Diversity Above Achievement: Affirmative Action Comes to the Academy Awards

Academy-Awards-Board-Changes-400x267

I can do more than anyone suspects. I pride myself on my versatility. It took 32 years of difficult parts, second leads, villains and juveniles. The Oscar changed the quality of the roles I was being offered. – Louis Gossett, Jr.

Affirmative action  sprang out of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement. It was intended to provide equal opportunities for members of minority groups and women in education and employment.

In 1961, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first to use the term “affirmative action” in an Executive Order which forced government contractors to take “affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” That Executive Order also established the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, now known as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

An institution or organization engages in Affirmative Action when it attempts to improve opportunities for historically excluded groups in American society by establishing a “quota system” to make up for perceived “past transgressions”.

These policies usually involve employment and education. In institutions of higher education, affirmative action involves admission policies that seek to provide equal access to education for those groups that have been historically excluded or underrepresented, such as women and minorities, at times, skipping over a more qualified candidate, in order to promote “Diversity”.

Needless to say, questions concerning the constitutionality of Affirmative Action has made the topic one of heated debate.

Affirmative action policies initially focused on improving opportunities for African Americans in employment and education.

In the past several years, several states have discontinued their Affirmative Action Policies because Affirmative Action has become outdated, and causes a form of reverse discrimination by favoring one group over another, based on racial preference rather than academic or business achievement. Additionally, there is a concern that minority groups may be stigmatized and treated differently by peers and professors who may believe that the success of minority groups in higher education institutions is unearned.

Now, just as “Mr. Smith Came to Washington”, Affirmative Action is coming to Hollywood.

The Academy Awards or “Oscar” Awards is the paramount awards ceremony originating out of Hollywood, which is held on an annual basis. Over the years, it has become a mega-event, with everyone associated, directly or indirectly, with Hollywood eagerly awaiting for the handing out of the golden statues.

The popularity of the Academy Awards has increased as the years have passed.

The awards were the brainchild of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), formed in 1927. The AMPAS was created through collaborative effort of 36 most prominent individuals, who worked within the motion picture industry.

Film actor Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was chosen as the first president of the Academy. The awards were established to honor the talented artists of the Motion Picture Industry. The first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. It was a very private affair, with only two hundred seventy people as guests. The awards were given in the banquet, set up at the hotel’s Blossom Room. The tickets for the guest tickets cost $5.

The first Oscar Ceremony consisted of the handing out of awards in 12 categories and two special honors.

The awards were meant to honor people responsible for cinematic achievements in 1927 and 1928. There was a very little element of surprise at the first Oscar Awards ceremony, as the names of the winners had been declared three months in advance. The entire affair was a lengthy one, filled with speeches. However, Douglas Fairbanks, the Academy President, moved things along as best he could, handing out the golden statues to the winners like a modern-day McDonalds Employee at the Drive-Thru Window.

Yes, boys and girls, once upon a time the Academy Awards celebrated individual achievement in the field of Professional Cinema.

That was then. This is now.

The New York Times reports that

LOS ANGELES — Confronting a fierce protest over a second straight year of all-white Oscar acting nominations, theAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Friday that it would makeradical changes to its voting requirements, recruiting process and governing structure, with an aim toward increasing the diversity of its membership.

The changes were approved at an unusual special meeting of the group’s 51-member governing board Thursday night. The session ended with a unanimous vote to endorse the new processes, but action on possible changes to Oscar balloting was deferred for later consideration. The board said its goal was to double the number of female and minority members by 2020.

“The academy is going to lead and not wait for the industry to catch up,” the academy’s president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, said in a statement. Ms. Isaacs referred to an often-repeated complaint that the academy, in its lack of diversity, reflects the demographics of a film industry that for years has been primarily white and male.

The most striking of the changes is a requirement that the voting status of both new and current members be reviewed every 10 years.

I wonder what the swashbuckling man’s man, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., would have thought about The bunch of no-talent crybabies who have politicized the award show that he worked so had to get off the ground?

He would probably echo the sentiments expressed by Veteran Actor and True Professional, Michael Caine.

Breitbart.com reports that

Two-time Oscar-winning actor Michael Caine has weighed in on the Oscars diversity controversy, saying in a recent interview that while he personally believes that one black actor in particular should have been nominated at this year’s ceremony, “you can’t vote for an actor because he’s black.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has come under fire for nominating exclusively white actors in top acting categories at this year’s Oscars, marking a repeat of last year’s #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Filmmakers Spike Lee and Michael Moore and actors Will and Jada Pinkett Smith have vowed not to attend the February 28 ceremony in protest, while others have simply spoken out to denounce the Academy for the lack of diversity in its nominating process.

But in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Nick Robinson, Caine said that the quality of a performance, rather than the color of an actors’ skin, is paramount when considering Oscar nominations.

“There’s loads of black actors,” the 82-year-old Youth star said. “You can’t vote for an actor because he’s black. You can’t just say, ‘I’m going to vote for him. He’s not very good, but he’s black. I’ll vote for him.’ You have to give a good performance.”

Caine, who has been nominated six times for Oscars and won twice, said that he thought Idris Elba would be nominated for his role as the sadistic Commandant in the Netflix war drama Beasts of No Nation. When Robinson pointed out that Elba wasn’t nominated this year, Caine demurred.

“Well, look at me,” Caine said. “I won the [European Film Award] for best actor, and I got nominated for nothing else.” Caine’s film Youth was nominated for just one Oscar, for Best Original Song.

Caine said the best advice he could give to minority actors is to “be patient.”

“Of course it will come,” he said. “It took me years to get an Oscar.”

Since the Academy announced its nominations last week, a slew of actors, actresses and producers have spoken out to blast the awards show for its lack of diversity, including David Oyelowo, George Clooney, Lupita Nyong’o, Dustin Hoffman and Mark Ruffalo. Straight Outta Compton executive producer Will Packer has called the lack of nominations for people of color a “complete embarrassment,” while the Rev. Al Sharpton has called for Americans nationwide to “tune out” of the broadcast in protest.

However, some have defended the Academy in the wake of the media firestorm.

In an interview with Variety, Boyz ‘N The Hood director John Singleton said that “there are only so many slots” for nominations, and those nominations will go to those films and performances that the Academy feels should be recognized. Singleton, who became the first African-American to earn a Best Director nomination for the 1991 film, said that the Academy’s nominating process is “almost like the lottery.”

“It’s like every year people complain,” the director said. “People even complain even when we have a lot of nominations. It is what is is. I’ve been in the game for 25 years. You never know – it’s the luck of the draw for you. To me, I’m not surprised. I’m not disappointed either, as much as other people are disappointed. There’s a whole elevation of work that happens.”

Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter on Friday, Oscar-winning Schindler’s List producer Gerald Molen also defended the Academy and called the growing boycott movement against the Oscars “ridiculous.” Molen said it would be tough to believe that Academy members are not voting for minority actors because of their skin color.

“In a liberal town like Hollywood, that makes about as much sense as saying all members of the Academy vote Republican,” he joked.

Back in 2010, Dan Gainor, in an op ed for foxnews.com, observed that

Hollywood can’t have a big night any more without pushing the Left Coast agenda. It isn’t always big name awardees that reflect a political view. The anti-God, anti-Christian “Golden Compass” took home a Visual Effects Oscar in 2008. The Tommy Lee Jones anti-Iraq War movie “In the Valley of Elah” didn’t even win, but it was honored just by being there. In 2003, many in the audience even gave a standing ovation when child rapist Roman Polanski won Best Director for “The Pianist.”

Sometimes, good movies win. The pro-life “Juno” won and even one of the pro-Christian Narnia movies got an Oscar for make-up. But those are the exceptions that prove the rule. And on Oscar night, the Hollywood left most certainly rules.

As always, the Academy will claim it’s giving us a feast of film, only it isn’t. It’s not even baloney. It’s just the rest of the bull.

So is Modern American Liberals’ battle cry of “Diversity!”

If they are truly “Champions of Diversity”, why are the Liberal Democrat Party’s leading Potential Presidential Candidates both old white folks from the Northeast?

Liberals have been acting for years as if they cherish Diversity for Diversity ‘ s sake.

Perhaps they all deserve an Oscar Statue, too.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Implosion of a Presidential Campaign: The Very Political…and Scandalous…Life and Times of Hillary Rodham Clinton

Her-shadow-600-LISometimes, “the inevitable” isn’t.

The Washington Post reports that

For Hillary Clinton, it’s starting to look like deja vu all over again.

Start a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination as giant front-runner. Check. Raise tens of millions of dollars and look unbeatable for large swaths of the year before the primaries start. Check. An insurgent challenger running to her ideological left? Check. Collapsing poll numbers on the eve of actual votes? Check.

Over the past week or so, Clinton has watched as her national polling lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), a self-avowed socialist, has shrunk. And, far more important, Clinton’s standing vis a vis Sanders in the key early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire has eroded as well.

In Iowa, after holding a high-single-digit lead (at worst) for months, Clinton now finds herself in a dead heat with the caucuses just over a week away. The Real Clear Politics polling average gives Clinton an edge of less than five points.

Sanders has always run stronger in New Hampshire than in Iowa, but of late several polls suggest that he is widening his steady lead over the former secretary of state. In the Real Clear Politics polling average, Sanders is up by almost 13 points.

Lose both of those states early next month, and Clinton’s inevitability bubble bursts. Period.

Clinton, to her credit, is doing everything she can to avoid a repeat of 2008. She’s savaging Sanders as both too conservative (on guns) and too pie-in-the-sky liberal (on health care).

Complicating those efforts is the news that broke midweek: The intelligence community’s inspector general confirmed that dozens of emails on the private server Clinton used while she was at the State Department contained extremely highly classified information.

Clinton continues to stick by her original line on the email controversy — that she never sent or received anything that was classified at the time — but the latest news is proof that the story and its reverberations are likely to dog her all the way through November.

Why is this individual, whom all of the “Political Pundits”, Professional and Self-described, proclaimed to be the “inevitable” 2016 Democrat Presidential Candidate, fading into oblivion? 

Even though, during this lengthy campaign, she has attempted to reinvent herself as a “Moderate” Democrat, a “Woman of the People”,and even, to quote her, “a “human being” as a  linchpin of her Campaign Strategy, the story of her life reveals someone quite different.

 Hillary Clinton 1On October 26, 1947, Hillary Diane Rodham entered this world in Chicago, Illinois.Hillary Rodham, the oldest daughter of Hugh Rodham, a prosperous fabric store owner, and Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham, was raised in Park Ridge, Illinois, a quaint little suburb located 15 miles northwest of downtown Chicago. Hillary has two younger brothers, Hugh Jr. (born 1950) and Anthony (born 1954).In her youth, the future Democrat was active in young Republican groups, even campaigning for the 1964 Republican Presidential Nominee, Barry Goldwater.According to Hil, she was inspired to work in some form of public service after hearing the Reverend Martin Luther King speak in Chicago. She became a Democrat in 1968.The young ingenue attended Wellesley College, where she was active in student politics, being elected Senior Class President before she graduated in 1969.After that, Hilary enrolled in Yale Law School, where she met Bill “Bubba” Clinton.  Afer graduating with honors in 1973, she then enrolled at Yale Child Study Center, where she took courses on children and medicine and completed one post-graduate year of study, which explains her whole “It takes a village” philosophy.While a college student, Hillary worked several summer jobs. In 1971, she arrived in Washington, D.C. to work on U.S. Senator Walter Mondale’s sub-committee on migrant workers. The next summer found her out west, working for the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern.Then, in the spring of 1974, Rodham became a member of the presidential impeachment inquiry staff, advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives during the Watergate Scandal.Her boss back then, Jerry Zeifman, now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, tells a very revealing story concerning her work there.

According to Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former Yale Law Professor, Burke Marshall, also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair.

When the Watergate Investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation. That made the Future First Lady and Secretary of State one of only three people who earned that badge of dishonor in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

According to Zeifman,

Because she was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.

Zeifman claims that she was one of several individuals including Marshall, Special Counsel John Doar, and Senior Associate Special Counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum, who plotted to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.

Zeifman believes  that they were deathly afraid of putting the break-in’s mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by Counsel to the President.  The reason being, Hunt had the goods regarding some dirty dealings  in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a kid busting open his Piggy Bank…dealings which purportedly included Kennedy’s complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.

Hillary and her associates were acting directly against the decision of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, who all believed that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel.

The reason that Hillary and the rest came up with the scheme is because they believed that they could gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon.

In order to pull off this scheme, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.

Hillary wanted to present in her brief that there was no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. Zeifman told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970….

As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer.

Douglas was allowed to keep counsel by the Judicial Committee in place at the time, which clearly established a precedent. Zeifman told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files.

That was  a mistake, per Zeifman…

Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public.

Hillary then wrote a legal brief which argued that there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding…ignoring the Douglas case completely.

The brief was so laughingly fraudulent, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had ever actually submitted it to a judge.

Zeifman says that if Hillary and her associates had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even be a part of the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.

