Allies Running Away

The USA and the UK are supposed to have a "special relationship" which has lasted for a century.  President after president has counted on the UK for close cooperation.  President Obama has managed to mangle and perhaps destroy that alliance, however.

It began when Obama took office.  It started with little, but symbolic things.  First, Obama sent back to the UK the bust of Winston Churchill that had been in the Oval Office on loan from the British government.  Tossing Britain's great wartime leader out of his office was one of the ways that Obama showed he didn't really care about the UK.  A second small signal came when Obama gave a present to Queen Elizabeth II; it was a batch of recordings of Obama's speeches.  I doubt whether the Queen really planned to listen to the speeches, but in any event she couldn't.  Obama gave the recordings in a format that would not work in the UK.  It was just another example of how Obama and his people did not really care much about the UK.

There were more slights as time went by, and they got bigger and bigger.

A few years ago, when Argentina again threatened the British territory of the Falkland Islands, Obama declared the USA neutral in the dispute.  Remember that the Falklands were the subject of a war between the UK and Argentina in the early 1980s and that the USA supported our British ally at that time.  The islands are the home to people who support staying part of the UK by more than 95%.  Obama defied the democratic will of the people of the Falklands as well as the need to support our "special" ally, the UK.  It was a major slap in the face to the Brits.

Then there was Brexit.  When that vote came about six months ago, Obama decided to interfere in the election.  He spoke in Britain of the need for the UK to stay in the European Union and actually threatened Britain with dire consequences if it voted to leave the EU.  Obama today is in full melt down mode because Russia allegedly tried to mix into our elections by leaking actual emails that showed the corruption and dishonesty of the Democrats.  Foreign nations cannot mix into our country's elections according to Obama.  Nevertheless, Obama's direct attempt to influence the British vote on Brexit was much more intense and much more direct interference in the British election than anything that the Russians supposedly did in our vote.  His meddling did not go unnoticed.

Earlier this week, we saw the consequences of what Obama has wrought.  John Kerry gave a long winded speech about the Arab Israeli situation, and directly criticized the members of the governing coalition that supports Israeli prime minister Netanyahu.  Kerry also called for the imposition of his own peace plan on the parties to the dispute.

In a move that surprised the US State Department, prime minister May of the UK condemned Kerry's speech.  She said that Britain would not criticize the democratically elected government of an ally.  She also said that only direct negotiations between the two side to the dispute could resolve it.  it was a total slam of the American position, and it was overt and direct.  May did everything short of calling Kerry an ignoramus.

The leader of another close American ally, Australia said much the same thing as prime minister May.  Even the Russians said that resolution of the Arab/Israeli dispute could only come from negotiations between the two parties.

During the campaign this past fall, the Democrats constantly criticized Donald Trump for suggesting that NATO needed to change; Trump was accused of ending America's alliances.  It's too late for that.  obama has already damaged our alliances in major, major ways.

It's Hard To Imagine

President Obama really is low.  He pretends to be helping with the transition, and then he does all he can to try to tie the hands of President Elect Trump.  Obama has issued environmental rules and regulations.  Obama has abandoned decades of US policy to try to take a stab and injure Israel.  Obama has put meaningless sanctions on Russia for things that happened at least six months ago; the Russian actions were no big deal until Hillary lost, and then the very same things became a major international incident in Obama's mind.  There's more, but let's just say that Obama has done all he can to impose an ideological leftist framework on future American policy.

The sad thing about all this is that none of it will make any lasting difference for anything except Obama's place in history.  After blowing most of his presidency, Obama has now blown the transition.  The vast bulk of Obama's actions can be undone by President Trump with the use of executive orders.  Much of the rest can be undone by Congress through passage of resolutions disapproving of Obama's actions.  These resolutions require only a simple majority in both houses (which are controlled by the GOP) and cannot be the subject of a filibuster.

What's the point of all this BS from Obama?  He's acting like a guest who turns on all the lights in the house in the hopes of running up the electric bill before he leaves.  It's a minor annoyance with no lasting effects.  Still it is incredibly rude and ill mannered.

Obama will be gone in three weeks.  Once again, let me say:  "Thank God!!!!!"

I Just had To Say This -- Obama is the Lowest of the Low

I have been trying not to post until after New Year's Day, but the actions of our idiotic leader president Obama and his secretary of state John Kerry are so moronic and immoral that I had to post.

Let's start with the lesser moron, John Kerry.  Today that idiot told the world that America's ally Israel could either be a Jewish nation or a democratic nation.  What BS.  What stupidity.  Think about that.  Suppose Kerry announce that Italy could either be an Italian nation or a democracy.  Maybe Japan could either be Japanese or a democracy.  Those are totally ridiculous statements.  Italy will always be Italian; Japan will always be Japanese.  For Kerry, though, Israel does not get to choose to be a nation of Jews.  For some reason Kerry and Obama view Israel as the only nation in the world that cannot be composed of its own ethnic group.

Then there's the big moron, Obama.  Our moron in chief decided to change seventy years of American foreign policy that said that only direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians could settle the dispute.  Instead, the USA let the UN come in to dictate some of the provisions of the agreement between these parties.  Israeli settlements are now supposed to be illegal and the residents of those so called settlement are criminals according to the UN.  Think about that.  In 1948, Arab armies forcibly ejected Jews from the Jewish Quarter of the old city of Jerusalem, the place where the Jewish temple was located thousands of years ago.  It is the site of the holiest shrine in Judaism, the Western Wall of the Temple.  After the 1967 war when Jordan (which controlled eastern Jerusalem attacked Israel), Israel came to control the eastern half of the city and it was reunited.  Jews moved back into buildings from which they had been expelled by force 19 years earlier.  The re-entered an area in which they had lived for thousands of years.  To Obama, however, these people who are living in their homeland are now international criminals.

We can't get president Trump in place soon enough for me.  Hopefully, Trump will not only move the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the city as Israel's eternal capital, but he will also locate that embassy in the eastern half of the city, indeed in the very region which Obama seeks to keep free of Jews.

During the Holocaust, there were many areas in Europe that were declared by the Nazis to be kept free of all Jews.  In essence, the resolution that Obama allowed to pass does that same thing.  It is a disgrace that the president of the United States of America, even one as moronic and misguided as Obama, would tolerate such a racist and anti--Semitic action by the UN.

Obama used to worry about his legacy.  He need worry no more.  Obama has established his place at the very worst president of the modern era when it comes to foreign policy.  The reality is that no matter what President Trump does, he will look good in comparison to Obama.

Thank God that there is less than one month left with this idiot.

Time For the Holidays

First of all, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and a Happy New Year.  For the rest of this year, I will be posting only sporadically.  It's time for the holidays rather than for sharing my thoughts with all of you.  I'm sure there will still be things about which I just have to write.  I'll be back full time, after the new year starts.

With Terrorism, The Left Still Misses The Point

There have been multiple terror attacks around the world in just the last week.  As we watch the end of the Obama years and the onset of the Trump administration, we will soon see the American government talking about radical Islamic terrorism.  No longer will the government of the USA be unwilling to call the attackers what they really are.  This will be a big change.

In the last few days, however, I have seen multiple articles in the mainstream media recognizing the coming change but deriding it as meaningless.  The articles basically say "so what!"  We will call them radical Islamic terrorists, but that surely won't stop them.  These articles are proof that the left still misses the point when it comes to terrorism.

The problem with the Obama policy has not been just that the president and the government refused to use three words, "radical Islamic terrorism."  The problem has been that in order to avoid characterizing our adversaries as Islamic terrorists, Obama required that our strategists and armed forces stay away from strategies designed to deal with the specifics of this violent brand of Islam.  In other words, Obama refused to allow the USA to recognize the true nature of the enemy, so our forces were unable to focus our strategies to defeat that specific enemy.  In many ways, the failure by Obama has been that he tried to have our military response to the terrorists mirror the approach of the TSA at the nation's airports.  The TSA selects people to get heightened scrutiny at random rather than focusing on those who are more likely to be terrorists.  The result is that 85 year old women using walkers get searched while 23 year old suspicious men do not.  The left gets to congratulate itself that we don't profile people, but security suffers.  When you use this approach across all anti-terror activities, the result is more terrorism.

Moving from a fantasy in which our adversaries are not really Islamic to the reality in which we recognize the true nature of the enemy and focus on that nature in order to develop a plan to defeat them will be a major step up in the nation's anti-terror activities.

When You Can't Find Hate, Just Make It Up

So far today, we have learned that the black church in Mississippi that was set on fire after the word "Trump" was spray painted on the outside was a hoax perpetrated by a member of the church.  Actually, it wasn't really a hoax, since the church was damaged in the fire.  Still, no one connected to Trump was involved; it was the work of an African American member of the church.  Then, we learned that the guy who claimed he was tossed off a Delta Airlines flight for speaking Arabic really wasn't thrown off.  Indeed, he made the whole thing up.  Then we heard that the Muslim woman who claimed that a group of white guys threatened to burn her headscarf while cursing at her and chanting "Trump" also wasn't telling the truth.  She too made the whole thing up.  Then....well there were two other fake hate crimes debunked today, but there's no point in going through the details.

