Tag: Liberals

The Death of Justice Antonin Scalia: Time to Start “Borking”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

Pendulum-NRD-600Last night, President Barack Hussein Obama addressed the nation concerning the passing of Conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. As he showed during a State of the Union Address, several years back, to say that he did not care for this Judicial Giant, would be putting it mildly.

In fact, as his remarks, courtesy of whitehouse.gov reveal, ol’ Scooter is positively chomping at the bit to replace him with a Far left Extremist Judicial Activist of his own choosing.

Good evening, everybody.  For almost 30 years, Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia was a larger-than-life presence on the bench — a brilliant legal mind with an energetic style, incisive wit, and colorful opinions.     He influenced a generation of judges, lawyers, and students, and profoundly shaped the legal landscape.  He will no doubt be remembered as one of the most consequential judges and thinkers to serve on the Supreme Court.  Justice Scalia dedicated his life to the cornerstone of our democracy:  The rule of law.  Tonight, we honor his extraordinary service to our nation and remember one of the towering legal figures of our time.

     Antonin Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey to an Italian immigrant family.  After graduating from Georgetown University and Harvard Law School, he worked at a law firm and taught law before entering a life of public service.  He rose from Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel to Judge on the D.C. Circuit Court, to Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

     A devout Catholic, he was the proud father of nine children and grandfather to many loving grandchildren.  Justice Scalia was both an avid hunter and an opera lover — a passion for music that he shared with his dear colleague and friend, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  Michelle and I were proud to welcome him to the White House, including in 2012 for a State Dinner for Prime Minister David Cameron.  And tonight, we join his fellow justices in mourning this remarkable man.

     Obviously, today is a time to remember Justice Scalia’s legacy.  I plan to fulfill my constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor in due time.  There will be plenty of time for me to do so, and for the Senate to fulfill its responsibility to give that person a fair hearing and a timely vote.  These are responsibilities that I take seriously, as should everyone.  They’re bigger than any one party.  They are about our democracy.  They’re about the institution to which Justice Scalia dedicated his professional life, and making sure it continues to function as the beacon of justice that our Founders envisioned.

     But at this moment, we most of all want to think about his family, and Michelle and I join the nation in sending our deepest sympathies to Justice Scalia’s wife, Maureen, and their loving family — a beautiful symbol of a life well lived.  We thank them for sharing Justice Scalia with our country. 

God bless them all, and God bless the United States of America.

The Liebrals, over at The Washington Post elaborated on the situation facing our nation and Obama’s possible choices.

President Obama declared Saturday that he intends to nominate a replacement for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a move aimed at deepening his imprint on the nation’s highest court.

“I plan to fulfill my constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor in due time,” Obama said, adding that there’s “plenty of time” for the Senate “to give that person a fair hearing and a timely vote. These are responsibilities that I take seriously, as should everyone. They’re bigger than any one party — they’re about a democracy.”

But the president faces a fierce and protracted battle with Republicans who have already signaled that they have no intention of allowing Obama to choose a nominee to succeed Scalia.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said that Scalia should not be replaced until the next president has taken office. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell said in a statement.

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) rejected that position. “It would be unprecedented in recent history for the Supreme Court to go a year with a vacant seat,” he said in a statement. “Failing to fill this vacancy would be a shameful abdication of one of the Senate’s most essential Constitutional responsibilities.”

Obama has nominated two justices to the court in the past, and he has expressed the desire for jurists with empathy. He did not discuss his thinking about that on Saturday night. Instead, he used the moment to pay tribute to Scalia, whom he described as an “extraordinary judicial thinker.”

In selecting Supreme Court nominees, Obama has relied heavily on the advice of Vice President Biden, a former Senate Judiciary chairman. Biden has demonstrated again and again a strong working relationship with McConnell, having previously negotiated several tax and budget deals. The court nomination may hinge on Biden’s ability to reach a deal with McConnell again.

But the fate of the nomination would clearly be in Republican hands. While Democrats were able to change the rules in 2013 to make it easier to approve lower court judges with a simple majority, Supreme Court nominations still require 60 votes to advance past an opposition filibuster. To derail or delay the nomination, McConnell could simply not schedule a vote, but even if he allows Senate consideration of the nomination, Democrats do not have the numbers to overcome a GOP filibuster.

Although the Republican-controlled Congress could easily thwart an Obama nominee, such a decision could reverberate across the presidential campaign and into in the November elections, in which several GOP senators face tough, competitive races.

The most immediate outcome of the Scalia vacancy is that it offers Obama the chance to draw sharper battle lines with Republicans during an increasingly acrimonious presidential election.

The administration now faces a chaotic political and legal environment in which the president must prepare for a bitter confirmation fight or embrace the prospect of a deadlocked Supreme Court divided evenly between liberals and conservatives.

Scalia’s death also throws into doubt the outcome of some of the most controversial issues facing the nation in cases before the court this term: abortion, affirmative action, the rights of religious objectors to the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, and the president’s powers on immigration and deportation.

A deadlocked court could leave appellate decisions in place without setting a precedent. That would please the administration on a case involving union membership, for instance, but would keep Obama’s executive action on deportation from being implemented.

White House officials would not comment Saturday evening on their deliberations about a potential nominee, but the administration has an extensive list of possible candidates to choose from, including some who would change the face of the court by virtue of their race or sexual orientation.

“Blocking a strong person of color, a woman or an historic LGBT candidate for the Supreme Court might cause conservatives more trouble than they think they’re preventing,” said Robert Raben, a Democratic consultant and lobbyist who served as a senior Justice Department official under President Clinton. “The perception of unfairness or bias at the height of a national election could seriously backfire.”

One former senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said the president was likely to look to someone young enough to make a mark on the court over several decades. Obama has appointed several such jurists to U.S. appellate courts, the person noted, providing him with a relatively deep bench to from which to choose.

Among the leading candidates would be Sri Srinivasan, a judge on U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, who was confirmed to seat in a 97-to-0 Senate vote in May 2013. Srinivasan would be the first South Asian American on the court. He worked in the U.S. Solicitor General’s office under both Obama and President George W. Bush, and clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Other contenders from that same court include its chief judge, Merrick Garland, who is well liked by conservatives and was a finalist for such a nomination when Obama selected Justice Elena Kagan in 2010. Patricia Ann Millett, who won confirmation to the D.C. Circuit in December 2013, may also be considered.

