Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 40

• The Invisible Hand of Salvation: Each sinner will save him/herself through self-interest—they don’t want to go to Hell.
• The reason motherships make it to planets and not fatherships is because fatherships didn’t stop and ask for directions and are now lost.
• Obama says that Trump is unfit to be president. Well, that didn’t stop Obama from being elected president twice.
• There is quite a few “mothers against” organizations. But there isn’t a “mothers for personal responsibility” or even “mothers for self-control.” Hmmm.
• The Left always talks about “sharing the wealth” but never “sharing the power” especially with the republicans.
• To the Left, woman and minority votes matter. Nothing else.
• An artificial intelligence android, robot or computer that does not care about human life or dignity could very easily turn into a sociopath. After all it is not human.
• The truth exists. Mankind may not always find the truth but it does exist because God knows about it.
• I don’t care if illegal immigrants (or for that matter legal immigrants) love Americans or not. I just want them to be peaceful and law abiding. If they love the Constitution even better.
• If a dictator wanted to oppress a country he would legalize marijuana. Not only legalize it but encourage it and possibly even supply it. Why? Because marijuana dulls the mind and a person doesn’t know if he/she is being oppressed. I wonder if that’s why the Left wants it legalized? Hmm.

Your Brain on Pot: Reasons to Avoid Marijuana

From News Max.com (Dec. 6, 2016):

More than half of our states have legalized marijuana for medical use, and the list of those legalizing recreational marijuana is growing rapidly. Many experts have focused on the positive medical aspects of marijuana to ease certain physical problems, such as chronic pain from nerve damage and painful muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis.

However, marijuana contains over 400 chemicals, and their impact on the brain and body is still largely unknown. Although studies have warned of the dangers of smoking pot and its effect on the brain for decades, two recent studies are even more troubling in light of the rush to legalize its recreational use.

"The proponents of legalization tried to make the medicinal benefits the focus and ignored the numerous damaging effects," neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock told Newsmax Health.

The most recent study, which was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, found that smoking marijuana lowers blood flow in every area of the brain, including those areas especially vulnerable to Alzheimer's.

Study participants included almost 1,000 marijuana smokers who had psychiatric problems that were resistant to treatment. They underwent a sophisticated imaging study called single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) that evaluates blood flow and activity patterns.

Compared to healthy non-marijuana users, researchers at Amen Clinics found abnormally low blood flow in almost every area of the brain in virtually every patient who used marijuana. The hippocampus, an area of the brain known to be impacted by Alzheimer's, was especially affected. [read more]

The article goes on to say that abusing pot makes you more psychotic. That’s not good.

Popular Science article (July 1, 2013): SCIENCE CONFIRMS THE OBVIOUS: SMOKING POT MAKES YOU LESS MOTIVATED

Progressive Liars Part IV: Woodrow Wilson

Speaking to business leaders at the Time Squares Hotel Astor, Wilson pushed back against the complaints that his ideas opposed the free enterprise system. He believed that wealthy families such as the Astors had turned the American Republic into their own fiefdom. The rich, he said, had to be reined in and their wealth confiscated for the public good, if necessary:

The very thing that government cannot let alone is business.

Government cannot take its hands off business. Government must regulate business because that is the foundation of every other relationship.

The tragic sinking of the Titanic, a ship that its owners boasted was unsinkable, was the consequence of a hubristic, humanist assumption about man’s ability to control natural law and to defy the will of God. And so was the candidacy of Woodrow Wilson.

Few presidents have displayed such open contempt for the Constitution they swore to preserve, protect and defend. Even fewer had such severe disdain for women, minorities and anyone else who deviated from Wilson’s view of the “perfect citizen.”

Source: Progressive Liars Part IV: Woodrow Wilson.

Basically, the “perfect citizen” is anyone who believes the Left’s ideology otherwise your an unbeliever or at worst an inferior person or a “deplorable.”

Here are some FEE.org articles on Wilson:

• Woodrow Wilson: This So-Called Progressive was a Dedicated Racist
• Should We Follow George Washington or Woodrow Wilson?

Woodrow Wilson Asks “What Is Progress?”

What is the Proper Role of Governments Lecture Notes

1. Punish evil, reward good. Romans 13.
2. For Israel then, not for us now.
3. God is sovereign over all nations.
4. Serve the people and seek the good of the people.
5. Citzens should obey the laws (usually).
6. Safeguard liberty.
7. Church and state have a relationship that is distinct.
8. Law applies even to rulers.
9. The Bible gives support to democracy.
10. Nations should value patrotism.

Source: What is the Proper Role of Government? lecture from Politics and the Bible.org.

How to Repeal and Replace Obamacare

From Fee.org (Dec. 8):

Vice President-elect Mike Pence recently described Price to Fox News as “someone who literally, for the last half a dozen years, has been in the forefront of efforts, not only to repeal Obamacare, but put forward common sense, free-market solutions that will lower the cost of health insurance, without growing the size of government.”

Jason Miller, Communications Director for the Trump transition team, told the San Francisco Gate that replacing the ACA is "one of the things he's going to lead the charge on as secretary of HHS."

Lowering the Cost of Care

Evidence is scant that Obamacare did anything to help with the biggest problem facing the American healthcare system: the cost of care. According to Consumer Reports, health care spending is at $3 trillion, making it alone the world’s fifth-largest economy. In the US, health care costs nearly double what the rest of the developed world is paying per person.

One reason healthcare in America is so expensive is that there are no more actual health insurance companies in this country. Instead, insurance companies have become cost-pools.

Consumer Reports sums it up nicely: “If you have health insurance, you may think [the cost of care] doesn’t matter because someone else is paying the bill.”

Health care works nothing like other market transactions. As a consumer, you are a bystander to the real action, which takes place between providers—hospitals, doctors, labs, drug companies, and device manufacturers—and the private and governmental entities that pay them. Those same providers are also pushing Americans into newer and more expensive treatments, even when there’s no evidence they’re any better.

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“What currently passes for health insurance in America is really just prepaid health care — on a kind of all-you-can-consume buffet card,” San Jose State University Economics instructor Warren C. Gibson wrote. “There is no price transparency. The resulting overconsumption makes premiums skyrocket, and health resources get misallocated relative to genuine wants and needs.”

“There is no such thing as a legitimate price for anything in healthcare,” according to George Halvorson, former chairman of Kaiser Permanente, the giant health maintenance organization based in California. “Prices are made up depending on who the payer is.”