The real point here is that the left is worried.  They are worried that their election narrative about how racist and Islamophobic America is today is about to fail for total lack of evidence.  As a result, there seems to be a mad rush to make up events to illustrate that hate exists.  After all, if there's not really much hatred for minorities across America, what is the point of the left.  You can't be a group of victims if there are no victimizers.

I can't wait for the Trump administration to actually start.  Surely, the far left will still see racism, sexism and every other thing that Hillary put into the basket of deplorables.  The point, however, is that the average American will get to see what a false and meritless attack that nonsense really is.  It may be a moment of doom for many on the left.  Without false claims like those, they won't have any way to get back into power.

These People Can't Run Anything

As the story of the hacking of the DNC and Podesta emails continues, one thing is clear:  the people at the DNC can't run anything.

According to the New York Times, the FBI called the DNC on multiple occasions in 2015 to warn that attempts were being made to hack the Democrats.  The staff member at the DNC who took the call never did anything in response, however, because he wasn't sure that the person calling was really an FBI agent.

Let's stop here.  Think about that.  Someone claiming to be an FBI agent calls the DNC and warns them of possible hacking.  The warning is ignored because the DNC staffer isn't sure if it really is the FBI.  C'mon, doesn't the DNC have people who could pick up the phone and call the FBI to verify that the message was real?  Maybe one of the members of Congress who were chair or vice chair of the DNC at the time could get through to the FBI?  Wouldn't that be the prudent thing to do?  It's roughly like getting a call at 2 am from someone saying that they are outside your house and the roof is on fire.  Would you just go back to sleep because the call might be a phony, or would you check the situation out?  The DNC chose to go back to sleep and got burned as a result.

Then there's a mistake in a message given to John Podesta about a phishing email he got.  The aide who sent it told Podesta that "this is a legitimate email." and that Podesta "needs to change his email password immediately."  Podesta, of course, never changed his password, and all of his email was hacked.  Somehow, the aide left out the word "not", since he intended to say "this is not a legitimate email."  Still, Podesta was warned to change his password and did nothing.  He too chose to go back to sleep and got burned as a result.

What this all proves is that the people at the DNC and the Clinton campaign can't run anything.

Connecticut and USA Lose Another Company

There's an announcement today that Praxair (of Connecticut) and Linde (of Germany) are going to merge with the resulting company to be located in what they call a "neutral" EU country.  This is not a minor deal.  The resulting company will be worth roughly 65 billion dollars with the shareholders of each existing company getting about half of the final ownership.

The point of all this is that yet another big company is moving out of Connecticut and out of the USA.  I wonder if the President Elect will decide to mix in to try to stop the move.

ISIS Claims Berlin Attack As Its Work; Media Isn't Sure

ISIS announced today that the terror incident in Berlin yesterday in which a truck traveling at high speed rammed through a crowded Christmas market was the work of one of its "soldiers".  The German authorities had already said that the attack was likely an act of terrorism.  After all, we know that the driver of the truck, a Polish man, was shot and killed before the incident, and the truck was hijacked.  We also know that the method used in the attack is one that ISIS has been recommending to its followers.  Then there's the point that the target was not just a crowd, but a group of people at a Christmas market, a sure group of "infidels".  It's been clear for a while that this was a major terrorist attack.

Then there's the media.  They talk about how things are still being investigated to determine the "possible motives" for the attack.  With the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor just passing, I wonder how today's mainstream media would react to that attack.  Would we hear how the Japanese commanding officer tripped and sent his forces to attack in Pearl Harbor by accident?  Would the media tell us that despite the Japanese markings on the planes, we should not jump to any conclusions that these were the forces of Japan?  After all, the planes might be Peruvian and in disguise.  What does it take for the mainstream media to accept a reality that they don't like?

Will Anyone in the Media Stand Up For The Truth?

The mainstream media is always strutting and preening while telling the nation that they alone "speak truth to power."  It's a nice act, even if it is completely untrue.

I was struck by that thought when I read the latest screed from Washington Post "pundit" Eugene Robinson.  His piece is called "Who In the Republican Party Will Stand Up To Trump?"  The substance of Robinson's opinion is that Trump will run over the GOP congressional leadership and get his way on policy unless the wiser men in the party stand up and stop him.  In other words, Robinson is just pushing another delusional bit of nonsense.

Think about it.  Robinson is worried that "Trump promised the ridiculous border wall, and I believe he will expect Congress to let him build it."  One has to wonder what the point of an election actually is according to Robinson.  Trump campaigned for more than a year on his promise to build a wall and the American people then elected him president.  Doesn't it stand to reason that the voters expect Trump will build that wall?  Shouldn't the GOP members of Congress honor the choice made by the voters?  According to Robinson, the answer is no.  You see, according to Robinson and the others like him, voter choices need to be honored only if those choices are victories for the Democrats.  When the GOP wins, its policies must be put aside.  Eight years ago, when the Democrats and Obama won big, all we heard for two years was "elections have consequences."  That was correct.  It is also correct in the context of the 2016 election.  No matter what hysteria gets pushed by so called pundits like Robinson, the GOP and Trump are going to enact as much of their program as possible.  All the ruinous policies put in place by Obama and the Democrats are going to be jettisoned.  That's the simple truth.

So I wonder.  The media doesn't speak truth to power.  It's more like it spouts Democrat propaganda to everyone.  But, is there anyone in the mainstream media who will stand up for the truth?

It Never Ends

Okay, Trump won the electoral vote.  The election is finally over.  Wouldn't you expect that there might be some let up in the relentless attack by the mainstream media on the President Elect?  Nope; it isn't going to happen.

I say this because this morning I listened to CBS radio news tell the world that Donald Trump said "without proof" that the murder of the Russian ambassador to Turkey was Islamic terrorism.

Think about that.  A Muslim man in Turkey (nothing unusual there) shot and killed the ambassador while shouting "Alahu Akhbar" as well as roughly "This is for Aleppo" and "remember Syria".  The shooter was then killed by security.

What more do you need to show this was Islamic terrorism?  Maybe CBS thinks it was "workplace violence". 

The good thing about all this is that the American people actually understand reality.  The mainstream media can continue with their nonsense, but no one with any sense will pay any attention.

So Notice What Didn't Happen

After weeks of non-stop stories in the mainstream media about the likelihood that electors would refuse to vote for Donald Trump particularly because of supposed hacking by the Russians, the Electoral College voted today.  In fact, the process has still not been completed as California and Hawaii at least are still to be completed.

So here are the big questions:  Did you see all the stories about how Trump was denied a victory due to a revolt by the electors?  Did you see the large numbers of Republican electors who decided to vote for someone other than Trump? 

The answers to both questions are "OF COURSE NOT!!!"

The reality is that the whole story line about a revolt by electors was nothing more than more fake news from the mainstream media and the Democrats.  How sad is it that they cannot get used to losing.  Why, though, do they have to push this story only to not even report on the outcome in any detail.

Terror Attack In Berlin

After days during which the German police and government have been warning of an imminent terrorist attack with the likely target being an outdoor Christmas market, a large truck rolled through just such a market in Berlin today.  According to reports, the driver of the truck fled after killing at least 10 and wounding 40 more, but now we are hearing that the driver has been captured by police.

That's all we know at the moment.  At least so far, no terrorist group has claimed authorship of the attack, nor do we know if the driver was even affiliated with al Qaeda or ISIS or the terrorist flavor du jour.  Police in Berlin, however, are treating the event as a terrorist attack.

We will have to wait more hours until the full nature of this event is known.  It sure does look like the ISIS attack in Nice last summer.

 

Way To Go, Pot

The UPI is reporting this morning that president Obama warned President Elect Donald Trump not to "overuse" executive orders.  Here's the first line of the UPI article:

With about one month to go before he leaves office, President Barack Obama gave some exit interview-type advice to his successor Donald Trump: Don't rely too heavily on executive orders.

It's hard to imagine that Obama could say this.  After all, he's the man who told us he had a pen and a phone and would use them because Congress wouldn't do what he wanted.  Obama's the guy who tried to amend the immigration laws with an executive pronouncement.  Obama's the guy who modified Obamacare legislation on a great many occasions by executive action.  Obama's the guy who tried to run the whole country in defiance of Congress.  Is Obama totally not self aware?

This is like Charlie Sheen telling some other celebrity about the need for abstinence and chastity.

UPDATE:  I got an email asking me about the title to the post.  I thought it was clear, but it's a reference to the cliché about the pot calling the kettle black. 