Obama could also look to current or former administration officials, said those familiar with the president’s thinking, or even to the Senate. Among those officials are Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Eric Holder, the former attorney general.

Other potential choices could include Deval Patrick (D), the former governor of Massachusetts, or Paul Smith, who chairs the appellate and Supreme Court practice at Jenner & Block and, if confirmed, would be the first openly gay justice.

Beyond the D.C. Circuit, there are many other appellate judges the president could look to in selecting a nominee. Those include Paul Watford and Mary H. Murguia of the 9th Circuit; Albert Diaz of the 4th Circuit and Ojetta Rogeriee Thompson of the 1st Circuit.

Regardless of whom Obama selects, the combination of the timing of the opening, the stark division on the court and deeply partisan passion being evoked in both presidential primaries would make this confirmation battle unlike any of the past 40 years.

The last confirmation in the eighth year of a presidency was Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whose 97-to-0 vote in February 1988 came after two failed nomination efforts by President Reagan in the face of a Democratic-controlled Senate in late 1987. Kennedy is seen as a traitor among conservative activists, who view his rulings on abortion and gay rights with the liberal bloc as an example of GOP leaders choosing political expediency over ideological rigidity.

The only other attempt to fill a vacancy during a presidential election year came in 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson tried to elevate Abe Fortas to be chief justice. The Senate blocked Fortas. Subsequently, the other nomination to fill Fortas’s spot as associate justice was withdrawn during the final months of Johnson’s presidency.

Under normal circumstances, the nomination of a justice takes about 75 to 90 days, the first 60 or so involving a thorough vetting process by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Typically, the panel does not consider judicial nominees after mid-May, under a tradition established by the late Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). While chairing the Judiciary Committee, Thurmond declared that he would not take up new judicial nominations within a few months of a presidential election.

Filling the post of Scalia, however, will be anything but normal. He was the outspoken champion for the court’s conservative wing and had many admirers in the Senate, including McConnell. Obama’s first two appointments to the court were relatively easy because Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Kagan were replacing liberal-leaning justices.

Senate conservatives, already predisposed to not approve of Obama’s choice, might be loath to allow him to replace their judicial hero with a liberal jurist who would tip the court in a left-leaning direction. As of now, Sotomayor and Kagan often sided with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer in the most ideologically driven cases, with Kennedy and sometimes Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. providing the tie-breaking votes.

If Republicans leave the Scalia seat vacant for any lengthy time, that sets up the chance of a series of 4-to-4 votes in which the ruling of the lower federal court would stand as the law of that particular region of the country.

That political math in the Senate means Obama will need the support of all 46 members of the Democratic caucus and at least 14 Republicans to end a filibuster and successfully appoint Scalia’s successor. In the president’s previous Supreme Court nominations, just nine and then four Republicans voted to confirm Sotomayor and Kagan, respectively.

So, what now? I will tell you “What Now”.

Time for McConnell and the Senate Republicans to grow a spine and do some “Borking”.

What do I mean by “Borking”?

On October 23, 1987, The New York Times printed the following article…

One of the fiercest battles ever waged over a Supreme Court nominee ended today as the Senate decisively rejected the nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork.The vote was 58 against confirmation and 42 in favor, the biggest margin by which the Senate has ever rejected a Supreme Court nomination. [ Roll call, page 10. ] Judge Bork’s was the 27th Supreme Court nomination to fail in the country’s history, the sixth in this century, and the first since 1970, when the Senate rejected President Nixon’s nomination of G. Harrold Carswell by a vote of 51 to 45. There have been 104 Supreme Court justices in the nation’s history.

The vote came two weeks after Judge Bork, in the face of expected defeat, said he would not withdraw his name and wanted the full Senate to vote on his nomination. In a statement issued from his chambers at the Federal courthouse here, where he still serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Bork said he was ”glad the debate took place.”

”There is now a full and permanent record by which the future may judge not only me but the proper nature of a confirmation proceeding,” the 60-year-old judge said.

President Reagan, in a statement released by the White House, said, ”I am saddened and disappointed that the Senate has bowed today to a campaign of political pressure.” The Next Nominee? In the final hours of the three-day debate on the Senate floor, senators turned their attention to the next nominee for the vacancy on the court. The White House is not expected to name a new candidate before the middle of next week.

The President has publicly vowed to find a nominee who will upset Judge Bork’s opponents ”just as much” as Judge Bork himself. Mr. Reagan said today, ”My next nominee for the Court will share Judge Bork’s belief in judicial restraint – that a judge is bound by the Constitution to interpret laws, not make them.”

Meanwhile, senators on both sides of the debate urged the President to adopt a less confrontational tone.

Now, in the last year of the Obama Presidency (Praise God), it is imperative for the United States Senate to adopt president Reagan’s “confrontational tone”.

Why? Well, here is a quote for you…

In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness. Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties?

Who said that?  Karl Marx?  Vladimir Lenin?  Danny Glover?  George Clooney?  Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm)?  Nope.  It was the Obama-appointed and Senate-ratified, Supreme Court Justice, Elena Kagan.  The quote was a part of her senior thesis, written almost thirty years ago while an undergraduate at Princeton. The title of the thesis: “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933”.

The Senate must “Bork” every single Supreme Court Nomination of this Lame Duck President.

He has done enough damage to our country, already.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

A KJ Op Ed: Vetting The Republican Candidates – Going After the Wrong “Enemy”

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

ctax=Campaigns^Expose^Viewers^Placement%2035743%20-%20Viewer (2) Sward-StoneFor those of us Conservatives, who are considering which candidate to vote for in the 2016 presidential Election, our cup runneth over.

We literally have a smorgasbord of candidates, who are still campaigning, less than 10 months from the big day.

And, therein lies the problem.

While candidates seem to be more interested in attacking each other, than the Democrats, potential Republican Voters are following suit, and attacking each other, all over the World Wide Web.

To quote the Master of Malapropisms, the late, great Yogi Berra,

It’s deja vu, all over again.

During the Presidential Elections of 2008 and 2012, while we were busy “vetting” the Republican Candidates, in search of their “bonafides”, Liberal Democrats were solidly behind their Great Black Hope”, the “Clean and Articulate” (Biden’s words, not mine) Barack Hussein Obama, which resulted in an unvetted, untested, incompetent, petulant, anti-American metrosexual assuming the role of “Leader of the Free World”.