After President Richard M. Nixon resigned in August, rendering the matter of her deception moot, Hillary became a faculty member of the University of Arkansas Law School in Fayetteville, where her Yale Law School classmate and boyfriend Bill Clinton was also teaching.

Hillary Rodham married Bill Clinton on October 11, 1975, at their home in Fayetteville. Before he proposed, Bubba had secretly purchased a small house that Hillary had previously said that she liked. When she accepted his marriage proposal, he revealed that they owned the house.

Hillary Clinton #2After she married Bill in 1975, Hillary Rodham Clinton worked on Jimmy Carter’s successful campaign for presidenti in1976, while Bill got elected Attorney General of the state of Arkansas.

Hillary joined the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock after Bill became Attorney General, and made partner only after he was elected governor, according to Former Clinton Confidante Dick Morris.

That event occurred in 1978.

President Carter appointed Mrs. Clinton to the board of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) in 1978. This was a federally funded nonprofit organization which was designed as a way to expand the social welfare state and grow social welfare spending. According to Dick Morris, the appointment was in exchange for Bill’s support for Carter in his 1980 primary against Ted Kennedy. Hillary went on to become board chairman in a coup in which she won a majority away from Carter’s choice to be chairman.

Hillary more than tripled LSC’s annual budget, from $90 million to $321 million, in taxpayer funds (OUR money). LSC used these funds in several different ways, most notable among them, the printing of political training manuals showing “how community organizations and public interest groups can win political power and resources,” and the financing of training programs that taught political activists how to harass their opposition.

While Hillary was running the LSC board, the Corporation also

1. Worked to defeat a California referendum that would have cut state income taxes in half

2. Called for the U.S. government to give two-thirds of the state of Maine to American Indians

3.  Paid Marxist orators and folk singers to wage a campaign against the Louisiana Wildlife Commission

4.  Joined a Michigan initiative to recognize “Black English” as an official language;

5.  Sought to force the New York City Transit Authority to hire former heroin addicts so as to avoid “discriminat[ing]” against “minorities” who were “handicapped.”

When it became clear that Ronald Reagan was on the verge of beating Democrat President Jimmy Carter in 1980, LSC redirected massive amounts of its public funding into an anti-Reagan letter-writing campaign by indigent clients. After Reagan was elected in November 1980, LSC immediately laundered its assets — some $260 million — into state-level agencies and private groups so as to keep the funds away from the board that Reagan would eventually appoint. Hillary Clinton left LSC in 1981.

While Bubba was  Governor of Arkansas from 1978 to 1980, and again from 1982 to 1992, Hillary was very active “behind the scenes”.

During these years, she continued her legal practice as a partner in the Rose Law Firm. In 1978 she also became a board member of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), and from 1986 to 1992 she served as chair of the CDF Board.

From 1982 to 1988, Hillary also chaired the New World Foundation (NWF), which had helped to launch CDF in 1973. While running the NWF, the Foundation made grants to such organizations as the National Lawyers Guild, the Institute for Policy Studies, the Christic Institute, Grassroots International, the Committees in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (which sought to foment a Communist revolution in Central America), and groups with ties to the most extreme elements of the African National Congress.

According to Dick Morris, when Clinton was considering not running for another term as Governor of Arkansas in 1990, Hillary said she would run if he didn’t. She and Bill even had Morris take two surveys to assess her chances of winning. The conclusion was that she couldn’t win because people would just see her as a seat warmer for when Bill came back licking his wounds after losing for president. So she didn’t run. Bill did and won. But there is no question she had her eye on public office, as opposed to service, long ago.

So, while Bill was the Front Man, Hil worked “the Back of the House”, in preparation for her “moment in the spotlight”.

During the Clintons’ time in Arkansas, they also both became involved in a little matter which later became known as “The Whitewater Scandal”.

In 1978, while Bubba was Attorney General of Arkansas, Hil and he partnered with James and Susan McDougal in a purchase 220 acres of land that would evolve into the Whitewater Development Corporation. The real estate venture tanked, costing the Clintons a reported $40,000 in losses. After that James McDougal went into the banking industry, forming Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan.

In 1986, federal regulators investigated another real estate investment backed by James McDougal. The investigation led to McDougal’s resignation from Madison Guaranty and the eventual collapse of the bank. Questions surrounding the Clintons’ involvement in the Whitewater deal grew during President Clinton’s first term in office and an investigation into the legality of the Whitewater transactions was launched.

All subsequent inquiries into the Whitewater land deal yielded insufficient evidence to charge the Clintons with criminal conduct. However, several of their associates were convicted as a result the investigations.

In July 1992, William Jefferson Clinton was nominated by the Democratic Party as their Candidate for the Presidency of the United States.

In August of that year, Daniel Wattenberg wrote the following prophetic statement in the opening of an article for “The American Spectator” titled, “The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock”…

Hillary Clinton has been likened to Eva Peron, but it’s a bad analogy. Evita was worshipped by the “shirtless ones,” the working class, while Hillary’s charms elude most outside of an elite cohort of left-liberal, baby-boom feminists-the type who thought Anita Hill should be canonized and Thelma and Louise was the best movie since Easy Rider. Hillary reckons herself the next Eleanor Roosevelt. But, standing well to the left of her husband and enjoying an independent power base within his coalition, Hillary is best thought of as the Winnie Mandela of American politics. She has likened the American family to slavery, thinks kids should be able to sue their parents to resolve family arguments, and during her tenure as a foundation officer gave away millions (much of it in no-strings-attached grants) to the left-including sizable sums to hard-left organizers. She is going to cause her husband no end of political embarrassment between now and November-and who knows how long afterward.

Mr. Wattenberg nailed that one, huh?

Hillary Clinton #3Bill Clinton was inaugurated as the 42nd President of the United States of America on January 20, 1993.  Standing right behind him…and pushing hard was Hillary Rodham Clinton, by now widely known as the more-driven, and politically ambitious one of the couple.

Billed as “the New Camelot” by the Main Stream Media, the Clintons strode arm-in-arm into their castle to preside over their new kingdom, where Progressivism in the name of “Moderation” would be the Law of the Land.

However, just as the reign of Arthur and Guinevere ended badly, into the Clintons’ storybook “Co-Presidency”, “a little rain” fell in the form of scandals and quite a few “Bimbo Eruptions” which brought about an inglorious end to all of their “peace and harmony”.

Rose Law Firm Billing – As I wrote previously, in 1978, while Bubba was Attorney General of Arkansas, Hil and he partnered with James and Susan McDougal in a purchase 220 acres of land that would evolve into the Whitewater Development Corporation. The real estate venture tanked, costing the Clintons a reported $40,000 in losses. After that James McDougal went into the banking industry, forming Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan.

In 1986, federal regulators investigated another real estate investment backed by James McDougal. The investigation led to McDougal’s resignation from Madison Guaranty and the eventual collapse of the bank. Questions surrounding the Clintons’ involvement in the Whitewater deal grew during President Clinton’s first term in office and an investigation into the legality of the Whitewater transactions was launched.

After nearly two years of searches and subpoenas, the White House announced on the evening of January 6, 1996, that it had unexpectedlydiscovered copies of missing documents from the Rose Law Firm that describe Hillary Rodham Clinton’s work for a failing savings and loan association in the 1980′s.

Federal and Congressional investigators had issued subpoenas for the documents since 1994, and the White House claimed not have them. The originals disappeared from the Rose Law Firm, shortly before Bill Clinton was inaugurated as President.

The newly discovered documents were copies of billing records from the Rose firm. The originals were found under the Clintons’ bed in the White House, shortly after the statute of limitations ran out.

All subsequent inquiries into the Whitewater land deal yielded insufficient evidence to charge the Clintons with criminal conduct. However, several of their associates were convicted as a result of the investigations.

Death of Vince Foster – On July 20, 1993, Vincent W. Foster Jr., the deputy counsel to the president of the United States, and former partner with Hillary, in The Rose Law Firm, was found lying neatly face-up on a steep embankment in Marcy Park with his feet pointing down, dressed in expensive trousers and a white dress shirt, less than eight miles from the White House, with a single gun-shot wound to the head. Dead. Some of the blood on Foster’s face was still wet, but starting to dry. A trail of blood flowed upwards from his nose to above his ear. The man who found his body said there was no gun, but after he left to notify police, a gun appeared in Foster’s hand. President William Jefferson Clinton’s Arkansas childhood friend, First Lady Hillary Clinton’s Rose Law Firm partner, and White House confidante’s death was to become the subject of controversy.

Due to Foster’s involvement in Whitewater, both at Rose and in the White House, the Senate Whitewater Committee investigation’s conclusion revealed that there was “a concerted effort by senior White House officials to block career law enforcement investigators from conducting a thorough investigation” into Foster’s death, and recommended “that steps be taken to insure that such misuse of the White House counsel’s office does not recur in this, or any future, administration.”

So, was Vince Foster murdered? And, why?

In 1999, a book titled, “Bill and Hillary: The Marriage”, caused a lot of consternation among the Clintons and their supporters.

The author, Christopher Andersen, claimed that in 1977 she began an intensely passionate affair with Vince Foster.

The affair supposedly took place when the two were lawyers at The Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, while Bubba was governor.

Rumors of an affair first started buzzing around after Foster was found in Marcy Park. The book did not say when the relationship ended.

To this day, the circumstances surrounding the death of Vince Foster, remain a topic for conjecture.

 Travelgate – In early summer of 1993, 6 employees of the White House Travel Office were fired, after Hil and Bubba determined that the Travel Office workers, who served at the pleasure of the president, could be fired and that the Travel Office business, and the commissions that came along with it, Coulee be taken over by a cousin of President Clinton’s, Catherine Cornelius, who already owned her own travel agency.

However, they could not just go ahead and hand over a governmental office to a relative, without a backlash, so the Clintons made up a story, claiming that the Travel Office was rife with corruption and the workers there had to be fired. An audit of the Travel Office ensued, and while the record-keeping at the office was found to have been pretty inadequate, no corruption or embezzlement were found. That did not matter to the Clintons, so they went ahead and pressured the FBI to make arrests, and the local US Attorney was given instructions to prosecute the employees for corruption.

Of course, the Clintons denied being behind any sort of scheme in the matter. However, leaks by those involved, led to a firestorm of media criticism. Most of the Travel Office employees were eventually given other government jobs or retired and the trial for corruption of the head of the Travel Office, Billy Dale, ended in a verdict of “NOT GUILTY”.

Clinton’s cousin was subsequently removed as new head of the Travel Office.

Afterward, Independent Counsel Robert Ray wrote a report that concluded that, while she did not make any knowingly-false statements under oath, First Lady Hillary Clinton had made a number of inaccurate statements concerning the firings and her role in them.

Bimbo Eruptions – Back in the Bill Clinton era, White House advisor Betsey Wright coined the term “bimbo eruptions” to describe a long list of presidential gal pals.

BIll “Bubba” Clinton’s Bimbo List” included, but is not limited to (I’m sure) Jennifer Flowers, Former Miss America Elizabeth Ward, Paul Corbin Jones, and, of course, Monica Lewinsky.

The Lewinsky scandal was a sensation that enveloped the presidency of Bill Clinton in 1998–99, leading to his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives and acquittal by the Senate.

Paula Corbin Jones, a former Arkansas state worker who claimed that Bill Clinton had accosted her sexually in 1991 when he was governor of Arkansas, had brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against the president. In order to show a pattern of behavior on Clinton’s part, Jones’s lawyers questioned several women believed to have been engaging in sex  with him. On Jan. 17, 1998, Bubba took the stand, becoming the first sitting president to testify as a civil defendant.

During this testimony, Clinton denied having had an affair with Monica S. Lewinsky, an unpaid intern and later a paid staffer at the White House who worked in the White House from 1995–96. Lewinsky had earlier, in a deposition in the same case, also denied having such a relationship. Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel in the Whitewater case, had already received tape recordings made by Linda R. Tripp (a former coworker of Lewinsky’s) of telephone conversations in which Lewinsky described her involvement with the president. Asserting that there was a “pattern of deception,” Starr obtained from Attorney General Janet Reno permission to investigate the matter.

The president publicly denied having had a relationship with Lewinsky and charges of covering it up. His adviser, Vernon Jordan, denied having counseled Lewinsky to lie in the Jones case, or having arranged a job for her outside Washington, to help cover up the affair. Hillary Clinton claimed that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was trying to destroy her husband, while Republicans and conservatives portrayed him as immoral and a liar.

In March, Jordan and others testified before Starr’s grand jury, and lawyers for Paula Jones released papers revealing, among other things, that Clinton, in his January deposition, had admitted to a sexual relationship in the 1980s with Arkansas entertainer Gennifer Flowers, a charge he had long denied. In April, however, Arkansas federal judge Susan Webber Wright dismissed the Jones suit, ruling that Jones’s story, if true, showed that she had been exposed to “boorish” behavior but not sexual harassment; Jones appealed.