It's Election Day and We Need a Safe Space For Electors

Today is Election Day.  In each state capital, the electors will meet and cast their ballots for president and vice president.  Usually, this merits a small story buried in the days news.  Today, however, we have electors who are meeting under siege.  The Democrats, who are still unable to accept their defeat, have been mounting a campaign trying to convince electors to refuse to follow the vote of the people in their states.  It's a rather unprecedented move to undermine the entire electoral process set up by the Constitution.

It's worth noting that much of what is happening with regard to the electors are triggering events and microaggressions.  Indeed, what the Democrats and the left are doing is more like macroaggressions.  The electors need a safe space free from the bullying of the Democrats.  Maybe we could get the Ivy League universities to suspend the season for the Democrats so that they have to shut up.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City says that the official opening of the new Second Avenue subway will be on January 1, 2017.  Actually, what is opening is the first segment of the line which adds only three stations on the avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  Eventually, the line is supposed to run the entire length of the island.

This should be and actually is good news.  There are, however, things that one needs to keep in mind when it comes to this subway.  First of all, construction on this segment began in 2007.  That means it took almost ten years to complete what was supposed to be a four year project.  Second, planning for the line began in 1929.  That's not a typo; planning began almost 80 years ago.  It was interrupted by the Depression, resumed in the 1960s with actual construction commencing in the 1970s, stopped in the 1976 when New York's financial crisis hit, and resumed again about 20 years ago.  Then there's the comparison to subway lines elsewhere.  In Beijing, the Chinese built a line with 18 stations that traverses the entire city in three years and at a cost roughly one-third as much as this new stub line in New York that took ten years.

Now that the line is opening, it would be a good thing for the MTA to step back and examine the entire process to determine how future construction can be made speedier and much less expensive.  Maybe they could call the report "Making subway construction great again."

John McCain Says Russian Interference Could Destroy Democracy

Senator John McCain has always been focused on foreign and military policy.  For him, the economy and domestic issues are secondary.  Most people remember eight years ago when McCain stopped campaigning and raced to Washington to help deal with the financial crisis.  Once back in Washington, McCain did and said nothing because he did not have any idea what to do.  The move made McCain look foolish and ended his chances to be president.  On foreign policy, though, we should expect McCain to be knowledgeable.  That's why his comments today on the CNN Sunday show surprise me.

McCain told the CNN audience (all five of them) today that Russian interference in our election could destroy democracy.  It seemed a bit odd coming from McCain.  After all, Obama interfered in the elections of other countries.  In Israel, Obama sent large amounts of American cash to help fund a group devoted to defeating prime minister Netanyahu in the last election.  In Egypt, Obama also took steps to undermine general (now president) al Sisi in the last election.  Obama also stepped in to try to swing the vote in the Brexit referendum in the UK.  There's more, but it's worth noting that McCain didn't seem upset by those Obama moves.  If it's ok for the USA to do this, why is McCain now up in arms if the Russians have done the same thing?

Here's Some Good News

The Guardian is reporting that many lower level staffers working in the White House in the national security apparatus are trying to leave because they don't want to work under general Flynn, the incoming National Security Adviser.  According to The Guardian, these people are worried because of stories that have been reported in the mainstream media about Flynn.  The Guardian's story portrays this exodus of staffers as a bad thing, indeed a major problem for the incoming administration.  That's odd.  That's really odd.  I mean think about it for a moment.  One of the supposedly alarming stories is that Flynn deleted a tweet he sent in the week before the election that linked to a story that tied Hillary Clinton to some sort of child porn ring.  I don't know if Flynn sent such a tweet or deleted it after sending it.  I also don't know if Flynn was fooled by a phony story.  Indeed, I don't even know if the story about Hillary was phony.  I do know, however, that Flynn and his career of many decades ought not be completely ignored by a security analyst on the basis of one deleted tweet.  In fact, if these security analysts are willing to flee the scene based upon such skimpy evidence, then they probably are not the sort of people we want heavily involved with America's national security.  What it really means is that these security analysts are strongly supportive of the liberal/Obama world view, so the claims in the hysteria of the mainstream media resonates with them.  That world view in which ideology is more important than reality, however, is just what President Elect Trump wants to jettison from the White House.  What better way to do that than a wholesale replacement of personnel.

There is, of course, the rejoinder about the loss of the collective experience of all these people if they leave.  In many ways, it's a basic argument of the presidential election on a small scale.  Hillary Clinton argued consistently that she had a great deal of experience that would make her a better president.  Trump's response, which carried the day, was that Hillary had bad experience.  She never achieved anything.  We've all seen the Obama foreign policy put together with the help of these fleeing analysts.  A fair assessment of that mess is to say that it sucked. 

Let's hope that most of these analysts leave.  Washington could use a good cleaning.

Education Apparently Isn't Everything

Have you ever heard of Kenneth Jost?  It's unlikely, so let me fill you in.  Mr. Jost is the living proof that education does not provide common sense.  Alternatively, you could say that Jost demonstrates that a trained legal mind is often devoid of reason. 

Perhaps here's a better way to look at it.  The LA Times published a column by Jost in which this genius argues that the Supreme Court should declare the Electoral College to be unconstitutional.  Think about that.  The Electoral College is expressly created by the Constitution as the method for chosing the president.  Jost wants the nation's highest court to rule that the body created by the Constitution is unconstitutional.  Lest you think that this is just the argument of some uneducated moron, let me tell you that Jost's online biography says that he is "an honors graduate of Harvard College and Georgetown Law School".  He has also written numerous books about the Supreme Court.

This article by Jost ought to be extremely embarrassing for him; apparently, though, he means it all seriously.  It is not a parody.

The next time someone tells you of the glories of education, tell them about this guy.  Education clearly isn't everything.  You really do need more.

Looking But Not Seeing

There's an article from the French news agency AFP today about how Israelis are looking past the "surge" of anti-Semitism in the USA tied to Donald Trump to remain hopeful that Trump will bring better ties between America and the Jewish state.  I have to wonder if the reporter bothered to do any research for the piece; it certainly seems not.

First, the reporter speaks of a surge of anti-Semitism in the USA.  There certainly has been more of that in American society in the last few years.  It has nothing to do with Trump, however.  The rise of anti-Semitism has come from the left, particularly on college campuses.  Israelis and those who support Israel have been shouted down on college campuses.  Constant verbal attacks on Jewish campus organizations (and sometimes more than verbal) have been ongoing for the last few years.  Oh, there are still the far right crazies who hate Jews just like they always did.  The change has been that the left has moved from simmering underground anti-Semitism to blatant and outspoken acts of that sort.

Second, the idea of anti-Semitic acts across the USA is nothing new.  We constantly hear from the media about all those anti-Muslim acts by xenophobic or racist thugs, even though such acts are extremely rare.  We rarely hear much about the anti-Semitic acts though.  For the media, they just don't really exist.  The reality, however, is that in each of the last ten year, the majority of hate inspired acts in the USA have been directed at Jews according to the FBI statistics.  Acts against Muslims, for example, were only about 15% as many as those directed against Jews last year, and there are less than two times the number of Jews in the USA as there are Muslims. 

Third, the supposed tie to Trump for the anti-Semitic acts just does not exist.  The AFP article says that the Ku Klux Klan supported Trump, so he must be to blame.  Really?  By that logic, Hillary Clinton is to blame.  Al Sharpton supported Clinton, and he helped incite a riots in New York by targeting Jews.  Trump, at least, denounced the KKK; Hillary accepted Sharpton's support.  The point is that neither Hillary or Trump are anti-Semitic because of the nature of a few supporters.  But the AFP says Trump appointed Steve Bannon to his staff, and he ran Breitbart.  Again, that's a silly point.  Breitbart is not anti-Semitic.  In fact, the site's founder, Andrew Breitbart was Jewish.

There's more to say here, but the point is clear.  The AFP article, and much of the media for that matter, just parrots a BS lie when they tie Trump to anti-Semitism.  It's offensive, but even worse, it's dangerous.  It needs to stop.

The Commentariat Of Delusion

I read a number of articles today in which one expert or another pundit "explains" the rationale for the cabinet appointments of President Elect Donald Trump.  It's a potpourri of delusion.  These people -- who were so wrong about the election -- are still using their incorrect understanding of Trump and the American people to put forth bogus reasoning about the various appointments.  One guy writing in the Washington Post says that the conservatives named by Trump are just a ploy to make the Republican base happy while Trump actually governs as a liberal.  (No, I'm not kidding; he really says that.)  Another so called expert says that Trump picked people without much thought to how they would be able to handle the difficult task of governing.  That guy actually uses the nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, as someone who will not be able to deal with a big bureaucracy.  (Tillerson, of course, is the CEO of Exxon, so he is already the head of an organization which is bigger than the State Department.)  Then there are those who explain that for foreign policy and defense, Trump is preparing for war.  These people should not be confused with the others who tell us that regarding the same policy area, Trump is planning to let Vladimir Putin determine US foreign and defense policies.l

It's really not that hard to understand Trump's picks.  He's even told us part of his reasoning.  Trump said he wanted people who get things done, so he picked people who have achieved that in the past.  Trump wants to move on from the Obama policy of talking about things while doing nothing; he actually wants to accomplish things.  On top of that, Trump wants to shake up the old Washington way of proceeding.  Is the EPA out of control?  (YES) Then put in a new administrator who will shake the place up and stop the avalanche of needless regulations.  Is the Department of Defense too much of a bureaucracy more concerned about the possibility of transgender troops than the defense of the country?  (YES) Then put in a new secretary who will cut through the BS and focus on the needs of the troops and restoring American military power.  Is the Justice Department being run as a social engineering agency rather than a law enforcement group?  (YES)  Then put in a new Attorney General who will see that the law is enforced.  We could go further down the list, but the point is that Trump's choices will shake things up in a big way and change the direction of the behemoth that is the federal government.  Trump really is the bringer of change; he's doing exactly what he said he would do.

