only exist in light of the shortfall being made up by private payers.

2. Investor’s Business Daily remarks that the “No Cost Sharing” provision is unprecedented anywhere in the world, with the possible exception of Cuba. In every other country with socialized medicine, a co-pay is expected. (Australia 20%; Britain and Canada 15%; Denmark 14%; Switzerland 28%.)

3. Based on experience in several other countries, IBD imagines life under S.1804…There would be chronic shortages of doctors nationwide. Hospital overcrowding would be epidemic. Waits for everything from hip replacements to cataract surgery to cancer treatments would be extensive. Drug innovation would come to a virtual standstill. And there would be endless fights over the size of the government’s health budget, along with massive amounts of waste, fraud, and abuse.

4. As IBD and many others contend, the biggest problem with a bill like S.1804 is that it assumes that “A handful of government central planners can manage trillions of dollars’ worth of resources better than hundreds of millions of people making trillions of decisions every day in the free market. They can’t.”

Since Nancy Pelosi is opposed to a Medicare-For-All plan, Dr. Singleton thinks that a likely compromise will be some form of a Medicare buy-in option. Interestingly, this column presented such a program.

The “Nonessential” Federal Government

December 22, 2018 DrHurd @ DrHurd.com

Here we go again with another partial government shutdown.

The fact that “government shutdowns” are so regular, and annoying to some — but never a catastrophe — tells you something.

The fact that the vast majority of the federal government is “nonessential” enough that the vast majority of Americans can get by just fine without it tells you something.

Basically, it’s national security and defense — including border protection, by the way — that are considered essential. Gee, that’s interesting. That’s basically what the U.S. Constitution mandates for the federal government. Everything else was left to “the people” and the states. There’s also Social Security and Medicare. Retirement and health insurance were not part of the Constitution. But once the government passed laws making them promises, they became essential. Whether they government should have done that is another discussion.

Beyond that, pretty much everything is “nonessential”.

We have all these histrionics and theatrics every so often about a government shutdown. But the government only partially shuts down. It appears that the vast majority of what the federal government does is nonessential, so while inconvenient, it’s not the end of the world. It proves that everything the federal government does that’s shut down during these periods could be provided for just as well — actually, much better — by the private, voluntary, and/or for-profit sector.

The founders of the United States who drafted the Constitution got it right. Imagine that!

Kamala Harris Shows Her Anti-Catholic Bigotry

Reagan McCarthy Dec 25, 2018

In the true spirit of the holiday season, Senators Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) showed their true colors of bigotry and bias against Catholicism in a recent judicial confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill.

Before the committee was Omaha lawyer Brian C. Buescher, nominated by President Trump to represent the District of Nebraska on the United States District Court. Buescher is also a long-time member of the Knights of Columbus, an iconic service group of nearly two million Catholics, worldwide, that recruits members for volunteer work and fundraising for charitable causes. The Knights of Columbus have a distinguished reputation for selfless public service, charitable work and the promotion of Catholic values both within and outside of the church. Buescher’s membership did not sit well with Harris and Hirono, although the pair of potential 2020 contenders do not seem to actually understand the function of the Knights of Columbus society.........To Read More....

Fiscal Fights with Friends: If a Carbon Tax Is Imposed, Hauser’s Law Won’t Protect America from Bigger Government

December 19, 2018 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I have a series of columns where I explore tactical disagreements with folks who generally favor free markets and less government.

• In Part I, I defended the flat tax, which had been criticized by Reihan Salam
• In Part II, I explained why I thought a comprehensive fiscal package from the American Enterprise Institute was too timid.
• In Part III, I disagreed with Jerry Taylor’s argument for a carbon tax.
• In Part IV, I highlighted reasons why conservatives should reject a federal program for paid parental leave.

Today, we’re going to revisit the carbon tax because Josiah Neeley and William Murray of the R Street Institute have a column in the Hill that claims that levy would not finance bigger government.

…There have been numerous tax rate changes in the past 70 years, with the marginal income tax rate falling from a high of over 90 percent in the 1950s to as low as 28 percent in the late 1980s. Yet during this entire time period, federal tax revenue has stayed in a fairly narrow band when measured as a percentage of gross domestic product, never rising above 20 percent or falling much below 15 percent between 1950 and 2018. This phenomenon, which keeps federal revenues within a relatively narrow band, is known as Hauser’s law…the belief that any kind of new taxation introduces even greater government spending is based on very little actual evidence. Instead, Hauser’s law provides evidence that certain kinds of tax swaps, such as exchanging an income tax for a carbon tax, may actually increase the rate of economic growth without increasing the tax share of the overall economy.