In July, Starr granted Lewinsky immunity from perjury charges, and Clinton agreed to testify before the grand jury. He did so on Aug. 17, then went on television to admit the affair with Lewinsky and ask for forgiveness. In September, Starr sent a 445-page report to the House of Representatives, recommending four possible grounds for impeachment: perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and abuse of authority.

On Dec. 19, Clinton became the second president (after Andrew Johnson) to be impeached, on two charges: perjury—in his Aug., 1998, testimony—and obstruction of justice. The vote in the House was largely along party lines.

In Jan., 1999, the trial began in the Senate. On Feb. 12, after a trial in which testimony relating to the charges was limited, the Senate rejected both counts of impeachment. The perjury charge lost, 55–45, with 10 Republicans joining all 45 Democrats in voting against it; the obstruction charge drew a 50–50 vote. Subsequently, on Apr. 12, Judge Wright, who had dismissed the Jones case, found the president in contempt for lying in his Jan., 1998, testimony, when he denied the Lewinsky affair. In July, Judge Wright ordered the president to pay nearly $90,000 to Ms. Jones’s lawyers. On Jan. 19, 2001, the day before he left office, President Clinton agreed to admit to giving false testimony in the Jones case and to accept a five-year suspension of his law license and a $25,000 fine in return for an agreement by the independent counsel, Robert W. Ray (Starr’s successor), to end the investigation and not prosecute him.

In a later interview, Hillary claimed that Bill suffered childhood abuse which may have caused him to philanderer and experience “bimbo eruptions” later in life. She described her philandering husband as “a hard dog to keep on the porch”.

The Clinton Co-Presidency ended with the Inauguration of President George W. Bush on January 20, 2001.

However, Hillary Clinton’s “time in the Spotlight” was just beginning.

Hillary Clinton #4On November 6, 2000, Former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected Democratic Senator for the State of New York, serving unremarkably until leaving Office on January 21, 2009.

During her undistinguished career in the U.S. Senate, Hillary Clinton voted on a variety of key pieces of legislation as follows:

  • in favor of a 2003 bill to ban oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
  • in favor of an October 2002 joint resolution to authorize the use of the U.S. Armed Forces against Iraq
  • against major tax-cut proposals in 2001 and 2003
  • in favor of a 2007 proposal to end the use of a point-based immigration system, (i.e., a system that seeks to ensure that people with skills that society needs are given preference for entry into the United States)
  • against a 2007 amendment designating English as the language of “sole legal authority” for the business of the federal government, and declaring that no person has a right to require officials of the U.S. government to use a language other than English
  • against a 2008 bill urging an expansion of the zero-tolerance prosecution policy for illegal aliens; calling for the completion of 700 miles of pedestrian fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border; allowing for the deployment of up to 6,000 National Guard members to the U.S. southern border; and encouraging the identification and deportation of illegal immigrants currently in the American prison system
  • in favor of the Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002 (McCain-Feingold Act), which put restrictions on paid advertising during the weeks just prior to political elections, and tightly regulated the amount of money which political parties and candidates could accept from donors
  • against separate proposals (in 2004 and 2005) to ban lawsuits against gun manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers for damages resulting from the misuse of their products by others
  • against a 2003 proposal to ban the late-term procedure commonly known as “partial-birth abortion”
  • against a 2004 proposal to make it an added criminal offense for someone to injure or kill a fetus while carrying out a crime against a pregnant woman
  • against a 2006 bill making it illegal to knowingly transport a pregnant minor across state lines in order to obtain an abortion, as a way to escape state laws requiring parental consent

One week after Barack Hussein Obama was elected President of the United States, on November 4, 2008, he called Hillary and offered her the job of Secretary of State, despite the fact that she had no Foreign Policy experience. It was a suspicious choice at best, considering that fact that when they were running against each other in the Democratic Primaries,Obama had specifically criticized Clinton’s Foreign Policy credentials and the initial idea of him appointing her had been so unexpected that she had told one of her own aides, “Not in a million years.”

The fact that she had campaigned unreservedly for Obama after he defeated her for the Democratic Nomination, led to speculation that the Secretary of State job was a “reward for her loyalty”.

Hillary accepted the position, and now, as speculation concerning a possible Presidential Campaign runs rampant, even the Main Stream Media is hard-pressed to come up with anything she accomplished as Obama’s First Secretary of State.

So, how did she do?

On January 26, 2013, after Hillary had stepped down as Secretary of State and was replaced by Senator John Kerry, the following conversation took place between Fox News Anchor Chris Wallace and Fox News Senior Political Analyst Brit Hume…

WALLACE: Yeah, I want to pick up on that, Brit, because during the hearing, what struck me was the Republicans were tough on Hillary, on Benghazi and the Democrats weren’t. But, both sides kept on saying what a great secretary of state she had been and to praise her service. And here’s some of the points that have been brought up, some of her accomplishments. She helped assemble the bombing campaign in Libya to topple Muammar Qaddafi. She helped assembly the coalition that imposed the toughest sanctions ever on Iran. And, she established diplomatic ties with Burma.

Question, Brit, how do you rate Hillary Clinton’s performance, record as our top diplomat?

HUME: I think those examples you cited would add up to a case for her competence. They do not add up to a case for greatness, after all, the groundwork on Burma had been done by the previous administration. And the administration properly followed through on it. You look across the world, now at the major issues. Are Arabs and Israelis closer to peace? How about Iran and North Korea and their nuclear programs? Have they been halted or seriously set back? Has the reset with Russia, which she so famously introduced with the photo-op in Moscow with the reset button, has they lead to a new and more cooperative relationship? Is there a Clinton doctrine that we can identify that she has articulated and formed as secretary of state? Are there major treaties that she has undertaken and negotiated through to a successful conclusion? I think the answer to all those questions is that she has not. And those are the kinds of things that might mark her as a great secretary of state.

She has certainly been industrious. She has visited 112 countries. Her conduct as secretary of state has been highly dignified. She does her homework. There have been no gaffes or blunders. So I think she has been a capable and hard-working secretary of state, but I think the case for her being a great secretary of state is exceedingly weak.

Brit was being gracious. Here are seven Foreign Policy Disasters, which happened under Hillary’s watch as the Architect of “Smart Power!”, in no particular order:

The decision to overthrow President Gaddafi in Libya – The short-sighted, ill-conceived action not only undermined an ally in the (now defunct) “global war on terror,” it also served to throw gasoline on the bonfire known as “Arab Spring.

The Afghanistan “surge”- A military campaign that fails to result in a desired political outcome is con only be considered a failure. What exactly was Obama and Hillary’s desired outcome when they called for this?
It is a fait d’accompli that the Karzai Government will be able to survive long once the U.S. completes its withdrawal of its combat forces from the country in 2014. This is can only be considered a failure, A failure which cost too many of our Brightest and Best.

Granting Afghanistan major non-NATO U.S. ally status – Why did Barry and Hill decide to grant Afghanistan the status of a major non-NATO ally? When we pull out, our enemied will pour in. And, with “friends” like these, you don’t need enemies.

Maintaining the status quo with Pakistan – Pakistan has a long history of sponsoring Sunni jihadists of various stripes. Following the 2001 attacks on the United States, they did an about-face, becoming a chief partner in the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan as well as its “global war on terror.”
10 years later, following the successful May 2011 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan that resulted in the death of Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, Pakistan promptly denounced the U.S. and closed its vital supply routes to NATO-bound shipments to Afghanistan.
Hil and Barry got “played”.

The East Asia “pivot” – Strictly an exercise in containment,attempts at containing China will only fuel Chinese fears of foreign encirclement, that will encourage Chinese assertiveness, that will further encourage containment.
This pivot is only a bluff on behalf of the feckless purveyors of “Smart Power” to begin with.

As shown by the continued drawing of “Red Lines”, they will not stand up to our enemies.

Arab Spring – The Arab Spring was a series of protests and uprisings in the Middle East that began with unrest in Tunisia in late 2010. The Arab Spring has brought down regimes in some Arab countries, sparked mass violence in others, while some governments managed to delay the trouble with a mix of repression, promise of reform and state largesse.
Through this all Hillary and Obama have back the Muslim Brotherhood, the Godfather of Muslim Terrorist Organizations, in deposing Moderate Muslim Leaders.
Doesn’t make a while lot of sense, does it?

BenghaziGate – On September 11, 2012, Muslim Terrorists stormed the US Embassy Compound in Benghazi, Libya, slaughtered 4 brave Americans, including US Ambassador Chris Stephens, whose lifeless, sexually assaulted body they drug through the streets, while taking cell phone pictures of his corpse.
I have written several blogs about the Administration’s Cover-up of this atrocity, but the seminal moment, regarding Hillary Clinton came in January of 2013, during an exchange between her and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
Johnson asked her about the administration’s conflicting explanations for the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed the ambassador and three other Americans. Hillary, as we say down here in Dixie, “got on her high keys” and said,

With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.

E-mailgate – Even as I write this blog, Hillary is the subject of an FBI Investigation centered around her use of a personal email address during her tenure as secretary of state. The fact is, she used her personal email accounts for State Department business, which was first revealed by The New York Times. Her supporters, including a network of outside groups, specifically created to defend her, have pointed out repeatedly that she has handed over some 55,000 pages of documents to State . The problem with their defense is the fact that her own staff has been in charge of deciding which emails to provide. Recently, it has been discovered that some of the information shared over Hillary’s personal e-mail address, consisted of proprietary governmental information of the highest importance, even above that of information which has been classified Top Secret. This investigation continues and could, and should, lead to Hillary Clinton’s indictment by a Federal Grand Jury.

SUMMARY: When I first finished writing the information contained in today’s blog, as an unauthorized biography of Hillary Clinton, I considered the reality of Hillary Clinton running for President, and a great many thoughts entered my head…some of them even repeatable.

In fact, there are a lot of images that race dthrough my mind, right now, as I sit here at my computer.

I remembered the image of a lone terrorist, brandishing a machine gun, standing in front of the burning Benghazi Consulate.

I also remembered the image of Benghazi Barbarians dragging a murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens through the streets, taking pictures every few yards, with their cell phones. 

My mind envisioned the image of two brave Americans, up on a roof holding off 100 Muslim Terrorists, trying desperately to hold out for help which was denied to them, until finally the overwhelming numbers which comprise the horde of barbarians, murdered them as well. 

I imagined Ambassador Stevens’ elderly mother, making the trip from the West Coast to the East Coast to pick up the lifeless body of her abused and murdered son, whom she and her entire family were so proud of.

Finally, I remembered the show of hypocrisy involving members of this anti-American Administration, including then-Secretary of State Clinton, solemnly welcoming the bodies of those brave Americans home.

Former Secretary Clinton…the truth makes a big difference…even after all this time, to the families of those that were so savagely murdered that fateful night…and to the millions of Americans who still believe in this “Shining City on a Hill”.

Americans deserve the truth.

And, you should be ashamed to be running for the office of President of the United States.

Until He Comes, 

KJ

***The information contained in this Blog may be found at biography.com, canadafreepress.com,

discoverthenetworks.org, investopedia.com, The American Spectator, The New York Times, canadafreepress.com, bbc.co.uk,

frontpagemag.com, theguardian.com, infoplease.com, realclearpolitics.com, policy mic.com,mideast.about.com, and wsj.com.***

Fossil Fuels Rule: America’s Low Gas Prices are in Spite of Obama…Not Because of Him

thHZLU1X9GWednesday Evening, I had to drive to my local Kroger Grocery and buy some Old El Paso Refried Beans because my wife decided to make Homemade Enchiladas for dinner.

(Trust me. The trip was worth it.)

Anyway, while I was there, I noticed that the price of gas at their Kwik Shop was $1.52.99 per gallon.

What happened to the “rebound” in gas prices, predicted by all of the “Pundits”, Professional and Internet, several months ago?

Back on December 7, 2015, the New York Times published the following explanation…

The oil industry, with its history of booms and busts, is in its deepest downturn since the 1990s, if not earlier.

Earnings are down for companies that have made record profits in recent years, leading them to decommission roughly two-thirds of their rigs and sharply cut investments in exploration and production. An estimated 250,000 oil workers have lost their jobs, and manufacturing of drilling and production equipment has fallen sharply.

The cause is the plunging price of a barrel of oil, which has been cut roughly by more than 60 percent since the June 2014.

Prices have recovered a few times last year, but a barrel of oil has already sunk this year to its lowest level since 2004. Executives think it will be years before oil returns to $90 or $100 a barrel, pretty much the norm over the last decade.

…Why has the price of oil been dropping so fast? Why now?

This a complicated question, but it boils down to the simple economics of supply and demand.

United States domestic production has nearly doubled over the last several years, pushing out oil imports that need to find another home. Saudi, Nigerian and Algerian oil that once was sold in the United States is suddenly competing for Asian markets, and the producers are forced to drop prices. Canadian and Iraqi oil production and exports are rising year after year. Even the Russians, with all their economic problems, manage to keep pumping.