The sad thing is that the overwhelming bulk of the commentariat cannot seem to grasp what is actually happening.  It's like they are watching a football game and analyzing it based upon the pitchers' ERA or the batting averages of the players.  They're following the wrong game.

All of this will become more apparent in the next six months.  Hopefully the "experts" will reach a point where they actually perceive reality.

Worse Than The Blind Leading The Blind

We've hit a new low in the USA.  Today, we have celebrities like Mark Ruffalo (okay minor celebrities) who are attacking President Elect Donald Trump because of the violence in Aleppo.  I'm not going to go through the list of all the attacks.  Suffice to say that many of the usual very liberal Hollywood types are condemning the slaughter in Aleppo by the Assad regime and its allies (a condemnation with which any sane person would agree), but then blaming it on Donald Trump.

It's an amazing thing to watch.  Remember, Aleppo is dying because for the last five years president Obama did nothing to stop this bloody tragedy.  Obama could have acted at the start of the Syrian civil war and brought down Assad without much cost at all.  Syria was nearly 80 percent Sunni Muslim, but Assad and nearly the entire government are Alawaite Muslims, a type of Shiite.  After nearly 50 years of rule by the tiny minority and oppression of the huge majority, protests erupted in 2011.  Assad responded to peaceful protests by sending snipers to kill people at random at those protests.  The civil war ensued.  A little help from the USA to the uprising would have tipped the balance against Assad quite quickly.  Instead, Obama did nothing.  As things got worse in Syria, Obama did nothing.  At this point, Syria is basically destroyed, close to half a million people have died, millions are homeless or have fled Syria as refugees and the killing continues.  The only one who has the power to have the US act right now is president Obama.  Trump is not yet in office.  So why would these moronic celebrities blame Trump for Aleppo?

I truly believe that the celebrities making these attacks don't know what is going on.  They are total morons who lack a basic understanding of how our government works and of what has caused the Syrian disaster.  Nevertheless, these Hollywood morons make statements that get repeated by other morons who also have no idea what the actual facts are.  Blaming Trump for Syria is like blaming it on Fidel Castro or on the government of Peru.  Maybe we could blame it on Matt Damon or Ben Affleck.  It's completely ridiculous.  It's like blaming slow economic growth on my dog.

There's been a big discussion in recent weeks about "fake news".  This latest series of attacks on Trump over Aleppo doesn't even make it to the level of fake news.  It's all just sheer idiocy.  It's the morons leading the morons.

Will The Old Weapons Still Work?

We will soon get a sense of just what sort of president Donald Trump will be, at least with regard to foreign policy.  Trump is indicating certain policy changes for the USA are coming, and other countries are trotting out the usual counter measures that dissuaded president Obama from action.  For example, Trump spoke to the president of Taiwan on the phone to indicate that he may not continue the phony "one China" policy of the USA.  America trades with Taiwan and has treaty obligations to defend that land, but for the last forty years or so, the USA has followed the charade of having diplomatic relations only with Beijing.  The seizure of an underwater drone yesterday by the Chinese navy was China's way of saying that recognition of Taiwan would cause big problems.

Another example can be seen in connection with Israel and the Palestinians.  President Elect Trump is indicating that he will follow the law and move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the capital Jerusalem.  It's hardly an earthshaking move, but the Palestinian Authority announced today that such a move by Trump would end any chance for peace in the Middle East.

It's interesting to look at the reaction by Obama to these two examples.  When Trump spoke to the Taiwanese president Obama apologized to China.  No doubt there will be some similar sort of response to the Palestinians.  China, Russia, Iran, the Palestinians, and all manner of other countries and groups know that threats, both real and ridiculous, have caused Obama to back down on multiple occasions.  These countries and groups are, no doubt, waiting to see if the old methods that so flummoxed Obama will have a similar result with Trump.

In my opinion, these countries and groups are going to be sorely disappointed.  After all, each of these situations is actually just a negotiation.  Will the Palestinians actually refuse to move toward peace once they realize that the USA will no longer put up with their threats?  Will China actually go to war because the American president is speaking to the president of Taiwan?  Remember, China did not object to America selling billions upon billions of dollars of weapons to Taiwan; a phone conversation hardly rises to even two percent of the importance of the weapons.  The key is that President Elect Trump knows this.  He also understands that both Russia and Iran will back away once they realize that threats and games will no longer move the USA.

Literature Come To Life

I was thinking this morning about what to write and for some strange reason, I realized that the current situation in the USA is like a line right out of literature.  Practically every person who graduated from high school over the last 50 years knows this quote:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
 
This is the opening sentence of A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  It is also a pretty accurate description of contemporary America.  There are those, like me, who are ecstatic that we will finally see the end of moronic but politically correct rule of progressivism in Washington.  America is about to be run to BENEFIT the mass of the American people with economic growth and freedom rather than to benefit the government and the elites who pompously but foolishly think they know better.  Then there are those who see the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the end of Democrat and leftist power as the onset of the end times.  These are the same people who told us that president Obama would bring hope and change, something that never happened.  Now, however, when President Elect Trump is clearly a harbinger of major change, these people have switched to non-stop lamentation about those changes.  You see change is only a good thing if it doesn't alter anything and it leaves them in permanent control.

It's going to be a very interesting few years. 

More Fake News --This Time from the LA Times

Here's a headline from the LA Times:  "US Jewish Groups Oppose Trump's Choice For Ambassador to Israel".  Think about that and what it means.

Most people reading that headline would think that the American Jewish community was rising up in opposition to Trump's choice.  That, however, is not what is happening.  Quite the contrary is true.  Most Jewish groups that have commented on the nomination have been pleased with it.  In fact, the only group so far to criticize the nomination has been J Street which is a far left Jewish group that basically sides with the Palestinians in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute.

So would it surprise you to hear that the Palestinians oppose a choice for US ambassador to Israel.  Most likely, the answer to that is no.  On the other hand, if you promote the idea that Jews are upset about Trump's choice for that post, you convey something very different.

Congratulations to the LA Times for today's version of fake news.

Speaking Truth To The Media

During the campaign, there were two big Wikileaks publications of emails that came from the Democrats.  The first was the publication of the internal DNC email that revealed that Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC did all they could to rig the primaries so that Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders.  This was the hack that revealed that Wasserman Schultz's successor as head of the DNC, Donna Brazile, actually fed Hillary Clinton questions for an upcoming presidential primary debate a few days ahead of that event.  This Wikileaks release came in the weeks just before the Democrat convention last summer.  The second Wikileaks release came in multiple parts.  Basically, Wikileaks put on line the email account of John Podesta, chairman of Hillary's campaign.  This drip, drip, drip release had daily surprises including things like the text of those secret speeches that Clinton gave to big Wall Street banks and a great many comments by Clintonistas that revealed their disdain for ordinary Americans.  This Wikileaks action came during the fall campaign.

The media has blamed all of this on the Russians.  There's no proof that has been released; all we have seen consists of articles citing unnamed sources at the CIA.  Both the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI, however, do not blame the Russians for the Wikileaks releases.

We now know why this split developed (if, in fact, the reports about the CIA view are correct.)  Podesta's email account was hacked by someone using a simple phishing operation.  In other words, someone sent Podesta and email with a link in it and Podesta clicked on the link.  This is the standard method for someone to hack an email account.  It requires no special skills as a hacker.  In fact, this sort of attack takes place thousands of times each day.  There is no way to connect this to the Russians.  There is no sophisticated methodology used.  It could be anyone.  The DNI and the FBI recognize this and understand there is no way to link this to Russia.  Most likely the CIA has come to the same conclusion and the reports in the media are wrong.

It may be that the hack of the DNC was the work of the Russians; I don't know.  But if that is the case, then those hacks took place last Spring and all the results were released four months before the election.  We heard nothing from the government about that.  Then Hillary lost to Trump.  Only now do we get the fake news account of massive Russian involvement.  But there's no basis for it.