1. Separating employment and health insurance. By killing the requirement that larger employers provide health insurance, the Empowering Patients First Act helps to sever the tie between employment and health insurance. Another method for severing that tie in the bill is a provision that limits how much tax-free health insurance coverage businesses can offer their employees. Individual employee could only get $8,000 worth of tax-free health insurance, and families $20,000, adjusted for inflation.
2. Incentivizing smart choices. Up to 30% of Americans’ medical care is unnecessary, according to the Congressional Budget Office. This is a natural result of the fee-for-service payment model. It means that a doctor who innovates a way to do with one CT scan what used to require three, is discouraged from implementing the new practice because it means the hospital loses money.
3. Re-legalizing low-cost catastrophic care plans. The ACA outlawed catastrophic care plans. By forcing insurers to cover a variety of treatments and procedures of varying necessity, the ACA made low-cost plans illegal.

[read more]

It’s a good start to get rid of the Unaffordable No-Care Act. President-elect Trump should have a look at it if he hasn’t already.

Progressive Liars Part III: Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger, the so-called mother of birth control and founder of what has become modern day Planned Parenthood, believed in a policy of improvement to “create a race of thoroughbreds.”

In 1922, Sanger wrote:

Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly. People who cannot support their own offspring are encouraged by church and state to produce large families. Many of the children thus begotten are diseased and feebleminded. Many become criminals. Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to the maintenance of those who should have never been born.

In 1926, Sanger presented her views to a women’s chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, which led to more speaking engagements to similar groups. How did an American woman arrive at this kind of thinking? As with many progressive leaders, a traumatic childhood event helped shape her radical beliefs about preventing birth among certain “undesirables.”

Source: Progressive Liars Part III: Margaret Sanger.

Karl Marx called the “undesirables” lumpenproletariats- the beggars, prostitutes, etc. He really had no use for the poor either. His main concern was the middle class and the wealthy business owners. Then there was Hitler. He just exterminated his “undesirables.”

Karl Marx, Western Civilization and Hypocrisy

Both theoretician and  practitioner, Marx strove to destroy Western civilization as we know it, by unraveling both strands of its cultural DNA and replacing them with his version of communism.

He repudiated the Abrahamic faiths with dialectical materialism: No God, one book (Das Kapital), one pamphlet (the Communist Manifesto), one profit (Karl Marx). He defied Aristotle by disording the hierarchy of arts and sciences, and promoting economics uber alles. He placed politics--and therefore all of the other arts and sciences under central economic control. This economic theory was intended to remedy the grevious wrongs suffered by the working classes during the Industrial Revolution, and was meant to spread worldwide. Capitalism was seen as evil, communism as good.

Marx himself privately envied the lives and lifestyles of the so-called "petty bourgeoisie"-- the middle class-- whom he accused of complicity in exploiting the proletariat. Having found a friend and benefactor in Frederick Engels, who himself had inherited factories in England's industrialized Midlands, Marx is eventually managed to lead the pampered upper-middle-class lifestyle that he otherwise sought to destroy--in a London town house and paid for by the sweat of the workers in Engels' factories.

……………..

Nonetheless, Marxism represented the terminus of a widespread romantic and utopian European rebellion against the myriad sufferings of the hapless masses, imposed by successive centuries and layers of feudalism, monarchy, theocracy, mercantilism, imperialism, and industrialization.  The ongoing democratic and socialist reforms were not enough for Marx, who sought more rapid and more radical change.

Source: The Middle Way. Finding Happiness in a World of Extremes  (2007) by Lou Marinoff, Ph. D.

Capitalism is seen today by most of the far-Left as evil especially by far-Left professors. Then they teach this warped view to their students who grow up and teach this hate to their young. The hate continues. It doesn’t help if the parents of the students believe this crap too.

As for the Marx living a pampered upper-middle-class lifestyle—that’s expected. After all he is special—he’s one of the Elites.

The Intellectual Conceit of IQ Ideology

From Fee.org:

The cultural fascination with the idea of an “intelligence quotient” or IQ seems to be experiencing a resurgence. Relentless testing is a feature of schooling and school admissions, and tests are used for a variety of occupational screenings. The practice reflects an intuition we all have: some bulbs are brighter than others. Surely there is nothing wrong with knowing, measuring, and acting on that information, however difficult it might be to assess.

Where matters become elusive is in codifying those skills, reducing them all to a single quantitative number, aggregating them based on other demographic traits, assessing the variability of the results, comparing the results across large population groups, determining the variety of causal factors – genetic, environmental, sheer personal determination – that make up what we call intelligence, and cobbling together a plan for what to do with the results.

Here we have a much more complex problem, as complex as the human mind itself. The amatuer commentator might read a book on the topic and hope to come away with a sense that within this literature we find the key to the rise and fall of whole civilizations. The would-be central planner salivates at the prospect! But the more you read, the less certain you become, and the more in awe of the unknowns, the surprises, and the way the real world continues to defy the predictions of the scientific elite.

The IQ as a Central Planning Tool

And then there are the social and political implications of the efforts. What’s not usually understood is that the search for some measurable standard of intelligence – and implicitly human value itself – has a deep history that is bound up with the emergence of the planned society, eugenics, and the 20th century leviathan state.

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The story of IQ begins at the end of the Franco-Prussian war when France’s civic institutions were remodelled to never lose another war. The prevailing theory was that France lacked the technical skills necessary for modern warfare. Citizens needed training and that meant education reform. Schooling would raise up a citizen army and therefore must be forced. From 1879 to 1886, legislation imposed compulsory schooling on the entire population.

With all kids now forced into non-religious schools, it was time to impose a rational method on steering the conscripts into socially and politically optimal paths. In 1904, just as fascination with the idea of scientific socialism had gained fashion, the French Ministry of Education contacted the psychologist Alfred Binet (1857-1911) to come up with some assessment test. He came up with a series of questions from easiest to hardest, and ranked the kids based on their performance of the tests.

The result was the Binet-Simon scale. From Binet’s point of view, the only purpose was to identify which kids needed special focus and attention so that they would not be left behind. But the idea of quantity, ranking, and assessing cognitive performance caught on in the United States, where eugenics was a prevailing intellectual fashion. It was driving public policy in labor regulations, immigration, forced sterilizations, marriage licenses, welfare policy, business regulation, and segregation strategies.

The first American enthusiast for Binet’s work was Henry H. Goddard, a leading champion of eugenics and a champion of the planning state. In 1908, Goddard translated Binet’s work and popularized it among the intellectual classes. He turned what might have been a humanitarian push to provide remedial help to students into a weapon of war against the weak.