There are signs, however, that production is falling in the United States and some other oil-producing countries because of the drop in exploration investments. But the drop in production is not happening fast enough, especially with output from deep waters off the Gulf of Mexico and Canada continuing to build as new projects come online.

On the demand side, the economies of Europe and developing countries are weak and vehicles are becoming more energy-efficient. So demand for fuel is lagging a bit.

Who benefits from the price drop?

Any motorist can tell you that gasoline prices have dropped. Diesel, heating oil and natural gas prices have also fallen sharply.

The latest drop in energy prices — regular gas nationally now averages under $2 a gallon, roughly down about 14 cents from a year ago — is also disproportionately helping lower-income groups, because fuel costs eat up a larger share of their more limited earnings.

Households that use heating oil to warm their homes are also seeing savings.

Who loses?

For starters, oil-producing countries and states. Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, Ecuador, Brazil and Russia are just a few petrostates that are suffering economic and perhaps even political turbulence. Persian Gulf states are likely to invest less money around the world, and they may cut aid to countries like Egypt.

In the United States, Alaska, North Dakota, Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana are facing economic challenges.

Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and BP have all announced cuts to their payrolls to save cash, and they are in far better shape than many smaller independent oil and gas producers that are slashing dividends and selling assets as they report net losses. Other companies have slashed their dividends.

About 40 companies in North America have gone into bankruptcy protection.

What happened to OPEC?

A central factor in the sharp price drops, analysts say, is the continuing unwillingness of OPEC, a cartel of oil producers, to intervene to stabilize markets that are widely viewed as oversupplied.

Iran, Venezuela, Ecuador and Algeria have been pressing the cartel to cut production to firm up prices, but Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other gulf allies are refusing to do so. At the same time, Iraq is actually pumping more, and Iran is expected to become a major exporter again under the recent nuclear deal.

Saudi officials have said that if they cut production and prices go up, they will lose market share and merely benefit their competitors. They say they are willing to see oil prices go much lower, but some oil analysts think they are merely bluffing.

If prices remain low for another year or longer, the newly crowned King Salman may find it difficult to persuade other OPEC members to keep steady against the financial strains. The International Monetary Fund estimates that the revenues of Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf allies will slip by $300 billion this year.

Is there a conspiracy to bring the price of oil down?

There are a number of conspiracy theories floating around. Even some oil executives are quietly noting that the Saudis want to hurt Russia and Iran, and so does the United States — motivation enough for the two oil-producing nations to force down prices. Dropping oil prices in the 1980s did help bring down the Soviet Union, after all.

But there is no evidence to support the conspiracy theories, and Saudi Arabia and the United States rarely coordinate smoothly. And the Obama administration is hardly in a position to coordinate the drilling of hundreds of oil companies seeking profits and answering to their shareholders.

When are oil prices likely to recover?

Not anytime soon. Oil production is not declining fast enough in the United States and other countries, though that could begin to change this year.

Demand for fuels is recovering in some countries, and that could help crude prices recover in the next year or two. There is now little or no spare production capacity to give the market a cushion in case of another crisis in a crucial oil-producing country.

The history of oil is of booms and busts followed by more of the same.

Imagine that.

It all boils down to the Law of Supply and Demand.

As the article shows, gas prices rise and fall in response to worldwide economic conditions, production decisions made by oil-producing nations, and the investment decisions of oil companies.

President Barack Hussein Obama, despite what all of the “Smartest People in the Room” on Facebook and Internet Chat Boards may claim, has nothing to do with it.

In fact. this is happening, in spite of Obama’s failed push of failed means of “Alternative Energy.”

Remember Solyndra and the Chevy Volt?

Last February, The Institute for Energy Research posted the following interesting (and depressing) fact…

The Taxpayers Protection Alliance produced a report highlighting information from various studies on the U.S. subsidization of solar power. Over the last 5 years, taxpayers spent over $150 billion on solar power and other renewable projects, financing grants, subsidizing tax credits, guaranteeing loans, and bailing out failed solar energy companies, according to the Brookings Institute. According to the Government Accountability Office, federal government support for solar energy is massive, with over 345 different federal initiatives covering over 1,500 projects in 20 federal agencies–the Pentagon has 63 solar programs, the highest among the agencies, followed by the Interior Department, with 37 programs and the Energy Department (DOE) with 34 solar programs. For example, DOE’s Sunshot Initiative spends $270 million per year to “induce companies to lower production and installation costs associated with photovoltaic solar panel systems and reducing the price of solar power.” Last month the Energy Department announced an additional $59 million for “solar deployment plans.”[iii]

By now, entering the last year (Praise the Lord) under the reign of Emperor Obama the First, we were all supposed to be driving around in electric cars, with solar-powered windmills in our front yards.

Instead, I had to pay a $128 Water Bill last month, because the toilet needed a new $1.78 flapper.

But, I digress…

While the search for “Alternative Energy” has continued to be a Quixotic Liberal Government Quest, funded through the use of OUR money, the use of Fossil Fuels, despite all of Obama and the rest of the tree-hugging Environmental Whackos’ claims,  continues to be a cheap, efficient energy source.

As I posted on Facebook and Twitter, yesterday…

Financial Insecurity 12016

 

America’s falling gas prices are brought to us, courtesy of Capitalism, not Government-Sponsored Marxist Theory.

So, Tree-hugging Environmental Whackjob Liberals…

Put that up your tailpipes.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

 

‘Cuda Shoots. She Scores!: Palin Endorses Trump. Conservative Populism Is Reborn

untitled (21)pop·u·lism [ˈpäpyəˌlizəm] NOUN – 1. support for the concerns of ordinary people: “it is clear that your populism identifies with the folks on the bottom of the ladder” · [more] “the Finance Minister performed a commendable balancing act, combining populism with prudence” 2. the quality of appealing to or being aimed at ordinary people: “art museums did not gain bigger audiences through a new populism”

Liberals love to brag that they are the most intelligent and the most tolerant people in any room that they walk into.

That is a bunch of self-conceit and downright baloney. When a Conservative (the political ideology of majority of Americans) calls them on their overestimation of their intelligence, and humiliates them in public, if you will (as Legendary Professional Wrestler, the “American Dream”, the late Dusty Rhodes, used to say), they stalk them, like a hyena stalking a wounded gnu, waiting for the opportunity for revenge.

For example, even though they will stand up and tell you that the Arctic Fox is nothing but a has-been, reality show-starring ‘chillbilly”, they still view her as  a thorn in their Collective Side.

And, that is why Governor Palin endorsement of the Republican Primary Front-runner, Donald J. Trump, is a BIG DEAL.

That being said, Liberals are still looking for ways to “get even” with the Former Governor of Alaska…any way they can.

Check out the not unexpected tone of the following article…and consider the source.

The New York Times reports that

AMES, Iowa — Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee who became a Tea Party sensation and a favorite of grass-roots conservatives, endorsed Donald J. Trump in Iowa on Tuesday, providing him with a potentially significant boost just 13 days before the state’s caucuses.

“Are you ready for the leader to make America great again?” Mrs. Palin said with Mr. Trump by her side at a rally at Iowa State University. “Are you ready to stump for Trump? I’m here to support the next president of the United States — Donald Trump.”

Her support is the highest-profile backing for a Republican so far. It came the same day that Iowa’s Republican governor, Terry Branstad, said he hoped that Senator Ted Cruz would be defeated in Iowa. The Feb. 1 caucuses are a must-win for the Texas senator, who is running neck-and-neck with Mr. Trump in state polls.

The endorsement came as Mr. Trump was bearing down in the state, holding multiple campaign events and raising expectations about his performance in the nation’s first nominating contest.

As Mrs. Palin announced her backing, Mr. Trump stood wearing a satisfied smile as she scolded mainstream Republicans as sellouts and praised how Mr. Trump had shaken up the party. “He’s been going rogue left and right,” Mrs. Palin said of Mr. Trump, using one of her signature phrases. “That’s why he’s doing so well. He’s been able to tear the veil off this idea of the system.”

It is not clear that Mrs. Palin’s blessing will have a major impact on Mr. Trump’s long-term prospects. But in Iowa, where Mrs. Palin spent years developing a network of supporters, it could be helpful. Mr. Trump has faced questions about whether his campaign’s organizing muscle can draw the voters to match his poll numbers come caucus night.

“Over the years Palin has actually cultivated a number of relationships in Iowa,” said Craig Robinson, the former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa and publisher of the website The Iowa Republican. “There are the Tea Partyactivists who still think she’s great and a breath of fresh air, but she also did a good job of courting Republican donors in the state,” he added.

Other conservatives said that Mrs. Palin serves as a particularly effective shield against Mr. Cruz, who has assiduously courted Iowa’s evangelical voters.

“Palin’s brand among evangelicals is as gold as the faucets in Trump Tower,” said Ralph Reed, the chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

“Endorsements alone don’t guarantee victory, but Palin’s embrace of Trump may turn the fight over the evangelical vote into a war for the soul of the party,” he said.

Mrs. Palin could amplify the news media-circus aspects of Mr. Trump’s candidacy: She too is a reality television star accustomed to playing to the cameras and often accused of emphasizing flash over substance.

And while Mr. Trump has already shown the ability to garner wall-to-wall cable-news coverage, Mrs. Palin’s involvement in his campaign could help him deprive Mr. Cruz of attention in the homestretch to the caucuses.

As rumors circulated that the endorsement was about to happen, Mr. Cruz offered praise for his former political ally after an aide to the senator mocked the pending endorsement earlier Tuesday. “I love Sarah Palin,” the senator told reporters in New Hampshire. “Sarah Palin is fantastic. Without her friendship and support, I wouldn’t be in the Senate today. So regardless of what Sarah decides to do in 2016, I will always remain a big, big fan of Sarah Palin.”

As word of Mrs. Palin’s endorsement trickled through the Hansen Agriculture Student Learning Center at Iowa State University, the reaction from supporters of Mr. Trump who braved snow and frigid temperatures to see the candidate was mixed. Backers of Mr. Trump filled a warehouse-style building with a dirt floor that is sometimes used for tractor shows, but most said that it was the candidate that they cared about, not his new endorsement.

“I’m not here to see her,” said Rich Hoffmann, 41, of Ankeny. “Some people it will matter to, but it doesn’t to me.”

Mrs. Palin and Mr. Trump are not strangers. The two shared pizza along with Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, in May 2011, when Mrs. Palin was considering a presidential run of her own and was making a bus tour around the country. (Mr. Trump was mocked at the time for using a knife and fork on his slice.)

They also share a trusted operative: Mr. Trump’s national political director, Michael Glassner, was chief of staff to Mrs. Palin’s political action committee.

And like Mr. Trump, Mrs. Palin has maverick tendencies. The mantra of her final weeks of the 2008 campaign was “going rogue,” as she defied instructions from aides to Senator John McCain of Arizona, the party’s presidential nominee.

Little-known before Mr. McCain picked her as his running mate, Mrs. Palin ultimately eclipsed him in popularity and polls show her maintaining strong support among Republicans. She has endured as a coveted endorser with an impressive fund-raising list. After the loss in 2008, she declined to finish her term in Alaska, and went on to become a television star and a Fox News commentator.

The endorsement of Mr. Trump puts Mrs. Palin back in the center of the media maelstrom, and allows her to rehabilitate her political image, which had diminished in the last year as her contract with Fox News ended.

Mrs. Palin endorsed several of Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals in their statewide races, including Mr. Cruz during his Senate bid in Texas and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Mr. Cruz, after his 2012 primary victory over the incumbent lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, said he would not have made it to the Senate without Mrs. Palin’s backing.

For Mr. Trump, who is trying to accrue other endorsements in the coming weeks, the backing of high-profile Republicans could dent the outsider-to-politics aura that has been elemental to his success in the polls before the voting has begun. But the support of Mrs. Palin, a darling of the Tea Party insurgency, could help inoculate him from such attacks.

The endorsement comes as Mr. Cruz is facing increasing scrutiny in Iowa for his opposition to federal ethanol mandates, highlighted by the criticism from Governor Branstad, whose son works for a group promoting ethanol, the corn-based fuel that is a crucial Iowa industry.

“Ted Cruz is ahead right now. What we’re trying to do is educate the people in the state of Iowa,” Mr. Branstad told reporters at the Renewable Fuels Summit in Altoona. “He is the biggest opponent of renewable fuels. He actually introduced a bill in 2013 to immediately eliminate the Renewable Fuel Standard.”

“He’s heavily financed by Big Oil,” the governor added. “I think it would be a big mistake for Iowa to support him.”

The remark was highly unusual for Mr. Branstad, an establishment Republican who nonetheless has stayed out of his party’s presidential primaries in thepast.

As I continue to write about this endorsement, make no mistake about my political ideology:

I AM STILL A REAGAN CONSERVATIVE.

That being said, I am enjoying the stew out of Trump’s gigging of the Washingtonian Status Quo and his expertise in the art of “Political Jiu-Jitsu”, through the trumpeting of his own horn, in order to achieve free publicity for his campaign.