Why have we and why are we “eating our own”?

  • Unlike the present-day version of the Democrat Party, which has moved to the Far Left of the Political Spectrum, Republicans, both Conservative and “Moderate”, still think for themselves. We all have our own opinion on the criteria necessary for a successful American President. Democrats, like the Proletariat of the old Soviet Union, possess a “Hive-Mind” mentality, voting en masse for whoever is deemed “good for the Party”.
  • There is a Generational Gap, in regards to morality and ethical behavior, which is a determining factor as to each Republican’s own definition of “Conservatism”, which is a determining factor as to whom their candidate of choice will be. For example, in my case, as a 57-year old Reagan Conservative, I judge Presidential Primary Candidates, and those who vote for them, by the following criteria, as defined by Matt Barber…

Ronald Reagan often spoke of a “three-legged stool” that undergirds true conservatism. The legs are represented by a strong defense, strong free-market economic policies and strong social values. For the stool to remain upright, it must be supported by all three legs. If you snap off even one leg, the stool collapses under its own weight.

A Republican, for instance, who is conservative on social and national defense issues but liberal on fiscal issues is not a Reagan conservative. He is a quasi-conservative socialist.

A Republican who is conservative on fiscal and social issues but liberal on national defense issues is not a Reagan conservative. He is a quasi-conservative dove.

By the same token, a Republican who is conservative on fiscal and national defense issues but liberal on social issues – such as abortion, so-called gay rights or the Second Amendment – is not a Reagan conservative. He is a socio-liberal libertarian.

Put another way: A Republican who is one part William F. Buckley Jr., one part Oliver North and one part Rachel Maddow is no true conservative. He is – well, I’m not exactly sure what he is, but it ain’t pretty. 

  • Another problem, which Republican voters are facing, is the fact that there are no Perfect Candidates. Ronald Reagan is not running for President. Each of the Top Tier Candidates all have their own  good points. Unfortunately, they all have their weak points, as well, just like we voters do. Voters support those candidates whose stance of the important issues most closely resembles their own, a fact which helps to explain why Trump and Cruz are leading the pack.
  • Our defensiveness toward the Republican Candidates comes from the fact that the Republican Establishment has, in several instances, abandoned and betrayed those who placed them in office: average American Voters, living out here in the heartland (or, as those up in the Halls of Power refer to it as, “Flyover Country”). The reaction of Republican Voters in this Primary Season, is, above all else, a repudiation of betrayal of the Republican-held House and Senate. While compromise is, indeed, a part of Washington Politics, capitulation to the opposition party is not. Because of the actions of the Republican Establishment, average Americans have become hyper-vigilant to discrepancies in what a candidate says in the present, and, their actions in the past.

And that, gentle reader, is why we, as Conservatives and potential voters for the Republican Candidate, are allowing the Main Stream Media to lead us around by the nose, “vetting” our candidates, by cause more consternation and infighting, than a bunch of texting teenage girls on Prom Night.

Because of our concerns that whoever winds up as the Republican Candidate for the Office of President of the United States of America represent US, the average American Voter, we are literally, presently, at war with one another, mirroring the infighting going on between the candidates, using the platforms given to us via Political Websites and Facebook Pages.

While vetting the candidates through the use of the New Media is a good thing, it must not be used to tear down each other and destroy our opportunity to undo the damage that years of “Progressive” Political Control in DC has done to our country.

Our mission, now, as Americans, is to decide our own destiny. 

We must not let the Political Elite, on BOTH sides of the aisle, nor the Main Stream Media, pick our candidate for us.

Ronald Reagan once said,

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

A charge to keep WE have.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

 

 

Clinton/Sanders Debate: Two Old Northeast Progressives “Swapping Stories”

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Hil-Bern-600nrdIn case you didn’t know, didn’t care, or you just didn’t want to watch a couple of old white “Progressives” from the Northeast lie like rugs on National Television, there was an actual Democrat Presidential Candidate Debate held in Prime Time on Thursday, and not in the dead of night on the Weekend.

Politico.com reports that

The niceties are finished.

After a string of debates where Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders discussed (and occasionally disagreed about) the fine points of progressive policy, the two finally had a full-fledged throwdown Thursday night.

Clinton accused Sanders of going negative on the campaign trail, telling the Vermont Senator at the Democratic debate that his campaign was smearing her name.

“I think it’s time to end the very artful smear that you and your campaign have been carrying out in recent week,” Clinton said after Sanders talked about getting money out of politics.

Sanders has boasted about not receiving money from Wall street, and has pointed out in recent weeks that Clinton has received large sums in exchange for speaking.

“Sen. Sanders has said he wants to run a positive campaign. I’ve tried to keep my disagreements over issues, but time and time again, by innuendo and by insinuation there is this attack that he is putting forth,” Clinton said.

“Which really comes down to anyone who ever took donations or speaking fees from interest groups has to be bought, and I absolutely reject that Senator. I really don’t think those attacks by insinuation are worthy of you,” Clinton continued

Then she leveled the challenge: “If you have something to say, say it. But I have never changed a view or a vote because of a donation I’ve received.”

Hold on a second. We’ll get back to this “Challenge”

Now about the lies…

Foxnews.com reports that

WASHINGTON –  Hillary Clinton cast the financial industry as an adversary in her presidential campaign — despite the money that industry has poured into her White House effort. Bernie Sanders once again mischaracterized the share of the wealth taken by the very richest Americans.

A look at some of the claims in their latest Democratic presidential debate:

CLINTON on Wall Street: “They are trying to beat me in this primary.”

THE FACTS: Wall Street is not the anti-Clinton monolith she implied. People in the securities and investment industry gave more than $17 million last year to super political action committees supporting her presidential run and nearly $3 million directly to her campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org, a campaign-finance watchdog. Wall Street is the top industry donating to her effort, ahead of the legal profession, non-profit institutions and others.

Clinton is taking heat from Sanders over her Wall Street ties, which go back decades.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Clinton has brought in more money from the financial sector during her four federal campaigns — for Senate and president — than her husband, Bill Clinton, did in his quarter-century political career. In all, more than $44 million was raised for her campaigns. This includes more than $1 out of every $10 of the money contributed for her 2016 campaign.