The Official Russian Response

President Obama has now said that the USA will take action against Russia for its alleged hacking of the presidential election.  That moron Ben Rhodes even went further and said that Vladimir Putin directed the hacking.  Are they pushing us to war with Russia just because the Democrats can't accept that they lost the election?  Remember, this is the same president Obama who many weeks after the election told his fellow Democrats to get over it and that Trump won fair and square.  Clearly the intelligence didn't change, because Obama made his statement after all the articles in the media claiming that the CIA has decided that Russia did it all to hurt Hillary and to help Trump.

So we have a strong threat from Obama and now we have the official Russian reaction.  Asked for comment, the Russian foreign ministry said something that translates roughly like this:

"After seeing Obama's follow through on threats in the past, all we can say now is HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA"

Okay, so the Russians never said that, but I bet that's what they think.  Obama never takes action.  Just look at Syria.  Obama said that Assad had to go; then for years he did nothing.  Obama said that if Assad used chemical weapons, that would cross a red line for the USA.  Assad used chemical weapons (and is still using them) and Obama did nothing.  Obama said that America would train the Free Syrian Army with 5000 trained in the first year.  Actually, we spent nearly 100 million dollars but managed to train roughly 12 men.  When the Russians moved forces into Syria and started killing those armed factions with which the USA was allied, Obama actually welcomed them to the fight against ISIS (even though the Russians were not fighting ISIS.)  Why should the Russians believe anything threat that Obama makes?

So Do The Russians Work For the Department of Homeland Security?

The Secretary of State of Georgia made public today that the voting systems of that state were subject to cyber attack ten times in the last year.  In each instance, the attack was traced back to the Department of Homeland Security.  The cyber attacks attempted to penetrate voter information and registration data and other similarly sensitive information.  The Georgia authorities contacted DHS, but they kept getting differing explanations as to what had happened.  Now the state is going public.

Think about this.  For the last week or two we have been watching many in the mainstream media and among the Democrats melt down because of a supposed hack by the Russians involving the election.  None of the Russian efforts centered on the actual process of voting or counting the votes; the allege Russian efforts focused on making public what Democrats were doing and saying in private.  The ten attempted hacks on the Georgia systems are much more serious.  These attempted hacks involve attempts to penetrate the actual voting systems and counting of ballots.  The more serious attempts to hack the election came from the Department of Homeland Security and they are getting essentially no attention from the media or the Democrats.  Why are there no calls to investigate these attempted hacks?

If you ever needed complete proof that the point of the uproar over supposed Russian hacks is political rather than concern over the validity of the election, the differing responses to these two sets of events provides it.

An Old Battle Worth Noting

Late yesterday, the federal Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the Virginia law requiring voters present a photo ID at the polls.  This law had been attacked as being an attempt to suppress minority voting, but the court rejected that view, just as the lower court whose ruling was being appealed had previously concluded.  This is just one more court ruling that photo ID requirements are fine.  Since the Supreme Court previously held just that, the ruling is no surprise.

Hopefully, the constant attacks on these laws will end soon.  They are just a waste of time and money. 

It's Disgraceful

Yesterday brought more moves by the Democrats and their media allies to attempt to discredit the election results.  It's truly disgraceful.

First, Nancy Pelosi came out for an independent commission to investigate whether or not the Russians influenced the election.  That's a rather big stretch.  Remember, the whole hysteria is based upon supposed anonymous statements that the CIA has concluded that the Russians were trying to help Trump win.  Those unsourced claims about the CIA view are contradicted by the public statements of the head of all intelligence, the Director of National Intelligence, who testified to Congress that no such conclusion could be made due to lack of any evidence of it.  In other words, the guy to whom the CIA reports says that the positions attributed to unnamed sources in the CIA are wrong.  In addition, the FBI has concluded that the supposed CIA position is wrong.  And to top this all off, if there really were proof that the Russians did do this, there would have been some response from president Obama.  After all, the hacks of the DNC and the Clinton campaign happened many months before the actual election; we all remember the uproar over them at the Democrats' convention last summer.  So why the hysteria now?  Is it all just because the Democrats can't deal with defeat?

Pelosi knows there won't be an independent commission to investigate this mess.  President Trump is not going to appoint such a group.  Congress is not going to fund such a group.  Without some sort of governmental backing, the commission would be meaningless; it couldn't get witnesses to appear or even get its hands on the relevant documents.  It certainly would not be made privy to classified information.  That means that the Pelosi call for a commission is just more political theater.  It's designed to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Trump's victory.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media is moving to do the same thing.  The New York Times is busy comparing the whole thing to Watergate.  Now it is true that every time there is any chance to take a swing at something affecting Republicans, the Times compares it to Watergate.  Still, this is the first time I can remember the Times trotting out its Watergate claims for something that the current evidence indicates didn't even happen. 

Then there's the move by some electors to seek an immediate briefing of what, if anything, the CIA and FBI have found on the subject.  The White House properly pointed out that most, if not all, of the electors do not have security clearances, so there is no way they could be shown classified information.  There is also no way that the security clearances could be put in place prior to the date next week when the electors vote.  In other words, this is more meaningless political theater.  Further, all but one of the electors calling for this briefing are Democrats.  I doubt that they are planning to change their votes away from Hillary Clinton.  And don't forget that the elector leading this move for a briefing is from California and just happens to be Nancy Pelosi's daughter.

This is truly disgraceful.  There is not even a claim by any of these groups that Trump was involved in any way with the Russians.  Using the supposed CIA position which has been rejected by the other intelligence agencies to attack Trump is a very dangerous thing to do.  

Death on a Massive Scale

Aleppo is the scene of death on a massive scale.  According to reports from the scene, the streets are littered with bodies.  Assad forces are summarily executing those who are suspected of opposing the Assad regime; the killing includes men, women and children.  Many are being burned alive.  As the same time many of the women who are captured are first being raped before being murdered.

Remember, this is not any part of the fight against ISIS.  The combatants in Aleppo are the Assad forces together with Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies on one side and Sunni rebels, many of whom are supposedly supported by the USA on the other side.  The slaughter in Aleppo is just one big war crime.

It's worth keeping in mind the silence of the world.  Oh, I'm sure that at some point, president Obama will tell us that Assad and his allies are on the wrong side of history.  That should really shake them up.  It won't stop the slaughter of hundreds or thousands of innocent civilians, however.

Next time someone tells you that Islam is a "religion of peace", I suggest that you point them towards Aleppo.  99% of those fighting in that slaughterhouse are Muslims.  No care is taken to avoid civilian deaths or injury.  In fact, starvation, death and destruction are being maximized.

The worst part of all this death is that it all could have been avoided.  President Obama and his then secretary of state Hillary Clinton put the USA on the path of avoiding any involvement in Syria.  Obama could have ended the civil war with a well timed push in 2010 or 2011.  With his choice to stay away from any possible involvement, Obama sentenced hundreds of thousands of Syrians to death and sent millions more fleeing from their homeland as refugees.

 

Letting Malloy Be A Moron

The governor of Connecticut is always good for a laugh.  Sadly, we are usually laughing at him rather than with him.  That's the case again today.  Dan Malloy issued a statement on the nomination of Rick Perry to be secretary of energy.  Dan Malloy called the nomination an affront to the American people.  After all, Rick Perry is an "energy man" from and "energy state".  Isn't that just terrible!  Our moronic governor thinks so.  Perry also called a few years back for the abolition of DOE.  It's another terrible moment!

The truth is that Rick Perry was governor for many terms of a state with six times as many people as Connecticut.  During that time, the economy of Texas was the principal growth engine for essentially all the growth of the US economy.  Connecticut lost jobs and people during that same time.  Maybe what Dan Malloy meant to say is that Donald Trump has nominated someone as secretary of DOE who understands economic growth and who will promote that growth with the resulting higher levels of employment and higher incomes for America's middle class through the energy industry.  Perhaps Malloy doesn't know what the word "affront" actually means.

I guess the best way to say this in shorthand is that Dan Malloy really doesn't know what he is talking about.

Rex, The Wonder Secretary

President Elect Donald Trump announced that he has named Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state.  Tillerson, for the three of you who don't already know, has been the CEO of Exxon for the last dozen years.

The amazing thing to me has been the response by many in the mainstream media in which they call Tillerson a "novice" when it comes to diplomacy.  Are they kidding?  Exxon is bigger than a great many countries.  It does business in something like 50 different countries.  In many places, the head of Exxon has to deal with the government in major ways in order to continue its activities there.  Tillerson has probably spent more time with world leaders than any of the other candidates who were up for the office except maybe for John Bolton who used to be ambassador to the UN (although it's hard to call people at the UN world leaders.)  Rex is not a novice.

Another big complaint is that Tillerson got awarded the "order of friendship" by Russia's president Vladimir Putin.  Apparently, friendship is now a bad thing.  I remember all these media people being very upset when Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize for nothing years ago.  Peace, after all, must be worse even than friendship.  These people are truly morons.  America should want a secretary of state who knows Putin and has a good relationship with him.  That might enable the new secretary to explain the position of the USA to Putin without it being seen as some sort of personal attack.