What did Goddard believe could be done with his insights?

He summarized his political outlook as follows:

“Democracy, then, means that the people rule by selecting the wisest, most intelligent, and most human to tell them what to do to be happy. Thus Democracy is a method for arriving at a truly benevolent aristocracy. Such a consummation will be reached when the most intelligent learn to apply their intelligence…. High intelligence must so work for the welfare of the masses as to command their respect and affection.”

What’s more, “society must be so organized that these people of limited intelligence shall not be given, or allowed to hold, positions that require more intelligence than they possess. And in the positions that they can fill, they must be treated in accordance with their level of intelligence. A society organized on this basis would be a perfect society.”

Toward this end, he broke down the human population into normative categories, the underperforming of whom he labelled imbeciles, morons, and idiots – designations that survive to this day. He proposed a new form of social order in which an elite of intellectuals assigns tasks and life stations based on test results.  [read more]

Interesting article. There is no such thing as a perfect society because people can’t be made to be perfect—only God can do that although sometimes Big Gov thinks it’s God.

In the article, the author talks about three economic issues that contradict the IQ ideology:

1. Consumers have odd tastes that have little to do with intelligence, scientifically defined.  For instance, in racing (car, boat, etc.) intelligence is not the first trait that stands out.
2. The law of association makes everyone valuable. A core belief of the IQ ideology is that smart people, as measured by tests, are more valuable to the social order than dumber people. But economics has made a different discovery. It turns out that through the division of labor, or what Ludwig von Mises called the “law of association,” everyone can be valuable to everyone else, regardless of aptitude.
3. Intelligence necessary for the building of a great society does not reside in the minds of particular individuals. The highest intelligence of the social order resides in the processes and institutions of society itself. It doesn’t exist in total in any single mind and it doesn’t emerge consciously from the plans of any group.

Will socialists and the far-Left or should I say the alt-Left ever get the third point? Not until they trust people to make their own decisions about their lives. Once they can see people as adults not as children or worse cattle then they will trust the general population.

Progressive Liars Part II: German Roots

To find the roots of progressivism, one has to go back to Germany in the 1500s, and the Protestant Reformation against the Catholic Church by Martin Luther. Was Luther a progressive? Hardly, but his ideas about man’s relationship with God have morphed and metastasized the past 500 years into something unrecognizable from what he originally intended. Luther’s declaration that man could have a personal relationship with God without enlisting a papal leader inadvertently started the ball rolling toward progressivism.

More than two centuries later in the late 1700s, German professor George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel would use his disbelief in God for a similar purpose — to better humanity. After surviving an epidemic, Hegel’s views on God were irrevocably changed. Hegel concluded that experts and knowledgeable persons should rule — not God — with the most perfect government and unlimited authority over the individual. Through the State and its rulers, man would essentially become God on earth. This was the foundational principle that eventually became known as progressivism.

Source: Progressive Liars Part II: German Roots.

Hegel influenced Karl Marx and Frederick Engels—the two founders of Communism.

The Right Problems

Below is Herman Cain’s important problems to solve:

1. Balance the budget.
2. Replace the tax code.
3. Restructure social security.
4. Restructure Medicare and Medicaid.
5. Secure the border and enforce existing immigration laws.
6. Achieving true energy independence and security.
7. Dramatically reduce federal regulations.
8. Enforce our constitution and laws.
9. Rebuilding our military.

Source: The Right Problems: What the President, Congress, and Every Candidate Should Be Working On (2016) by Herman Cain.

Good ideas. Interesting book.

5 Ideas at the Heart of Socialism

From FEE.org:

Marx and the Marxists would have us believe that socialism is inevitable, that it will embrace the world as surely as the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. As long as men have free will (the power to choose right over wrong), however, nothing that involves human volition can ever be inevitable. If socialism comes, it will come because men choose to embrace its principles.

Socialism is an age-old failure, yet the socialist idea constitutes the chief threat to liberty today. As I see it, socialism can be broken down into five ideas:

1. The Pass-a-Law Syndrome

Passing laws has become a national pastime. Business in trouble? Pass a law to give it public subsidies or restrict its freedom of action. Poverty? Pass a law to abolish it. Perhaps America needs a law against passing more laws.

Almost invariably, a new law means: (a) more taxes to finance its administration, (b) additional government officials to regulate some heretofore unregulated aspect of life, and (c) penalties for violating the law. In brief, more laws mean more regimentation, more coercion. Let there be no doubt about what the word coercion means: force, plunder, compulsion, restraint. Synonyms for the verb form of the word are even more instructive: impel, exact, subject, conscript, extort, wring, pry, twist, dragoon, bludgeon, and squeeze.

When government intervenes in the free economy, bureaucrats and politicians spend most of their time undoing their own handiwork. To repair the damage of provision A, they pass provision B. Then they find that to repair provision B, they need provision C, and to undo C, they need D, and so on until the alphabet and our freedoms are exhausted.

2. The Get-Something-from-Government Fantasy

Government by definition has nothing to distribute except what it first takes from people. Taxes are not donations.

In the welfare state this basic fact gets lost in the rush for special favors and giveaways. People speak of “government money” as if it were truly free.

3. The Pass-the-Buck Psychosis

Recently, a welfare recipient wrote her welfare office and demanded, “This is my sixth child. What are you going to do about it?”

An individual is victim to the pass-the-buck psychosis when he abandons himself as the solver of his problems. He might say, “My problems are really not mine at all. They are society’s, and if society doesn’t solve them and solve them quickly, there’s going to be trouble!”

Socialism thrives on the shirking of responsibility. When men lose their spirit of independence and initiative, their confidence in themselves, they become clay in the hands of tyrants and despots.

4. The Know-It-All Affliction

Leonard Read, in “The Free Market and Its Enemy,” identified “know-it-allness” as a central feature of the socialist idea. The know-it-all is a meddler in the affairs of others. His attitude can be expressed in this way: “I know what’s best for you, but I’m not content to merely convince you of my rightness; I’d rather force you to adopt my ways.” The know-it-all evinces arrogance and a lack of tolerance for the great diversity among people.

In government, the know-it-all refrain sounds like this: “If I didn’t think of it, then it can’t be done, and since it can’t be done, we must prevent anyone from trying.” A group of West Coast businessmen once ran into this snag when their request to operate barge service between the Pacific Northwest and Southern California was denied by the (now-defunct) Interstate Commerce Commission because the agency felt that the group could not operate such a service profitably.