Over the next month, at least, you will hear self-appointed Liberal and “dejected Conservative” Political Pundits grouse and whine that Palin’s endorsement is an albatross around the neck of Trump, and that she brings nothing to the table.

They’re full of it.

If these “pundits” are anticipating trying to defeat Donald J. Trump and Sarah Palin, in a battle of wits…they are woefully unarmed.

Back in July of 2009, Alaskan Fisherman, Dewey Whetsell, wrote the following list of Sarah Palin’s accomplishments as Governor of Alaska:

1. Democrats forget when Palin was the Darling of the Democrats, because as soon as Palin took the Governor’s office away from a fellow Republican and tough SOB, Frank Murkowski, she tore into the Republican’s “Corrupt Bastards Club” (CBC) and sent them packing. Many of them are now residing in State housing and wearing orange jump suits, The Democrats reacted by skipping around the yard, throwing confetti and singing, “la la la la” (well, you know how they are). Name another governor in this country that has ever done anything similar.

2. Now with the CBC gone, there were fewer Alaskan politicians to protect the huge, giant oil companies here. So she constructed and enacted a new system of splitting the oil profits called “ACES.” Exxon (the biggest corporation in the world) protested and Sarah told them, “don’t let the door hit you in the stern on your way out.” They stayed, and Alaska residents went from being merely wealthy to being filthy rich. Of course, the other huge international oil companies meekly fell in line. Again, give me the name of any other governor in the country that has done anything similar.

3. The other thing she did when she walked into the governor’s office is she got the list of State requests for federal funding for projects, known as “pork.” She went through the list, took 85% of them and placed them in the “when-hell-freezes-over” stack. She let locals know that if we need something built, we’ll pay for it ourselves. Maybe she figured she could use the money she got from selling the previous governor’s jet because it was extravagant.

Maybe she could use the money she saved by dismissing the governor’s cook (remarking that she could cook for her own family), giving back the State vehicle issued to her, maintaining that she already had a car, and dismissing her State provided security force (never mentioning – I imagine – that she’s packing heat herself). I’m still waiting to hear the names of those other governors.

4. Now, even with her much-ridiculed “gosh and golly” mannerism, she also managed to put together a totally new approach to getting a natural gas pipeline built which will be the biggest private construction project in the history of North America. No one else could do it although they tried. If that doesn’t impress you, then you’re trying too hard to be unimpressed while watching her do things like this while baking up a batch of brownies with her other hand.

5. For 30 years, Exxon held a lease to do exploratory drilling at a place called Point Thompson. They made excuses the entire time why they couldn’t start drilling. In truth they were holding it like an investment. No governor for 30 years could make them get started. Then, she told them she was revoking their lease and kicking them out. They protested and threatened court action. She shrugged and reminded them that she knew the way to the court house. Alaska won again.

6. President Obama wants the nation to be on 25% renewable resources for electricity by 2025. Sarah went to the legislature and submitted her plan for Alaska to be at 50% renewable by 2025. We are already at 25%. I can give you more specifics about things done, as opposed to style and persona Everybody wants to be cool, sound cool, look cool. But that’s just a cover-up. I’m still waiting to hear from liberals the names of other governors who can match what mine has done in two and a half years. I won’t be holding my breath.

By the way, she was content to return to AK after the national election and go to work, but the haters wouldn’t let her. Now these adolescent screechers are obviously not scuba divers. And no one ever told them what happens when you continually jab and pester a barracuda. Without warning, it will spin around and tear your face off. Shoulda known better.

Of course, her influence and status as “kingmaker” has become the stuff of legend.

Of the 41 candidates Palin endorsed in 2009,2010, and 2012, 30 of them earned victories.  

In 2012, she endorsed the following winners: Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, Pat Toomey, Nikki Haley, Deb Fischer, Jeff Flake and Ted Cruz, himself.

That is the reason that he was so gracious and kind toward her, when her endorsement of Trump was announced.

Not too shabby, huh?

Of course, Liberals will continue to ignore the accomplishments of Conservative Populists like Sarah Palin…it spoils the lies they tell about her, in order to feel better about themselves.

Liberals have to keep targeting America’s Conservative Leaders as we approach the 2016 Elections.

After all, what are they going to do? Run on Obama’s Record of Accomplishments?

Or, perhaps, Hillary and Bernie’s “youthful, dynamic leadership”?

Puhleeze.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

Blatant Unprofessional Objectivity Just Cost the Democrat Lackeys at NBC the Republican Primary Debates

ModeratorsAs I have related to you before, I was a Radio News Director during college from 1978-1980, with a staff of 20 student reporters, who each received credit for producing and delivering a 5-minute newscast, once a week, on our College Radio Station.

I can remember sitting in the lecture hall of the (then) Memphis State University Journalism Building, listening to Dr. Williams, whom we all swore did the first newscast of KDKA, America’s first radio station, in 1920.  The class was “Introduction to Journalism” and Dr. Van Williams was telling us that the ” key to being a good journalist was objectivity”.

Now, in 2016, one Broadcast/Cable News Organization has become so blatantly objective, that one of America’s two political parties has had no choice but to fire them from hosting their Presidential Primary Candidate Debates.

Breitbart.com reports that

The Republican National Committee (RNC) officially voted on Monday afternoon to sever its business relationship with NBC News for the previously-scheduled Feb. 26, 2016, GOP presidential primary debate, Breitbart News has learned.

The Debate Committee for the RNC met via conference call and after hearing updates from RNC chairman Reince Priebus officially voted to cancel the partnership with NBC, according to sources on the call. The vote was unanimous.

After the October debate hosted by NBC partner CNBC—in which co-moderator John Harwood was roundly criticized for a poor performance—the RNC suspended its relationship with NBC News over that upcoming Houston debate.

“I write to inform you that pending further discussion between the Republican National Committee (RNC) and our presidential campaigns, we are suspending the partnership with NBC News for the Republican primary debate at the University of Houston on February 26, 2016,” Priebus wrote to NBC News chairman Andy Lack back in late October. “The RNC’s sole role in the primary debate process is to ensure that our candidates are given a full and fair opportunity to lay out their vision for America’s future. We simply cannot continue with NBC without full consultation with our campaigns.”

In response, NBC News signaled in a statement at the time that it thought the situation could be resolved.

“This is a disappointing development,” NBC News said in a statement. “However, along with our debate broadcast partners at Telemundo we will work in good faith to resolve this matter with the Republican Party.”

This process also sparked an unprecedented meeting of top officials with almost every GOP presidential campaign, in which campaign managers represented most of the 2016 GOP candidates to fight for better representation in the debate process. Donald Trump’s team and Dr. Ben Carson’s team, as well most of the rest of the campaigns, huddled together to wrest control away from the mainstream media—which has been, until now, dominating the process.

Clearly, however, despite NBC’s previous hopes that the RNC would reinstate the network as a moderator of the upcoming debate, the RNC has officially moved forward with formal actions to end the network’s plans for the Houston debate.

NBC News moderated Sunday evening’s Democratic debate between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

The move by the RNC to formally extricate NBC News from the process is sure to seriously harm the media organization’s reputation, and its financial bottom line. Typically, networks make millions of dollars in ad revenue with debate moderation due to the extraordinarily high viewership.

The debate is still on the schedule–it would come after Iowans, New Hampshire citizens, South Carolinians, and Nevadans vote, heading into the all-important SEC Primary of which Texas is a part on March 1–but it’s unclear as of yet who will moderate it or where it will air.

For years, the Main Stream Media has been in bed with politicians and business moguls. While, touting objectivity, they have often fallen way short of that goal.

The Media really came into its own during the 80’s, with the advent of Cable Television, the First Iranian Hostage Crisis, and the ascension and election of President Ronald Wilson Reagan. Their advocacy of all things Liberal became very apparent, as they attacked the greatest president of this generation, mercilessly, giving no quarter.

I believe that Reagan’s election was a wake up call to the MSM. They realized that, if let to their own devices, the American Public would elect a Conservative as president, every time. And, they just couldn’t have that. They were already in too deep to their Democratic, Progressive Masters.

So, America’s Media forsook their objectivity, choosing to help to shape current events, instead of just reporting on them, in an effort to produce outcomes which would be most beneficial to the Progressive Cause.

Now, in 2015, after propping up Barack Hussein Obama and getting him re-elected, their own hubris has given them an exaggerated sense of self-importance, as to their role in our society.

Their Achilles’ Heel , the before-mentioned hubris, blinded them to the potential of the upstart Fox News Channel in informing America’s population in the Heartland, and that has been their undoing, much to Obama’s consternation.

Every night of the week, the Fox News Channel beats the mainstream outlets in popularity. There is a reason for that.

Fox News is exactly what it claims to be: fair and balanced.

The Mainstream News Channels are so far up Obama’s and the Democratic Party’s backsides that they wouldn’t know the truth if it French-kissed them.

Just as it was during the Russian Revolution, when Vladimir Leninn seized control of Russia from the Czar, and just as it was during the era of the National Socialist Party in Germany, when a former altar boy and house painter named Adolf Hitler took over, the first thing that totalitarian governments do is to take control of media, for propaganda purposes.

Through threats, coercion, and promises of reward, that is exactly what Obama did when he took office.

Of course, he did not have to try very hard. The Main Stream Media were already Obama Fanboys, their staffs being made up of a majority of Liberals.

Heck, they were posting fictitious propaganda about Barack Hussein Obama, before he was even elected president.

The election of Barack Hussein Obama is the best thing that ever happened to the Fox News Channel. It has solidified their position as the Leader in Cable News.

And, the thing about it, is the fact that Fox News is not the only source by which average Americans can obtain the truth about Obama and his administration. The New Media, the Internet, has proven to be an invaluable source for dissemination of information.

Principled reporters, such as the late Andrew Breitbart and Michelle Malkin, turned up the heat on both Obama and the MSM, by providing an alternative source through which Americans can receive news, unfiltered by those in the Halls of Power.

All during the Republican PreFsidential Primate Candidate Debates, which they have had the privilege of hosting, the NBC Debate Moderators, while doing the will of their Masters at the Network and the Democratic Party, the self-proclaimed “Broadcast Journalists” allowed the entire country to witness them practice, on live television, their actual jobs: being junkyard dogs and purveyors of propaganda , in service to a political party and ideology, who once stood for the “Working Man and Woman”, but who now stand for the worst kind  of state-sponsored fascism, racial division exacerbated by the Rhetoric of Class Warfare, and greed-inspired socialism.

It was refreshing to actually see the Republican National Committee tell them to go take a long walk off of a short pier.

It is time to take our country back.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Little White Lies, Bald-Faced Lies, and Hillary: “I’m For Huge Campaign-Finance Reform”…Except in the Clinton Foundation

untitled (19)There is a very logical reason that the Main Stream Media, in cooperation with the Democrat Party, is scheduling the Democrat President Primary Candidate Debates late on Weekend Nights:

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Late last night, hidden in the abyss of Sunday Television Programming at 9:00 p.m. Center, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bernie Sanders, And Martin O’Malley (Who!), , took the stage in South Carolina for another Democrat Presidential Democrat Candidate Debate.

…which, once again, ended early.

Even politicians can blatantly lie for just so long, I suppose.

For example…

SANDERS: “We need someone with the guts to stand up the private insurance companies and all of their money, and the pharmaceutical industry. That’s what this debate should be about.” 

CLINTON: “Well, as someone who, as someone who has a little bit of experience standing up to the health-insurance industry, that spent — you know, many, many millions of dollars attacking me and probably will so again because of what I believe we can do, building on the Affordable Care Act — I think it’s important to point out that there are a lot of reasons we have the health-care system we have today. I know how much money influences the political decision-making. That’s why I’m for huge campaign-finance reform. However, we started a system that had private health insurance. And even during the Affordable Care Act debate, there was an opportunity to vote for what was called the public option. In other words, people could buy-in to Medicare, and when the Democrats were in charge of the Congress, we couldn’t get the votes for that. So, what I’m saying is really simple, this has been the fight of the Democratic Party for decades. We have the Affordable Care Act. Let’s make it work. Let’s take the models that states are doing. We now have driven costs down to the lowest they’ve been in 50 years. Now we’ve got to get individual costs down. That’s what I’m planning to do.”

Liar, liar…pantsuit on fire!

On April 18, 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported that

The board of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation has decided to continue accepting donations from foreign governments, primarily from six countries, even though Hillary Clinton is running for president, a summary of the new policy to be released Thursday shows.

The rules would permit donations from Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the U.K.—countries that support or have supported Clinton Foundation programs on health, poverty and climate change, according to the summary.

That means other nations would be prohibited from making large donations to the foundation. But those governments would be allowed to participate in the Clinton Global Initiative, a subsidiary of the foundation where companies, nonprofit groups and government officials work on solutions to global problems.

Ministers from any government would be allowed to attend meetings and appear on panels at the group’s meetings and their governments would be allowed to pay attendance fees of $20,000.

The new policy, which was designed to address growing concern that the donations would present a conflict of interest for a Hillary Clinton presidency, all but ensures that Mrs. Clinton’s links to the charity will be a feature of the emerging presidential campaign.

