Iowa Caucus Analysis: Winners, Losers, and Unbelievable Spin

On February 2, 2016 By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Alright. As Maureen McGovern sang, “There’s Got to Be a Morning After”.

Now that the dust has settled, what can we learn from the results of the First Event of the Primary Season, the Iowa Caucus, or, as it is called, the “Hawkeye Caucai”?

Edward J. Rollins is a former assistant to President Ronald Reagan, who managed Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign. He is presently a senior presidential fellow at Hofstra University and a member of the Political Consultants Hall of Fame. He is Senior Advisor for Teneo Strategy.

Rollins, a Fox News Contributor, has submitted the following op ed, analyzing the results of yesterday’s Iowa Caucus on the Republican Side of the Aisle…

It is always interesting to watch democracy in action and Iowa is ground zero.

Many political pundits and media analysts complain about the attention Iowa receives from candidates and the media because it goes first. But it also is a state filled with people who are willing to pay attention, to go to small events and forums (more than 1,500 have been held) and to show up at a caucus on a cold, often snowy night to participate in a ritual few states duplicate.

Millions of dollars are spent on TV commercials (over 60,000) and organization that Monday night produced a record turnout.

Iowa doesn’t always produce the eventual winners but it does eliminate the losers. With 17 Republican candidates starting this process, there are really only three or four real candidates now with voter support and sufficient monies to go on to the remaining contests.

With a record voter turnout in Iowa, the winner, Ted Cruz goes on with his extraordinary organization and conservative supporters with a big upset.

Marco Rubio, the best debater, came on strong and gained real momentum. He came very close to coming in second. Certainly he has to be viewed as a very serious candidate and the best bet to become the establishment candidate.

Trump is Trump and his special appeal to new voters and the angry anti-Washington element will go on, too, but with unpredictable results. He also paid a price for missing the last debate and fighting Fox News.

Ben Carson held his 10 percent base, but his candidacy is short lived and beyond Iowa has minimal support.

The biggest losers are Bush, Christie and Huckabee. Bush spent the most money and dropped like a rock.

Christie’s bluster, unlike Trump’s, didn’t sell. He has no money and no future in this race.

And Huckabee, who won this race eight years, and thought he could be a serious challenger against Romney in 2012, was a bottom dweller getting less than 2 percent of the vote. He raised no money and has no appeal and barely has enough money left to buy a bus ticket back to Arkansas. He quickly waved the flag of surrender and wisely quit the race.

One more may make the cut after Iowa, but this is the field now and it will be fascinating to watch.

Monday night’s win is a giant victory for Cruz and his team. He won in spite of a greater turnout than in years past and benefited from the dramatic increase in new voters. And now on to New Hampshire!

So, the Grand Old Party’s cup runneth over, They are seemingly blessed with 3 strong contenders for this Presidential Candidate Nomination.

The problem, as history has shown, is the fact that the Iowa Caucus is not exactly a bellweather by which to determine what will happen in November.

The other problem for the Republican Establishment, is the fact that they absolutely cannot stand the candidates that came in first and second.

Rubio, in the past, has proven to be a useful ally.

Things promise to be interesting in the months leading up to the convention.

Meanwhile, over at Propaganda Central for the Democrat Party and the Clinton Machine, otherwise known as the New York Times, Nate Cohn tried to declare the Queen of Mean, the winner of a VIRTUAL TIE.

Bernie Sanders is right: The Iowa Democratic caucuses were a “virtual tie,” especially after you consider that the results aren’t even actual vote tallies, but state delegate equivalents subject to all kinds of messy rounding rules and potential geographic biases.

The official tally, for now, is Hillary Clinton at 49.9 percent, and Mr. Sanders at 49.6 percent with 97 percent of precincts reporting early Tuesday morning.

But in the end, a virtual tie in Iowa is an acceptable, if not ideal, result for Mrs. Clinton and an ominous one for Mr. Sanders. He failed to win a state tailor made to his strengths.

He fares best among white voters. The electorate was 91 percent white, per the entrance polls. He does well with less affluent voters. The caucus electorate was far less affluent than the national primary electorate in 2008. He’s heavily dependent on turnout from young voters, and he had months to build a robust field operation. As the primaries quickly unfold, he won’t have that luxury.

Iowa is not just a white state, but also a relatively liberal one — one of only a few of states where Barack Obama won white voters in the 2008 primary and in both general elections. It is also a caucus state, which tends to attract committed activists.

In the end, Mr. Sanders made good on all of those strengths. He excelled in college towns. He won an astonishing 84 percent of those aged 17 to 29 — even better than Mr. Obama in the 2008 caucus. He won voters making less than $50,000 a year, again outperforming Mr. Obama by a wide margin. He won “very liberal” voters comfortably, 58 to 39 percent.

But these strengths were neatly canceled by Mrs. Clinton’s strengths. She won older voters, more affluent voters, along with “somewhat liberal” and “moderate” Democrats.

This raises a straightforward challenge for Mr. Sanders. He has nearly no chance to do as well among nonwhite voters as Mr. Obama did in 2008. To win, Mr. Sanders will need to secure white voters by at least a modest margin and probably a large one. In the end, Mr. Sanders failed to score a clear win in a state where Mr. Obama easily defeated Mrs. Clinton among white voters.

Mr. Sanders’s strength wasn’t so great as to suggest that he’s positioned to improve upon national polls once the campaign heats up. National polls show him roughly tied with Mrs. Clinton among white voters, and it was the case here as well. It suggests that additional gains for Mr. Sanders in national polls will require him to do better than he did in Iowa, not that the close race in Iowa augurs a close one nationally.

Mr. Sanders will have another opportunity to gain momentum after the New Hampshire primary. He might not get as much credit for a victory there as he would have in Iowa, since New Hampshire borders his home state of Vermont. But it could nonetheless give him another opportunity to overcome his weaknesses among nonwhite voters.

As a general rule, though, momentum is overrated in primary politics. In 2008, for instance, momentum never really changed the contours of the race. Mr. Obama’s victory in Iowa allowed him to make huge gains among black voters, but not much more — the sort of exception that would seem to prove the rule. Mr. Obama couldn’t even put Mrs. Clinton away after winning a string of states in early February.

Continue reading the main story Write A Comment There’s an even longer list of candidates with fairly limited appeal, particularly Republicans like Rick Santorum, Pat Buchanan or Mike Huckabee, who failed to turn early-state victories into broader coalitions.

The polls this year offer additional reasons to doubt it. Mrs. Clinton holds more than 50 percent of the vote in national surveys; her share of the vote never declined in 2008. The polls say that her supporters are more likely to be firmly decided than Mr. Sanders’s voters.

Back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire by Mr. Sanders might have been enough to overcome that history. The no-decision in Iowa ensures we won’t find out.

Wow.

I haven’t seen a job of spinning like that since Rumpelstiltskin spun straw into gold. (look him up, kids.)

Mr. Cohn, as we say down here in Dixie,

That dog don’t hunt.

While Sanders’ strength does rely with white voters ( which is funny, because you Democrats are supposed to cherish DIVERSITY, but, I digress…), his base of power lies in the New England States, home of his Millennial Minions and a bunch of those college towns, which you referred to. And the last time I checked, New Hampshire is located in New England.
Mrs. Clinton’s Voter Base have begun to distance themselves, en masse, from her. She carries more baggage than the image of the late Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear) and his buddy (Willem Dafoe), rolling through the airport, in the Biographical movie, “Auto Focus” …And, she’s just as sleazy.
Momentum “never really changed the contours of the race in 2008”, because it was all on Obama’s side, from the get-go. When you have the ground troops of SEIU and their partner-in-crime, ACORN, going door-to-door for you around the nation, it provides you with an insurmountable lead in “the community”. Hillary does not have access to those ground troops.
BIG QUESTION: What happens if Obama and the Democrat Elites decide that they don’t like what they are seeing, so Obama orders the DOJ to indict Hillary and Crazy Uncle Joe enters the Primaries to “save the day”?

Clinton, no matter what those “smarter than the rest of the country” in the Northeast Corridor may choose to believe, is neither trustworthy nor likable as the polls have shown, time and again. Her Political Accomplishments are all negative, bordering on the nonexistent.

Bill’s coattails can cover up only so much political stain (Ask Monica).

Somebody had better hide all of the sharp instruments at the New York Times. This could get ugly.

Get your popcorn ready.

Until He Comes,

The Iowa Caucus: Bernie Sanders, Millennials, and the Empty Promise of “FREE STUFF!”

On February 1, 2016February 1, 2016 By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Today, the focus of America will be on the state of Iowa, as Presidential Candidate Hopefuls from both parties, vie to win their respective races.

On the Left Side of the Political Aisle, a 74-year old curmudgeon, from a tiny New England State, promising a whole lot of FREE STUFF, is in a virtual tie with the Queen of Mean, the “Inevitable Democrat Party Candidate” Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Washington Post reports that

DES MOINES — In his final campaign rally before the Iowa caucuses, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders on Sunday decried the nation’s “rigged economy” and pressed other now-familiar themes before an enthusiastic crowd estimated at 1,700 people.

“You want a radical idea? All right, here’s a radical idea,” the senator from Vermont told an audience packed into a gym at Grand View University. “Together, we’re going to create an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent.”

Sanders’s appearance capped a full day of campaigning on the eve of the nation’s first presidential nominating contest, which could go a long way toward shaping the direction of the Democratic race against Hillary Clinton. Polls have shown the caucuses to be a dead heat.

Sanders made only passing references to Clinton during his 48-minute remarks, instead emphasizing the same issues that propelled him from being a fringe candidate when he launched his bid nine months ago to a surprisingly strong contender.

He called for a $15 minimum wage, pay equity for women, paid family leave for workers, a $1 trillion federal jobs program and an overhaul of the tax system to make large corporations to pay substantially more.

Sanders singled out Wal-Mart, saying it pays its workers so little that taxpayers subsidize the company’s owners by paying for Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance for its employees.

“I say to the Walton family: Get off of welfare, pay your workers a living wage,” Sanders said, referring to the family that owns the company.

In an interview taped in Ames before the rally, Sanders told Matt Lauer of NBC’s “Today” show that his campaign is “in this until the end,” regardless of the outcome in Iowa.

“What we are doing is running a national campaign,” Sanders said. “We’re going to run until the convention.”

“I hope we win, but if we lose by two points, so what — we’re going to go to New Hampshire, then we’re going to go to South Carolina, then we’re going to go to Nevada,” he told Lauer. “We are in this to the end.”

Why is this self-proclaimed SOCIALIST still in the Race?

Sanders is riding the crest of a wave of popularity among the generation whom we call “Millennials”…those, whom my late Daddy, who landed on the beaches of Normandy, France on D-Day, all those decades ago, in the biggest Fight Against Fascism that the world has ever known, and the rest of “The Greatest Generation”, would have called “useful idiots”, “dupes”, or “slackers” for their inability to recognize the con job and failed theory that is Marxism, when they see it.

The following is a post found on fee.org, the website of the Foundation for Economic Education. It explains this part of Marxist Theory and “Why Socialism Failed”.

Socialism is the Big Lie of the twentieth century. While it promised prosperity, equality, and security, it delivered poverty, misery, and tyranny. Equality was achieved only in the sense that everyone was equal in his or her misery.

In the same way that a Ponzi scheme or chain letter initially succeeds but eventually collapses, socialism may show early signs of success. But any accomplishments quickly fade as the fundamental deficiencies of central planning emerge. It is the initial illusion of success that gives government intervention its pernicious, seductive appeal. In the long run, socialism has always proven to be a formula for tyranny and misery.

A pyramid scheme is ultimately unsustainable because it is based on faulty principles. Likewise, collectivism is unsustainable in the long run because it is a flawed theory. Socialism does not work because it is not consistent with fundamental principles of human behavior. The failure of socialism in countries around the world can be traced to one critical defect: it is a system that ignores incentives.

In a capitalist economy, incentives are of the utmost importance. Market prices, the profit-and-loss system of accounting, and private property rights provide an efficient, interrelated system of incentives to guide and direct economic behavior. Capitalism is based on the theory that incentives matter!

Under socialism, incentives either play a minimal role or are ignored totally. A centrally planned economy without market prices or profits, where property is owned by the state, is a system without an effective incentive mechanism to direct economic activity. By failing to emphasize incentives, socialism is a theory inconsistent with human nature and is therefore doomed to fail. Socialism is based on the theory that incentives don’t matter!

In a radio debate several months ago with a Marxist professor from the University of Minnesota, I pointed out the obvious failures of socialism around the world in Cuba, Eastern Europe, and China. At the time of our debate, Haitian refugees were risking their lives trying to get to Florida in homemade boats. Why was it, I asked him, that people were fleeing Haiti and traveling almost 500 miles by ocean to get to the “evil capitalist empire” when they were only 50 miles from the “workers’ paradise” of Cuba?

The Marxist admitted that many “socialist” countries around the world were failing. However, according to him, the reason for failure is not that socialism is deficient, but that the socialist economies are not practicing “pure” socialism. The perfect version of socialism would work; it is just the imperfect socialism that doesn’t work. Marxists like to compare a theoretically perfect version of socialism with practical, imperfect capitalism which allows them to claim that socialism is superior to capitalism.