5. The Envy Obsession

Coveting the wealth and income of others has given rise to a sizable chunk of today’s socialist legislation. Envy is the fuel that runs the engine of redistribution. Surely, the many soak-the-rich schemes are rooted in envy and covetousness.

What happens when people are obsessed with envy? They blame those who are better off than themselves for their troubles. Society is fractured into classes and faction preys on faction. Civilizations have been known to crumble under the weight of envy and the disrespect for property it entails.

A Common Thread

A common thread runs through these five socialist ideas. They all appeal to man’s darker side: the primitive, noncreative, slothful, dependent, demoralizing, unproductive, and destructive side of human nature. No society can long endure if its people practice such suicidal notions.   [read more]

Socialism is just about control of the masses—that’s what the socialists and the Left call everyone except themselves. They are sheep herders and the masses are the sheep who need to be guided.

Progressive Liars Part I: Fear and Hope

Chicago coliseum, July 9, 1896: Thirty-six-year old William Jennings Bryan put forth the Democratic Party’s proposed national platform to a cheering crowd that frantically waved red bandannas in a sign of solidarity. Bryan became convinced that victory was his. A new monetary policy based on the coinage of silver, free silver, had proven to be an even more enticing message than he had expected. The new supply of money would relieve crippling debt for the impoverished voters Bryan sought to mobilize. As he neared the climax of his remarks, he mustered every last ounce of energy and unleashed some of the most famous lines in American political rhetoric:

If they dare come out in the open field,” he thundered, “And defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nations of the world and having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and the toiling masses.

Bryan’s speech launched the era of progressivism, featuring the biggest liars in American history. These liars achieved their so-called progress using fear and hope, two uniquely human feelings, to impose their will upon mankind.

Source: Progressive Liars Part I: Fear and Hope.

Once the gold standard was removed, Congress had no external discipline.

Why the 2016 Election Proves America Needs the Electoral College

From The Daily Signal.com (Nov. 14):

In the last week since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in a stunning electoral blowout, there have been calls from many on the left to abolish America’s unique presidential election system.

It still hasn’t been settled whether Trump or Clinton won the popular vote, but many Democrats are upset about the possibility that their candidate may have won more total votes, yet lost the election.

Progressives are taking aim at the Electoral College and want to replace it with a national popular vote. This would both remove the indirect mediation of the electors’ votes, and more damagingly, eliminate the power of states in choosing a president.

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The ‘Fairness’ of the Electoral College

As designed in the Constitution, America’s presidential election is very much a product of the states—channeling the principle of “federalism” that the Founders cherished.

Smaller states receive a slightly higher number of votes compared to their population than more populous ones, which detractors of the Electoral College claim damages the idea of one man, one vote.

Many say this system is “unfair,” and that the total number of individual votes from all the states is a more accurate gauge for who the president should be. But, would it be fair for America’s chief executive to mostly be the product of a few urban centers in California, New York, and Texas?

The Electoral College system was designed to ensure that presidents would have to receive support from a diverse array of people around the country.

Modern candidates have to accommodate farmers in rural states, factory workers in industrial states, and software engineers in tech-dominated states. The president must consider the needs and opinions of people across the country instead of just the views of a few, highly populated urban centers.

The Electoral College ensures that the interests of “flyover country” in middle America cannot be ignored.  [read more]

What the Left doesn’t think about is one day in the future there might be a time when a republican candidate or a non-Left candidate will win the presidential election and get both the popular vote and the electoral vote. Then again they think everyone will always love them like parental figures. Then you have those like elites like Hillary who would rather just skip the vote altogether and just be annointed.

Even if Donald Trump won the popular vote too, the Left would just way they were duped by a con man. The masses are never duped by Left of course. The Left never con or lie to the public like Hillary did to the mothers who lost their sons over in Benghazi.

Seven Executive Orders Trump Should Reverse

From The Daily Signal.com (Nov 10):

Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress, not the president, creates the laws. Article I of the Constitution grants enumerated legislative powers to Congress. The Constitution assigns the executive the duty to enforce the law, and Article II, Section 3 requires that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

However, throughout the last eight years, we have seen the Obama administration continually abuse the power of the executive branch by issuing unconstitutional, unilateral executive actions to push its agenda. The “old days” of Congress creating our laws have become a distant memory.

President Barack Obama even went so far as to announce his unilateralism, saying, “We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone.”

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As long promised, Trump should use the first 100 days of his administration to repeal every illegal executive action the Obama administration has issued while in office.

Here is a list of the seven areas with the most damaging executive actions signed during the Obama administration that must be repealed:

1. Crony Exemptions to Obamacare
2. Executive Amnesty. The new president must repeal Obama’s unilateral changes to our nation’s immigration laws, which exempted certain categories of illegal aliens from being deported. (This bar on deportations was halted by a court order, but the underlying exemption still remains on the books.)
3. Environmental Protection Agency Overreaches. Trump must repeal Obama’s multiple illegitimate expansions of EPA rules. These new rules have imposed huge costs on society and are crippling the U.S. energy sector.
4. Appeasement of Iran. Trump must repeal the executive order that single-handedly removed U.S. sanctions on Iran. These sanctions provided key leverage to the U.S. in negotiations with Iran, and their removal has cleared Iran’s path in developing a nuclear weapon.
5. Climate Change Bureaucracy. Trump must repeal the executive orderthat purports to “prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change.” This action from Obama created manifold new justifications for government spending based on inconclusive science.
6. Life and Religious Liberty. Trump should reverse Obamacare’s unprecedented taxpayer funding of abortion. He should also direct the secretary of Health and Human Services to undertake a rulemaking process that will end the mandate for insurance to cover abortion-inducing drugs and contraception, along with “gender transition” therapies and surgeries.
7. “Gender Identity.” Trump should repeal the Obama administration’s Title IX guidance equating “gender identity” with “biological sex.” The Department of Justice and Department of Education have wielded this guidance to punish educational institutions for “discrimination” under Title IX, simply for having separate showers,

By making the repeal of these executive actions a priority, the Trump administration will have an easy opportunity to right some of the wrongs of the past administration.locker rooms, and bathrooms for men and women.  [read more]

I agree Donald Trump should resind those executive orders and then some. It was a blatent abuse of power—made the Congress seem obsolete. Then again Emperor Obama didn’t care.