Just how dishonest is Hillary Rodham Clinton? She wouldn’t lie about her own family would she?

…I mean, besides Bubba.

Is Michael Moore barred from all buffets in the Continental United States?

On April 23, 2015, I wrote a blog titled, “Foundationgate: There’s Little White Liars, Bold-Faced Lars, Statistical Liars, and Then, There’s the Clintons”.

Here is some pertinent information contained in that blog…

NYMag.com reports that

The qualities of an effective presidency do not seem to transfer onto a post-presidency. Jimmy Carter was an ineffective president who became an exemplary post-president. Bill Clinton appears to be the reverse. All sorts of unproven worst-case-scenario questions float around the web of connections between Bill’s private work, Hillary Clinton’s public role as secretary of State, the Clintons’ quasi-public charity, and Hillary’s noncompliant email system. But the best-case scenario is bad enough: The Clintons have been disorganized and greedy.

The news today about the Clintons all fleshes out, in one way or another, their lack of interest in policing serious conflict-of-interest problems that arise in their overlapping roles:

The New York Times has a report about the State Department’s decision to approve the sale of Uranium mines to a Russian company that donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Global Initiative, and that a Russian investment bank promoting the deal paid Bill $500,000 for a speech in Moscow.The Washington Post reports that Bill Clinton has received $26 million in speaking fees from entities that also donated to the Clinton Global Initiative.The Washington Examiner reports, “Twenty-two of the 37 corporations nominated for a prestigious State Department award — and six of the eight ultimate winners — while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State were also donors to the Clinton family foundation.”And Reuters reports, “Hillary Clinton’s family’s charities are refiling at least five annual tax returns after a Reuters review found errors in how they reported donations from governments, and said they may audit other Clinton Foundation returns in case of other errors.”

The Clinton campaign is batting down the darkest and most conspiratorial interpretation of these stories, and where this all leads remains to be seen. But the most positive interpretation is not exactly good.

When you are a power couple consisting of a former president and a current secretary of State and likely presidential candidate, you have the ability to raise a lot of money for charitable purposes that can do a lot of good. But some of the potential sources of donations will be looking to get something in return for their money other than moral satisfaction or the chance to hobnob with celebrities. Some of them want preferential treatment from the State Department, and others want access to a potential future Clinton administration. To run a private operation where Bill Clinton will deliver a speech for a (huge) fee and a charity that raises money from some of the same clients is a difficult situation to navigate. To overlay that fraught situation onto Hillary’s ongoing and likely future government service makes it all much harder.

And yet the Clintons paid little to no attention to this problem. Nicholas Confessore described their operation as “a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.” Indeed, as Ryan Lizzareported in 2012, Bill Clinton seemed to see the nexus between his role and his wife’s as a positive rather than a negative:

Regardless of Bill Clinton’s personal feelings about Obama, it didn’t take him long to see the advantages of an Obama Presidency. More than anyone, he pushed Hillary to take the job of Secretary of State. “President Clinton was a big supporter of the idea,” an intimate of the Clintons told me. “He advocated very strongly for it and arguably was the tie-breaking reason she took the job.” For one thing, having his spouse in that position didn’t hurt his work at the Clinton Global Initiative. He invites foreign leaders to the initiative’s annual meeting, and her prominence in the Administration can be an asset in attracting foreign donors. “Bill Clinton’s been able to continue to be the Bill Clinton we know, in large part because of his relationship with the White House and because his wife is the Secretary of State,” the Clinton associate continued. “It worked out very well for him. That may be a very cynical way to look at it, but that’s a fact. A lot of the stuff he’s doing internationally is aided by his level of access.”

The Obama administration wanted Hillary Clinton to use official government email. She didn’t. The Obama administration alsodemanded that the Clinton Foundation disclose all its donors while she served as Secretary of State. It didn’t comply with that request, either.

The Clintons’ charitable initiatives were a kind of quasi-government run by themselves, which was staffed by their own loyalists and made up the rules as it went along. Their experience running the actual government, with its formal accountability and disclosure, went reasonably well. Their experience running their own privatized mini-state has been a fiasco.

On Jan. 8, 1996, in a still-relevant commentary titled “Blizzard of Lies,” New York Times columnist William Safire described Hillary Clinton as “a congenital liar.”

Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar. Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.

1. Remember the story she told about studying The Wall Street Journal to explain her 10,000 percent profit in 1979 commodity trading? We now know that was a lie told to turn aside accusations that as the Governor’s wife she profited corruptly, her account being run by a lawyer for state poultry interests through a disreputable broker.

She lied for good reason: To admit otherwise would be to confess taking, and paying taxes on, what some think amounted to a $100,000 bribe.

2. The abuse of Presidential power known as Travelgate elicited another series of lies. She induced a White House lawyer to assert flatly to investigators that Mrs. Clinton did not order the firing of White House travel aides, who were then harassed by the F.B.I. and Justice Department to justify patronage replacement by Mrs. Clinton’s cronies.

Now we know, from a memo long concealed from investigators, that there would be “hell to pay” if the furious First Lady’s desires were scorned. The career of the lawyer who transmitted Hillary’s lie to authorities is now in jeopardy. Again, she lied with good reason: to avoid being identified as a vindictive political power player who used the F.B.I. to ruin the lives of people standing in the way of juicy patronage.

3. In the aftermath of the apparent suicide of her former partner and closest confidant, White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, she ordered the overturn of an agreement to allow the Justice Department to examine the files in the dead man’s office. Her closest friends and aides, under oath, have been blatantly disremembering this likely obstruction of justice, and may have to pay for supporting Hillary’s lie with jail terms.

Again, the lying was not irrational. Investigators believe that damning records from the Rose Law Firm, wrongfully kept in Vincent Foster’s White House office, were spirited out in the dead of night and hidden from the law for two years — in Hillary’s closet, in Web Hubbell’s basement before his felony conviction, in the President’s secretary’s personal files — before some were forced out last week.

Why the White House concealment? For good reason: The records show Hillary Clinton was lying when she denied actively representing a criminal enterprise known as the Madison S.& L., and indicate she may have conspired with Web Hubbell’s father-in-law to make a sham land deal that cost taxpayers $3 million.

Why the belated release of some of the incriminating evidence? Not because it mysteriously turned up in offices previously searched. Certainly not because Hillary Clinton and her new hang-tough White House counsel want to respond fully to lawful subpoenas.

One reason for the Friday-night dribble of evidence from the White House is the discovery by the F.B.I. of copies of some of those records elsewhere. When Clinton witnesses are asked about specific items in “lost” records — which investigators have — the White House “finds” its copy and releases it. By concealing the Madison billing records two days beyond the statute of limitations, Hillary evaded a civil suit by bamboozled bank regulators.

Another reason for recent revelations is the imminent turning of former aides and partners of Hillary against her; they were willing to cover her lying when it advanced their careers, but are inclined to listen to their own lawyers when faced with perjury indictments.

Therefore, ask not “Why didn’t she just come clean at the beginning?” She had good reasons to lie; she is in the longtime habit of lying; and she has never been called to account for lying herself or in suborning lying in her aides and friends.

No wonder the President is fearful of holding a prime-time press conference. Having been separately deposed by the independent counsel at least twice, the President and First Lady would be well advised to retain separate defense counsel.

The late, great William Safire was a prophet.

The revelation contained in today’s blog should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.

Lying comes as naturally to The Former First Lady as breathing in and out.

As I have written, from the time she was fired from the Watergate Investigative Committee to wiping her private e-mail server, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

Machiavellian in political ambition and armed with a vocabulary that would make the legendary Gong Show Judge, Jaye P. Morgan, blush (look her up, kids), “the Hildebeast” has cut a wide swatch in her path to Political Power.

It should be obvious to Americans by now, that she believes that morality and ethics are for “the little people” (i.e., you and me).

We already have a congenital liar in the White House.

We certainly do not need another one.

Oh…and Ambassador Christopher Stevens remains unavailable for comment.

Until He Comes,

KJ
 

 

 

U.S. Navy Captured, Iran Frees American Prisoners, Gets $100 Billion Back and Nuclear Capability: America Gets Conned. Thanks, Obama

Missing-Piece-600-LIThe late, great Jerry Reed once sang a song about a fellow who got a divorce, titled, “She Got the Gold Mine. I Got the Shaft.”

As Obama and his minions celebrate their deal with Iran, Americans with common sense are feeling like that fellow in Jerry’s song.

The New York Times reports that

VIENNA — The United States and European nations lifted oil and financial sanctions on Iran and released roughly $100 billion of its assets after international inspectors concluded that the country had followed through on promises to dismantle large sections of its nuclear program.

This came at the end of a day of high drama that played out in a diplomatic dance across Europe and the Middle East, just hours after Tehran and Washington swapped long-held prisoners.

Five Americans, including a Washington Post reporter, Jason Rezaian, were released by Iran hours before the nuclear accord was implemented. The detention of one of the released Americans, Matthew Trevithick, who had been engaged in language studies in Tehran when he was arrested, according to his family, had never been publicly announced.

Early on Sunday, a senior United States official confirmed that “our detained U.S. citizens have been released and that those who wished to depart Iran have left.” The Washington Post also released a statement confirming that Mr. Rezaian and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, had left Iran.

“Iran has undertaken significant steps that many people — and I do mean many — doubted would ever come to pass,” Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday evening at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which earlier issued a report detailing how Iran had shipped 98 percent of its fuel to Russia, dismantled more than 12,000 centrifuges so they could not enrich uranium, and poured cement into the core of a reactor designed to produce plutonium.

But Mr. Kerry was clearly energized by the release of the Americans, an issue he took up on the edges of almost every nuclear negotiation, and pursued in separate, secret talks that many involved in the nuclear issue were only vaguely aware were happening.

The release of the “unjustly detained” Americans, as Mr. Kerry put it, came at some cost: Seven Iranians, either convicted or charged with breaking American embargoes, were released in the prisoner swap, and 14 others were removed from international wanted lists. Many of the presidential candidates, including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Donald J. Trump, denounced the swap as a sign of weakness, and they have long promised to review or withdraw from the nuclear agreement.

They particularly object to the release of about $100 billion in frozen assets — mostly from past oil sales — that Iran will now control, and the end of American and European restrictions on trade that had been imposed as part of the American-led effort to stop the program. It was not only sanctions that forced Iran to the table: the United States and Israel also developed one of the world’s most sophisticated cyberweapons to destroy the centrifuges that Iran has now been dismantling.

With the start of the so-called implementation day, the day that the accord goes fully into operation, the structures are finally in place for Tehran to re-engage with the world after decades of isolation.

But even in a week that started with the release of 10 sailors who drifted into Iranian waters — the Defense Department still has not provided an explanation of how that happened — and ended with a prisoner swap that seemed drawn from the pages of the Cold War, it was far from clear whether Tehran would choose to re-engage — at least very quickly.

In Tehran and Washington, political battles are still being fought over the merits and dangers of moving toward normal interchanges between two countries that have been avowed adversaries for more than three decades. But Mr. Kerry suggested that the nuclear deal had broken the cycle of hostility, enabling the secret negotiations that led up to the hostage swap. It was far from a sure thing: Just weeks ago, Iran was demanding the release of nearly 20 Iranians convicted or indicted in the United States; an administration official said that number had been whittled down to seven, but even that still rankled some.

“Critics will continue to attack the deal for giving away too much to Tehran,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who started the sanctions against Iran that were lifted Saturday as the No. 3 official in the State Department during the George W. Bush administration. “But the fact that Iran’s nuclear ambitions will be effectively frozen for the next 10 to 15 years is a real advantage for us,” he said, adding that “it was achieved by tough-minded diplomacy and not war.”

Still Mr. Burns, who now teaches diplomacy at Harvard and has advised Hillary Clinton, a Democratic candidate for president, argued that recent encounters with Iran — including its ballistic missile tests and its propping up of President Bashar al Assad of Syria, “demonstrate how complicated our relationship with Iran will continue to be.” He urged President Obama to issue new sanctions against Iran this weekend for the ballistic missile tests — a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions — to demonstrate that he will keep up the pressure.

A copy of the proposed sanction leaked three weeks ago, and the Obama administration pulled it back — perhaps to avoid torpedoing the prisoner swap and the completion of the nuclear deal. Negotiations to win the release of Mr. Rezaian, who had covered the nuclear talks before he was imprisoned on vague charges, were an open secret: Mr. Kerry often alluded to the fact that he was working on the issue behind the scenes.

First off, Praise God that the hostages, including Pastor Saeed, are free!

However, money talks and BS walks.

About those “tough negotiations”…

The Middle East Media Research Institute reports that

Iranian officials recently began to reveal details from the nuclear negotiations with the U.S. since their early stages. Their statements indicate that the U.S. initiated secret negotiations with Iran not after President Hassan Rohani, of the pragmatic camp, was elected in 2013, but rather in 2011-2012, in the era of radical president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[1] The disclosures also indicate that, already at that time, Iran received from the U.S. administration a letter recognizing its right to enrich uranium on its own soil. Hossein Sheikh Al-Islam, an advisor to the Majlis speaker, specified that the letter had come from John Kerry, then a senator and head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Iranian vice president and top negotiator Ali Akbar Salehi said that Kerry, while still a senator, had been appointed by President Obama to handle the nuclear contacts with Iran.