If perfection really were an available option, the choice of economic and political systems would be irrelevant. In a world with perfect beings and infinite abundance, any economic or political system–socialism, capitalism, fascism, or communism–would work perfectly.

However, the choice of economic and political institutions is crucial in an imperfect universe with imperfect beings and limited resources. In a world of scarcity it is essential for an economic system to be based on a clear incentive structure to promote economic efficiency. The real choice we face is between imperfect capitalism and imperfect socialism. Given that choice, the evidence of history overwhelmingly favors capitalism as the greatest wealth-producing economic system available.

The strength of capitalism can be attributed to an incentive structure based upon the three Ps: (1) prices determined by market forces, (2) a profit-and-loss system of accounting and (3) private property rights. The failure of socialism can be traced to its neglect of these three incentive-enhancing components.

Prices

The price system in a market economy guides economic activity so flawlessly that most people don’t appreciate its importance. Market prices transmit information about relative scarcity and then efficiently coordinate economic activity. The economic content of prices provides incentives that promote economic efficiency.

For example, when the OPEC cartel restricted the supply of oil in the 1970s, oil prices rose dramatically. The higher prices for oil and gasoline transmitted valuable information to both buyers and sellers. Consumers received a strong, clear message about the scarcity of oil by the higher prices at the pump and were forced to change their behavior dramatically. People reacted to the scarcity by driving less, carpooling more, taking public transportation, and buying smaller cars. Producers reacted to the higher price by increasing their efforts at exploration for more oil. In addition, higher oil prices gave producers an incentive to explore and develop alternative fuel and energy sources.

The information transmitted by higher oil prices provided the appropriate incentive structure to both buyers and sellers. Buyers increased their effort to conserve a now more precious resource and sellers increased their effort to find more of this now scarcer resource.

The only alternative to a market price is a controlled or fixed price which always transmits misleading information about relative scarcity. Inappropriate behavior results from a controlled price because false information has been transmitted by an artificial, non-market price.

Look at what happened during the 1970s when U.S. gas prices were controlled. Long lines developed at service stations all over the country because the price for gasoline was kept artificially low by government fiat. The full impact of scarcity was not accurately conveyed. As Milton Friedman pointed out at the time, we could have eliminated the lines at the pump in one day by allowing the price to rise to clear the market.

From our experience with price controls on gasoline and the long lines at the pump and general inconvenience, we get an insight into what happens under socialism where every price in the economy is controlled. The collapse of socialism is due in part to the chaos and inefficiency that result from artificial prices. The information content of a controlled price is always distorted. This in turn distorts the incentives mechanism of prices under socialism. Administered prices are always either too high or too low, which then creates constant shortages and surpluses. Market prices are the only way to transmit information that will create the incentives to ensure economic efficiency.

Profits and Losses

Socialism also collapsed because of its failure to operate under a competitive, profit-and-loss system of accounting. A profit system is an effective monitoring mechanism which continually evaluates the economic performance of every business enterprise. The firms that are the most efficient and most successful at serving the public interest are rewarded with profits. Firms that operate inefficiently and fail to serve the public interest are penalized with losses.

By rewarding success and penalizing failure, the profit system provides a strong disciplinary mechanism which continually redirects resources away from weak, failing, and inefficient firms toward those firms which are the most efficient and successful at serving the public. A competitive profit system ensures a constant reoptimization of resources and moves the economy toward greater levels of efficiency. Unsuccessful firms cannot escape the strong discipline of the marketplace under a profit/loss system. Competition forces companies to serve the public interest or suffer the consequences.

Under central planning, there is no profit-and-loss system of accounting to accurately measure the success or failure of various programs. Without profits, there is no way to discipline firms that fail to serve the public interest and no way to reward firms that do. There is no efficient way to determine which programs should be expanded and which ones should be contracted or terminated.

Without competition, centrally planned economies do not have an effective incentive structure to coordinate economic activity. Without incentives the results are a spiraling cycle of poverty and misery. Instead of continually reallocating resources towards greater efficiency, socialism falls into a vortex of inefficiency and failure.

Private Property Rights

A third fatal defect of socialism is its blatant disregard for the role of private property rights in creating incentives that foster economic growth and development. The failure of socialism around the world is a “tragedy of commons” on a global scale.

The “tragedy of the commons” refers to the British experience of the sixteenth century when certain grazing lands were communally owned by villages and were made available for public use. The land was quickly overgrazed and eventually became worthless as villagers exploited the communally owned resource.

When assets are publicly owned, there are no incentives in place to encourage wise stewardship. While private property creates incentives for conservation and the responsible use of property, public property encourages irresponsibility and waste. If everyone owns an asset, people act as if no one owns it. And when no one owns it, no one really takes care of it. Public ownership encourages neglect and mismanagement.

Since socialism, by definition, is a system marked by the “common ownership of the means of production,” the failure of socialism is a “tragedy of the commons” on a national scale. Much of the economic stagnation of socialism can be traced to the failure to establish and promote private property rights.

As Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto remarked, you can travel in rural communities around the world and you will hear dogs barking, because even dogs understand property rights. It is only statist governments that have failed to understand property rights. Socialist countries are just now starting to recognize the importance of private property as they privatize assets and property in Eastern Europe.

For the past 7 years, Barack Hussein Obama has been promising “Hope and change”, through his unceasing rhetoric of Class Warfare, Racial Animus, and “Sharing the Wealth”.

His promises have proven to be as empty as our pocketbooks.

Almost 94,000,000 Americans are now out of our workforce, having given up ever being able to find a job.

The Socialist Paradise, which Bernie Sanders is offering Millennials, is nothing new.

Ask the countries of Venezuela and Greece, as they burn to the ground, their hopes and dreams piled on top of a “Democratic Socialist” Pyre of their own making.

As we enter the first event of the Presidential Primary Season, the Iowa Caucus, tonight, it would be wise for those voters who want to “#FeelTheBern” to remember the words of a great World Leader, Sir Winston Churchill, who, as Prime Minister, lead Great Britain though the Fight Against Fascism, which I referenced before, World War II, when he said,

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. – Winston Churchill

Someone has to pay for all of the FREE STUFF that ol’ Bernie is promising, kids.

And, if he gets in office, that will be YOU.

Until He Comes.

Obama to Visit Baltimore Mosque With Close Ties to the Muslim Brotherhood

On January 31, 2016 By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

With less than a year left in office, President Barack Hussein Obama, has decided to “let it all hang out”, as the old 1960’s song said.

The “little boy who played in the streets of Jakarta” and who attended an Islamic School for the “Well-off” is paying his respects to a very special place this Wednesday.

Foxnews.com reports that

In a public show of support, President Barack Obama will meet with Muslim community members Wednesday in Baltimore on his first presidential visit to an American mosque.

Obama plans to hold talks with Muslim leaders at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, the White House announced Saturday.

The visit will amount to a public embrace of Muslims by Obama at a time when public sentiment against them seems to be growing, largely fueled by fears of terrorist acts carried out by extremist groups.

Obama has largely put distance between himself and U.S. Muslims, opting against fueling the rampant theories that he is a closet Muslim who was born in Kenya, the country of his late father’s birth.

Obama is American by virtue of his birth in Hawaii and has released his birth certificate as proof. He also is Christian. But segments of the U.S. population still believe neither to be true.

As such, the visit will come during the final year of Obama’s two terms in office. The White House said he will go to the Baltimore mosque to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.”

In remarks to be delivered at the mosque, Obama “will reiterate the importance of staying true to our core values: welcoming our fellow Americans, speaking out against bigotry, rejecting indifference and protecting our nation’s tradition of religious freedom,” the White House said.

Obama has been outspoken in pushing back against calls by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and others to block Muslims from being admitted to the U.S. over fears of domestic terrorism linked to radical extremist groups.

Others have cited potential security risks in pushing legislation in Congress to limit the resettlement of refugees from Iraq and Syria, where the Islamic State group is active and from which it has exported its brand of terrorism to other regions of the world.

Obama has argued that such efforts are wrong and serve only to incite extremist groups, weaken America’s leadership around the world and put U.S. security at risk.

“We’re not going to build progress with a bunch of phony tough talk, and bluster, and over-the-top claims that just play into ISIL’s hands,” the president said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

He spoke to House Democrats on Thursday as they strategized at a meeting in Baltimore. “We’re not going to strengthen our leadership around the world by allowing politicians to insult Muslims or pit groups of Americans against each other. That’s not who we are. That’s not keeping America safe.”

It was not immediately clear why the White House chose the Islamic Society of Baltimore for the visit.

Obama’s reason for visiting the Islamic Society of Baltimore just became even murkier and more mysterious.

Yesterday, Chuck Ross, in an article found on dailycaller.com, reported that

The Baltimore mosque President Obama has chosen as the first U.S.-based mosque to visit during his presidency has deep ties to extremist elements, including to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The White House announced on Saturday that Obama will visit the Islamic Society of Baltimore (ISB) on Wednesday. He has visited several mosques overseas as president but has resisted visiting one in the homeland. The purpose of the trip, according to the White House, is to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.”

But ISB is a curious choice for Obama’s first domestic visit.

The mosque is a member of a network of mosques controlled by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a Muslim civil rights group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror case. Several executives with that organization were convicted of sending money to aid the terrorist group Hamas.

An imam who served at ISB for a total of 15 years has also been a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood network and has worked for an Islamic relief group that was designated as a terrorist organization by the Treasury Department in 2004.

Mohammad Adam el-Sheikh, who served two stints as ISB’s imam, from 1983 to 1989 and from 1994 to 2003, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan in the 1970s. He also co-founded the Muslim American Society, a Falls Church, Va.-based group that is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood.

While in Baltimore, el-Sheikh served as a regional director for the Islamic American Relief Agency. That group’s parent organization is the Islamic African Relief Agency, which the Treasury Department says provided funds to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

After leaving Baltimore, el-Sheikh served as imam at the infamous Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church. That mosque has a lengthy roster of known terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. Its imam during much of the 1990s was Mohammed al-Hanooti. He was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people.

Dar al-Hijrah came under the control of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2001. He’s the American al-Qaeda recruiter who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011. Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Nov. 2009, is said to have attended the Virginia mosque when al-Awlaki served there. The pair also reportedly exchanged emails. Two of the 9/11 hijackers also attended Dar al-Hijrah during al-Awlaki’s tenure.

El-Sheikh took over at Dar al-Hijrah in Aug. 2003, a little over a year after al-Awlaki left. While there he defended Palestianian suicide bombings against Israel.

“If certain Muslims are to be cornered where they cannot defend themselves, except through these kinds of means, and their local religious leaders issued fatwas to permit that, then it becomes acceptable as an exceptional rule, but should not be taken as a principle,” he said in 2004, according to a Washington Post article at the time.

As The Post reported Saturday, ISB’s website states that it seeks “to be the anchor of a growing Muslim community with diverse backgrounds, democratically governed, relating to one another with inclusiveness and tolerance, and interacting with neighbors in an Islamic exemplary manner.”

But that desire for tolerance — which President Obama frequently touts as well — does not appear to be a virtue shared by ISB’s resident scholar, Yaseen Shaikh.

A 2013 Youtube video shows Shaikh, who previously served as imam at a mosque in Plano, Tex., speaking out forcefully against homosexuality in Islam.

During an hour long diatribe, Shaikh called homosexuality a psychological disorder that has no place in Islam or society. He also lamented that gay rights groups have “hijacked” political discourse.

“This whole subject of homosexuality in the public sphere…is no longer a religious issue, unfortunately, as much as we want to use the religious card and try to defeat this, now it’s become a politicized issue,” Shaikh says in the video.

“Politicians are highly influenced by people who back them, and we find that these politicians who are calling for gay rights and marriage and supporting gay rights are lobbied and campaigned by gay activists, by gay groups. And they are throwing money at it left and right to gain some acceptance in society, to be considered normal people, to be treated normally.”

Obama is one such politician who has supported gay rights.

“We have to counter the efforts that are taking place elsewhere,” Sheikh says in the video, advising that “if our children are taught that [homosexuality is] okay, we have to teach them it’s not okay.”

Okay. So, let me try to wrap my head around this.

Obama has spent the past year chastising American Christians for not wanting to “take in” a bunch of military-looing Syrian Muslim Barbairans, who are pillaging and raping their way across Europe, by saying that our reluctance to endanger our friends, families, and Sovereign Nation is “not who we are”.

And now, this same President is about to visit a mosque, in a city, intentionally torn apart by racial strife, which has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Godfather of Muslim Terrorist Organizations.

To quote the late, great Slim Pickens, in Mel Brooks’ Classic Movie, “Blazing Saddles”,

What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports is a’goin’ on here?

Exactly, who are these guys?

Founded in 1928 by the Egyptian schoolteacher/activist Hasan al-Banna (a devout admirer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis), the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) — a Sunni entity — is one of the oldest, largest and most influential Islamist organizations in the world. While Egypt historically has been the center of the Brotherhood’s operations, the group today is active in more than 70 countries (some estimates range as high as 100+). Islam expert Robert Spencer has called MB “the parent organization of Hamas and al Qaeda.” In 2003, Richard Clarke – the chief counterterrorism advisor on the U.S. National Security Council during both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations – told a Senate committee that Hamas, al Qaeda, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were all “descendants of the membership and ideology of the Muslim Brothers.”