When ISIS Rules

At first, Lattif said, ISIS treated civilians “gently,” even assuming some of the civil administrative duties that had been handled by volunteers and the FSA. They fixed damaged roads, planted flowers in the street, cultivated gardens, and cleaned the local schools. But not long thereafter, Lattif said, ISIS instituted Sharia law, forcing women to wear what he called “the Daesh clothes”—the niqab or full head-and-face covering. “They banned hairdressing. Beard shaving is also forbidden. No woman can leave her house without a male escort now. There’s no smoking, no shisha [flavored tobacco smoked in hookahs], no playing cards. They’ve made everything bad for civilians now. They force the people to go to the mosque for prayers, to close their businesses. No one can walk in the street during prayers. They kidnapped almost everybody working in the relief centers. About a month ago [November 2014], they closed the school. If you want to study now, you have to go to the Daesh school in the mosque.”

Torture is common, too. ISIS has taken to arresting members of the FSA, whom they accuse of being agents of foreign intelligence services. Sentences for various ISIS-designated crimes are carried out publicly in al-Bab’s town square. These range, depending on the offense, from dismemberment to beheading. “They cut off heads and hands in the square. Do you remember the hookah place?” Lattif was referring to a popular cafe in central al-Bab where, in 2012, he had outlined his vision of a free and democratic Syria. “The beheadings are taking place now in front of there. They shut down the hookah place, of course.”

Source: ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (2015) by Michael Weiss.

Beard shaving is forbidden? The male cast of Duck Dynasty would fit in nicely except for being Christians. The ISIS thugs wouldn’t like that at all.

9 Controversies Obama Didn’t Mention When He Denied Any ‘Major Scandals’

From The Daily Signal.com (Oct. 24):

President Barack Obama discarded eight years of controversies surrounding his administration, including the targeting of conservative groups, veterans lacking health care, the administration’s response to a terrorist attack weeks before the 2012 election, and a botched gun sting.

During a Democratic fundraising event in San Diego Sunday, Obama attacked Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the former chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, for the various investigations into the administration.

“Here’s a guy who called my administration perhaps the most corrupt in history, despite the fact that actually, we have not had a major scandal in my administration,” Obama told Democratic donors.

………………….

Here’s a list of nine controversies that Obama didn’t mention at the Democratic fundraiser, but that nevertheless leave many unanswered questions.

1. IRS Targeting Scandal.
2. VA Waiting List.
3. GSA Spending Spree. In 2012, Martha N. Johnson, the administrator of the General Services Administration, resigned after the federal procurement agency was engulfed in a controversy. The department was accused of allowing excessive spending on travel and conferences for the agency and employees.
4. Attack on the Benghazi Compound.
5. Clinton Emails.
6. Fast and Furious Gun Walking.
7. Solyndra Subsidies.
8. DOJ and the New Black Panther Party. On Election Day 2008, hours before Obama was first elected, two members of the New Black Panther Party stood outside the door of a polling place in Philadelphia in paramilitary outfits. One of the men was carrying a nightstick. The two men were caught on video seemingly intimidating voters.
9. A Job for Sestak.

In 2010, Rep. Joe Sestak, who was challenging Sen. Arlen Specter in a Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary, said that the Obama administration had offered him a job to dissuade him from entering the race.

Obama had endorsed Specter, who had recently switched allegiance from the Republican to the Democrat Party during the early months of Obama’s presidency. The White House did not answer questions on the matter for several months.

[read more]

Yea, this is Obama’s legacy. He owns it. Whether he wants to or not. But he will not even think about these scandals because his narcissism won’t permit it. The press didn’t help anything by not doing their job and not reporting them. Or briefly reporting them.

Will these nine scandals get put in history books? Well, if Leftwing historians are writing the books probably not.

 

Six Bullets Dodged with Hillary's Loss

From FEE.org (Nov. 15):

The current news cycle is monopolized by two narratives. In one, Trump supporters are cheering the great and promising future. In the other, oppositional progressives are screeching about how hateful and daft he and his supporters are. But in the midst of this chaotic national quarrel, one important person has managed to slip away: Hillary Clinton. Not only metaphorically but literally. Maybe she’s seeking asylum in Russia.
Anyway, while Trump’s impending reign isn’t anything to be ecstatic over, a relief of what America avoided in a Clinton presidency is definitely warranted. So let’s take a moment to examine some avoided disasters that likely would’ve happened had Hillary Clinton won.

         The Death of the Sharing Economy

Hillary Clinton is on the same track. Last year she pledged to “crack down” on companies like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Lending Club, Dogvacay, etc. These are companies that are frowned upon by taxi and hotel cartels, street corner title loan shops, and many more awful, out-of-date institutions. With Hillary out of office, the sharing economy and all those who benefit from its employment opportunities and convenience get to live to see another day.

          Minority Unemployment

Minimum wage increases, overtime rules, high corporate taxes; all these policies have historically and presently had a negative impact on employment opportunities among minority communities. This is particularly true of youth and blacks in middle- and lower-class America. Hillary Clinton supports all of these initiatives and more. Her policies included manufactured outsourcing of labor due to uncompetitive corporate tax rates, which disincentivizes businesses to stay in the States, and, instead, offsets the insane tax by employing workers in other countries like China and Mexico. So when it comes to the American labor force and those who are un- or underemployed, they may have dodged a huge bullet.

          Globalism and Imperialism

In addition to terrible military strategy, she’s also a staunch globalist, using government to achieve it. This is not to be confused with the internationalization of cooperative cultures and markets. She wants global governance, which means increased concentration of elitist wealth, power, and bureaucratic controls over our everyday lives.  [read more]

The other bullets not listed here are: Healthcare, Guns (specifically gun control laws), and Energy (increasing costs on energy producing companies like coal).

ISIS’s Divide-and-Rule Strategy

In The Management of Savagery, Abu Bakr Najji elucidated the importance of manipulating tribal politics and offered his own anthropological gloss on the matter. He observed that it was not necessarily a bad thing for jihadists that confederations of families tended to stick together. In fact, this reality was easily harnessed to the jihadists’ benefit by a gradual process of bribery, brainwashing, and co-optation. “When we address these tribes that have solidarity we should not appeal to them to abandon their solidarity,” he wrote. “Rather, we must polarize them and transform them into praiseworthy tribes that have solidarity. . . . It is possible to begin doing so by uniting the leaders . . . among them with money and the like. Then, after a period of time in which their followers have mixed with our followers and their hearts have been suffused with the picture of faith, we will find that their followers do not accept anything which contradicts the sharia. Of course, solidarity remains, but it has been changed into a praiseworthy solidarity instead of the sinful solidarity which they used to have.”