Clinton has often talked about how much she has raised from teachers, as opposed to big corporate interests. But the $2.93 million given directly to her campaign last year by people in the securities and investment industry surpassed the $2.88 million given by people in education, OpenSecrets found.

SANDERS: “Almost all new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent.”

THE FACTS: This has been a common mantra by Sanders but it relies on outdated numbers. In the first five years of the economic recovery, 2009-2014, the richest 1 percent captured 58 percent of income growth, according to Emmanuel Saez, a University of California economist whose research Sanders uses.

That’s a hefty share, but far short of “almost all.” In the first three years of the recovery, 2009-2012, the richest 1 percent did capture 91 percent of the growth in income. But part of that gain reflected an accounting maneuver as the wealthiest pulled income forward to 2012 in advance of tax increases that took effect in 2013 on the biggest earners.

Many companies paid out greater bonuses to their highest-paid employees in 2012 before the higher tax rates took effect. Those bonuses then fell back in 2013. And in 2014, the bottom 99 percent finally saw incomes rise 3.3 percent, the biggest gain in 15 years. Average wages also showed signs of picking up last year as the unemployment rate fell, suggesting the bottom 99 percent may have also seen gains in 2015.

CLINTON: “I am against American combat troops being in Syria and Iraq. I support special forces. I support trainers. I support the air campaign.”

THE FACTS: Clinton makes a dubious distinction. Although it can be debated whether certain types of military personnel fit the definition of “combat” troops, there is little doubt that special operations forces like those now operating both in Syria and Iraq do.

In the fall, a special operations soldier was killed in a firefight in Iraq during a joint U.S.-Kurdish commando raid on an Islamic State prison.

The Pentagon recently sent up to 200 special operations troops to Iraq to carry out a range of risky missions, including raids against Islamic State targets.

Pilots of fighter aircraft, bombers and other warplanes that have flown over Iraq and Syria, dropping bombs and missiles on Islamic State targets on a daily basis, certainly are engaged in combat.
Clinton said she supports Obama’s reluctance to take the lead in ground combat in Iraq and Syria. But many military members are now engaged in combat.

SANDERS: “You have three out of the four largest banks in America today, bigger than they were, significantly bigger than when we bailed them out because they were too big to fail.”

THE FACTS: Sanders is right that JPMorgan, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are larger than they were in mid-2008, before they received bailout money. But those gains largely reflect mergers and acquisitions that occurred, frequently at the government’s behest, during the financial crisis. JPMorgan bulked up by purchasing Bear Stearns, in a deal facilitated by the Federal Reserve. Bank of America ballooned when it acquired Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo roughly doubled in size when it bought a floundering Wachovia Bank.

But the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul bill, passed in 2010, has forced banks to hold more capital as a cushion against risk and to make future bailouts less likely. That requirement and others has caused several banks, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Citi, to shed assets to avoid growing larger and triggering further oversight.

CLINTON on Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal: “I said that I was holding out that hope that it would be the kind of trade agreement that I was looking for. I waited until it had actually been negotiated because I did want to give the benefit of the doubt to the administration. Once I saw what the outcome was, I opposed it.”

THE FACTS: As Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton was far more enthusiastic about the Pacific trade deal taking shape than she became once she was running for president and trying to appeal to the liberal wing of her party. As secretary she had given speeches around the world in support of the deal under negotiation, saying in Australia in 2012 that it “sets the gold standard in trade agreements,” a cheerleading sentiment she echoed elsewhere.

She’s stated since that the final agreement didn’t address her concerns. But the final version actually had been modified to drop certain provisions that liberal activist groups had opposed.

CLINTON: “I am not going to make promises I can’t keep. I am not going to talk about big ideas like single-payer and then not level with people about how much it will cost.”

THE FACTS: Clinton was taking aim at Sanders’ universal health care coverage plan that he calls “Medicare for all,” and a new independent analysis suggests that she was correct about his understating the cost.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that the tax increases in Sanders’ plan would only cover about 75 percent of the estimated spending under the plan, creating at least a $3 trillion hole over 10 years.

The analysis was based on Sanders’ estimate of how much his plan would spend. If that turns out to be low, then the financing gap would grow.

The group represents deficit foes from both political parties. Leon Panetta, a CIA director and a defense secretary under President Barack Obama, is a co-chairman of its board.

Remember Former Secretary of State Clinton’s challenge from last night, regarding donations that she has received?

“If you have something to say, say it. But I have never changed a view or a vote because of a donation I’ve received.”

Challenge accepted.

Back in April of 2015, NYMag.com reported 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.

With the revelation of “the gift” of massive quantities of Uranium to the Russians and an Iranian Connection regarding some of the money given to the Clinton Foundation, this is not just a scandal involving money and unscrupulous political ladder-climbing through the peddling of “favors”, the actions of the Clintons crossed the line into the abhorrent abyss of treason.

Clinton does not belong in the White House. She belongs in jail.

And, Sanders need to move to the tiny country of Denmark and like the rest of his life in that failed “Socialist Paradise”

Or, he needs to be fitted with a short white jacket with long sleeves that tie behind the back.

Just sayin’.

Until He Comes,

KJ

“In Hillary, We Don’t Trust”

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

untitled (25)Of course you’ve heard about the fact that Hillary won six coin flips in a row?  You know what the odds of that are? It’s 1.7%.  It doesn’t happen.  Anyway, I watched television coverage of Mrs. Clinton’s acceptance last night and there’s this guy that ends up being over her right shoulder as you’re looking at the picture, and he’s got two stickers on each cheek right below each eye, and he’s making weird, odd faces.  It turns out this guy has become a hero of the Internet today because people are replaying this and sending it, tweeting it, Facebooking it all over the place. It’s a comedy piece.  Some guy stands there with Hillary stem-winder serious and telling everybody what she’s gonna do. She’s doing the Hillary screech, the voice that reminds you of your first two ex-wives.  This guy’s back there with these stickers on his face laughing and making faces, totally distracting everybody, and then if you notice Bill Clinton behind her.  And that was… What’s the word?  I was gonna say “scary,” but, no, it was shocking the way Bill Clinton looked last night.  It’s clearly not the 1990s, and there aren’t a bunch of bikini-clad babes running…

Well, there might still be that.  With Bill Clinton, you never know. – Rush Limbaugh, 2/2/2016

The Des Moines Register reported that

It’s Iowa’s nightmare scenario revisited: An extraordinarily close count in the Iowa caucuses — and reports of chaos in precincts, website glitches and coin flips to decide county delegates — are raising questions about accuracy of the count and winner.