MB was established in accordance with al-Banna’s proclamation that Islam should be “given hegemony over all matters of life.” Toward that end, the Brotherhood seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate, or kingdom — first spanning all of the present-day Muslim world, and eventually the entire globe. The organization further aspires to dismantle all non-Islamic governments wherever they currently exist, and to make Islamic Law (Shari’a) the sole basis of jurisprudence everywhere on earth. This purpose is encapsulated in the Brotherhood’s militant credo: “God is our objective, the Koran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, struggle [jihad] is our way, and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations.”

Consistent with the foregoing credo, MB since its founding has supported the use of armed struggle, or jihad, against non-Muslim “infidels.” As al-Banna himself wrote: “Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded.” Added al-Banna: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”

…Embracing Hasan al-Banna’s belief that Islam is destined to eventually dominate all the world, MB today is global in its reach, wielding influence in almost every country with a Muslim population. Moreover, it maintains political parties in many Middle-Eastern and African countries, including Jordan, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and even Israel. Not only does the Brotherhood exist in Israel proper, but its Palestinian chapter created the terrorist organization Hamas, through which MB has supported terrorism against Israel ever since. Article II of the Hamas charter explicitly identifies Hamas as “one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine.” In January 2006 Hamas defeated the rival Fatah party to win the Palestinian legislative elections, thereby becoming the first branch of MB to control an official government.

Outside of the Middle East, MB exercises a strong influence in Muslim communities throughout Europe. Among the more prominent Brotherhood organizations in the region are: the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations, the Muslim Association of Britain, the European Council for Fatwa and Research, the Islamische Gemeinschaft Deutschland (IGD), and the Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (UOIF).

…In early February 2011, Muhammad Ghannem, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, told the Iranian news network Al-Alam that “the people [of Egypt] should be prepared for war against Israel,” emphasizing that “the Egyptian people are prepared for anything to get rid of this regime.” That objective was entirely consistent with former MB Supreme Guide Muhammad Mahdi Othman Akef’s 2007 assertion that his organization had never recognized Israel and never would: “Our lexicon does not include anything called ‘Israel.’ The [only thing] we acknowledge is the existence of Zionist gangs that have occupied Arab lands and deported the residents. If they want to live among us, it will have to be as [residents of] Palestine.”

And these are the people that President Barack Hussein Obama and his Administration have chosen to support.

So, why is the President of these United States, Barack Hussein Obama, standing with an enemy of freedom? An enemy who wants every single American Infidel beheaded, and, who, to this day, refers to this sacred land as “The Great Satan”.

It is well known, that a young Obama, after his mother wed a quite well-off fellow from Indonesia, attended a Madrassa, or Muslim School, in Jakarta.

I believe that the time he spent among “the religion of peace” in his youth, and the 20 years he spent under the “Reformed Muslim” (Liberation Theology) teachings of “ex”-American Muslim, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, molded and cemented his attitude toward Muslims.

Obama innately trusts Muslims…even radical ones.

Lari Regan, in an article for americanthinker.com, published in April of 2013, wrote that…

Obama did not create the Islamist ideology that has fed the fervor of modern-day terrorism. But from his Cairo speech through his speech Monday night just after the Boston bombings, in which he refused to call the attacks terrorism (he conceded the point the following day), he has made it clear that he does not believe that terrorism is a continuing threat to the lives and safety of Americans. His refusal to use the terms “War on Terror” and “Islamic fundamentalism” are just examples of a belief either that he can wish away evil or that evil simply does not exist. But what the country needs is a president who understands Islamic jihad for what it is — the totalitarian, fundamentalist dogma that drives the violence perpetrated by those who have waged holy war on the West. And Obama has yet to give us any indication that he understands these very real threats, or that he is interested in, and capable of, protecting us from them.

Indeed.

Even after over 6 and 1/2now, in his last year in office (Praise the Lord), Obama, if he has a clue as to how barbaric and devious radical Muslims are, sure doesn’t let on.

Representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood have visited OUR White House numerous times now, during the Obama Presidency. Obama truly believes that he can broker peace in the Mid-East by standing by and supporting the Grandfather of all Islamic Terrorist Groups.

Naivete or a Fellow Traveler? You be the judge.

His love for, and embracing of, these murderous barbarians could very well be the death of us all.

It sure as shootin’ hasn’t done the good folks living in the Land of the Pharaohs and the Holy Land of Israel any good, whatsoever.

Until He Comes,

Hillary’s E-mailgate Worsens. FBI Wants to Indict Both Hil and Huma.

On January 30, 2016 By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

The Talk of Capitol Hill is the meltdown-in-progress of the Party-in-Power’s Number One Presidential Hopeful, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Her mistaken belief that the rules of our country, regarding Protocol and Top Secret Information, as regards her former position as Secretary of State, did not apply to her, is coming back to bite her in the hindquarters…and endanger our Sovereign Nation.

Foxnews.com reports that

EXCLUSIVE: The intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails “too damaging” to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a U.S. government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding.

The determination was first reported by Fox News, hours before the State Department formally announced Friday that seven email chains, found in 22 documents, will be withheld “in full” because they, in fact, contain “Top Secret” information.

The State Department, when first contacted by Fox News about withholding such emails Friday morning, did not dispute the reporting – but did not comment in detail. After a version of this report was first published, the Obama administration confirmed to the Associated Press that the seven email chains would be withheld. The department has since confirmed those details publicly.

The decision to withhold the documents in full, and not provide even a partial release with redactions, further undercuts claims by the State Department and the Clinton campaign that none of the intelligence in the emails was classified when it hit Clinton’s personal server.

Fox News is told the emails include intelligence from “special access programs,” or SAP, which is considered beyond “Top Secret.” A Jan. 14 letter, first reported by Fox News, from intelligence community Inspector General Charles McCullough III notified senior intelligence and foreign relations committee leaders that “several dozen emails containing classified information” were determined to be “at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, AND TOP SECRET/SAP levels.”

The State Department is trying to finish its review and public release of thousands of Clinton emails, as the Democratic presidential primary contests get underway in early February.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, there is an exemption that allows for highly sensitive, and in this case classified, material to be withheld in full — which means nothing would be released in these cases, not even heavily redacted versions, which has been standard practice with the 1,340 such emails made public so far by the State Department.

According to the Justice Department FOIA website, exemption “B3” allows a carve-out for both the CIA and NSA to withhold “operational files.” Similar provisions also apply to other agencies.

Fox News reported Friday that at least one Clinton email contained information identified as “HCS-O,” which is the code for intelligence from human spying.

One source, not authorized to speak on the record, suggested the intelligence agencies are operating on the assumption there are more copies of the Clinton emails out there, and even releasing a partial email would provide enough clues to trace back to the original – which could allow the identification of “special access programs” intelligence.

There was no comment to Fox News from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, or the agency involved. Fox News has chosen not to identify the agency that provided sworn declarations that intelligence beyond Top Secret was found in the Clinton emails.

The State Department was scheduled to release more Clinton emails Friday, while asking a D.C. federal court for an extension.

FBI investigators looking into the emails are focused on the criminal code pertaining to “gross negligence” in the handling and storage of classified information, and “public corruption.”

“The documents alone in and of themselves set forth a set of compelling, articulable facts that statutes relating to espionage have been violated,” a former senior federal law enforcement officer said. The source said the ongoing investigation along the corruption track “also stems from her tenure of secretary. These charges would be inseparable from the other charges in as much as there is potential for significant overlap and correlation.”

Based on federal regulations, once classified information is spilled onto a personal computer or device, as was the case with Clinton and her aides, the hardware is now considered classified at the highest classification level of the materials received.

While criticized by the Clinton campaign, McCullough, an Obama administration appointee, was relaying the conclusion of two intelligence agencies in his letter to Congress that the information was classified when it hit Clinton’s server — and not his own judgment.

Joseph E. Schmitz, a former inspector general of the Department of Defense, called the attacks on McCullough a “shoot the watchdog” tactic by Clinton’s campaign.

The developments, taken together, show Clinton finding herself once again at the epicenter of a controversy over incomplete records.

During her time as the first female partner at the Rose Law firm in Arkansas during the mid-1980s, she was known as one of the “three amigos” and close with partners Webb Hubbell and Vince Foster. Hubbell ended up a convicted felon for his role in the failure of the corrupt Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan which cost taxpayers more than $65 million. Hubbell embezzled more than a half-million dollars from the firm.

Foster killed himself in Washington, D.C., in July 1993. As Clinton’s partner in the Rose Law firm, he had followed the Clintons into the White House where he served as the Clintons’ personal lawyer and a White House deputy counsel.

Clinton’s missing Rose Law billing records for her work for Guaranty during the mid-1980s were the subject of three intense federal investigations over two years. Those records, in the form of a computerized printout of her work performed on behalf of Guaranty, were discovered under mysterious circumstances in the Book Room of the private White House living quarters.

The discovery of those records was announced during a blizzard in January 1996 by attorney David Kendall, who still represents Hillary Clinton. After Clinton testified before a grand jury, prosecutors concluded there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt she committed perjury or obstruction of justice.

Despite Clinton’s recent public statements about not knowing how the technology works, at least one email suggests she directed a subordinate to work around the rules. In a June 2011 email to aide Jake Sullivan, she instructed him to take what appeared to be classified talking points, and “turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.”

A State Department spokesman could not say whether such a fax was sent.

The was a Direct Report to Secretary of State Clinton, who never should have been given chosen for her position in the first place, given her “troubling Familial Affiliations”, who as Hillary’s “Right-Hand Woman”, received all of these unsecured e-mails, as well.

And, it appears that when the Hammer falls on Hillary, it will fall on her, as well.

The Washington Examiner reports that

MANCHESTER — California Congressman Darrell Issa, who previously led an investigation into Benghazi as former chairman of the House Oversight Committee, says the FBI “would like to indict both Huma [Abedin] and Hillary Clinton” for conducting sensitive government business on an unsecure, private email server.

“I think the FBI director would like to indict both Huma and Hillary as we speak,” the Republican heavyweight told the Washington Examiner Thursday, during a debate watch-party at Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s New Hampshire campaign headquarters.

“I think he’s in a position where he’s being forced to triple-time make a case of what would otherwise be, what they call, a slam dunk,” Issa said, referring to FBI Director James Comey, who previously told the Senate Judiciary Committee he would conduct a “competent,” “honest” and “independent” probe into Clinton’s handling of classified information during her tenure as secretary of state.

Still, Issa suggested Clinton’s wrongdoing is obvious.

Let’s look a little closer at Ms. Abedin’s background, and her “troubling Familial Affiliations”, shall we?

According to discoverthenetworks.org,

Huma Abedin was born in 1976 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her father, Syed Abedin (1928-1993), was an Indian-born scholar who had worked as a visiting professor at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz University in the early Seventies.

[She is]

Daughter of Saleha Mahmood Abedin, a pro-Sharia sociologist with ties to numerous Islamist organizations including the Muslim Brotherhood
Longtime assistant to Hillary Clinton
Wife of former congressman Anthony Weiner
Longtime former employee of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, which shares the Muslim Brotherhood’s goal of establishing Islamic supremacy and Sharia Law worldwide.
…From 1997 until sometime before early 1999, Abedin, while still interning at the White House, was an executive board member of George Washington University’s (GWU) Muslim Students Association (MSA), heading the organization’s “Social Committee.”

It is noteworthy that in 2001-02, soon after Abedin left that executive board, the chaplain and “spritual guide” of GWU’s MSA was Anwar al-Awlaki, the al Qaeda operative who ministered to some of the men who were among the 9/11 hijackers. Another chaplain at GWU’s MSA (from at least October 1999 through April 2002) was Mohamed Omeish, who headed the International Islamic Relief Organization, which has been tied to the funding of al Qaeda. Omeish’s brother, Esam, headed the Muslim American Society, the Muslim Brotherhood’s quasi-official branch in the United States. Both Omeish brothers were closely associated with Abdurahman Alamoudi, who would later be convicted and incarcerated on terrorism charges.

From 1996-2008, Abedin was employed by the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA) as the assistant editor of its in-house publication, the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA). At least the first seven of those years overlapped with the al Qaeda-affiliated Abdullah Omar Naseef’s active presence at IMMA. Abedin’s last six years at the Institute (2002-2008) were spent as a JMMA editorial board member; for one of those years, 2003, Naseef and Abedin served together on that board.

Abedin went on maternity leave after giving birth to a baby boy in early December 2011. When she returned to work in June 2012, the State Department granted her an arrangement that allowed her to do outside consulting work as a “special government employee,” even as she remained a top advisor in the Department. Abedin did not disclose on her financial report either the arrangement or the$135,000 she earned from it, in violation of a law mandating that public officials disclose significant sources of income. Abedin’s outside clients included the U.S. State Department, Hillary Clinton, the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, and Teneo (a firm co-founded by Doug Band, a former counselor for Bill Clinton). Good-government groups warned of the potential conflict-of-interest inherent in an arangement where a government employee maintains private clients.

In June 2012, five Republican lawmakers (most prominently, Michele Bachmann) sent letters to the inspectors general at the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and State, asking that they investigate whether the Muslim Brotherhood was gaining undue influence over U.S. government officials. One letter, noting that Huma Abedin’s position with Hillary Clinton “affords her routine access to the secretary [of state] and to policymaking,” expressed concern over the fact that Abedin “has three family members—her late father, mother and her brother—connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations.” Some other prominent Republicans such as John McCain and John Boehner disavowed the concerns articulated in the letters.