Given the popularity of this manifesto among ISIS zealots, it was hardly a shock that the organization would be the first one in history to successfully pit members of the same tribe against one another. Such divide-and-rule tactics were on grim display in August 2014, when members of the Shaitat tribe in Deir Ezzor participated in the killing of hundreds of their fellow tribesmen at ISIS’s behest. The same kind of coerced fratricide occurred in the Iraqi town of Hit, where members of the Albu Nimr took part in the execution of dozens of their own in October 2014. Making the ruled complicit in the crimes of the ruler, and individuals more loyal to the state than to their own flesh and blood, is a hallmark of totalitarianism.

As per Najji, the exchange of money for loyalty has played a major role in tearing families apart. In April 2013, after the rupture with al-Nusra, ISIS secretly sought to co-opt young tribal leaders by offering to share oil and smuggling revenues with them. It also promised them positions of authority currently held by their elders. Younger tribesmen were generally more credible and popular, owing to their participation in the anti-Assad rebellion; their elders had mainly sided with the regime or stayed neutral.

One figure from the Syrian border town of Albu Kamal explained how ISIS had exploited this generational schism to snare members of a prominent family, months before the jihadists had even established a presence there. “They are giving him a portion of an oil well in the area,” the figure said, referring to a younger relative who had joined the jihadists. “They know that if they are to be eradicated in our area, who would be able to rally up people around him? Most of the other tribes in our area have no leadership; we have leadership and influence. They give him money, they protect him and consult with him on everything. The other option is, they would assassinate him.”

Source: ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (2015) by Michael Weiss.

The divide-and-conquer rule is used by a lot of dictators. It’s hard to conquer when the people you are trying to conquer are united.

How Republicans Could Overcome Filibusters by Senate Democrats

From The Daily Signal.com (Nov. 10):

As Democrats strategize on how to stop conservative legislation from making its way to Donald Trump’s desk in the White House, Republicans have a little-known rule in their toolbox that would allow them to pass legislation, including a repeal of Obamacare, with a simple majority.

Democrats were able to keep 48 seats in the Senate after Tuesday’s election, giving the party the power to filibuster legislation and effectively prevent conservative policies from being enacted.

But Republicans can turn to a seldom-used Senate rule that would allow them to pass legislation by a simple majority vote—legislation that has a greater chance of earning Trump’s signature after he assumes office Jan. 20.

Called the two-speech rule, the tool limits senators to giving only two speeches in one legislative day on a question before the Senate. A legislative day, which differs from a calendar day, ends when the upper chamber adjourns.

Once a senator gives those two speeches, he or she is not allowed to speak again. [read more]

Works for me. If the roles were reversed this is what the Dems in the Senate would do in a heartbeat. Politics is war to them and the Republicans ought to know that by now.

If the Republicans in the Senate activate this rule the Dems would call fowl of course. That’s their modus operandi.

Slavery and the Founders Part III: Benjamin Franklin

Critics of the Founders point to the three-fifths clause in the United States Constitution, which counted blacks as three-fifths of a person, as proof of their racism. To use this as proof of the Founders’ hatred for black people shows a painful lack of knowledge.

The three-fifths clause had nothing to do with the worth of the human being. The argument in question was over the census and counting people in various states for Congressional representation and taxation. Many southern delegates argued that slaves, as their property, should be counted as a full person. Why? Because that would increase their representation in Congress, and thus their power and ability to keep slavery intact. The northern delegates who sought the eventual end to slavery knew that more representation meant more power for the south. And if they allowed that, slavery may never end. The compromise was the three-fifths clause.

During the constitutional convention of 1787, the slavery debate threatened to derail any attempts to form a new government. The southern states would not have entered the Union if slave trade had been abolished. Thus, the delegates agreed to end the slave trade in 1808. James Madison wrote, “Great as the evil is, a dismemberment of the Union would be worse.”

The Founders put an end to the slave trade in 1808. From the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791 to 1808, the slave trade lasted a total of 17 years in the United States of America. Ending slavery altogether would take a civil war and the lives of 600,000 Americans, 57 years later.

In the early 1770s, before America declared independence from England, two Founding Fathers — Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush — tried to eliminate slavery from the American continent. Franklin’s journey towards abolitionism had started ten years earlier with a visit to a school for black children, created by the Reverend Thomas Bray. For Franklin, it was an eyeopener, and he financially backed the Bray Associate School in Philadelphia.

Historian David Barton explains:

While Pennsylvania was still a British colony, Pennsylvania passed an anti-slavery law, but King George III vetoed that law passed by Pennsylvania. At that point in time, in 1774, Ben Franklin joins with fellow Pennsylvanian, also soon to be signer of the Declaration, Benjamin Rush, and they start the first Abolition Society in Pennsylvania. It was an act of civil disobedience against King George III. He said, “You can’t end slavery.” They said, “Watch us.” But Franklin had already taken actions well before that.

Back in 1768, Ben Franklin had joined with Francis Hopkins, who was also soon to be a signer of the Declaration, and they started a chain of schools across Pennsylvania and across New England for black Americans. And it was to teach black Americans the Bible and academics. Now, that doesn’t seem all that notable today, but it was then. Because under British policy, you were not to be educating blacks. Because if you educate blacks, they don’t make good slaves.

And, by the way, if you teach them to read, they’re probably going to read the Bible because that was the book. And if they read the Bible, they’ll probably end up praying. And if they end up praying, you know what they’re going to pray for, is an end of slavery. And that’s just not a good thing, to have an educated slave. So under British policy, you tried to avoid education for slaves.

Now, that was carried forth in America in the southern states. And at the time of the civil war, it was a capital offense to teach a black to read. If a white person taught a black person to read, you both got kill. That was a capital offense.

Benjamin Franklin, president of the Pennsylvania anti-slavery society, thought differently and wanted to see blacks educated. When the first Congress of the United States convened in 1789, Ben Franklin introduced a petition asking Congress to abolish slavery. He died shortly after in 1790, without seeing his efforts to end slavery come to fruition. But he was one of the many Founding Fathers who worked to end slavery in America, recognizing that civil rights came from God’s creation, that all men were created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, including life and liberty

Franklin realized that being in bondage as a slave, having no free will, being governed by fear, and most likely abused on a regular basis, would take its toll on its victims. So he not only fought to free slaves, but also set up a way to help once they were freed. Franklin and his friends decided to expand the activity of their Abolition Society to include assistance in the immediate post-slavery period, helping former slaves make the transition to freedom by providing advice, assistance in finding jobs, educating children and learning how to exercise and enjoy their new civil liberties. He did all of this with private funds and private effort and without any government interference or intervention.