This time it’s the Democrats, not the Republicans.

Even as Hillary Clinton trumpeted her Iowa win in New Hampshire on Tuesday, aides for Bernie Sanders said the eyelash-thin margin raised questions and called for a review. The chairwoman of the Iowa Democratic Party rejected that notion, saying the results are final.

The situation echoes the events on the Republican side in the 2012 caucuses, when one winner (Mitt Romney, by eight votes) was named on caucus night, but a closer examination of the paperwork that reflected the head counts showed someone else pulled in more votes (Rick Santorum, by 34 votes). But some precincts were still missing entirely.

Like Republican Party officials in 2012, Democratic Party officials worked into the early morning on caucus night trying to account for results from a handful of tardy precincts.

At 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire announced that Clinton had eked out a slim victory, based on results from 1,682 of 1,683 precincts.

Voters from the final missing Democratic precinct tracked down party officials Tuesday morning to report their results. Sanders won that precinct, Des Moines precinct No. 42, by two delegate equivalents over Clinton.

The Iowa Democratic Party said the updated final tally of delegate equivalents for all the precincts statewide was:

Clinton: 700.59

Sanders: 696.82.

That’s a 3.77-count margin between Clinton, the powerful establishment favorite who early on in the Democratic race was expected to win in a virtual coronation, and Sanders, a democratic socialist who few in Iowa knew much about a year ago.

Sanders campaign aides told the Register they’ve found some discrepancies between tallies at the precinct level and numbers that were reported to the state party. The Iowa Democratic Party determines its winner based not on a head count, like in the Republican caucuses, but on state delegate equivalents, tied to a math formula. And there was enough confusion, and untrained volunteers on Monday night, that errors may have been made.

Team Sanders had its own app that allowed supporters and volunteers to send precinct-level results directly to the campaign. At the same time, caucus chairs sent their official results to the state party, either over a specially built Microsoft app or via phone. Sanders aides asked to sit down with the state party to review the paperwork from the precinct chairs, Batrice said.

“We just want to work with the party and get the questions that are unanswered answered,” she said.

McGuire, in an interview with the Register, said no.

“The answer is that we had all three camps in the tabulation room last night to address any grievances brought forward, and we went over any discrepancies. These are the final results,” she said.

Clinton deemed victor at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday

McGuire in her 2:30 a.m. statement said: “Hillary Clinton has been awarded 699.57 state delegate equivalents, Bernie Sanders has been awarded 695.49 state delegate equivalents, Martin O’Malley has been awarded 7.68 state delegate equivalents and uncommitted has been awarded .46 state delegate equivalents. We still have outstanding results in one precinct — Des Moines 42 — which is worth 2.28 state delegate equivalents. We will report that final precinct when we have confirmed those results with the chair.”

Team Clinton quickly embraced that news, and flatly stated that nothing could change it.

Clinton’s Iowa campaign director, Matt Paul, said in a statement at 2:35 a.m.: “Hillary Clinton has won the Iowa caucus. After thorough reporting — and analysis — of results, there is no uncertainty and Secretary Clinton has clearly won the most national and state delegates. Statistically, there is no outstanding information that could change the results and no way that Senator Sanders can overcome Secretary Clinton’s advantage.”

McGuire repeated that Tuesday afternoon, saying the reporting app had a built-in fail-safe to prevent volunteers from reporting more delegates than were assigned to each precinct.

Clinton, who saw her expected Iowa win slip away in 2008, grasped the prize Tuesday.

“I can tell you, I’ve won and I’ve lost there, and it’s a lot better to win,” she said at a rally in New Hampshire, the state that votes next on the presidential nominating calendar.

But that didn’t quell doubts back in Iowa.

“Politics is a contact sport with few referees, so torturing your opponents with questions about the transparency of an election can be very harmful and damaging,” said Steffen Schmidt, a longtime political observer and professor at Iowa State University in Ames.

Discrepancies can occur in official elections, and caucuses are not even official election events run by the secretary of state’s office, noted Dennis Goldford, a Drake University professor who closely studies the Iowa caucuses.

“The caucus system isn’t built to bear the weight placed on it,” he said. “There aren’t even paper ballots (in the Democratic caucuses) to use for a recount in case something doesn’t add up.”

Democrats have never released actual head counts, and McGuire said they would not be released this time, either. Determining a winner based on state delegate equivalents rather than head count is a key distinction between how the Democrats conduct their caucuses versus conducting a primary, she said. New Hampshire and Iowa are generally careful to maintain such distinctions as part of their effort to preserve their status as the first caucus state and first primary state.

Results for final precinct reported on Tuesday

Reports of disorganization and lack of volunteers also emerged Monday evening. Party officials reported a turnout of 171,109, far less than the record of 240,000 seen in 2008.

Democratic voters reported long lines, too few volunteers, a lack of leadership and confusing signage. In some cases, people waited for an hour in one line, only to learn their precinct was in a different area of the same building. The proceedings were to begin at 7 p.m. but started late in many cases.

The scene at precinct No. 42, the one with the final missing votes, was “chaos” Monday night, said Jill Joseph, a rank-and-file Democratic voter who backed Sanders in the caucuses.

None of the 400-plus Democrats wanted to be in charge of the caucus, so a man who had shown up just to vote reluctantly stepped forward. As Joseph was leaving with the untrained caucus chairman, who is one of her neighbors, “I looked at him and said, ‘Who called in the results of our caucus?’ And we didn’t know.”

The impromptu chairman hand-delivered the results to Polk County Democratic Party Chairman Tom Henderson Tuesday. Sanders won seven county delegates, Clinton won five.

Long lines, confusion reported at many sites
Ames precinct 1-3 started caucusing two hours late, at 9 p.m., because the crowd was so big and the check-in line so slow, said Peter D. Myers, a finance major and member of the student government at Iowa State University, who caucused for the first time.

“There wasn’t a clear person in charge,” Myers said.

Capacity at the caucus site, Heartland Senior Center, was 115, but 300 people turned out, Myers said. At one point, caucusgoers considered moving to the parking lot of the Hy-Vee grocery store.