On February 1, 2013—Hillary Clinton’s final day as Secretary of State—Abedinresigned her post as Mrs. Clinton’s deputy chief of staff. Yet she would continue to serve as a close aide to Clinton.

On March 1, 2013, Abedin was tapped to run Clinton’s post-State Department transition team, comprised of a six-person “transition office” located in Washington.

Huma Abedin’s brother, Hassan Abedin, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and is currently an associate editor with the JMMA. Hassan was once a fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, at a time when the Center’s board included such Brotherhood-affiliated figures as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Abdullah Omar Naseef.

Huma’s sister, Heba Abedin (formerly known as “Heba A. Khaled”), is an assistant editor with JMMA, where she served alongside Huma prior to the latter’s departure.

Speaking straight from the heart, as an American Citizen, I find it beyond the pale that, during the time of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, someone with direct ties to our sworn enemies, the Muslim Brotherhood, had access to the highest level of Top Secret Information contained in our State Department, being sent to her over Secretary Clinton’s own unsecured e-mail Server.

And, the thing is, she not only had access through her job as Assistant to Secretary of State Clinton, she also had access to government information through pillow talk with her husband, then-Congressman and “Professional Sexter” Anthony Weiner.

Being the “proud Muslim” that she has proclaimed herself to be, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that this information found its way to her “troubling Familial Affiliations”?

Which brings up another troubling question:

What if the Obama Administration and their minions are shouting down the voiced concerns of Republican Primary Candidate Donald J., Trump, the American People, and those in Congress, and dragging their feet on having the DOJ issue indictments, because they knew “what was going on” all along?

…and simply did not care?

Until He Comes,

Thursday Night in Iowa: A Republican “Royal Rumble” Without the Front-Runner There (Physically, Anyway)

On January 29, 2016 By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Last Sunday, the WWE staged it’s annual event, known as “The Royal Rumble” in which 30 combatants enter the squared circle, individually, every 3 minutes, and try to toss each other over the top rope, to see who will headline WrestleMania in a World Championship Match.

Last night’s Republican Presidential Candidates Primary Debate, with the notable absence of the Front-Runner, Donald J. Trump, was reminiscent of that wrestling event.

For those of you who did not watch the Trump-less Republican Primary Contenders’ Debate on Fox News Channel last night, MSN.com provides a detailed synopsis (from the Opposition Party’s point-of-view, of course)…

DES MOINES — The first Republican presidential debate without Donald Trump still took on a Trumpian tone at times, with the seven other top candidates here Thursday night voicing anger, talking tough and vowing to do away with political correctness.

But with the defiant GOP front-runner staging his own counter-program by rallying supporters a few miles away, Trump’s absence left a vacuum on the debate stage and fewer fireworks than Republicans had grown accustomed to.

From the opening question, it was mostly filled by Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), who has been locked in an intensifying duel with Trump for dominance in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, only four days away.

Cruz began by mocking Trump’s reputation for insults: “I’m a ‘maniac’ and everyone on this stage is ‘stupid,’ ‘fat’ and ‘ugly.’ And Ben [Carson], you’re a ‘terrible surgeon.’ Now that we’ve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way . . .”

From there, however, little more was said about Trump, few direct attacks were leveled at him and the overall atmosphere was notably calmer than in previous debate. That left Cruz as the top target as Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and other opponents sought to puncture the Texas senator’s appeal by trying to depict him as an inauthentic conservative.

“The truth is, Ted, throughout this campaign you’ve been willing to say or do anything in order to get votes,” Rubio said. “You want to trump Trump on immigration.”

Rubio and Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) both attacked Cruz for having once supported an amendment that would have granted legal status, not citizenship, to illegal immigrants — though Cruz maintains that it was a “poison pill” and that he has always opposed amnesty.

“He is the king of saying, ‘Oh, you’re for amnesty. Everybody’s for amnesty except for Ted Cruz,’ ” Paul said. “But it’s a falseness, and that’s an authenticity problem.”

Cruz was not the only candidate on the defensive on immigration, however. Rubio also came under fire for his role as one of the Gang of Eight senators who crafted comprehensive reform legislation in 2013.

After giving Rubio a backhanded compliment for being “charming and smooth,” Cruz hammered him for having aligned with President Obama and Democratic Senate leaders Harry Reid (Nev.) and Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.).

The Fox News Channel moderators tried to challenge both Cruz and Rubio by playing archival video footage of the two senators. After showing the Cruz videos, co-moderator Megyn Kelly asked: “Was that all an act? It was pretty convincing.”

In the absence of Trump, Cruz and Rubio had the most to gain or lose in Thursday night’s debate. The two are the second- and third-polling candidates in Iowa, and their strategies are predicated on being the last non-Trump candidate left standing to face off with the mogul in a long-slog primary season.

Both men emerged with scars.

Rubio appeared to struggle explaining why he advocated a hard-line immigration approach as a Senate candidate, then pursued comprehensive reform that included a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, then reverted.

Rubio said he does not support “blanket amnesty” and focused on the need to seal the border with Mexico and improve security there.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush used the exchange to portray Rubio — his onetime protege when Rubio was a Florida state lawmaker — as weak for having reversed positions on immigration. After noting that he supported Rubio’s work in the Gang of Eight, Bush said, “He cut and run because it wasn’t popular among conservatives, I guess.”

“You shouldn’t cut and run,” Bush said. “You should stick with it. That’s exactly what happened. He cut and run, and that’s a tragedy.”

Rubio countered by saying that Bush had reversed his own position on citizenship and legal status in a book he wrote.

“So did you,” Bush snapped back.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie used the back-and-forth over Senate votes and amendments to show the leadership differences between legislators and executives, and he repeated his call for a governor in the White House.

“I feel like I need a Washingtonese-English dictionary converter,” Christie joked.

Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who once led the polls but has seen his lead falter among heavy scrutiny of his policy knowhow, invoked his medical career as a credential for the White House: “I’ve had more 2 a.m. phone calls than everybody here put together, making life and death decisions.”

The immigration exchange was one of the few moments of direct confrontation onstage between the candidates. The debate lacked a central focus, with Kelly and her co-moderators, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace, asking many one-off questions that focused on the vulnerabilities of individual candidates.

In return, the candidates gave many of the canned lines that have become familiar on the campaign trail, avoiding taking big risks with the Iowa caucuses so close.

The seventh Republican debate of the 2016 campaign cycle was the first not to include Trump, the billionaire mogul whose bombast and showmanship dominated the previous events.

Trump boycotted the debate, escalating his feud with Fox and its star anchor, Kelly, because he believed he would not be treated fairly. He has long harbored disdain for Kelly because of her aggressive line of questioning during the first GOP debate in August, and he has argued that the network was taking advantage of his popularity with viewers to boost its ratings and thus its advertising revenue.

In her opening question, Kelly said, “Let’s address the elephant not in the room tonight.”

Trump staged a competing rally Thursday night on the Des Moines campus of Drake University, where he raised money for and honored veterans.

Much of the debate centered on foreign policy, with the candidates competing to show who would be the toughest commander in chief.

“You claim it is tough talk to discuss ‘carpet bombing,’ ” Cruz said. “It is not tough talk. It is a different fundamental military strategy than what we’ve seen from President Obama.”

Early in the debate, Cruz took fire on multiple fronts. Paul went after him for refusing to show support for a vote to audit the Federal Reserve and for not voicing strong enough opposition to the government’s surveillance efforts.

“I don’t think Ted can have it both ways. They want to say they’re getting some of the liberty vote,” Paul said. “But we don’t see it happening at all. We think we’re going to do very well in Iowa with the liberty vote.”

Rubio, as he has for months, portrayed Cruz as weak on national security.

“As already has been pointed out, the only budget that Ted has ever voted for is a budget that Rand Paul sponsored that brags about cutting defense spending,” Rubio said. “And I think that’s a bad idea.”

The closing days of the race have been nasty here in Iowa. The campaigns and allied super PACs are blanketing television and radio airwaves with attack ads, while the candidates have laced their stump speeches with sharp barbs.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is banking his hopes on the Feb. 9 New Hampshire primary, sought to position himself above the fray.

“We cannot fix things in this country — the Social Security, the border, balancing the budget, getting wages to grow faster — unless we lead as conservatives, but we also invite people in from the other party,” Kasich said. “We have to come together as a country. And we have to stop all the divisions.”

Kasich’s call for unity went unheeded, and he was a non-factor through significant stretches of the debate as other candidates sparred.

As in previous debates, the candidates harshly attacked Hillary Clinton and sought to position themselves as best equipped to lead the Republican Party into the general election against Clinton, whom they see as the most likely Democratic nominee.

“She is not qualified to be president of the United States,” Christie said, drawing loud cheers from the audience. “The fact is, what we need is someone on that stage who has been tested, who has been through it, who has made decisions, who has sat in the chair of consequence and can prosecute the case against Hillary Clinton.”

Bush made a similar pitch.

“This is an election about people that are really hurting,” he said. “We need a leader that will fix things and have a proven record to do it. And we need someone who will take on Hillary Clinton in November.”

So, what was the Front-Running Trump up to, while the rest of the candidates duked it out?

Again, MSN.com has the story (and, please remember, they are hardly non-partisan)…

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Donald Trump opened a Thursday rally coinciding with the final GOP debate before Monday’s Iowa caucuses by telling supporters he would have preferred to be at the debate, but had no choice but to skip it after promising a boycott.

Angry over an escalating feud with debate host Fox News, Trump bowed out of the debate and held what his team called a “Special Event to Benefit Veterans Organizations” at a packed 775-seat auditorium at nearby Drake University instead.

“You have to stick up for your rights. When you’re treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights,” Trump told the crowd. “We have to stick up for ourselves as people and we have to stick up for our country if we’re being mistreated.”

Speaking from the stage at what felt like a cross between a televised fundraising telethon and a typical Trump campaign rally, Trump said his foundation already had raised between $5 million and $6 million for veterans since announcing the event. He said he’s putting up $1 million of his own money and read off the names of wealthy friends he said had pledged major contributions.

Trump repeated earlier statements that Fox “very much” wanted him to attend the debate and said he’d fielded repeated phone calls from the network during the day. Fox News Channel issued a statement saying Trump had offered to appear at the debate upon the condition that Fox contribute $5 million to his charities, which the network said was not possible.

Fox News says Chairman Roger Ailes, in conversations with Trump, “acknowledged his concerns” about a statement the network had made in the days leading up to the debate.

Trump has said he’s not worried about turning off voters who may be disappointed by his decision to skip Thursday’s contest.

“We’ve had other voters that love what I’m doing because they don’t want to be pushed around by the establishment,” said Trump, who is planning to participate in the next debate in New Hampshire.

It was unclear exactly which groups would receive money raised from the event and new website Trump launched for collecting donations: donaldtrumpforvets.com. Contributions to the site will go to The Donald J. Trump Foundation, Trump’s nonprofit charitable organization. The page says: “100 percent of your donations will go directly to Veterans needs.”

Trump representatives had been reaching out to various groups, in some cases inquiring about their programs and finances. Among those contacted were the Green Beret Foundation, which provides care to veterans, and Fisher House, which provides free or low cost housing to veterans and military families receiving treatment at military medical centers.

K9s for Warriors, which trains rescue dogs to be service animals for veterans, received a call from a Trump campaign representative asking if the group was interested in accepting funds from the event, according to executive director Rory Diamond. Diamond said the group is non-partisan but would be happy to accept any contributions.

Two of Donald Trump’s presidential rivals have taken the stage at a rally Trump is hosting to benefit veterans as he skips the Republican debate.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum attended the rally after participating in the early undercard debate for candidates whose poll numbers were too low to make it on the main stage.

Trump was joined at the event by two of his rivals, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Both took the stage at Trump’s event after participating in the early, undercard debate for candidates whose poll numbers were too low to make it on the main stage.

Santorum joked that he didn’t want his picture taken with the Trump campaign sign. He quipped that he’s “supporting another candidate for president,” but said he was happy to come out to support veterans.

Huckabee had earlier stressed his appearance should not be seen as an endorsement of Trump. He told the audience gathered at Drake University that he, Santorum and Trump may be presidential race competitors but said “tonight we are colleagues” in supporting veterans.

Every since I graduated high school in 1976, I have followed politics. I had to in college, because I was the News Director of the Campus Radio Station, with a staff of 20 students , who received class credit for producing a 5-minute newscast, once a week.

In 1980, I was privileged to cast my very first vote for the greatest American President in my lifetime, Ronald Reagan.

Since then, I have witnessed a lot of political chicanery, resulting in a lot of harm to the country which I love.

The Muslim-sympathizing, Alinsky-ite Marxist, who currently saunters down to the Oval Office every morning at 10:30 a.m. in his shirt sleeves, on his way to play golf, is the latest and most egregious example.

In every decade since the 1970s, the Media in this country has become more and more Liberal…and more and more subjective in their Editorial Policies and actual reporting.

With the advent of cable television and the 24-hour News Cycle, the Media had to step up their behind-the-scenes manipulation of events, in order to be competitive, and to secure the Cash Cow of their business, high viewership ratings.