Then there's the group that is complaining that Tillerson is a white male.  It seems that the switch from John Kerry to Rex Tillerson somehow makes a difference in that regard.  Forgetting the idiocy of that position, it is good to know that Trump is going for the best people rather than some sort of phony diversity. 

Welcome aboard Rex. 

Have They No Standards?

Does the New York Times have journalistic standards?  I ask because today the Times announced that it is hiring Glenn Thrush to cover the White House.  Thrush, of course, is the Politico reporter who sent his articles for pre-approval to the Clinton campaign during the presidential election.  We learned that when the emails of John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chair, were leaked online at Wikileaks.  It's just another example of the Times ignoring the substance of some really shady dealings by the Clinton group and supporting media while making a big stink over who exactly leaked this true material to Wikileaks.

How can the Times hire this guy?  Obviously, Thrush doesn't care about journalism.  His motto seems to be "All the news that's approved by the Clintons".  It would be one thing if thrush were hired to run some internal newsletter at the DNC, but the New York Times claims to be a major source of journalism.

I started this by asking if the Times has journalistic standards.  Clearly, the answer is no.

Was It The Russians? Recount Shows Votes Changed!

Earlier today, I updated readers about the Wisconsin recount.  Well, now we have final results from that state.  Every last vote in Wisconsin was counted again, and the results turned out to have changed.  In the original vote count, Trump beat Clinton in Wisconsin by over 22,000 votes.  Now that the votes have been recounted, Trump widened his lead by 162 votes.  Maybe the Russians tried to hack the original count to help Hillary Clinton.  Thanks, however, to the $3.5 million spent on the recount, we now have a more accurate result that shows Trump with his enlarged lead over Clinton.

I hope that all those people who gave money to Jill Stein to help defray the cost of this nonsensical recount are happy with the outcome.  They need to accept reality.  Trump won; Hillary lost.  It wasn't the Russians; it wasn't someone hacking the vote; it was the will of the people.  Why can't liberals accept the will of the people when those people vote against the left?  What's their new slogan?  Maybe "Democracy -- but only if we win!"

The Himes Disgrace

I sad to say that my congressman is Jim Himes of the 4th district of Connecticut.  Today, Himes is out begging the electors in the electoral college to ignore the vote in their states and to vote against Donald Trump for president.  Jim admits that Trump won the election "fair and square", but he still wants the electors to vote for someone else.  Jim says that the President Elect is "completely unhinged" because he said he does not believe that the Russians hacked the election.

Let's get two things clear:

1.  There is no evidence that the Russians did anything to alter the outcome of the election.  Indeed, quite the opposite is true.  Every place where the crazies demanded recounts and the like, the result has stayed the same after review.  Further, five weeks after the election, no one has found even a single instance of Russian hacking of the election.  That means that if anyone is "completely unhinged" about the subject, it is congressman Himes, not President Elect Trump.

2.  There is evidence that someone hacked or leaked information from the DNC and from the Clinton campaign.  We don't know if that was the Russians, and there is no evidence that has been made public to support the claim that it was the Russians.  We do know, however, that however the information put on Wikileaks was obtained, it was nothing more than the public disclosure of the actual truth about the DNC and the Clintons.  Wikileaks revealed the ongoing lies that were coming from the DNC etc.

It's really a disgrace for Himes to be calling for the vote of the people to be overturned.  If the result had been the opposite and Republicans were calling for the overturning of the results, charges of fascism, Nazism, and the like would be spewing from the mouths of people like Himes.  Himes is a disgrace to this district. 

For Democrats, The Truth Won't Set You Free

The big news story of the day is the claim that the Russians hacked the US presidential election to help Donald Trump.  The whole claim is based upon a story in the Washington Post citing anonymous "intelligence sources".  There is no evidence presented aside from these supposed claims, but the rest of the media is running with the story as if it is unquestionably true.  Indeed, I'm waiting for the mainstream media to announce that the claim of Russian hacking is now "settled facts" and that those who don't accept it are "political deniers."

Much has been made about the lack of any real evidence for the story, but it's another aspect that I think merits some attention.  The mainstream media and the Democrats are going berserk over this story, but the reality is that whoever hacked the DNC and the Clinton campaign didn't change the truth of what they found there.  Let's take a step back and review a few things:

1.  The emails of the DNC that showed that Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her team rigged the system to favor Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders were all real.  No one denied that.  Whoever hacked the DNC just released the truth instead of the lies being told by Wasserman Schultz, Clinton and the DNC.

2.  The emails from the DNC also showed that the next chair of the DNC, Donna Brazile, gave Hillary Clinton the exact questions to be asked to her in an upcoming presidential debate.  Even worse, Brazile did this more than once.  No one has questioned the validity of the emails.  Here too, whoever hacked the DNC just released the truth instead of the lies being told by Brazile and Clinton's campaign.

3.  The excerpts from the speeches that Hillary Clinton gave to various Wall Street banks did contain statements in which Hillary told the bankers that they were the ones who could be fix Wall Street.  The speeches also contained Hillary telling the bankers that they really shouldn't pay all that much attention to her public positions because she had public positions for the campaign and private positions for later.  She just had to say certain things for public consumption even if she didn't mean it.  For example, Hillary told the bankers that there was no way that college tuition could be made free (even though she was promising that in her campaign.)  Hillary never denied the accuracy of the speech excerpts that were released through Wikileaks.  So here again, the "hackers" just released the truth to the public.

4.  The myriad of emails from John Podesta's account brought to light one after another issue of improprieties by the Clinton foundation and the Clinton family.  They were all real emails and real problems.  They exposed the truth rather than the cover up and lies that the Clintons had been spouting before the disclosure.

So think about what is happening now.  The Democrats and much of the media is having a melt down because someone -- who they say is the Russians -- revealed the truth.  THE TRUTH!!!  It's not the usual fake news that the Democrats themselves put forward, it's the actual truth.

Should we all thank whoever it was that brought the truth to the public.  Isn't that the very "speaking truth to power" that the left loves to proclaim?

They need to remember that the truth will set you free.

The Latest Recount Update

It's worth noting that there was news in two of the three states where Jill Stein and her group of crazies sought a recount of the presidential vote.  In Wisconsin, the recount is 95% complete.  In the general election count, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 22,000 votes.  With 95% recounted, Hillary has picked up 28 votes in total.  That still leaves Trump ahead by 22,000 plus votes.  The remaining votes being recounted are expected to be completed today.  So after spending millions of dollars on a recount, Stein and her crazies changed nothing.

Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, a federal court ruled against Stein's claim of a constitutional right to have a recount now.  The judge pointed out that there is no evidence of any problem with the vote count and that Stein had plenty of time to mount a requested recount under state law.  The court also questioned if Stein even had standing to bring the claim in federal court and if the federal court had jurisdiction to hear the case.  In other words, Stein lost on every possible basis (and any one of them would have been enough to defeat her claim.)

Hopefully, this marks the end of all the recount nonsense aside from the final report in Wisconsin that reaffirms the result.

Oh No, Democrats Complain They Aren't Being Told What To Say

There's an amazing article in leak central, excuse me, in the Politico this morning.  It seems that Democrats are worried because they don't have a clear leader once president Obama leaves office in a few weeks.  The Democrats complain that they don't know what to oppose that President Elect Trump is doing.  Even worse, the Democrats say that they aren't getting "messaging memos" or other directions about what they are supposed to say on various subjects.

Think about that for a minute.  We always recognized that the Democrats had a very "unified" message.  The pundits and politicians seemed to be reading from prepared talking points.  Now that is being confirmed.  It is bad enough that the whole group operated like puppets for a central messaging unit.  Much worse is the idea that these people are panic stricken because they have to decide for themselves what to do and what to say.

Don't these people know for themselves what they think?

ISIS Back In Palmyra

Just the other day, president Obama (remember him?) gave a speech about how wonderful and successful his anti-terrorism policies have been.  Today, as if to punctuate Obama's speech, ISIS forces are reported to have retaken about half of the Syrian city of Palmyra.  About six months ago, a big deal was made that ISIS had been expelled from Palmyra and how ISIS was being pushed back to Raqqa, the ISIS capital.  Since then, the Assad forces and their Iranian, Russian and terrorist Hezbollah forces have concentrated on starving and killing the Syrians and rebel forces in Aleppo.  Many thousands have died, but the fighting continues in and around Aleppo.  Meanwhile, Palmyra is once again falling to ISIS.

The real truth is that Obama's policies have been based on the strategic doctrine of "not enough".  There are not enough soldiers, not enough weapons, not enough attention given to ISIS, and generally not enough anything except disinterest.  I don't know that President Elect Trump will move to send US forces to the war, but I know that there will be one major change from Obama.  Trump is going to try actually to succeed in what the USA does.  The Obama target of doing enough so that Obama can say he has taken action (without really caring about ultimate success) is coming to an end.