Myers said he registered to vote in August but “was alarmed to find out I wasn’t on the list, so I had to go to the back of the line. The gentleman in front of me had caucused the past three cycles and he wasn’t on the list, either.”

No one was there to lead the caucus, so “a pregnant lady took charge and counted the Bernie supporters, and a Hillary captain took the small group to a corner and counted the supporters,” he said.

Sanders ended up with four delegates and Clinton one, he said.

A C-SPAN video was circulated widely on Facebook and Twitter with claims it was evidence of fraud. In truth, it was an example of the mayhem at some of the most crowded caucus sites, when nose counts differed between rounds of voting because some people left or the initial count was wrong. In this case, precinct No. 43 in Des Moines, a majority of voters, including Sanders backers, voted against a recount.

An Indianola precinct that gathered in Hubbell Hall at Simpson College had a discrepancy between the number who checked in, and people counted in the first vote.

“The chair and secretary knew the count was off but proceeded anyway,” said Paige Godden, a reporter for the Indianola Record-Herald. “We did the final count at least three times. People were very frustrated by the end.”

New voters made up nearly 40 percent of the caucusgoers — 207 of 521 — at Democratic precinct No. 59 at Des Moines Central Campus, organizers said. The precinct ran out of voter registration forms and had to print more.

When the caucus began, the one-by-one head count discovered 58 more people voting than had checked in. Organizers asked anyone who had not signed in to do so, and then recounted. Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, a Clinton supporter who lives in the precinct, stepped in to help with the recount.

The precinct’s caucus chair, Mark Challis, wasn’t sure if the counts were accurate, but changes wouldn’t have affected the final vote tally, which had Sanders substantially ahead.

Democrat Mary Ann Dorsett of Des Moines told the Register 492 voters turned out in her precinct, but there were only a handful of people assigned to check people in.

“It was a very large room so clearly they expected a large turnout,” Dorsett said. “The lines snaked through the corridor and out the door. It took over an hour to check in. Republicans in the same precinct were seated long before this, and already listening to speeches.”

Dorsett thinks the one-by-one head-counting system is “a real head-scratcher in terms of the possibility of inaccuracy as well as time wasted.”

“If all the smart phones were eliminated, it could have been 1820, and we were re-enacting the roles of a bunch of farmers sitting in a church hall, counting heads. Is this the 21st century?” she said. “This may well be my last caucus unless the Democratic Party cleans up its act.”

GOP is checking results on app vs. paper forms

Meanwhile, Republican Party of Iowa officials are doing a review, comparing the app results for each candidate with what the precinct chairs jotted down on their “e-forms” on caucus night.

“When you’re counting thousands of votes, you’ve always got to be careful,” Iowa GOP spokesman Charlie Szold said.

Microsoft, one of the premiere tech companies in the world, had developed websites to deliver results in real time. But both the Democratic website, idpcaucuses.com, and GOP website, iagopcaucuses.com, struggled intermittently throughout the night, crashing for periods of time and locking out the public from access to the results.

McGuire said the app system the volunteers in the precincts used to file their numbers was never down. “They (Microsoft) had plenty of capacity for our results,” she said.

Microsoft spokeswoman Angela Swanson-Henry said: “National interest in the Iowa caucuses was high, and some who attempted to access websites may have experienced delays which were quickly addressed.”

To quote Elmer Fudd,

Sumpin’ awfuwwy scwewy is goin’ on awound heah.

Was the Political Game of Voter Fraud being perpetrated in Iowa on Tuesday Night, by the Hillary Camp?

Is Michael Moore banned from buffets from coast-to-coast?

Remember the allegations of Democrat Voter Fraud, after the 2012 Presidential Election?

No? Please allow me to remind you, courtesy of, believe it or not, ABC News.

  1. The chairman of the Republican Party for the state of Maine suspected voter fraud in his state after he heard reports that African Americans were turning out at the polls in rural counties.”In some parts of rural Maine, there were dozens, dozens of black people who came in and voted on Election Day. Everybody has a right to vote, but nobody in town knows anyone who’s black,” Webster said. “How did that happen? I don’t know. We’re going to find out.” Census data shows Americans who identify as black or African American made up 1.6 percent of the population in Maine in 2010. It’s tied with North Dakota and Utah for fifth smallest percentage of blacks in the U.S.
  2. …in 59 Philadelphia voting divisions, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.In the entire county, Romney scored less than 100,000 votes, putting him at a measly 14 percent. Republicans in the state tried to use this as evidence of a need for the voter ID laws hotly debated in the state this election season, the Inquirer reported. But ID or no, anyone with unfettered access to a ballot could choose to vote Republican. More than 500 Pennsylvania voters registered complaints about election procedure to the state this election, according to Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele.
  3. In St. Lucie County, Fla., about 175,500 residents were registered to vote on Election Day. But when results came in that night, officials counted more than 247,383 votes. Voter turnout was a whopping 140.92 percent.Where did all the extra votes come from? It turned out some voters had submitted their long ballots on two separate voting cards. Each card had been counted once, meaning many of the votes were double counted. The Examiner reported the real turnout total was closer to 70 percent, a number that conservative outlet suggested was still worthy of investigation for potential voter fraud.
  4. The week of the election, Fox News reported that 200 fake voter application cards had been sent to Hamilton County in Ohio, including one with the name “Adolf Hitler.”  Fox reported the D.C.-based company, Fieldworks, was at fault for submitting the fraudulent registration cards. 

Given the documented track record of the Democrat Party and Hillary Clinton’s own personal record of being dishonest and untrustworthy, I would say that you can bet the house on it.

That is, if under 7 years of Barack Hussein Obama’s failed Economic Policies, you still have one.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

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

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

Oval-Office-Trump-ArtOfTheDealLeading Republican Presidential Primary Candidate, Donald J. Trump, was at the top of the News Cycle all day, yesterday.

I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why did Trump tell Fox News to buzz off?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Leverage.

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

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

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

“You’re in the big leagues, now.”

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

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

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

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

How in the world did Reagan do it? Experience.

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

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

Somehow Reagan had to build a coalition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Similar arrows found the mark for Ronald Reagan.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

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

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

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

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

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

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?