Source: “Slavery and the Founders Part III: Benjamin Franklin.”

There is one last part to the series called “Slavery and the Founders Part IV: Abolitionists.”

For a racist, Ben Franklin sure tried to abolish slavery and help former slaves. He also wrote a pamplet in 1789 called “A Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks.” Hmmm. Sure don’t make sense unless he wasn’t a racist.

Under the pseudonym of Polly Baker he wrote a fictional story about a woman put on trial in 1747 for have an illegitimate child. The woman protested saying that the child’s father was never put on trial for the same offense. So, maybe he was a feminist too?

Converts to ISIS and “Five-Star Jihadists”

The intellectuals.

[Mothanna Abdulsattar] spoke with gusto about his journey into ISIS, downplaying the eight hours he had spent in its custody as more of a rite of passage than a life-or-death grilling. Abdulsatter said that he was ultimately swayed by ISIS’s “intellectualism and the way it spreads religion and fights injustice.”

A great number of ISIS members who were interviewed for this book echoed similar sentiments—and hyperbolic appraisals—of the terror army, which has mastered techniques to break down the psyches of those it wishes to recruit, and then build them back up again in its own image.

The novice.

The Kurds.

Hussain Jummo, the political editor at the Dubai-based Al Bayan newspaper, and a prominent analyst of Kurdish politics, offers the most plausible explanation for why Kurds have joined ISIS. After Saddam’s Halabja massacre, many families in the town were left impoverished, while others built new homes and carried on with their lives as before. Charities that were started and meant to tend to the victims of the chemical attacks were mainly Salafist in orientation, organized and funded by Gulf state sponsors, including Kuwait’s Society of the Revival of Islamic Heritage, which has been accused by the United States of bankrolling al-Qaeda. So after decades of proselytization in the Kurdish regions of the Middle East, Halabja became the epicenter of Kurdish Islamism.

In Syria the Kurdish turn to ISIS has been less common, although not unheard-of. Syrian Kurds are predominantly secular or Sufi from the Khaznawi order, named after the family that inaugurated it. We spoke with two Kurds from Aleppo and Hasaka, however, who said they were driven to ISIS because of the organization’s pan-Sunni, rather than pan-Arab, philosophy. A Kurdish ISIS member from Hasaka related to the authors a conversation he had had with an ISIS recruiter shortly before he joined. The recruiter told him that al-Nusra, which had by then split from ISIS, was essentially an “Arab” organization, rather than an Islamic one. ISIS was blind to ethnicity, he said, and attended only to true faith—a theme that recurs frequently in its propaganda.

The prisoners.

According to journalist Wael Essam, who met al-Absi after the Syrian uprising started, the jihadist has considered many of his fellow former inmates at Sednaya to be kuffar, including those who now lead rival Islamist brigades and battalions in Syria. Why? Because they refused to pronounce as nonbelievers the taghut (tyrannical) Muslim rulers in the Middle East and the majority of Muslims in the region. Also, al-Absi explained, these Islamists acceded to the surrender of Sednaya to the Syrian authorities after the bloody 2008 riot.

The fence-sitters.

Another category of ISIS recruits consists of those who already held Islamist or jihadist views but had limited themselves only to orbiting takfiri ideology. The final gravitational pull, as it were, differed depending on circumstance. Some recruits joined for the simple reason that ISIS overran their territories and became the only Islamist faction available to join. Others were impressed with ISIS’s military prowess in campaigns against rival rebel factions. Still others fell out with their original insurgencies and found ISIS more organized, disciplined, and able-bodied.

For what might be called “extra-mile extremists,” the conversion experience is hardly as sweeping or comprehensive as it was for men like Abdulsattar. They have tended to trickle into ISIS from the rank and file of the Islamic Front and Islamist-leaning groups in Iraq and Syria as a result of either leadership disputes or the abortive Syrian Sahwa that erupted in late December 2013.

The politickers.

As it happens, the closer ISIS came to realizing its territorial ambitions, the less religion played a part in driving people to join the organization. Those who say they are adherents of ISIS as a strictly political project make up a weighty percentage of its lower cadres and support base.

For people in this category, ISIS is the only option for Sunni Muslims who have been dealt a dismal hand in the past decade—first losing control of Iraq and now suffering nationwide atrocities, which many equate to genocide, in Syria. They view the struggle in the Middle East as one between Sunnis and an Iranian-led coalition, and they justify ultra-violence as a necessary tool to counterbalance or deter Shia hegemony. This category often includes the highly educated.

The pragmatists.

In areas fully controlled by ISIS, people support the group because it is effective in terms of governance and delivery of basic services, such as sanitation and food delivery. ISIS has established a semblance of order in these “governed” territories, and people view the alternatives—al-Assad, the Iraqi government, or other militias—as far worse. For those weary of years of civil war, the ability to live without crime and lawlessness trumps whatever draconian rules ISIS has put into place. Members of this category sometimes keep their distance from ISIS, to avoid trouble; others seek out areas where ISIS is said not to be committing atrocities.

The opportunists.

There are also those who were drawn to ISIS largely because of personal ambition. The opportunists tend to serve in the group’s rank and file as well as its low-level command structures. They join to undermine a rival group, to move up the chain of a dominant military and political force, or simply to preempt ISIS’s brutal justice because of some past offense or crime they might have committed against the group.

The foreign fighters.

The radicalization expert Shiraz Maher of King’s College London has explained how digital apps or social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and, in the ex-Soviet context, VKontakte (Russia’s answer to Facebook) have revolutionized jihadist agitprop. Much of the online chatter among Western-born ISIS recruits sounds more like a satire of the group than an earnest commitment to it: “Does the Islamic State sell hair gel and Nutella in Raqqa?” “Should I bring an iPad to let Mom and Dad know that I arrived safely in caliphate?” “I was told there’d be Grand Theft Auto V.”

In December 2013, Maher’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation calculated that the number of foreign fighters enjoined with the Syrian opposition was “up to 11,000 . . . from 74 nations.” Most of them signed up with ISIS or other jihadist groups, with few going to join mainstream FSA factions. Western Europe, the study found, accounted for 18 percent of the total, with France leading among nations as the number-one donor country for jihadists, followed closely by Britain. That number only grew, particularly in light of the US coalition war against ISIS. By September 2014, the CIA calculated that there were fifteen thousand foreign fighters in Syria, two thousand of whom were Westerners. These figures had doubled by September 2015. The predominant emigration trend has always been from the Middle East and North Africa, with Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Tunisia being the major feeder countries of foreign Sunni militants.