 

Was Liberalism Rejected?

I just read a column by Graham Vyse in the New Republic in which he argues that the victory of Donald Trump was not a rejection of liberalism.  It's a strange sort of piece which seems to get lost in some very contorted logic.

First, we get the obligatory argument that Hillary won the popular vote so liberalism couldn't have been rejected.  Really?  That misses the point.  It is safe to say that a great many Hillary voters didn't consider liberalism vs. conservatism when they went to the polls.  After all, Hillary ran on one theme:  "I'm not Donald Trump."  That's not a liberal argument.  People who voted against Trump could hardly be considered to be affirming their support for liberalism.  Then there's the massive defection of non-college educated Americans to the GOP.  That's the group that for many years was the core of support for liberal Democrats.  Their movement was notable in that it pushed about five or six states from the Democrats to the GOP.  That's a pretty big rejection.

Second, Vyse misses the big picture.  It is true that America was closely split for president, but when it got to senators, congressmen, governors and state legislators, the split was totally one-sided.  The more anodyne conservatives in these other races beat the liberal Democrats again and again and again.  That's where the rejection of liberalism really shows.  Only in a very few of these races were personalities able to make a difference.  It's probably safe to say that voters choosing a state senator had no idea what that man or woman was like; it was a policy or philosophy decision that was made.  Those decisions show wholesale rejection of liberals.

Third, Vyse waxes ecstatically about all the liberal accomplishments of president Obama and argues that this proves liberalism has not been rejected.  And what are those accomplishments?  First, of course, is Obamacare.  But Obamacare is about to be repealed, something that was made clear to the public during the campaign.  The public voted to get rid of Obamacare.  The second liberal accomplishment cited by Vyse is the stimulus.  Eight years ago, Obama pushed through a massive spending bill that was supposed to push shovel ready jobs which never got built.  The stimulus turned into a move to push cash to state employee unions, and it led to the creation of the Tea Party (hardly a reaffirmation of liberalism).  It was also a one time thing that gave Congress back to the Republicans in response.  Vyse also mentions financial regulation (Dodd Frank), another law about to be seriously changed.  In fact, there really is nothing that Vyse points to that could be called a lasting "accomplishment".

So has liberalism actually been rejected by the American people?  I don't think so despite all that I have written above.  A better way to look at it is that the American people have decided that the liberalism of the Democrats has not worked and they are opting to give something else a try.  If Trump and the GOP can be successful in governing so that people's lives are improved, then the choice of something other than liberalism will be embedded in the minds of a great many.  That could be a true rejection of liberalism.  It may be coming, but it's not here yet.

They Got It Wrong, But They're Still Explaining It To the Rest Of Us

I just happened to look at 538 blog.  The home of Nate Silver and his number crunchers has a big new explanatory article about how Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump was actually not Clinton's problem but a bigger problem for Democrats as a whole.  They compare the shift in Obama's job approval in individuals states through 2015 with the election results in 2016 and draw "insightful" conclusions from that data.  They might as well just read tea leaves.

The reality is that the gurus at 538 got it wrong.  They had all the data they now analyze on Obama approval ratings before the election.  They had a myriad of polling results.  They gave us state by state predictions.  They got at least five states wrong.  That may be only 10% of the total number of states, but it is more than half of the states that anyone thought might flip one way or the other.  In short 538 not only got it wrong; there were not even close.  Nevertheless, they are now busy explaining what happened to rest of us.  In many ways, it's the equivalent of having a three year old explain organic chemistry.

Perhaps the funniest and most revealing part of the analysis comes at the end when the 538 gurus tell us that advantages for one party or another in the Electoral College are short lived.  These are some of the same people who told us over and over for years about the Democrats' "blue wall" and overwhelming advantage in the Electoral College.  Until election day in 2016, long term advantages for one party in the EC were the accepted wisdom.  After election day when the GOP won, long term advantages for one party in the EC are now next to non-existent.  Give me a break!

In 1936, there was a famous magazine that predicted that Franklin Roosevelt would lose his race for re-election.  FDR won every state except Maine and Vermont.  The magazine closed shortly thereafter.  Eighty years later, media outlet after media outlet told us that Trump simply had no chance to win the election; even on election day, we were getting that message.  Then Trump won.  Why can't today's media have the decency to follow the 1936 example and just close their doors?  It's surely the right thing to do.

Taking Money Out Of Politics

There's a big report out today that Hillary Clinton spent 1.2 billion dollars in her losing campaign for president.  Think about that for a moment.

1.  Hillary spent much much more than Trump and the Republicans.  It seems that either money just doesn't work or one has to actually know how and where to spend the money for it to make a difference.  Remember all those months over last summer when Hillary's team was running attack after attack on Trump on TV and the pundits were telling us that Trump's failure to run counter ads would destroy his ability to win?  Five states where Hillary ran endless attack ads are PA, MI, OH, NC and FL.  Trump won every one of them.

2.  The reports don't tell us how much Hillary actually raised.  If I know the Clintons, they raised 1.3 or 1.4 billions dollars and spent 1.2 with the remainder sitting in a fund somewhere put aside for future use.  And then there's the cash that got siphoned off directly to the Clintons.  During the campaign we heard that Hillary was paying herself a salary out of campaign funds.  How much was that? 

3.  The Democrats spent much of the campaign denouncing the influence of money on the election.  The truth, however, is that the big bucks went to the Democrats and those dollars did not work their magic.

News That Isn't Fake, But No One Cares About

He's back.  (Yawn)  That's right, senator Tim Kaine is back in the news.  Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Kaine has made it onto CNN for the first time in weeks.

For those of you who have forgotten, Kaine was the Democrats' nominee for vice president in 2016.  His last major bit of exposure was in the vice presidential debate where he was crushed by the GOP's Mike Pence.  Kaine did so poorly that even most of the pro-Democrat pundits picked Pence as the winner of the debate.  After that, Kaine mostly disappeared from view during the campaign.

Well now Kaine is back, at least on CNN.  His big position now is to criticize the man appointed by Donald Trump as National Security Adviser.  That appointee, retired general Mike Flynn, is just a conspiracy nut according to Kaine.  Kaine thinks Flynn has to "step aside" for the good of America.

It's actually pretty funny to hear what Kaine has to say.  He has no idea what he is talking about.  I hope he pops up again in five or six years to provide us with another of his great "insights".

Maybe Reality Will Count Soon

In the last few weeks, so much has been happening that I haven't commented on the decision by the Corps of Engineers to refuse a permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline to traverse a local river.  There have been major protests at the site of the pipeline construction on the supposed reason that it "threatens" local water supplies and could disturb local sites of a particular Indian tribe. 

The first reason, safety of the water supply, is nonsense.  There are literally tens of thousands of pipelines that cross rivers in this country.  None are leaking into those rivers.  In fact, the plan for this pipeline is to run the pipeline under the river, something that would reduce the chance of there ever being an accidental rupture of the pipes.  That is supposedly the issue on which the Corps of Engineers was reviewing the application, so there is no way the permit should have been denied.

The second reason is also bogus.  The area in question is near, but not on the local reservation.  On reservation land, the tribe ought to be involved.  Once the issue pertains to land that is not on the reservation, then the decision about local sites should be left to the state.  There is no reason why the Army Corps of Engineers should be getting involved in local social issues; it never was and ought never be within the purview of that agency.

The real reason for the decision is another triumph for environmental hysteria.  Some of the true believers in the church of global warming think that anything that results in production of fossil fuels has to be stopped.  The pipeline is just the latest target.  They are wrong, however, if they think that this decision will reduce the use of fossil fuels or help lower carbon emissions.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Right now, much of the production of the prolific fields in North Dakota is moved by trains or trucks to refineries.  The pipeline would take literally hundreds or thousands of trucks off the highways and trains off the tracks.  Transporting oil to a refinery by pipeline results in essentially no pollution.  Transporting the same oil to the same refinery by truck releases a whole batch of pollution into the air.  In essence, the enviro-protesters are fighting to keep pollution higher.

The sad thing about all this is that president Obama surely understands the actual facts in this issue.  Nevertheless, his administration bowed to the protesters and their far left ideology.  The result is a decision which helps no one and hurts many.

It's really good that Obama has only about six weeks left.  The sooner he is gone, the better.

Bombs in Giza

We now have terrorist bombs going off in Giza right near the Pyramids in Egypt.

It's bad enough that monsters use bombs to terrorize people.  Doing that in places that represent the history of civilization on Earth is even worse.  Instead of just attacking people, they are attacking humanity.

 

What A Great Line

I just read a piece that Howie Carr wrote in the Boston Herald.  It's all about how the Democrats are now condemning things that they lauded under Obama.  The point is that the Dems are furious about losing.  The article ends, however, with a great line that is worth repeating.  The last time the Democrats were this angry at Republicans was when the GOP took the Democrats' slaves away.