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

The State of the Union Address: While Iran Holds 10 American Sailors Hostage, Obama Has a “Chip Diller” Moment

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

th (55)Have you ever seen the Classic Movie, “Animal House”, about a Fraternity at fictional Faber College, who partied all the time, until the Dean of Students expelled them all?

A young Kevin Bacon played a Gung Ho ROTC Cadet, a member of the snotty fraternity who got the “Animal House” expelled, named Chip Diller. When the Animal House guys exacted their revenge during the surrounding town’s annual parade, Chip was assigned crowd control, in an effort to calm the panicking parade crowd and to avert the resulting stampede.

The young cadet stood in the path of the rapidly exited mob, shouting

Remain calm. All is well! 

Needles to say, he was trampled in the stampede.

Last night, in his last (hopefully) State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama had a “Chip Diller” Moment.

In case you missed it, here’s a summary from Foxnews.com:

President Obama, with an eye on cementing his legacy and countering the narrative on the Republican campaign trail, used his final State of the Union address Tuesday night to defend his economic record – and, in stark language, downplay the threat from the Islamic State.

“Over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands,” the president said, arguing that ISIS fighters “do not threaten our national existence.”

The remarks on ISIS are sure to rile Republican critics who say the president’s strategy for confronting the group is inadequate – particularly just hours after ISIS was blamed for another deadly attack, this time in Istanbul.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, one of the leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination, tweeted afterward that the address was “less a State of the Union and more a state of denial.”

The backdrop of the address undeniably was election-year politics, though Obama is not on the ballot. Throughout the speech, the president took several implicit jabs at the GOP candidates competing for his job, and in doing so sought to shore up his own legacy.

His message to them seemed to be: The sky is not falling.

On the economy and on national security, Obama called the criticism “political hot air.” More broadly, the president sounded a call for “better politics” and bipartisanship, and cast the rancor directed at his administration’s policies as the product of an overheated political system.

“Let me tell you something, the United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period,” Obama said, to those who say America is getting weaker.

And to those who say the economy is just limping along, Obama countered: “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.” He said America’s is the “most durable economy in the world” and one that has improved on his watch.

The defiant remarks were met with skepticism from Republicans in the audience. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office said the “lofty platitudes” still did not explain how to defeat ISIS and get the economy back on track.

In the official GOP response, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley challenged the president’s message on terror, saying the country is facing threats like few others in recent memory and the president is unwilling or unable to deal with it. At the same time, she urged Americans to avoid following the “angriest voices.”

On that, Haley and Obama had a common message. In his address, Obama returned repeatedly to a warning that the country faces a choice in a time of “extraordinary change” – between facing the future with “confidence” or with “fear.”

He decried politicians who “insult Muslims” or target people “because of race or religion,” an implicit reference to some of the comments made on the Republican campaign trail including from Donald Trump. And he made a reference to remarks from Cruz, saying the answer to threats “needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet bomb civilians.”

Cruz responded on Twitter, “We need a president who will defeat radical Islamic terrorism.”

But Obama delivered pointed remarks on the nature of the terror threat. He said the priority remains protecting the American people from terrorism, but went on to play down the ISIS problem.

“Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages, they pose an enormous danger to civilians. They have to be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence,” Obama said. “That is the story ISIL wants to tell; that’s the kind of propaganda they use to recruit.”

He also dug in on what effectively is an administration policy of not referring to the terror threat as radical Islam. He urged against “echoing the lie that ISIL is somehow representative of one of the world’s largest religions,” and said: “We just need to call them what they are – killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed.”

In a statement after the speech, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., accused him of “pushing these growing threats to the next administration.”

The president from the start was by turns combative and casual, delivering an unconventional address that avoided a detailed to-do list. From the outset, he said he’d “go easy” on the laundry list of proposals – and focus more broadly “on our future.”

“For this final one, I’m going to try to make it a little shorter. I know some of you are antsy to get back to Iowa,” he joked.

He also began, and closed, his address with a call for bipartisan cooperation on key issues, saying Washington “might surprise the cynics.” On issues ranging from criminal justice reform to prescription drug abuse, Obama suggested both parties can find common ground.

The president delivered his seventh and final State of the Union address as he faces an invigorated opposition in both houses of Congress and the prospect of his policies becoming unraveled if a Republican wins the White House in November.

His administration, though, is still trying to deliver on promises made since his first inauguration – most notably, the vow to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

He renewed that vow Tuesday, saying he will “keep working to shut down the prison at Guantanamo.”

“It is expensive, it is unnecessary, and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies,” he said, without saying whether he might resort to executive action to achieve his goal.

Despite vowing to avoid the to-do list, Obama did tick off several other final-year goals: including raising the minimum wage, doing more on gun control and pushing for free community college – a proposal left over from last year’s agenda. He also tapped Vice President Biden to lead “mission control” in a new national effort to research a cure for cancer.

Hanging over Tuesday’s address, aside from the terror attack in Istanbul, was yet another diplomatic dispute involving Iran — as it emerged Iran was holding 10 U.S. Navy sailors after they apparently drifted into Iranian waters.

Obama did not address the dispute in the State of the Union, though Republicans pointed to the incident in renewing their concerns about the Iran nuclear deal.

As I sit down to write today’s blog, our country finds itself  under attack, by an old established enemy, whom  Obama has given the means, though a lopsided “Gentleman’s Agreement, by which to annihilate America through a Nuclear Bomb.

The Rogue Radical Islamic State Sponsor of Terror, Iran, has kidnapped nine American men and an American woman, who voluntarily enlisted in OUR Navy, in the process crippling one of Our Navy’s boats, while their Commander-in -Chief publicly ignored their plight and Iran’s hostile act, while chastising us for being worry about the safety of our nation, as regards to the plans of Radical Islamists, a political ideology, masquerading as a religion, which he claims has nothing to do with the Followers of the “Warrior Prophet”, Mohammed.

President Barack Hussein Obama is in a trap of his own making. It started with his Speech to the Muslim World at the University of Cairo, shortly after his first Inauguration as President, in which he sounded like a subservient dhimmi.

In the years that followed, his genteel Foreign Policy toward the Barbarians of the Muslim World, known as “Smart Power!”, led to a never-ending Radical Islamic Revolution in the Middle East, known as Arab Spring, through which Moderate Muslim Dictators were replaced by Radical Muslim Dictators. It also led to the increased threat of the extermination of Israel, and the changing of NASA into a Muslim Outreach Program.