Now, why would Obama have Kerry, who was not even Secretary of State, yet, have secret “nuclear contacts” with Ahmadinejad and the Mad Mullahs?

Simple. Family ties.

Courtesy of AllenB.West.com…

You not might be aware that in 2009, the daughter of Secretary of State John Kerry, Dr. Vanessa Bradford Kerry, John Kerry’s younger daughter by his first wife, married an Iranian-American physician named Dr. Brian (Behrooz) Vala Nahed.

Of course you’re not aware of it.

Brian (Behrooz) Nahed is son of Nooshin and Reza Vala Nahid of Los Angeles. Brian’s Persian birth name is “Behrooz Vala Nahid” but it is now shortened and Americanized in the media to “Brian Nahed.” At the time his engagement to Bradford Kerry, there was rarely any mention of Nahed’s Persian/Iranian ancestry, and even the official wedding announcement in the October 2009 issue of New York Times carefully avoids any reference to Dr. Nahed (Nahid)’s birthplace (which is uncommon in wedding announcements) and starts his biography from his college years.

Gosh, I wonder why??

Gee, do you think Secretary Kerry should have recused himself from the negotiations with Iran at the very outset because of his long-standing relationship to his Iranian counter-part, Mohammad Javad Zarif? Let me explain.

Zarif is the current minister of foreign affairs in the Rouhani administration and has held various significant diplomatic and cabinet posts since the 1990s. He was Kerry’s chief counterpart in the nuclear deal negotiations.

Secretary Kerry and Zarif first met over a decade ago at a dinner party hosted by George Soros at his Manhattan penthouse. What a surprise. I have to say, connecting the dots gets more and more frightening.

But it gets even worse. Guess who was the best man at the 2009 wedding between Kerry’s daughter Vanessa and Behrouz Vala Nahed? Javad Zarif’s son.

Does this bother anyone at all?

Apparently Kerry only revealed his daughter’s marriage to an Iranian-American once he had taken over as Secretary of State. But the subject never came up in his Senate confirmation hearing, either because Kerry never disclosed it, or because his former colleagues were “too polite” to bring it up.

Polite? Somehow the words “Iran” and “nuclear capability” just do not go with the word “polite”.

The 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, has purposely and surreptitiously handed a Rogue State of Radical Muslim Barbarians the means of the destruction of both the United States of America and  our staunch ally, Israel.

Why is the President of these United States, Barack Hussein Obama, trusting Iran, an enemy of freedom, to stand by its “Agreement” to refrain from nuking the United States of America and Israel?

He just gave them everything they wanted: their money, nuclear capability, and acquiescence by the Government of the United States of America.

Here’s a question for you:

What if a condition of the Iran Prisoner Swap Agreement and the closure of the “Iran Deal” was that we humble ourselves by allowing our Navy Personnel to be captured and used as propaganda?

Iran remains our mortal 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.

Obama, Kerry, and the rest of his Liberal Dhimmi Cabal has shown where their loyalties unequivocally lie, with their braggadocio over this Chamberlain-esque “deal” that is destined to not only blow up in their faces, but also “where alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears” and in the heart of the Holy Land, itself.

Obama’s concern is not with our allies nor the safety of the citizens and the military of the United States of America.

Obama, as he always has been, is concerned with himself and leaving a marvelous legacy as president.

Giving Iran the means to “kill the infidels” will definitely cement Obama’s Legacy…if there is anyone left to remember it.

Iran has always been, since the ouster of the Shah, a rogue nation. They are a threat to every nation who stands in the way of their crazed Political Ideology, disguised as a “religion”.

Either due to naiveté or simple over-estimation of their own intelligence, on the part of Obama and his Administration, as regards their “superior intellect”, to quote Fred Thompson, as Admiral Josh Painter, in the great movie “The Hunt for Red October”…

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

Obama has screwed both God’s Chosen People and the nation which he is sworn to protect…for the sake of his own ego’s contentment.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

Hillary, Benghazi, and the Democrat Nomination: Inaction Has Consequences, Too

untitled (18)In the Arena of Presidential Politics, sometimes what is lauded as “inevitable”, “ain’t necessarily so”.

The Washington Post has the story…

Some leading Democrats are increasingly anxious about Hillary Clinton’s prospects for winning the party’s presidential nomination, warning that Sen. Bernie Sanders’s growing strength in early battleground states and strong fundraising point to a campaign that could last well into the spring.

What seemed recently to be a race largely controlled by Clinton has turned into a neck-and-neck contest with voting set to begin in less than three weeks.

On Capitol Hill and in state party headquarters, some Democrats worry that a Sanders nomination could imperil candidates down the ballot in swing districts and states. Others sense deja vu from 2008, when Clinton’s overwhelming edge cratered in the days before the Iowa caucuses.

Just as Barack Obama’s stunning upset there helped assure Democrats in later states that a black man could win votes from whites and propelled him to victory in South Carolina and other places, so, too, could a Sanders victory on Feb. 1 in Iowa and then Feb. 9 in New Hampshire ease doubts about the viability of a self-described “democratic socialist,” some said.

“It’s just like the weak spot for Barack Obama was his skin color, but he got cured of that in Iowa,” said Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), the party’s leading African American in Congress.

“If [Sanders] comes out of Iowa and New Hampshire with big victories — if it’s close in both places, that’s one thing — but if he comes out of there with big victories, hey, man, it could very well be a new day,” Clyburn added.

One Clinton ally on Capitol Hill said some in the party are starting to seriously consider what it would mean for Democrats nationally if Sanders were to win.

“There’s definitely an elevated concern expressed in the cloakroom and members-only elevators, and other places, about the impact of a Sanders nomination on congressional candidates,” Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said.

Israel, a former chairman of the Democrats’ House campaign committee, said that a Sanders nomination “increases the level of anxiety that many of our candidates have in swing districts, where a Hillary Clinton nomination erases that anxiety.”

Sensing the tightening race, some state party officials have gone out of their way to keep the peace with supporters of Sanders, hoping to tap their energy and keep them activated for the general election campaign.

The reevaluation of the Democratic primaries — which seemed destined for a Clinton coronation after she recovered from a summer slide amid controversy over her use of a private email system while secretary of state — comes as state and national surveys show her sliding fast once again.

A Des Moines Register survey of likely Iowa caucus voters released Thursday showed a statistical dead heat, with Clinton at 42 percent and Sanders at 40. That marks a significant shift from a month ago, when Clinton held a lead of nine percentage points and saw her share of the vote at 48 percent. In New Hampshire, Sanders holds a commanding lead, 53 percent to 39 percent, according to a Monmouth University poll released this week. 

Clinton and Sanders have escalated their attacks on each other, with each claiming to be the strongest general election candidate.

The new dynamic will be on display in South Carolina this weekend, when the Democratic candidates attend a party dinner and then a fish fry hosted by Clyburn ahead of their debate Sunday night. The pre-debate events, expected to draw hundreds of activists, will serve as a chance for Sanders to prove that his campaign has an effective organization beyond the first two states.

“We’re really at the front end of the process for states beyond Iowa and New Hampshire,” said Sanders adviser Tad Devine. “Part of the process is to convince people Bernie is a serious option, and doing well in early states helps.”

Clinton’s allies have said that they have always planned for a difficult primary season and that they expect their well-structured campaign to pay dividends when the race moves on to larger states with more diverse electorates than the two earliest states. They note that a recent trip to Oklahoma, part of the Super Tuesday bloc of 10 states on March 1, demonstrated their campaign’s long view of the race.

“From Day One, we have told everyone who will listen this would be a dogfight,” said Jerry Crawford, a longtime Clinton supporter in Iowa. “Hillary will continue to fight for every vote just as she has done since Day One in Iowa, and I wouldn’t trade places with any other campaign.”

Whether or not he wins, Sanders’s rise has created challenges for party leaders by highlighting policy differences between the Democratic establishment and the party’s support base.

Many Sanders proposals — Medicare for all, free college and breaking up big banks — go beyond congressional Democrats’ agenda but are embraced by an ascendant wing of the party.

Those policy prescriptions win support in primaries, but many Democratic elites fear how they would play in a general election. At the same time, Democratic leaders know they can’t afford to alienate an energized party base.

Some recent surveys suggest that Sanders is drawing support beyond the liberals and young voters who have flocked to his rallies.

A Quinnipiac University poll early this month found Sanders trailing Clinton by an insignificant two percentage points among moderate and conservative Democrats, a sharp shift from Clinton’s 24 percentage-point lead among that group in December.

“Whatever the success that Senator Sanders, that Bernie Sanders, has, I think it’s important to recognize that his supporters are essential to our success in winning the White House,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) told reporters in the Capitol on Wednesday.

In the Senate, more than two-thirds of the Democratic caucus has endorsed Clinton. For now, the senators will remain calm, even if she loses the first two states, according to a senior consultant working on Senate races.

However, full-fledged panic would set in if Clinton loses the Nevada caucuses, wedged in between New Hampshire and South Carolina, the consultant said.

A Clinton defeat would complicate matters for one of the country’s most vulnerable Democrats, Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.). Bustos said that much of her campaign strategy is based on energizing female voters with the potential of a female presidential nominee . “There’s a lot of excitement about having a woman at the top of the ticket,” Bustos said, without directly critiquing Sanders.

While the Elite of the Democrats are excited about the prospect of having “The Queen of Mean” as their Presidential Candidate, others are, as the article alluded to, beginning to distance themselves from Hillary and her “baggage”.

Regardless of what she proclaimed in front of a sub-committee, what happened at a remote Embassy Compound in Libya DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

And now, it is on “the Big Screen” for all Americans to see.

The Christian Post reports that

Pat Smith, mother of American 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack victim Sean Smith, called presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “a liar” this week after viewing the Benghazi-themed film “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.”

Smith, in an appearance on Fox News with Megyn Kelly this week, said she couldn’t complete watching the film after seeing the portrayal of her deceased son in the movie. 

“Hillary is a liar! I know what she told me,” screamed Smith pointing to the Obama administration blaming a YouTube video for the controversial attack.

Kelly noted that Clinton had denied telling families of the Benghazi victims that the YouTube video was what caused the terrorist attack but Smith replied “bull feathers.”

“Oh, Pat. I know it must be so hard. So many people want to put this behind them and say, Hillary sat there and testified, she testified with her own 13 hours. And they say it’s done. They say there’s no story about Benghazi. And that she did everything she could do to the war and she came right out and said she is not lying. Suggesting you are the one who is lying about what happened [at] that Air Force base,” said Kelly.

“Bull feathers! That is just plain old bull! I know what she said and not only did she say it, but Obama said the same thing to me. And Panetta. And Biden. And Susan Rice. I went up to all of them, begging them to tell me what happened. And they all said, that it was the video. Every one of them,” said Smith. 

“13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” is an action thriller based on the 2014 non-fiction book written by journalist Mitchell Zuckoff with the Annex Security Team. The film depicts the harrowing true story of the attack on a CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, which killed four Americans. After the assault begins, a U.S. Special Ops team are sent to the annex to protect those still trapped within the compound. The film is directed by Michael Bay, and stars John Krasinski, James Badge Dale, and Pablo Schreiber.

We have learned a lot of things since the Benghazi Massacre.

On October 27th, 2012, I reported that

Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”

Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights.

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood, [on orders from General Petraeus] though, denied the claims that requests for support were turned down.

“We can say with confidence that the Agency reacted quickly to aid our colleagues during that terrible evening in Benghazi,” she said. “Moreover, no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. In fact, it is important to remember how many lives were saved by courageous Americans who put their own safety at risk that night-and that some of those selfless Americans gave their lives in the effort to rescue their comrades.”

That means that the order to stand down had to come from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and/or President Barack Hussein Obama. [or Valerie Jarrett]

We also learned on October 26, 2012, that there were two drones circling overhead, as four brave Americans were being slaughtered. Obama and his Administration knew exactly what was happening, yet, for the sake of political expediency, chose to do nothing about it.

What Hillary’s  appearance before the Benghazi Hearings showed, was a pathological predilection for dishonesty, insincerity, and inappropriateness, not only on the part of Former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton,  but the whole Obama Administration, as well, from the top on down.

They all knew that the cause of the attacks was not some stupid Youtube Video, but a full-blown Muslim Terrorist Attack.

However, for the sake of Political Expediency…and the re-election of President Barack Hussein Obama and the legacy of his rapidly-failing Foreign Policy, known as Smart Power!, they had to quickly come up with an excuse for their liability in the deaths of those four brave Americans.