I Hope This Is Fake News

There's an article in the Washington Examiner today that one of the pet chickens kept by Virginia governor Terry MacAuliffe died about a month before the election.  The dead chicken's name was Hillary.  I'm not making this up.

So here's the questions:

1.  Why does the governor of Virginia have pet chickens?

2.  Why is the death of a chicken news to be reported?

3.  Are we supposed to consider the death of Hillary the chicken an omen for the election?

I sure hope this is all fake news.

How Do They Miss This?

Hillary Clinton was in Washington for the farewell ceremony for Harry Reid.  The moment was truly surreal.  Hillary used the occasion to lament the damage that fake news did to her losing campaign for president.

Think about that for a moment.  "Fake News" is the big bugaboo for the mainstream media and the left at the moment.  Fake news is being denounced every day and now Hillary is joining the chorus.  Remember, though, that Hillary put out the news that the Benghazi attack was the result of a youtube video.  That was fake news coming from a high government official rather than from some unknown website.  Hillary is also the one who gave America the news that there was no classified information sent or received in her email.  That too was fake news designed by Hillary to cover up what she had actually done.  Join that with the news put out by Hillary that she turned over all of her work emails to the State Department (fake news) and that she set up her email system so she could use just one device (more fake news).  Then there's the news she put out that all the donors to the Clinton foundation were made public (fake news again).  The reality is that Hillary Clinton probably did lose because of fake news, but it was the fake news that she put out herself and which was discovered by the American people.   

Another Reason For a Wall

If you speak to the average liberal and you mention guns, you will get a ten minute lecture on the need for "common sense gun safety legislation" which is the preferred way to say gun control these days.  Meanwhile, if you mention the possibility of building a wall along the border with Mexico to the same person, you will first be called a racist and then told that there is no need for such a thing.

Remember those positions when you consider these statistics:
In 2015, there were 12,979 Americans killed in gun homicides.  In the same year, 12,989 Americans were killed in heroin overdoses.  In other words, more Americans dies from heroin than from gun homicides.  Further, when you add in the natural and synthetic opioids, there were over 32,000 overdose deaths in 2015, a figure way more than twice the number killed in gun homicides.

There are no exact stats on where the heroin/opioids came from, but it is generally accepted by law enforcement officials that by far the biggest entry point into the USA for these drugs is illegal importation across the Mexican border.

So here's the big question.  If the libs go into near total meltdown when it comes to trying to stop deaths by guns, why do they oppose a measure like the border wall that would cut off a big chunk of drugs that are killing far more Americans?

Some Misguided Moments

There are a great many ideas promoted by the mainstream media that are completely wrong and need to be exposed.  Here are just a few:

1.  Claim:  Donald Trump won because his campaign gave a platform to white supremacists.  That's right Hillary was defeated by white racists.
     Reality:  In 2012, Mitt Romney got a higher percentage of the white vote than Trump got in 2016.  Meanwhile, Trump got a higher percentage of black and Hispanic votes in 2016 than Romney got in 2012.  In short, Trump did not win using racism.

2.  Claim:  Donald Trump is anti-gay and he and his campaign are anti-Semitic.
     Reality:  Trump never said or proposed anything that could be called anti-gay.  As for supposed anti-Semitism, Trump's daughter Ivanka is married to an orthodox Jew and she converted.  Her kids (Trump's grandchildren) are Jewish.  In addition, Trump and the GOP are much more supportive of Israel than Clinton and the Democrats were.

3.  Claim:  The Trump transition effort is disorganized and chaotic.
     Reality:  At this point, Trump has named more cabinet choices than any of his recent predecessors had done.  In addition, Trump is actively involved in policy moves like the Carrier deal to save jobs and the promise from Softbank of Japan of a massive pro-growth investment in the USA.  Further, many of the Trump cabinet choices are acknowledged to be extremely strong.

4.  Claim:  Trump's tweets directly to the public are unpresidential.
     Reality:  by tweeting, Trump is doing what president Obama has done for years.  The difference is that Trump avoids the anodyne messages that Obama put out.  Trump makes his points directly to millions on social media and it irks the mainstream media that they don't get to decide what the public gets to hear each day.  The media is no long the gate keeper for news.

5.  Claim:  Trump has too many generals in his cabinet.
     Reality:  So far, Trump has named two generals to the cabinet and he has another on his staff.  It's not at all unusual to have generals in the cabinet.  Think of general Powell for Bush or General Shinseki for Obama.  The men named by Trump have unique skills that make them well suited to their respective positions.  There is no reason why military service would disqualify someone from heading the Defense Department or Homeland Security.

There's more of these idiotic positions from the media and the Democrats, but you get the picture.

The Ministry Of Health???

Two men were killed when a tunnel collapsed in Gaza.  The men were working on construction of the tunnel which was to enable Hamas terrorists to sneak into Israel to carry out attacks.  The announcement came from the Ministry of Health of Gaza.

This leads to a few comments:

1.  Why is the Ministry of Health reporting about terrorists being killed building an attack tunnel?  Have things actually gotten that bizarre in Gaza that the collapse is considered a health issue?

2.  I wonder what caused the tunnel to collapse.  Have the Israelis found a method to cause the collapse of such tunnels?  I hope so.

3.  There is the need for enormous amounts of construction in Gaza.  Buildings, roads, schools and infrastructure is woefully inadequate.  Why is Hamas wasting its resources on building terror tunnels rather than using the resources to help the population?

Question of the Day

What do these states have in common that makes them different from every other state:   California, Hawaii, Delaware and Rhode Island?

Here's the answer:  these are the only four states out of 50 that have a Democrat governor and Democrat majority control of the state legislature.  (Connecticut's state senate is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans so the Democrats have functional control but not a majority.)

It's a rather staggering statistic.  A month after the election, it is still hard to grasp just how badly the Democrats have done across the country. 

Wisconsin Moves Towards The Finish Line

The recount in Wisconsin is 70% complete as of yesterday.  As of now, Hillary Clinton has closed the more than 22,000 margin run up by Donald Trump by 68 votes.  In other words, the original count was correct and the recount has been a massive waste of time and money.  Jill Stein has also picked up about 60 votes (which comes to roughly $58,000 per vote for her.)

This thing is over and the word for Jill Stein (and her silent partner Hillary Clinton) is "Humiliated".

Why is it that the left are such bad losers?

Pruitt At EPA

Donald Trump named his choice for head of the EPA today; it is Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma.  It is truly a delicious moment of joy.  Pruitt, you see, does not believe that man made climate change is "settled science".  He believes that data showing actual warming and a causation by human activity is needed before any conclusions can be drawn.  He also believes that the computer models on which all global warming arguments have been based are insufficient to constitute settled science, particularly since those computer models have been shown to be erroneous by the actual data we have so far.  In other words, Pruit wants to use the scientific method to come to a conclusion rather than failed models, coercion and hype.

All I can say about this choice is BRAVO!!!!!!  If there was ever any proof needed to show just how positive this development is, it comes from the New York Times tonight which is busy calling Pruitt a "climate change denialist".  Just yesterday, Trump was meeting with Al Gore and the climate change industry was getting goose bumps thinking that Trump had suddenly flipped in his views.  Today, reality is back and it is wonderful.

There's no question that we need to monitor the climate to make sure if there is any merit to claims about global warming.  Until there is some actual evidence that the actions of man are changing the climate, however, there is no need to change the essence of our lives to prevent something that is most likely not actually happening.

CNN Is Accused Of Racial Discrimination

In an interesting, a lawsuit has been filed on behalf of all of CNN's African American employees alleging that the network engages in racial discrimination in hiring and promotion.  I haven't seen the complaint, but the news reports indicate that the basis for the charges is the under-representation of blacks at the highest level of CNN management.  Given that CNN is one of the prime places where phony charges of racism are made in our media, it's nice to see charges of racism leveled at the network.  Nevertheless, the court should require more than just unequal representation to prove discrimination; there needs to be proof of actual discrimination.

Just remember this lawsuit, however, the next time you hear that some nonentity on CNN is charging someone with racism.

Oh NO!!!! There's Too Many Generals!!

Today's big criticism of President Elect Trump in the mainstream media is that he is selecting too many generals to be in his cabinet.  What a calamity.  Trump has selected retired general Mattis as the defense secretary and another retired general as head of Homeland Security.  Top that off with General Flynn as National Security Advisor and there are three retired generals with top positions.  So?  Mattis is someone with unquestioned talent regarding the military.  He is known as someone who gets things done and does not let bureaucracy stand in the way.  In other words, he is just the sort of person who could reshape the Pentagon in a very positive way.  Flynn is former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Obama.  He has years of experience with national security matters.  His military experience is a positive not a negative for his position.  Similarly, having retired general Kelly as head at Homeland Security is great.  Kelly has years of experience dealing with many of the major problems handled by DHS. 

Sometimes, it just gets ridiculous to watch the media and the critics try to find fault with anything that Trump does.