What happened last night, was a result of an American Businessman, refusing to play the role of Pinocchio to one of these Modern-day Gepettos.

Per gatewaypundit.com,

FOX News and Google invited a radical Muslim activist, a Bernie Sanders supporter, a Black Lives Matter supporter and a Mexican illegal immigrant to the debate to confront Donald Trump.

Trump found out and, instead of stepping into a pile of…well, you know…he stepped around it, right into more FREE PUBLICITY, while raising money for our American Veterans, whom this Administration has treated so badly.

So, will Trump be hurt by last night?

Hardly.

As of this morning’s Drudge Report’s Republican Candidate Poll, Trump is far outdistancing the pack, with 65.59% of the vote. Sen. Ted Cruz has 16.63%, and Marco Rubio has 6.5%.

Not a scientific poll, I know, but, it could very possibly be a portent of things to come.

The best laid plans of mice and men oft’ times go awry. – Robert Burns

Until He Comes,

O’Reilly Begs Trump, Rush: “Fox Jilted at the Altar”

On January 28, 2016January 28, 2016 By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

Under the category “Actions Have Consequences”…

Thehill.com reports that

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday night lashed out at Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly in his first appearance on the network since he announced he’d boycott the next GOP debate.

He also refused to reconsider his decision to sit out the network’s Thursday night debate – the last before the Iowa caucuses in five days – and said he’d move forward with his own competing event to raise money for wounded veterans.

Speaking on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Trump continued his long-running feud with Kelly, who he has been criticizing ever since she challenged him on his past derogatory remarks about women at the first GOP debate in August.

“I have zero respect for Megyn Kelly,” Trump said. “I don’t think she’s good at what she does and I think she’s highly overrated. And frankly, she’s a moderator; I thought her question last time was ridiculous.”

Kelly is also set to moderate Thursday night’s debate on Fox News.

Trump is instead holding a rally in Des Moines at the same time as the Republican debate that he says will raise money for wounded veterans.

In the contentious interview with O’Reilly, Trump rebuffed the anchor’s attempts to convince him that he’s making a grave error by skipping the debate.

“I believe personally that you want to improve the country,” O’Reilly said. “By doing this, you miss the opportunity to convince others … that is true.

“You have in this debate format the upper hand — you have sixty seconds off the top to tell the moderator, ‘You’re a pinhead, you’re off the mark and here’s what I want to say’. By walking away from it, you lose the opportunity to persuade people you are a strong leader.”

But O’Reilly’s pitch fell flat with Trump. The GOP front-runner dug in his heels, insisting he intended to retaliate against the network by depriving them of ratings.

“Fox was going to make a fortune off this debate,” Trump said. “Now they’re going to make much less.”

O’Reilly said he was merely trying to convince Trump that his approach “is wrong because it’s better for people to see you in the debate format.”

He gave the example from 2012, when former Speaker Newt Gingrich was asked an embarrassing question by a CNN debate moderator at a South Carolina debate about allegations he had an open marriage.

Gingrich shut the moderator down and went on to win South Carolina, O’Reilly noted.

“That’s the kind of guy you are,” O’Reilly said. “You stick it to them and let them have it.”

Responded Trump: “Newt is a friend of mine and I thought it was an unfair question. But equally unfair was the question Megyn Kelly asked me.”

O’Reilly then sought to appeal to Trump’s capacity to forgive, reminding the billionaire businessman that he’s a Christian, even if he doesn’t attend church all that often, and that the Bible says to “turn the other cheek.”

Trump shot back, saying he’s a regular church-goer, and that the Bible also says “an eye for an eye.”

“You could look at it that way too,” Trump said.

O’Reilly accused Trump of being “petty,” and said he was allowing things that are out of his control to have outsized influence over his decision-making process.

“I don’t like being taken advantage of,” Trump said. “In this case I was being taken advantage of by Fox. I don’t like that. Now when I’m representing the country, if I win, I’m not going to let our country be taken advantage of. … It’s a personality trait but I don’t think it’s a bad personality trait.”

O’Reilly ended the interview asking Trump to just at least consider showing up Thursday night. Trump said the two had agreed beforehand that O’Reilly not ask that question.

“I told you up front don’t ask me that question because it’s an embarrassing question for you and I don’t want to embarrass you,” he said.

Bill-O asked the question because his employers are desperate.

Fox News Host Greta Van Susteren posted a Viewer Poll in which she asked if folks would watch tonight’s Republican Primary Debate, if Donald J. Trump followed through with his promise not to show up.

As of the morning of the debate, 86.91% of those who responded will not be watching a “Trump-less” Debate.

Rush Limbaugh, as I reported yesterday, has been on point during this whole kerfuffle.

Once again, he made a couple of spot-on observations on yesterday’s radio program:

Observation #1 –

Folks, I want to let you in on another observation of mine — and that’s all it is, is an observation. I have found, when talking to people, including media people in the East Coast, New York — well, all the way up and down the East Coast, but New York — Washington, Boston, down here in south Florida and so forth, virtually everybody thinks of Fox News as a conservative network. But you go out… As I’ve traveled around and go places… Like for the holidays, I see people in Missouri. For Christmas, I see people all over the place. When I golf, I see people all over the country.

And I’m here to tell you: Fox News is not considered the conservative network that it used to be. I’m not trying to stir anything up here. I’m saying that when you hear the media, who are all leftists, talk about Fox News, it may as well be the John Birch Society as far as they’re concerned. That’s why they hate it. It may as well be the Birchers. It may as well be whatever evil right-wing organization. That’s what they think it is. But you go out to the heartland of this country, and it’s not so much. “I mean, what would a conservative network be doing giving time to Michael Moore?

“Why would New York Times and Washington Post reporters be on the air to give opinions on a conservative network?” This is what people are saying out there that I hear. Now, the identity is still pretty obviously heavily tilted to news and analysis that you don’t get anywhere else, and that remains true. I’m just telling you people’s perceptions as they share them with me. I’ll tell you what I think, ’cause I find it amazing. It’s just more evidence of the media being out of touch and not really knowing what people say.

Since we’re talking about Iowa, I don’t think they really know what’s important to the people of Iowa. Because they look at everything through their own prism of being in the Northeast and part of the liberal power structure that determines every social, political structure in that part of the country — and, as such, there’s a divide. And it’s not just among elected officials. I speak constantly about the disconnect that exists now between elected officials and the people, Republican and Democrat.

The distances, the disconnect between the people who vote for them and the people that serve in office is bigger than I’ve ever seen it. And it’s no more obvious than the issue of immigration. But it’s also obvious on the issue of say, Obamacare, or spending. And when you start talking about Fox News, people in the media say, “Oh, it’s just embarrassing. Right wing! My God, ugh.” But it’s not thought of that way in many parts of the country.

Observation #2 –

You’ve heard the phrase “the game.” Every business has aspects of it that are considered the game, and that’s the routine. And the game is characterized by everybody knowing the rules of the game. People involved in it play by the rules. Some venture outside now and then, but the rules pretty much of the game are adhered to because it’s a matter of respect for the game in which everybody is in.

And in this business one of the games is that when the media calls, you answer, and when the media wants you, you go, and when the media is going to host a debate and it’s part of a Republican presidential campaign, you go. You just do it, no matter what the media’s done to you in the past, no matter what you think of it, whether you want to go or not, you go. That’s the game.

Trump is so far outside this game, he’s so far outside the rules, he’s never been a player in this game. He’s always been an outsider. I heard people on Fox last night talking about this. “Who does he think he is? He can’t control the media.” I got news for you: He is controlling the media, and it’s his objective. He is controlling the media. He controls the media when he’s not on it. He controls the media when he is on it. He controls the media when he’s asleep. Nobody else has been able to do anything like this short of the Kennedys, and they’re pikers compared to the way Trump is doing this.

Now, it’s very simple, if you read The Art of the Deal or if you know Donald Trump at all, it’s very simple: He had an unpleasant experience in the first debate, and in his mind, the question that he was asked was rigged. Don’t forget, before that first debate, remember all of the news stories that were floating around saying that that debate, somebody at Fox had been given orders by the Republican establishment to take Trump out. Remember that? There were any number of so-called sources for this. Some said it was the donors demanding it. Some said that it was Fox News executives demanding it. Some said it was the RNC demanding it.

Well, Trump’s not immune. He hears it. And even if he hadn’t heard it he would have to know that they want to take him out; he’s outside the game; he’s breaking all the rules. He’s exposing so much as fraud that has gone on inside the American political process for so long they can’t allow somebody like this to win and succeed. It’s quite natural they would want to take him out as well. It’s Bengals-Steelers time here, folks. It’s quite natural they’d want to take him out. Well, he heard it.

Here comes Megyn Kelly’s first question. He didn’t hear anybody else get a question like that. He never sees Hillary Clinton get a question like that. He never hears Bill Clinton or another Democrat get a question like that. So he answers it and says screw this. I’m not putting myself in that position again. Why should I? I don’t have to.

But the rules of the game say when there’s a debate, you show up. Screw the rules, he’s saying. Why should I willingly give them another shot at me in a circumstance they control, why should I do it? What’s the sense in it for me? I’m leading; I’m running the pack here; why in the world should I put myself in that circumstance? I’ve already seen what’s gonna happen.

I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that. I mean, there could be some personal things going on here that I don’t know about. But just from the standpoint of knowing Trump, reading his book, and seeing how he operates elsewhere, in his mind, screw the rules, screw what’s expected, screw “This is just the way you do it.” I’m not gonna put myself in a position go where I’m gonna be treated unfairly. I don’t have to. I’m Donald Trump. Anybody can do this. Ted Cruz could choose to do it if he wants to. They just don’t. Cruz and the rest of the pack are playing the rules of the game. Trump is saying I don’t have to do it. I don’t want to do it. I don’t have any respect for these people. What the hell.

In addition to that, Donald Trump knows that by not showing up, he’s owning the entire event. Some guy not even present will end up owning the entire event, and the proof of that is Fox News last night. I have to tell you, folks, this is where this gets tough for me. I was stunned watching Fox News last night. Fox News was acting like they had been jilted at the altar. If it had been me — and this is easy to say — if it had been me and Donald Trump makes a big to-do about not showing up for the debate, report the story and move on. Talk about Ted Cruz. Go talk about the other candidates. Go talk about Hillary and the FBI. There’s a lot of news out there. But don’t devote the rest of the night to how a candidate’s not showing up because of you. I mean, the network, not just Megyn Kelly.

Look, I understand the warfare that has been established here. If you look at some of the things that Trump’s campaign spokesman, Corey Lewandowski has said, if you read between the lines, it looks like what really has ticked ’em off over at Trump central is the mocking of Trump in the official PR statements that Fox has released, making fun, they’re gonna call Putin, they’re gonna call in the ayatollah, and the ayatollah and Putin, whatever. That might have been the nail in the coffin as opposed to any lack of desire to face Megyn Kelly. But folks, one other thing about this. If I heard it once last night, I’ve heard it a thousand times since, that Trump is afraid of Megyn Kelly or afraid of Fox News. That is not what this is. There isn’t any fear. What is there is here — in my opinion — is a desire to control this and a purposeful decision to not put himself in a circumstance where other people want to make him look bad.

In his mind, that’s a dumb thing to do. You don’t put yourself in a circumstance where a whole bunch of other people are gonna be able to make you look bad while you’re there. If they do it when you’re not around, that’s another thing, you can counterprogram it, you can do whatever, but you don’t have to put yourself in a circumstance where you have to personally deal with it as a sign of disrespect or somebody else trying to notch their belt. It really isn’t any more complicated than that.

Exactly.

It was a sound business decision. He was protecting his “brand”. The “Business of Today’s Politics” decrees that you jump when the Elite of your Political Party and their minions in the Media tell you to. That is the game to which Rush was referring.

The problem that the Republican Elite and the Media are having with Trump is the simple fact that he is a Businessman. He is not a Professional Politician. Trump knew that he was walking into a trap. So, he made the decision not to. It was a sound Business Decision. He was protecting his “brand”, while at the same time, once again owning the News Cycle.

Additionally, through appearing on behalf of the Iowa Veterans, he is solidifying his Populist Image.

Another Republican Presidential Hopeful, back in the 1980s, decided to skip the last Primary Debate before the Iowa Caucus. He lost Iowa, but he won the Presidency in a landslide.

He did alright.

Ratings-wise, Fox News, if Trump goes through with his plans, will be hoisted on their own petard.

My degree is in Radio, Television, and Film. And, let me tell you, boys and girls, in television, even now, almost 36 years after I graduated college, high viewership ratings remain the Cash Cow of the Television Industry.

Their business depends on it.

In this situation, those who run Fox News decided to send their Cash Cow to the slaughterhouse and then hold a barbeque.

As a result of their actions, I predict that they will experience a bad case of gas tonight.

Until He Comes,

Trump, Fox News, the Democrat Elite, and “The Art of the Deal”

On January 27, 2016 By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

Leading Republican Presidential Primary Candidate, Donald J. Trump, was at the top of the News Cycle all day, yesterday.