And now, Hillary Rodham Clinton, with her Oscar-worthy Performance in front of the House Committee, which including circuitous answers to Yes or No Questions and inappropriate smirks, accompanied by cackling laughter, echoes across the years, proving completely true and accurate as to what I and my fellow Conservative Americans have said about her all along:

She is a sociopath, who envisions herself to be smarter than everybody else, above the law, and White House-bound, because, “it’s her turn”.

The new movie about that fateful night of September 11, 2012, hopefully, will be the final nail in her Political Coffin.

The only place that she should be bound, at least in this life, is jail.

Her final destination promises to be a more Southern Locale…and infinitely hotter.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

 

 

Trump and the Average American Voter: Gladly Accepting the “Mantle of Anger”

Fox-Business-Republican-Debate-January-2016-Line-up-of-candidates-e1452562725740-620x433As anyone who has been paying attention already knows, another Republican Presidential Primary Debate took place.

One of the seminal moments in the debate came when Republican Front-Runner Donald J. Trump, responded to South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who said the following, during her nationally-televised State of the Union Rebuttal, which she made on behalf of the Republican Party on Tuesday Evening.

Today, we live in a time of threats like few others in recent memory. During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation. No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country.

The Christian Post reports that

Billionaire real estate mogul and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump proudly declared that he assumes the “mantle of anger,” then proceeded to double down on earlier comments demanding a temporary ban on all Muslim immigration.

Tuesday night South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley mentioned in her response to the State of the Union that angry voices were driving the Donald Trump campaign.

At a debate held at the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in South Carolina on Thursday evening, the Republican frontrunner responded, “I gladly accept the mantle of anger.”

“But [Haley] did say there was anger. And I could say, oh, I’m not angry. I’m very angry because our country is being run horribly and I will gladly accept the mantle of anger,” said Trump.

“Our healthcare is a horror show. Obamacare, we’re going to repeal it and replace it. We have no borders. Our vets are being treated horribly. Illegal immigration is beyond belief. Our country is being run by incompetent people. And yes, I am angry.”

Later in the debate moderator Maria Bartiromo asked Trump if he would reconsider his position on having a temporary ban on Muslim immigration, to which Trump said no.

“We have to get down to creating a country that’s not going to have the kind of problems that we’ve had with people flying planes into the World Trade Centers,” argued Trump.

“We have to find out what’s going on. I said temporarily. I didn’t say permanently. I said temporarily. And I have many great Muslim friends. And some of them, I will say, not all, have called me and said, ‘Donald, thank you very much; you’re exposing an unbelievable problem and we have to get to the bottom of it.'”

Trump’s comments came as he was part of the main stage set of Republican candidates at the Thursday evening debate hosted and moderated by the Fox Business Channel.

In addition to Trump, other GOP hopefuls on the stage were U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, Dr. Ben Carson, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and Ohio Governor John Kasich.

“The next Commander in Chief is standing on this stage,” said Sen. Cruz in his opening remarks, eliciting cheers from the audience.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, and former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum debated earlier in the evening as part of the undercard debate.

Trump’s doubling down on his plan for a ban on all Muslim immigration did not come unopposed by the other candidates on the main stage.

Jeb Bush denounced the Trump ban as counterproductive to United States’ efforts abroad to build a coalition to battle Islamic States and other terrorist groups.

“I hope you reconsider this, because this policy is a policy that makes it impossible to build the coalition necessary to take out ISIS. The Kurds are our strongest allies. They’re Muslim. You’re not going to even allow them to come to our country?” said Bush to Trump.

“The other Arab countries have a role to play in this. We cannot be the world’s policeman. We can’t do this unilaterally. We have to do this in unison with the Arab world. And sending that signal makes it impossible for us to be serious about taking out ISIS and restoring democracy in Syria.”

Other candidates, including Gov. Kasich, stressed their support for banning Syrian refugees for security reasons but not all Muslim immigrants.

“I’ve been for pausing on admitting the Syrian refugees. And the reasons why I’ve done is I don’t believe we have a good process of being able to vet them. But you know, we don’t want to put everybody in the same category,” stated Kasich.

“If we’re going to have a coalition, we’re going to have to have a coalition not just of people in the western part of the world, our European allies, but we need the Saudis, we need the Egyptians, we need the Jordanians, we need the Gulf states.”

The undercard and main stage debates for the Republican Party came as the influential first-in-the-nation caucus in Iowa is nearly two weeks away, on Feb. 1.

I agree with “The Donald.”

I’m angry, too.

That is one of the reasons that I began writing, way back in 2010.

It is a great way to vent one’s anger and frustration, without punching holes in the wall.

As the polls show, and will continue to show, Trump is striking a resonant chord in the hearts of Average Americans, living here in the part of America, which the snobbish Political Elites refer to as “Flyover Country”, but which we refer to as “America’s Heartland”, or, quite simply, “HOME”.

Our palpable anger is one which has been building since January of 2009, when a Lightweight, who seems to have as much in common with us as a Martian would, was inaugurated as President of the United States of America.

That anger, a result of his anti-American actions and resulting policies, which have affected Americans’ daily lives, has been exacerbated by the Republican Elite, who, in their desire to “reach across the aisle” and “go along to get along”, have distanced themselves from the Conservative Voting Base, who elected them to Congress in the first place.

Meanwhile, average Americans, like you and me, remain mired up to our necks in an abysmal swamp of bills and taxes, living paycheck-to-paycheck, afraid to make a move, for fearing of drowning in an ocean of debt.

Seemingly forgotten, in all of the forgotten promises, made by Barack Hussein Obama, are the 94 million Americans, who are no longer, largely through no fault of their own, participating in our Workforce.

You want to talk about anger and frustration?

Try looking for work, when you are over 55 years of age.

It makes you want to give up…daily.

But, I digress…

Anger has played an important part in the forging of this great country, which will be lucky to survive Obama’s final year in office.

It was anger that formed our country….an anger over being held captive to “Taxation Without Representation”…an anger which, as a prime example of history repeating itself, Americans are experiencing, even as I type this blog.

It is this anger, which has propelled Donald J. Trump to his lead in the Republican Primary Race…and those who prefer the Washingtonian Status Quo know it.

Hence, Governor Haley’s alluding to it in her Rebuttal, something which has never been done before.

When delivering a Rebuttal to the SOTU Address, the Opposition Party’s Spokesperson is supposed to discredit the sitting President, not one of their own.

In conclusion, concerning the “Mantle of Anger”, I, like Trump, wear it proudly.

It is an American’s Right…and Heritage.

And…it shows that you actually have a clue.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

The Iran Hostage Situation and Gov. Nikki Haley’s SOTU Rebuttal: When Did Mistreating Our Own Become Acceptable?

conservative1The are two major stories presently in the news.

The first story involves the capture and the release, a day later, of 10 American Navy Personnel by the partner in Barack Hussein Obama’s Legacy-Securing “Gentleman’s Agreement”, which gave Iran a ton of cash and the nuclear capability to make America a footnote in history.

The second story involves the Republican Party Rebuttal to Obama’s last (Amen.) State of the Union Address, delivered by South Carolina’s perky Governor, Nikki Haley, in which she spent much of her allotted time attacking Republican Presidential Primary Front-Runner, Donald J. Trump, instead of President Barack Hussein Obama, who delivered the address, which she was supposed to be rebutting.

The reason that both are National Water Cooler Topics for discussion is that both illicit a response of incredulity from average Americans.

Regarding the seizing of our two Naval Vessels and their crews by the Worldwide Sponsors of Radical Islamic Terrorists, Iran…

Several things make this whole incident smell as rotten as Hillary Clinton’s Bathtub.

  1. Obama and Kerry’s Response – Any actual President of the United States of America would have immediately parked a Navy Gunship off the coast of Iran and told those turban-wearing barbarians that, unless our Brightest and Best were freed immediately, their desert sands would become glass. Instead, the White House’s response was that this was not “a Hostile Act”. In fact, the Dhimmi-in Chief did not even mention it, during his barely-watched SOTU Address.
  2. The Crippling of our Vessels – The GPS Navigation Systems on our boats were busted by the Iranians. What if we did not actually stray into “their Territorial Waters”?
  3. The Treatment of our Sailors – After they returned our nine men and one woman, the Iranians released both videos and photographs, which showed the humiliation which they put these sailors through, including making the woman hide her face and having a Commander apologize, in a video which was disseminated around the world.
  4. Thank you for Humiliating Us – Secretary of State John F. (I served in Vietnam…and threw my fellow soldiers under the bus) Kerry publicly thanked the Iranians for how magnanimous they were for actually returning our Navy Personnel.
  5. The Kissing of Iran’s Hindquarters by “The Leader of the Free World” – In conjunction with my first point, what kind of AMERICAN PRESIDENT bows and scrapes to a nation of barbarian whackadoodles, who would rather behead us than look at us, and whose subjugated population lives in fear and abject poverty?

As Rush Limbaugh observed on his Nationally-Syndicated Radio Program yesterday…

This Iranian business.  Folks, you can think what you want, but I’m gonna tell you something.  This kind of story where we apologized, and, “Boy the Iranians were so nice. Oh, my God, it was so much fun be with them! They were so nice. It was our fault; we shouldn’t have been there. We apologize. they treated us so well,” you might think that’s cool.  I’m telling you, that’s one of the biggest propaganda victories that this Satanic country could get. 

In the Middle East, where this is the kind of stuff that matters, it’s gonna make it look like they totally dominate us.  It’s gonna come across as another huge victory over the Great Satan, the United States of America.  Now, last nightin his State of the Union speech, Obama’s going on and on, “We’re the most powerful country in the world! we got the best fighting force in the world. We got the best military in the world! We spend more on our military than the first eight nations behind us combined. We got the greatest battle machine world!”

Ask yourself a question.  All of that may be true.  We may be the most powerful nation in the world.  What kind of rules of engagement are they saddled with.  But more importantly than that, why…? I’m dead serious about this.  Why, given that fact we have the most powerful military, the greatest fighting force ever — we can project more power than any nation on earth can even dream of — why are all of our enemies growing in power?  Why are they getting bigger?  Why are they stronger?  Why are our enemies more dangerous than ever?  Why are they bigger, more dangerous, and wreaking more havoc than ever before under Obama?

That’s how you measure it.  We can have the best, most powerful fighting force in the world and if it’s led by a wuss or somebody who thinks that it’s the problem in the world, what good is it, under his command?  And make no mistake: Barack Hussein Obama is one of these people that thinks the United States military is one of the greatest problems in the world, historically and at present.  Do not doubt me. It falls right in line with this whole belief system that in the United States is not the solution to the world’s problems.  We are the problem. 

The second hot topic is the SOTU Rebuttal, as delivered By South Carolina’s Republican Governor, Nikki Haley.

Supposedly written by the Governor, herself, this rebuttal, at times, seemed not to be a rebuttal at all, but a personal attack against Donald J. Trump, the Business Entrepreneur and Showman, who is leading the other Republican Primary Candidates for their party’s Presidential Candidate Nomination by a wide margin.

As I pointed out on Twitter, yesterday,

The purpose of a SOTU Rebuttal is to discredit the opposition…not the potential Presidential Candidate of your own Political Party.

So, why would the Republican Party allow, and probably encourage, Governor Haley to attack Trump like that?

As I have written before, I believe that the main reason that Trump is leading among the other Republican Candidates, is that he, while sparse on details on of his platform, is empathetic on what he personally believes.

He is “flying” BOLD COLORS, while the other candidates are “flying” PALE PASTELS.

For example, while others up on the CNN Stage last night, watched, Trump boldly stated that “we speak English in America”, referring to the unprecedented accommodations that Liberal Politicians, on both sides of the aisle, have made for Illegal Aliens, here in a country whose very sovereignty they have violated.

This is what I don’t understand about the Republican Establishment.

They run around telling everybody how Conservative they are, when in reality,they actually hold the same beliefs as Liberal Democrats.

As Ronald Reagan said in his famous speech, given so long ago, today’s Republican Party needs to be “flying” “bold colors, not pale pastels”.

From what I’m seeing out of a lot of the Republicans right now, they’re not even presenting Americans with pale pastels.

The majority of Republican Congressmen and women seem to be quite content with the Washingtonian Status Quo and the self-serving political practice of “reaching across the aisle”, even if making “concessions” screws us “rubes’ back here in “Flyover Country”, America’s Heartland.

And, they don’t want anything, or ANYONE, to stop their “Gravy Train”.

That is why they are attacking Trump and the other Republican Primary  Front-Runner, Senator Ted Cruz.

For the Establishment (Vichy) Republicans, it’s a matter of survival…theirs, not that of us “rubes”.

What both of these topics have in common is a betrayal of the heritage and the principles which made America the Greatest Country on the Face of Good’s Green Earth.

Our Ancestors, Family Members, and Friends did not make the ultimate sacrifice on the Field of Battle for Professional Politicians and Spineless Bureaucrats (but, I repeat myself) to assist a megalomaniac Muslim-sympathizing Marxist in “radically changing” the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave into The Land of the Proletariat and the World’s Doormat.

This November, it’s time to fight back.

Are you with me?

Until He Comes,

KJ