They also claim that higher taxes don’t lead to more spending.

…demand for government spending drives tax policy, not the other way around. This conclusion has important implications for the carbon tax debate. …The relative imperviousness of the gross domestic product tax percent equilibrium since the late 1940s suggests that spending pressures drive taxes and not the other way around.

I have two responses to this analysis.

First, I very much want Hauser’s Law to be true. It would be very comforting if politicians in Washington could never seize more than 20 percent of the private sector’s output.

Sadly, that’s simply not the case. Just look at Europe, where central governments routinely extract far more than 40 percent of economic output.

All that’s required is taxes that target lower- and middle-income taxpayers. That’s happened in Europe because of harsh value-added taxes, punitive payroll taxes, onerous energy taxes, and income taxes that impose very high rates on ordinary people.

Needless to say, a carbon tax would be a step in that direction.
Second, the authors offer zero evidence that “government spending drives tax policy, not the other way around.”

By contrast, there is some persuasive data for the “starve the beast” hypothesis, which is based on the notion that higher taxes will encourage more spending.

In other words, Milton Friedman was right when he warned that “History shows that over a long period of time government will spend whatever the tax system raises plus as much more as it can get away with.”

Though I actually don’t think this causality debate is very important. The bottom line is that higher taxes are a bad idea if they trigger higher spending, and higher taxes also are a bad idea if they merely enable higher spending.

The column in the Hill is a spin-off from a recent study published by the R Street Institute.
Let’s look at that publication to further explore this issue. It starts with the basic hypothesis that a revenue-neutral carbon tax would be desirable.

…a carbon tax…provides a source of revenue that can be put to beneficial purposes, such as funding cuts to other existing taxes. By using the revenue from a carbon tax to replace existing ones, such a revenue neutral “tax swap” would greatly reduce or eliminate the economic costs of the tax. Indeed, in some cases, even if benefits from reduced emissions are not considered, a tax swap could be a net positive for the economy. …many critics of a carbon tax are skeptical as to whether a revenue-neutral carbon tax could be enacted. Some critics go further, arguing that even if a carbon tax started out as revenue neutral, it would not remain so. …While there are no guarantees, the existing evidence suggests that a revenue-neutral carbon tax would not lead to larger government over the long term and could even shrink it.

I don’t object to the notion that a carbon tax would be theoretically desirable if it replaced a tax that did more damage per dollar collected, such as the corporate income tax.

My concern has always been such a swap is highly unlikely. Indeed, many proponents of the carbon tax are very explicit about wanting to use the revenues to create a new entitlement. That would be the worst outcome, assuming we want more growth.

And, as noted above, I don’t think Hauser’s Law would save us from higher overall taxes and a larger burden of government spending.

Interestingly, the study basically acknowledges the same thing.

…given that Hauser’s Law is not an iron law of economics, it would be imprudent to put too much weight on it when considering the effects of a tax swap.

There are a couple of other parts of the study that deserve attention, including the assertion that politicians would have a hard time using the carbon tax as a money machine.

…a carbon tax has natural limitations that preclude it from being used to generate ever-increasing amounts of tax revenue. This is because higher carbon-tax rates induce a more rapid fall in greenhouse gas emissions. This, in turn, limits the overall revenue collected from the tax. In fact, unlike revenue from income, sales or property taxes, which tends to increase over time even at a constant tax rate, revenue from a carbon tax is likely to remain stable or fall gradually as emissions decline.

Since I’m a fan of the Laffer Curve, I think this argument is very reasonable in theory.
In effect, the R Street Institute is making the same argument – excessive tax rates can reduce revenue – that Alexander Hamilton used when endorsing tariffs.

But where is the point where carbon taxes become excessive? I don’t know the answer, but I’m very worried that there would be ample leeway to collect a lot of tax revenue before getting close to the revenue-maximizing point (the Congressional Budget Office estimates that a $25-per-ton carbon tax would generate more than $1 trillion in the first ten years).

The bottom line is that I worry that a carbon tax likely would be akin to a value-added tax. Yes, there are negative feedback effects from a VAT, as I noted at the end of yesterday’s column. But that doesn’t change the fact that the revenue-generating capacity of the VAT helps to explain Europe’s bloated welfare states.

I understand how a carbon tax, in theory, might not enable bigger government. But I see no way, in reality, that politicians wouldn’t use this new levy to finance even more spending.

P.S. If you’re not already convinced that a carbon tax will mean bigger government, then all you need to know is that both the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development support higher energy taxes for the United States.