The sixth President of the United States of America, John Quincy Adams, wrote the following about the nature of Islam:

THE ESSENCE OF HIS [MUHAMMAD’S] DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE [Adams’ capital letters]… Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant… While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and goodwill towards men…The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.

In contrast, our present Petulant President Pantywaist will not even call Radical Islam by its name, as exhibited last night.

He has already proclaimed that we are not at war with Islam.

So, how can America win this war against Radical Islam, if the President of our country will not even admit that we are in one?

Barack Hussein Obama’s disdain for all of the core values of our country, such as American Exceptionalism, American Rugged Individualism, American Achievement, the American Family Unit, and the Faith of Our Fathers, has been shown through his words and actions, over and over again, through this long National Nightmare, through which we have been suffering, hoping fervently that the light at the end of the tunnel, is not an oncoming train…or a Nuclear Explosion.

The Good News is…

As a Constitutional Republic, those of us, the overwhelming majority of Americans who still believe in the concept of right and wrong, maintain the Rights which our Founding Fathers bestowed upon us, to speak our mind…regardless of what the current Presidential Administration, the Main Stream Media, and the rest of the mindless sycophants, who worship at the dual altars of popular culture and political correctness, want us to do.

We shall not be assimilated into the Hive-Mind.

That still, small voice which resides within each one of us, has led Americans to do great things, in service to their country and the concept of American Freedom, as personified by Lady Liberty, standing so majestically in New York Harbor.

God gave us this nation, ensconced in the concept of “Liberty and Justice for all”.

By His Grace, we will keep it.

As President Ronald Wilson Reagan, himself, said,

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Sunday Morning Thoughts: A Nation Founded By Faith Will Not Be Marginalized

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics1 Comment

WashingtonPrayingAs I sit here on an American Sunday morning, my bride sound asleep, here in the quiet of my stately mansion, a small 3 Bedroom Home in NW Mississippi, I ponder the reaction of some to my posts concerning the ongoing attempt by a tyrannical minority to marginalize the cultural and political clout of Christian Americans, the overwhelming majority of American Citizens…and I try not to lose my Witness.

For those that do not know what that means, it means to behave in such a manner that people will doubt that you’re actually a Christian…not unlike a certain resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC.

But, I digress…

The reaction of  Modern American Liberals to my posts has hardly been unexpected.

Of course, those who responded, immediately denied that our Founding Fathers were Christians and that our country was founded on a Judeo-Christian belief system.

Evidently, they had never read anything, except what their like-minded non-believing soothsayers allowed them to.  Or else, they would have read historical documents like President George Washington’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, written on November 1, 1777, and found at wallbuilders.com:

The committee appointed to prepare a recommendation to the several states, to set apart a day of public thanksgiving, brought in a report; which was taken into consideration, and agreed to as follows:

Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to him for benefits received, and to implore such farther blessings as they stand in need of; and it having pleased him in his abundant mercy not only to continue to us the innumerable bounties of his common providence, but also smile upon us in the prosecution of a just and necessary war, for the defense and establishment of our unalienable rights and liberties; particularly in that he hath been pleased in so great a measure to prosper the means used for the support of our troops and to crown our arms with most signal success:

It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive powers of these United States, to set apart Thursday, the 18th day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise; that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor; and that together with their sincere acknowledgments and offerings, they may join the penitent confession of their manifold sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor, and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance; that it may please him graciously to afford his blessings on the governments of these states respectively, and prosper the public council of the whole; to inspire our commanders both by land and sea, and all under them, with that wisdom and fortitude which may render them fit instruments, under the providence of Almighty God, to secure for these United States the greatest of all blessings, independence and peace; that it may please him to prosper the trade and manufactures of the people and the labor of the husbandman, that our land may yield its increase; to take schools and seminaries of education, so necessary for cultivating the principles of true liberty, virtue and piety, under his nurturing hand, and to prosper the means of religion for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.

And it is further recommended, that servile labor, and such recreation as, though at other times innocent, may be unbecoming the purpose of this appointment, be omitted on so solemn an occasion.

And, then all the Liberals responders continued to deny Jefferson’s Christianity.

Liberals like to bring up the fact that he wrote a version of the Bible which left out Christ’s miracles.  What they are reluctant to do, though, is explain why he wrote his book that way.  David Barton explains on wallbuilders.com:

The reader [of a newspaper article which Barton is replying to], as do many others, claimed that Jefferson omitted all miraculous events of Jesus from his “Bible.” Rarely do those who make this claim let Jefferson speak for himself. Jefferson’s own words explain that his intent for that book was not for it to be a “Bible,” but rather for it to be a primer for the Indians on the teachings of Christ (which is why Jefferson titled that work, “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth”). What Jefferson did was to take the “red letter” portions of the New Testament and publish these teachings in order to introduce the Indians to Christian morality. And as President of the United States, Jefferson signed a treaty with the Kaskaskia tribe wherein he provided—at the government’s expense—Christian missionaries to the Indians. In fact, Jefferson himself declared, “I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.” While many might question this claim, the fact remains that Jefferson called himself a Christian, not a deist.

Finally, the Liberals who replied to my blogs insisted that Crosses and other Chrstian symbols have no place in the Public Square.  They wish for Christians to remain unseen and unheard from, worshiping in private.

Well,  y’all can wish for a unicorn to magically appear in your backyard…but that ain’t gonna happen, either.

As a free nation, all you who are non-believers have every right to exercise your faith.

However, as Orthodox Rabbi Daniel Lapin of the Jewish Policy Center clearly explains:

[I] understand that I live . . . in a Christian nation, albeit one where I can follow my faith as long as it doesn’t conflict with the nation’s principles. The same option is open to all Americans and will be available only as long as this nation’s Christian roots are acknowledged and honored.

…Without a vibrant and vital Christianity, America is doomed, and without America, the west is doomed. Which is why I, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, devoted to Jewish survival, the Torah, and Israel am so terrified of American Christianity caving in. God help Jews if America ever becomes a post-Christian society! Just think of Europe!

Is the Rabbi prophetic? I pray that he isn’t.

As we enter this Election Year, I believe that those who have attempted to silence the overwhelming majority of Americans, who still practice the Faith of Our Fathers, are going to find out that a nation founded by faith will not be marginalized.

Until He Comes,

KJ