I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

Eight hours ago, as of this posting, the Presidential Campaign Office of Donald J. Trump issued the following statement on his Official Faceboo Account…

(New York, NY) January 26th, 2016 – As someone who wrote one of the best-selling business books of all time, The Art of the Deal, who has built an incredible company, including some of the most valuable and iconic assets in the world, and as someone who has a personal net worth of many billions of dollars, Mr. Trump knows a bad deal when he sees one. FOX News is making tens of millions of dollars on debates, and setting ratings reco…rds (the highest in history), where as in previous years they were low-rated afterthoughts.

Unlike the very stupid, highly incompetent people running our country into the ground, Mr. Trump knows when to walk away. Roger Ailes and FOX News think they can toy with him, but Mr. Trump doesn’t play games. There have already been six debates, and according to all online debate polls including Drudge, Slate, Time Magazine, and many others, Mr. Trump has won all of them, in particular the last one. Whereas he has always been a job creator and not a debater, he nevertheless truly enjoys the debating process – and it has been very good for him, both in polls and popularity.

He will not be participating in the FOX News debate and will instead host an event in Iowa to raise money for the Veterans and Wounded Warriors, who have been treated so horribly by our all talk, no action politicians. Like running for office as an extremely successful person, this takes guts and it is the kind mentality our country needs in order to Make America Great Again.

Yesterday, Trump also said the following in an interview with Mike Barnicle on the seldom-watched cable news channel, MSNBC…

Well, I think that I’m going to be able to get along with Pelosi. I think I’m going to be able to — I’ve always had a good relationship with Nancy Pelosi. I’ve never had a problem. Reid will be gone. I always had a decent relationship with Reid, although lately, obciosuly, I haven’t been dealing with him so he’ll actually use my name as the ultimate — you know, as the ultimate of the billionaires in terms of, you know, people you don’t want.

But I always had a great relationship with Harry Reid. And frankly, if I weren’t running for office I would be able to deal with her or Reid or anybody. But I think I’d be able to get along very well with Nancy Pelosi and just about everybody.

Hey, look, I think I’ll be able to get along well with Chuck Schumer. I was always very good with Schumer. I was close to Schumer in many ways. It’s important that you get along. It’s wonderful to say you’re a maverick and you’re going to stand up and close up the country and all of the things, but you have to get somebody to go along with you. You have a lot of people. We have a system. The founders created the system that actually is a very good system. It does work, but it can’t work if you can get nobody to go along with you.

When word came out, my fellow Conservatives made the following points that

If Trump can’t stand up to Meghan Kelly, how is he going to stand up to Putin and the rest of our enemies?
2. Who the heck wants to get along with Pelosi, Reid, and Schumer? The next President needs to politically destroy them!

Why did Trump tell Fox News to buzz off?

Why is he talking about “getting along” with the Democrat Elite?

The Godfather of Conservative Talk Radio, Rush Limbaugh, gave a superb analysis of the way Trump operates, on his nationally-syndicated Program, yesterday…

Let me share with you some analysis that will no doubt be misunderstood and distorted in many places in our media, but here we go. As I’m listening to Trump talk about all this — and not just today. It is fascinating, is it not, that Donald Trump has sort of reframed, or maybe even redefined, the purpose and the position of the presidency as something defined by negotiating deals? He talks about this all the time. This is important. He’s credibly presenting himself as a skilled dealmaker, as a skilled negotiator. Therefore, he is positing here that the job of president, to him, is negotiating and dealmaking, foreign and domestic.

Trade equals deals. Foreign policy equals deals such as Iran, the entire Middle East. Domestic policy equals deals, i.e., making them with Democrats. By all those deals… Here’s the thing: Every time Trump talks about doing a deal — with Mexico and the wall, you name it, with the ChiComs. Every time he talks about doing deals, he talks about winning them for his position, that nobody else is any good at this, that the people running our government now, elected officials now don’t know how to do deals. They do the dumbest deals ever.

But Trump is gonna do smart deals, because that’s what his life is.

He does deals for everything, and he runs rings around everybody.

He wrote a book on how to do deals better than anybody else. Even after telling everybody how to do deals, they still can’t do ’em better than he does. And he’s defined all of this as pro-America, i.e., for the people. Making America great again. The opposition, or the opposite reactions to Trump among Republicans and others depends on whether people trust or believe him or not. Trump opposers don’t believe it; Trump supporters do believe it. He thinks he can make deals with Russia and Putin better than Obama, everybody think is so that’s he’s repositioning everything here as he’s a dealmaker and Cruz can’t do deals because everybody hates him.

Okay. Let’s talk about deal-making here for a minute. Just a quick minute or two. When you are in business, let’s say you’re J.R. Ewing and you’re up against the cartel in Dallas, and you’re making deals, those are businesses deals. Any kind of a business deal. The experts who teach business school students how to do deals, the best deals are those in which everybody at the end feels good. The Art of the Deal in business is making sure that you get what you want while making the other side think they got enough of what they want that they’re happy, too. That in business it’s a bad thing to skunk somebody and leave them with nothing. Give ’em something, no matter what cards you hold, and if you go into the deal holding none of the cards, the objective is, both sides like it and both sides don’t. If there’s commonality, if both sides are unhappy they didn’t get it all, fine. If both sides are happy with what they get to one degree or another, then you got a good deal, an okay deal, and you’re out of there.

In politics, that’s not how it works. Take a look at the deals the Republicans have done with the Democrats and ask yourself, in every one of them, be it a budget deal, be it an immigration deal, is there any, is there a single deal that the Republicans have made in the past seven years that any of you have felt, “You know what, we got something out of this?” No. However, if you listen to the Republicans who participated in the negotiation of the deal, they universally come out of there and start telling us, “Hey, you know, we got some stuff in here that we didn’t have. And out of the budget deal you know what that was? We won back the right to export oil. We smoked ’em. We got a great deal.” And you’re saying, “You think that makes this a good deal?”

So from the Republican establishment standpoint, they think you will be made to believe that they made a good deal if they tout what they think they got out of it. The Democrats, when they go into one of these deals, it’s smoke city. There isn’t going to be one iota’s compromise. The Republicans aren’t gonna get anything that matters.

Now, the Democrats might give them something inconsequential, just enough that the Republicans can leave the negotiation and say, “Look what we got, look what we got here, we did okay.” And their voters are saying, “You got skunked, you got nothing, we lost it again, and what you promised to do is kick it down the road and we’ll deal with it next time. It keeps happening and happening. We didn’t get diddly-squat.”

“Yeah, we did, look at Medicare Part B! We skunked ’em, we got a brand-new entitlement that’s got conservative free market principles all over.” You think that was a win? That’s what we were told after that happened. How in the world can you, with a Republican administration, Republican House, agree to a new entitlement, it’s your idea for a new entitlement. And they dare come out and tell us that that’s a win?

But in Trump’s world, where he does deals, he’s gonna have to do business with ’em down the road. He doesn’t want to make enemies like he says Ted Cruz does. Ted Cruz is not nasty. You know, this is the thing. I have warned them about this I don’t know how many times. Ted Cruz is not nasty. (imitating Trump) “He’s a nasty guy. Everybody hates Cruz.” No, they fear Cruz, maybe respect Cruz, but, hey, look, if you’re running a scam and somebody comes along in your own club and calls you out on it, you’re not gonna love ’em, which is what Cruz did many times.

Addressing the first point concerning Trump’s decision to boycott tomorrow night’s debate,

1. Trump knows that Fox News has been backing the Republican Elite’s Heir to the Throne, Jeb Bush, since the start of the Republican Primary. He is not going to walk into anywhere that he perceives, right or wrong, to be an ambush.

2. Trump’s real fight is with Roger Ailes, with whom he has been negotiating. Meghan Kelly is simply being used as a focal point.

3. Any publicity is good publicity. Trump evidently feels that this will not hurt his campaign.

4. Leverage.

Concerning Trump’s assertion that he can “get along” with the Democrat Hierarchy…

On July 27. 2012. John Heubush, Executive Director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, wrote the following op ed for The Daily Caller…

In order to be an effective President, you have to build a Coalition. The most effective President in my lifetime did.

“You’re in the big leagues, now.”

So the speaker of the House said to the 40th president of the United States just days after his inauguration.

It was 1981. The 97th Congress was a mixed bag, with a Democratic-controlled House, led by Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, and a Senate held by Republicans who, for the first time since 1953, controlled a chamber of Congress.

But Ronald Reagan didn’t think “eight years as governor of one of the largest states in the union had exactly been the minor leagues.” Sacramento had been Reagan’s beta-site where nothing was accomplished until strong coalitions were formed. “It was important to develop an effective working relationship with my opponents in the legislature,” Reagan wrote, “our political disagreements not withstanding.”

What did this adversarial relationship with O’Neill and Democrats produce in the next two years? Caustic gamesmanship? A stand-off? On July 29, 1981, less than six months after Reagan took office, a strong bipartisan coalition in the House passed one of the largest tax cuts in American history, the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981. Two days later, the Senate followed suit.

How in the world did Reagan do it? Experience.

Matching wits with Jack Warner (of Warner Brothers) as head of the actors’ union and Jesse Unruh (speaker of the California State Assembly) as governor taught Reagan to come to the bargaining table prepared. “I’d learned while negotiating union contracts,” Reagan wrote, “that you seldom get everything you ask for.” (Years later, the press asked him about negotiating with Gorbachev. “It was easier than dealing with Jack Warner,” Reagan shot back.)

Although the Democrats were in a tough position after the Carter years, their big trump card was that nothing would get done unless Reagan won over a substantial number of them in the House. It’s no wonder that O’Neill was so full of braggadocio.

Somehow Reagan had to build a coalition.

The strategy to get the Economic Recovery Act passed by a conflicted Congress had two major parts.

First, Reagan would use his tremendous skills as a communicator by making repeated televised appeals to Congress and the American people. “Every time he spoke,” Reagan Chief of Staff Jim Baker recalled, “the needle moved.”

Second, the Legislative Strategy Group led by Baker and Ed Meese “did the grunt work” of inviting Democrats to the White House, while the president worked the phones. “I spent a lot of time in the spring and early summer of 1981 on the telephone and in meetings trying to build a coalition to get the nation’s recovery under way,” Reagan wrote. At the time, he even noted in his diary, “These Dems are with us on the budget and it’s interesting to hear some who’ve been here ten years or more say that it is their first time to ever be in the Oval Office. We really seem to be putting a coalition together.”

These “Dems” — the Boll Weevils — were Southern conservative Democrats who became key players in Reagan’s economic recovery strategy. It helped Reagan’s purpose that many represented districts that the president had carried in 1980. If they voted against a popular president, it could cost them their seats in 1982.

“To encourage the Boll Weevils to cross party lines,” journalist Lou Cannon wrote, “Reagan accepted a suggestion by James Baker and promised that he could not campaign in 1982 against any Democratic members of Congress who voted for both his tax and budget bills.” It was a shrewd and effective move.

2. In order to become President of the United States, you must garner more votes than the other party’s candidate. This cannot be done simply by relying on the votes of your own poltical party. You must have ‘crossover votes”.

Back on August 15, 1984, Mark Green, in an article written for the New York Times, titled, “Reagan, The Liberal Democrat”, wrote the following…

To what do we owe these conversions on the road to November? Could it be election-year opportunism? Could it be anything else?

There is a kind of historical consistency in this inconsistency: As Will Rogers noted back in the 1920’s: ”The Republicans have a habit of having three bad years and one good one, and the good ones always happened to be election years.”

If Ronald Reagan holds to this path, he may soon end up back among the Americans for Democratic Action, which he fled and renounced in the 1950’s.

Not surprisingly, ideological fellow-travelers such as the commentators William F. Buckley Jr. and Pat Buchanan have expressed dismay over their champion’s apostasy. Mr. Buchanan worries that by flirting with the idea of a summit meeting, the President ”is playing with the national security of the U.S.”

Mr. Reagan’s election-year liberalism appears designed to win over those political independents and weak Democrats who might otherwise recall him as the man who has opposed all but one of the major civil rights laws and nuclear arms control pacts of the past two decades.

Will it work? Only if these constituencies believe his reversals to be principled and permanent – and that seems unlikely. To conclude now that Ronald Reagan has suddenly become pro-environment, pro-arms control, pro-food stamps and pro-regulation is to believe that a sow’s ear can become a silk purse merely by declaring itself so.

Besides, swing voters faced this fall with the equivalent of two Democratic tickets may just as well decide to vote for the real McCoy rather than the imitation brand.

The New York Times was a Liberal Schlock Sheet, even way back in 1984.

They, like the rest of the Liberals in the Media back then, could not stand Ronald Reagan. That’s no secret. However, even they understood what Reagan. He was attracting “crossover votes” for his Second Presidential Campaign.

The constant deal-making, bravado and braggadocio, and his “willingness to work together” are arrows in the quiver of Donald J. Trump, which have served him well in the past, and have helped him become an American Success Story,

We shall see if those arrows find their mark during the Republican Presidential Primary Battle and later, the President Campaign, if he is the Nominee.

Similar arrows found the mark for Ronald Reagan.

Until He Comes,

Black Monday: The American Legal System Protects Planned Parenthood and “Reproductive Rights”, But Not the Unborn

On January 26, 2016 By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics1 Comment

This is a debate about our understanding of human dignity, what it means to be a member of the human family, even though tiny, powerless and unwanted. – Henry Hyde

[Where am I? This is July…not January. What are all these bright lights? What’s that smell? I don’t understand. I was inside my mother, sucking my thumb, all nice and safe and warm. The next thing I know, I feel this pressure on either side of my head, and I was ripped out of my mother.

Why is this happening to me? I have a whole life ahead of me.

I deserve a Mother and a Father. I will never have those. Grandparents, either. Heck, I won’t even get to know my cousins.

I want to know what milk tastes like. I want to hold a Cheerio in my hand and put it in my mouth. I want to know what it’s like to get my first tooth…to take my first step….to hear music for the first time. I want to hold a puppy. I want to have a first day in school. I want to have a best friend. I want to ride a bike. I want to have a best friend and go out to play with them. I want to know what Christmas is all about. I want to eat a turkey leg at Thanksgiving…and to see a fireworks display on the 4th of July. I want to wear costumes on Halloween. I want to go to ballgames with my Father.

I want to watch cartoons. I want to love and be loved.

I want to fall in love. I want to experience my first kiss. I want to have my parents drop me and my date off at the movie and then pick us up. I want to play sports in school…or be an artist…or be a musician…or, just be a kid.

I want to go to a pep rally. I want to dance at a prom. I want to get a report card. Heck, I want to taste a school lunch.

I want to graduate and go to college. I want to start work…and have a family.

I want to live!

Wait! What are you doing with those scissors! Don’t…]

I was born three days before my mother’s 40th birthday. To say I was a surprise is an understatement. As I recently wrote, I truly believe that they were going to name me “Oops”. That being said, I am grateful that God convicted them, regarding the sanctity of the life that my mother was carrying within her.

Now, 42 years after the passing of Roe Vs. Wade, Planned Parenthood is not just content with ending unborn lives, they are selling their body parts to the highest bidder.

And, instead of these worshippers of Molech being brought to justice, the intrepid Americans who exposed their heinous activities are being charged, instead.

The Houston Chronicle reported yesterday that

A Harris County grand jury investigating allegations that a Planned Parenthood clinic in Houston illegally sold the tissue of aborted fetuses has cleared the organization of wrongdoing and instead indicted two anti-abortion activists behind the undercover videos that sparked the probe.

Secret videographers David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt were both indicted on charges of tampering with a governmental record, a second-degree felony that carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison. Daleiden received an additional misdemeanor indictment under the law prohibiting the purchase and sale of human organs.

Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson announced the surprising indictments Monday after a two-month investigation.

“We were called upon to investigate allegations of criminal conduct by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast,” said Anderson, a Republican. “As I stated at the outset of this investigation, we must go where the evidence leads us. All the evidence uncovered in the course of this investigation was presented to the grand jury. I respect their decision on this difficult case.”

The probe began after the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group run by Daleiden, released footage of the Houston clinic as part of a series of videos showing Planned Parenthood officials casually discussing the methods and costs of preserving fetal tissue for scientific research. That prompted allegations that the organization was profiting off of tissue — an allegation that was never proven — and sparked calls for an investigation from Gov. Greg Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton and others.

The Center for Medical Progress did not immediately return a message seeking comment Monday.

Abbott’s office noted in a statement that Paxton and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission still are investigating the videos.

“Nothing about today’s announcement in Harris County impacts the state’s ongoing investigation,” Abbott said. “The State of Texas will continue to protect life, and I will continue to support legislation prohibiting the sale or transfer of fetal tissue.”

Paxton’s office declined comment, as did the health commission.

A spokeswoman for the Houston branch of Planned Parenthood said the news made the organization feel “vindicated.”

“It’s great news because it demonstrates what we have said from the very beginning, which is that Planned Parenthood is following every rule and regulation, and that these people came into our buildings under the guise of health when their true intentions were to spread lies,” said the spokeswoman, Rochelle Tafolla. “We’re glad that these extremists have been indicted for breaking the law.”

The national organization of Planned Parenthood had said in a letter to Congress that Daleiden was involved in secretly recording staff and patients at least 65 times over the last eight years.

The organization alleged that Daleiden and others used aliases, obtained fake government I.D.s, and formed a fake tissue procurement company in an effort to gain access to private areas and record private conversations to be deceptively edited to create a false impression.

The second indictment for Daleiden suggests that the grand jury found that he went too far in trying to get Planned Parenthood to admit to selling tissue. The crime, a class A misdemeanor is committed if a person intentionally offers to buy or offers to sell a human organ, including fetal tissue. If convicted, the maximum punishment is a year in jail.

For those of you who still don’t believe that the American Legal System has been taken over by Liberal Activists, you have not been paying attention to the Highest Court in the Land.

NBCNews.com reported that

The U.S. Supreme Court today rejected an appeal from North Dakota to revive its proposed restriction on abortions, which would be the strictest in the nation.

By declining to take up the case, the justices left lower court rulings standing that found the restriction unconstitutional and blocked the law’s enforcement. Passed in 2013, it was intended to make abortions illegal after a fetal heartbeat could be detected — about six weeks into the pregnancy.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court turned away an appeal from state officials in Arkansas who sought to revive a similar fetal heartbeat law. Also blocked by lower courts, it would have banned abortions after about 12 weeks of pregnancy.

In both cases, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit — responsible for federal cases Arkansas, North Dakota, and five other states — said it was bound by an earlier U.S. Supreme Court decisions on abortion. Those precedents say the states may not impose undue burdens on a woman’s right to choose during the period of pregnancy before the fetus is viable.

Even so, the appeals court said, “good reasons exist” for the Supreme Court to revisit those cases. “The continued application of the Supreme Court’s viability standard discounts the legislative branch’s recognized interest in protecting unborn children,” the Eighth Circuit said in the North Dakota case.

But the Center for Reproductive Rights, representing the only abortion clinic in North Dakota, urged the Supreme Court to leave the ban on the North Dakota law in place.

“Since this Court first recognized constitutional protection for pre-viability abortion, two generations of American women have come of age, depending on constitutional protection for their dignity in making reproductive decisions.”

The Supreme Court will decide the fate of another abortion restriction during this current court term. It’s a challenge to a Texas law requiring abortion clinics to conform to the same building standards as surgical centers. It also requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

Since the law was passed, the number of abortion clinics in Texas has fallen from 42 to 19, and could drop to ten if the law is upheld.

The justices will hear the Texas case in March with a decision expected by late April.

Whatever happened to “One nation UNDER GOD”?

Have you ever tried to have a discussion with an ardent pro-abortion supporter, either on Facebook or face-to-face? You won’t hear these “Champions of Tolerance” call those innocent lives, babies, human beings, a life, a soul, a gift from God, or anything remotely resembling something that they should feel remorse about killing.

Heck, Pro-Abortionists are opposed to the taking of sonograms of the woman’s womb, before she has a abortion. They’re afraid that the “seed-carrier” will realize that IS a HUMAN BEING inside her, and will decide not to kill that baby.

I have always said that, it what seems to be a majority of the cases, abortion is a selfish act. It ends the life of an innocent human being, before they have even had the chance to live it.

Life is not, and never will be, a bicycle ride in the park.

Life is a series of challenges, which every person has to meet head on, and make the choice between right and wrong for themselves.

We have been given Free Will by Our Creator because WE ARE LOVED.

In fact, He loves us so much, that he gave us that still small voice, which resides in each one of us, which is referred to, in secular terms, as the conscience, and, is known to Christians as the Holy Spirit.

It is this still, small voice that helps us make the important decisions which we face in this life, in order to overcome the challenges which we are faced with.

It’s also undoubtedly why the overwhelming majority of Americans are so upset about the ghoulish resurrection of the practices of, and imitation of, the Third Reich by Planned Parenthood, through their monstrous marketing of the body parts of aborted babies.

Regardless of what you see in the Main Stream Media, the majority of Americans still know the difference between right and wrong.

Until He Comes,

Beck Endorses Cruz, Says That He Prefers Socialist Bernie Over Capitalist Donald

On January 25, 2016January 25, 2016 By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

Well, Professional Showman and Radio Talk Show Host Glenn Beck is at the top of the News Cycle, again.

Why? Because CONTROVERSY MEANS RATINGS.

Thehill.com has reported that

Conservative commentator Glenn Beck on Saturday endorsed Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz for the White House.

Beck compared Cruz to the 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, and gave him a compass that belonged to the first one, George Washington.

“I’m taking a very big risk here and gambling on it, but this is how much I believe in Ted Cruz,” Beck said at a Cruz rally in Ankeny, Iowa.“I’d like you to hold onto that,” he said, passing Cruz the compass, “to make sure your compass is square and you stay true” to your values.

Beck said he had never endorsed a presidential candidate in his 40 years of broadcasting, but he made an exception because of the urgency of the moment.

He said Cruz is the only candidate in the field who can defeat GOP front-runner Donald Trump in the Iowa caucuses.

“I like [Sen.] Marco Rubio – I’ve had real problems with his policies, especially on the NSA – but I like him, he’s a decent man,” Beck said. “Ben Carson – really good, decent, honorable, God-fearing man. I just don’t think he’s ready – I wish he was, but I don’t think he’s ready.

“[Sen.] Rand Paul, strong on the Constitution and a good guy,” he continued. “But I will tell you this – those guys aren’t going to win Iowa. They might win down the road, they’re not going to win Iowa.

“And if Donald Trump wins, it’s going to be a snowball to hell.”

The conservative media magnate took several shots at Trump, comparing him to a progressive in the likeness of President Obama.

“The other guy has said he hasn’t done anything in his life that actually makes him feel like he should ask forgiveness from God,” he said of Trump. “The hubris of that is astonishing, as if for the last eight years we have watched a narcissist in the Oval Office and it has meant nothing to us.”

Beck said Trump owed America an apology for supporting the Wall Street bailout during the financial crisis.

“It’s up to him to ask God’s forgiveness, but I would like to suggest to you that the man owes America an apology, and he should ask conservatives for America for forgiveness for supporting billions of dollars of bailouts, for pulling for the nationalization of our banks,” he said.

He said he even prefers Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” running in the Democratic presidential primary, to Trump.

“Honesty, faith and truth are basic requirements. And quite honestly, I have to tell you, this probably isn’t going to go over very well, that’s why I like Bernie Sanders,” he said. “Bernie Sanders is like, ‘Yep, I’m a socialist.’

“I can actually sit at a table with a man who says, ‘Yes, I’m a socialist, and yes, I don’t like what we are doing, we should be more like Denmark,’ ” he added.

“What we really need in America is enough of these politicians who are telling us what we want to hear, hiding behind fancy language, and actually have a debate between a constitutionalist like Ted Cruz and a socialist like Bernie Sanders.”

Cruz praised Beck as a “fearless and reliable conservative.”

“Glenn has been a relentless fighter for liberty, for limited government, and for restoring the country we all love so much,” he said in a statement released by his campaign after the endorsement.

“His powerful voice and passion played a critical role in my Senate victory and I am now proud to have him in our corner in 2016.”

I can remember when Glenn Beck first came on in the Memphis Area.

I thought, “Hey. This guy’s pretty refreshing and entertaining. He makes some pretty intelligent points.”

As time went by, Beck became more powerful in the world of Conservative Talk Radio.

He became a part of the Grassroots Movement, known as “The TEA Party”.

He held massive rallies to “Restore Honor” and to reinforce “Traditional American Values”, such as Faith and Family.

And then, something happened.

Like Captain Ahab, who changed from a respected “Man of the Sea” to an obsessed lunatic, willing to sacrifice ship and crew to kill the massive White Whale, Moby Dick, Beck has become obsessed in bringing down the Front-running Potential Republican Presidential Candidate, Donald J. Trump.

Allow me to set something straight, before I go any further, I do not begrudge him, or any of my friends, for supporting Ted Cruz. I like him, as well.

He is a good candidate and a fine Christian American.

However, the reality is, Trump is way out in front of him in the Primary Race because Americans have had their fill of Professional Politicians.

Heck, I will be fine with either one of these men taking up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

BECAUSE THEY ARE BOTH A D@#N SIGHT BETTER MEN THAN THE MUSLIM-LOVING SOCIALIST DHIMMI, WHO SLEEPS IN UNTIL 10 O’CLCK EVERY MORNING, AND WHO CURRENTLY USES OUR HOUSE FOR HIS “CRIB”.

Beck is as big a Showman as Trump is. Hence, his statement of stated “affinity” for the Far Left Whackjob Socialist, Democrat Primary Candidate Bernie Sanders.

We are already suffering under one Far Left Socialist Whackjob, we sure as heck don’t need to follow up this present Presidential Nightmare with another.

French sociologist and political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) traveled to the America in 1831 to study our prisons and returned to France with a wealth of broader observations that he compiled together in “Democracy in America” (1835), one of the most influential books of the 19th century. With its spot-on observations on equality and individualism, Tocqueville’s work remains a valuable explanation of America to Europeans and of Americans to ourselves.

He once observed that

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

In other words, the failed political ideology of socialism takes away the exhilaration and fulfillment of individual achievement and replaces it with self-sacrifice in servitude to the State, for the good of the Central Nanny-State Government, which, in turn, promises to “share the wealth”, but, as was the case in the old Soviet Union, and more recently, Venezuela, never does.

…And, Professional Politician Bernie Sanders, like the members of the old Soviet Union’s Politboro before him, has a net worth that is more than most of us will never see in our lifetimes.

The great Sir Winston Churchill once said that

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

I would rather be blessed than miserable.

Wouldn’t you?

Thehill.com, in the preceding article got something wrong about Glenn Beck. He has never been a “Conservative”

He is a Libertarian.

Per libertarianism.org:

Libertarianism is the belief that each person has the right to live his life as he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others. Libertarians defend each person’s right to life, liberty, and property. In the libertarian view, voluntary agreement is the gold standard of human relationships. If there is no good reason to forbid something (a good reason being that it violates the rights of others), it should be allowed. Force should be reserved for prohibiting or punishing those who themselves use force, such as murderers, robbers, rapists, kidnappers, and defrauders (who practice a kind of theft). Most people live their own lives by that code of ethics. Libertarians believe that that code should be applied consistently, even to the actions of governments, which should be restricted to protecting people from violations of their rights. Governments should not use their powers to censor speech, conscript the young, prohibit voluntary exchanges, steal or “redistribute” property, or interfere in the lives of individuals who are otherwise minding their own business.

Libertarian ideas are becoming increasingly influential. Philosopher Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia helped to revitalize political theory and to focus attention on the proper limits of state power. Classical liberal economists and social scientists have pioneered the understanding of processes of social coordination and change, many of them earning Nobel Prizes in the process. And the broad global trend toward economic deregulation, freer trade, limits on taxes, toleration of minorities, and greater personal freedom shows the influence of libertarian ideas and libertarian thinkers and activists.

For example, Dr. Ron Paul is a Libertarian, and he and his son, Republican Candidate, Dr. Rand Paul, are frequent guests on Beck’s program.

Ronald Reagan defined Conservatism as being a three-legged stool, consisting of Social Conservatism, Fiscal Conservatism, and National Defense.

Today’s Libertarians misidentify themselves as Conservatives. They discard two out of the three legs of the stool, identifying themselves as “Fiscal Conservatives”.

If you’re having a discussion with someone and they call themselves a “Fiscal Conservative”. Nine times out of ten, you’re talking to a Libertarian.

While Trump is not a Classic Reagan Conservative, either, Ted Cruz has his faults as well.

I, for one, would love to see them running on the same ticket.

As this Campaign Season rolls on, just remember:

There was only ONE PERFECT MAN.

And, he gave his life for us on Calvary.

Until He Comes,

The War Against Christianity: The Only “Angels From Hell” are “Lucifer” and His Demons…and They are Not the “Good Guys”.

On January 24, 2016January 24, 2016 By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

This past week, several of my fellow Christian American Conservatives became very concerned over the fact that leading Republican Presidential Primary Candidate Donald J. Trump, revered to a passage of scripture as being from “Two Corinthians”, instead of “Second Corinthians”.

Heck, I was just glad that he was referring to the Bible, instead of the Quran, as the current occupant of the White House does, every chance he gets.

Christian American Conservatives have bigger issues than Trump’s misspeaking to worry about.

Christanpost.com reports that

One Million Moms, a nonprofit family-interest group, has managed to convince the manufacturer Sleep Number to stop funding CBS’ new comedy series, “Angel from Hell,” starring Jane Lynch, which, it says, disrespects Christianity.

“The previews alone can make believers sick to their stomachs with the blasphemous content including crude humor, foul language and distasteful dialogue,” says an alert posted on the website of One Million Moms, an organization founded by the American Family Association.

The series, which premiered Jan. 7, airs on Thursday evenings. The show is about an angel named Amy, who acts as a guardian for Allison, forming an unlikely friendship. It focuses on “a holier-than-thou character who is anything but that,” the family interest group says.

“The network also cast children in scenes that are extremely inappropriate, such as the angel using foul language in front of them and then joking that she never promised to be G-rated,” the group adds. “The premiere also included the angel hiding liquor in the children’s clothes and saying, ‘My booze!’ followed by a little boy saying, ‘That’s so cool!’ Almost every scene included the angel drinking alcohol from a flask, even on Sunday, and once at a bar. Not to mention the angel rides on a wrecking ball while busting up a concrete angel statue.”

Networks like CBS portray a false image of religion “once again,” the group says, calling the show “another attempt to distort the truth about people’s faith.”

As a result of the alert, Sleep Number is pulling its sponsorship of “Angel From Hell” immediately, the group’s website says. “Thanks for your feedback. We’ve contacted our Marketing team and confirmed we’re not planning on running any additional ads with this program at this time,” Sleep Number wrote on its Facebook page.

The Media Research Center agrees with One Million Moms’ criticism.

“This is just the latest volley in Hollywood’s war against faith,” Dan Gainor, VP of business and culture for MRC, tells Fox411. “Rather than simply deny the divine, ‘Angel From Hell’ seeks to denigrate it. They picked ‘Glee’ veteran Jane Lynch, who hates conservatives, to portray a disgustingly foul and perverted ‘angel.'”

He compared CBS’ show with the FOX television series called “Lucifer.” “With the arrival of the show ‘Lucifer,’ where the devil is portrayed as suave good guy, this is just the Left Coast’s latest attack on religious faith,” Gainor says.

In “Angel from Hell,” Amy is portrayed as a mysterious and eccentric individual who reveals herself to be an angel. She has a crazy persona and can make unbelievable predictions that come true. It is suggested that Amy has been watching Allison since childhood. Allison is a dermatologist who likes to multi-task and is a perfectionist. She thinks that Amy is nuts, until she discovers that Amy knows everything about her and starts believing her crazy predictions.

While we are on the subject of “Angels”, here is an article from CNS News, about the program mentioned earlier, featuring the Fallen Angel, previously known as “The Lightbearer”.

A number of faith-based and conservative watchdog groups are panning Lucifer, a new Fox television series that will premiere on January 25 at 9 pm Eastern Standard Time, saying there’s “nothing redeeming” about a show that glamorizes Satan.Fox’s website describes the series’ main character, Lucifer Morningstar, who is depicted as a “devilishly handsome” demon: “Bored and unhappy as the Lord of Hell, the original fallen angel, Lucifer Morningstar has abandoned his throne and retired to L.A. where he owns Lux, an upscale nightclub.”

Actor Tom Ellis, the son of a Baptist pastor who plays Lucifer, described his character in a recent interview: “He looks like James Bond- or perhaps a villain out of Jaguar’s ‘it’s good to be bad’ commercial – and has the morals of a debauched investment banker (albeit with a little more heart.)

“The show certainly is not a big theological debate,” Ellis added. “More than anything, I’d say this show is a story of redemption.”

But critics say the graphic murder and blasphemy in the official trailer prove that Lucifer is anything but redeeming.

The pilot was condemned by the American Family Association’s One Million Moms project not only for featuring violence and scantily-clad women, but also for its attempt to “glorify Satan as a caring, likeable person in human flesh.”

“We were not able to preview this show, but we know enough about to be concerned,” Melissa Henson, director of communications and public education at the Parents Television Council, told CNSNews.com.

“Besides the dark theme, we expect there will be high levels of violence and disturbing sexual content. Clearly it is inappropriate for kids and families even though it is airing in prime time,” she said. “From what I can see, there’s nothing redeeming about this show at all.”

“The very fact that it could be on a major network without serious questions being raised with regard to advertisers and the like tells you where the culture has gone, to a certain extent,” Fr. Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, told CNSNews.com.

“I urge believers to be calm, because part of the marketing strategy of these companies is to incorporate the kind of opposition they can get from believers who would find this offensive and thus call more attention to the project.

“The second caution is that this show seems rather superficial with its constant use of one gag about the devil. It doesn’t seem like it’s a serious reflection on evil, on the capacity of human beings to betray their highest values.”

“I’m reminded of what C.S. Lewis puts in the words of his devil in the Screwtape Letters, that the real danger in confrontation with evil and the world is when people don’t believe that there is evil. So I don’t think we’ve hit the bottom quite yet, because at least they’re talking about things spiritual,” Sirico said.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, told CNSNews.com that he’s not too concerned that Lucifer will do any serious damage to Christians’ faith.

“It strikes me as sci-fi. It’s theater of the absurd for me. It doesn’t look like something I’m going to get exorcised about,” he said. “You’d have to be a moron to look at this show and come to the conclusion that the Bible is wrong.

“I’m more worried about docu-dramas like the ones Oliver Stone does that confuse viewers,” Donohue added.

Noting that “believers and non-believers alike have questions about, and interest in, Satan and the demonic,” Dr. Alex McFarland, author of 17 books on Christian apologetics, told CNSNews.com in an email that “the Bible warns that as history moves toward the point of Christ’s return, demonic activity will persist and even increase (I Timothy 4:1, II Timothy 3:1-13). The Bible also warns that Satan’s intent is for the spiritual detriment of people.

“Satan is called ‘the god of this age’ (II Corinthians 4:4) and a spiritual deceiver of people (II Corinthians 4:4, and 11:14). Revelation 12:9 says that he ‘led the whole world astray.’

“Jesus calls Satan ‘the enemy,’ and says that hell was made for him and the other demons (Matthew 13:39, Matthew 25:41). We know that Lucifer’s coup attempt in heaven failed, and that earth is caught in the crossfire as fallen angels still try to make war against God.”

But for Christians, the story has a happy ending, he pointed out.

“The panorama of Scripture is clear about Satan’s doom and destiny: God wins, Satan loses.”

Amen, Dr. McFarland.

Christians know this. We’ve read the back of The Book.

And, that’s a good thing, because the President of the United States of America and his Secretary of State, even while our Best and Brightest were held captive, continued to acquiesce to the wishes of the Rogue Islamic Nation of Iran, Giving them not only their billions of dollars back, but throwing in 1.7 billion dollars of American Taxpayer (that’s you and me, kids) Money, while continuing to hone the timeline set for them to have the capability to build the means of the nuclear destruction of the United States of America in a “Gentleman’s Agreement, which Iran has already broken.

Meanwhile. in Iraq, Christians and innocent Muslims continue to be killed by barbarians who have sworn to hoist their flag above our White House.

Nationally, America’s economy remains in the tank, with more and more Americans choosing to drop out of the work force, in disgust and humiliation. 37.2% of America’s Work Force, to be exact.

A lot of these “drop-outs” are Americans over 50, like myself, who are being intentionally ignored, because of our age, which seems to matter more than our business acumen and wealth of experience.

While, as the articles I presented demonstrate, the very fabric of our society is being torn asunder, through the dissipation of morality and the glorification of evil.

Satan, Vampires, and Zombies…oh, my!

And, of course, legalizing marijuana has no consequences. So what if elementary school kids are being caught selling their parents stash? And, DUI accidents are up?

Yep. No consequences at all.

What we seem to be heading for is not simply an immoral society, but, an amoral one, whose concept of right and wrong is “Whatever Gets You Through the Night (It’s Alright. It’s Alright.)”, and whose ultimate authority is not the God of Abraham, but a Godless Central Government, whose credo is

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. (Karl Marx)

Just as Marxism has failed wherever it has been tried before, so will it fail here.

Just as amorality and licentiousness led to the destruction of the Roman Empire, so, if unchecked, will it lead to America’s.

The galling thing is the fact that, even the, as gallup.com recently reported, American Christians remain 75% of the population, we are propagandized and suppressed in both the Old and New Media, to make it seem as if WE are the Minority, when, in fact, WE are the overwhelming Majority.

It is this New Generation of Amoral Socialists, who are in fact, just a tiny, albeit vocal, Minority of America’s population.

So, what can an average Christian American, like you and me, do about this “Tyranny of the Minority”?

As the Apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians, we can STAND.

However, you cannot stand without “the full armor of God”. I have found, as have my family and friends, that the better that you are doing, in terms of your Christian Walk, the harder that you will be attacked.

10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. 11Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.…- Ephesians 6:10-12

By now. you’re probably asking, “So what’s the point of all this, KJ?”

We are given free will by our Creator…will to make choices and decisions on the direction of our lives. Being human, we often don’t make the right decisions and being human, those decisions have the potential to lead us down a dark path.

Whether is in reality or strictly in the close quarters of our own consciousness, the path we choose to follow is up to us. However, our parents, family, and friends can make a difference in our journey and I thank God that through His Grace I was given a Father who made sure that I received loving instruction in The Way in which I should go.

We still live in the greatest country on the face of the earth and we still have a responsibility to one another.

Now, more than ever, we have to keep THE MAIN THING, THE MAIN THING.

The Light or the Darkness. The choice is up to each and every one of us.

Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 1 John 4:14 (ESV)

Until He Comes,

Kingsjester's Blog

Author: kingsjester

Iowa Caucus Analysis: Winners, Losers, and Unbelievable Spin

Obama to Visit Baltimore Mosque With Close Ties to the Muslim Brotherhood

Hillary’s E-mailgate Worsens. FBI Wants to Indict Both Hil and Huma.

Thursday Night in Iowa: A Republican “Royal Rumble” Without the Front-Runner There (Physically, Anyway)

O’Reilly Begs Trump, Rush: “Fox Jilted at the Altar”

Trump, Fox News, the Democrat Elite, and “The Art of the Deal”

Black Monday: The American Legal System Protects Planned Parenthood and “Reproductive Rights”, But Not the Unborn

Beck Endorses Cruz, Says That He Prefers Socialist Bernie Over Capitalist Donald

The War Against Christianity: The Only “Angels From Hell” are “Lucifer” and His Demons…and They are Not the “Good Guys”.