Missionary jihadists who were driven by civilian suffering, according to Maher, constituted a plurality of the Britons who joined ISIS. They saw jihad as an obligation to defend women and children as the war dragged on in Syria, Maher said.

Maher notes a second category of foreign fighters: martyrdom-seekers, who want nothing more than to carry out a suicide operation and thus be lionized in the annals of jihadism. For many foreign fighters from the Gulf states, the glorification of suicide bombers has been a constant on jihadist chat forums and websites since al-Qaeda in Iraq got started. Saudi nationals often point to the fact that many Saudis carry out these self-immolations, to argue that ISIS leaders discriminate against their compatriots by sending them to their deaths, whereas Iraqis hoard all the leadership positions in the organization for themselves.

The final factor leading foreign fighters to ISIS, according to Maher, is pure adventurism. Adrenaline junkies tend to be nonpracticing Muslims and are often drug users or addicts, or involved in criminality and gang violence back home—much as al-Zarqawi himself was in Jordan before discovering the mosque. Going off to fight in Syria represents just another rush.

Source: ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (2015) by Michael Weiss.

Happy Veterans Day!

Here’s a commentary from Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Spoehr, U.S. Army (Ret.) on The Daily Signal.com (Nov. 10):

Friday is Veterans Day. We celebrate Veterans Day on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year, the day the guns fell silent in Europe following the armistice that ended World War I. For some, it’s a day off from school or work, but for the majority of Americans, it means so much more.

Veterans Day is the chance to thank and honor those who have selflessly served their country. Support for veterans has been mixed through our nation’s history. But today, through the efforts of great Americans, respect and assistance for veterans has never been stronger.

In increasing numbers, veterans are returning that support by continuing their service to their communities and country.

The term “veteran” comes from the Latin, vetus meaning “old.” In America and elsewhere, we use the word to describe those who have served in the military. But you don’t need to be old to be considered a veteran.

A veteran is a person who has served honorably in the U.S. military. He or she can be a citizen who served for four years and leaves the service at the ripe old age of 24.

U.S. veterans today enjoy a much different relationship with the populace—their government and the American people—than veterans have over the span of our history.

Revolutionary Beginnings

In the Revolutionary War, America relied on volunteers, although some state militias used conscription. Pay was the responsibility of the states and was sporadic or nonexistent. Many soldiers were promised cattle when their term of service ended. There was no system for pensions, death benefits, or disability payments. This led to unrest and dissatisfaction among those who had served so faithfully.

In 1830, years after the end of the war, Sgt. Joseph Plumb Martin, a Connecticut soldier who served for seven years in the Continental Army, summed up these feelings when wondered in his memoirs why he and his fellow soldiers were “turned adrift like worn-out horses.”

The number of people who served in the Revolutionary War never exceeded 30,000, and they were relatively ineffective in mustering any public opinion to better support veterans.

This national disinterest toward veterans continued with relatively minor reforms until the Civil War, where heretofore unprecedented numbers of Americans were killed or wounded.

Sensing a growing national obligation toward veterans, President Abraham Lincoln explicitly mentioned supporting them after the war. Post-Civil War reforms resulted in the establishment of a better system of pensions and payments, but most still remained meager.

Fast forward to World War I. Large groups of veterans returned from overseas; some with major needs. But the largest change in America’s treatment of its veterans came after World War II, which was pivotal in improving the relationship between veterans and their government.  [read more]

He goes on to talk about the GI Bill of Rights and veterans returning to the community.

To all veterans past and present, thank you for your service and defending America’s constitution.

Secular, Feminist, and Pro Life

Commentary by John Stonestreet on Break Point.org (Oct. 25):

The pro-life tent is constantly expanding, but some of our new allies might surprise us.

In the third presidential debate on Wednesday night, Hillary Clinton said women should be able to end the lives of their preborn babies right up until the very moment of birth, long after a child is viable outside the womb.

In a recent Marist poll reported by the Wall Street Journal, eighty percent of Americans and some sixty-percent of self-described pro-choicers oppose this extreme view. Instead, they support restricting abortion to the first trimester of pregnancy.

……………………

All of this led Ruth Graham to conclude in Slate that the pro-life movement is in the midst of a transition. But it’s not just in the sense that it’s getting younger. It’s also attracting the non-religious.

Not that long ago, being pro-life meant you were almost certainly a Catholic or evangelical. But now, the belief that killing unborn babies is wrong is transcending religious and even political boundaries.

Take Aimee Murphy, the 27-year-old founder of Pittsburgh’s Life Matters Journal. Aimee was raped by an ex-boyfriend who pressured her to get an abortion when she thought she was pregnant. That was when it clicked, Aimee says. “I could not use violence to get what I wanted in life. I realized that if I were to get an abortion, I would just be passing oppression on to a child.”

Her appeal, like that of a growing group of young pro-lifers who aren’t religious, is rooted in human rights, and the belief that our nation has committed an unspeakable atrocity in the name of convenience.

Kelsey Hazzard, founder of the group Secular Pro-Life, says the non-religious argument against abortion has the potential to bring people on board who would have never otherwise taken the message of life seriously.

And Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, a Dallas resident who founded New Wave Feminists, sees protecting the unborn and ending abortion as a deeply feminist cause. She told Slate she doesn’t understand why so many fellow feminists treat fertility “like a disease,” as if abortion is the only way women can achieve their dreams. The culture of death tells women they must bear the consequences of pregnancy alone, and Herndon-De La Rosa calls that “a grave form of injustice.”  [read more]

Humorist Dennis Miller once said the Left believe in cradle-to-grave healthcare but make it hard for babies to get to the cradle. So, true.

What abortionists don’t understand is if you kill off the potential human beings you are going to have under population because eventually everyone will grow old and die. You will need new people (babies) to at least replace the dead. Also, with the newly born come new ideas and innovation. The economic system will collapse without new workers. Russia has experienced this phenomena. And now China is telling its citizenry its okay now to have more than one child—actually just two children. Well, the citizens are basically giving the finger to the gov’t. The gov’t told its people for 30 years to only have one child because they were worried about overpopulation. Now, they have the opposite. This is what happens when Big Gov starts to play God.

One final thought. Most people believe abortions should be outlawed except if the mother’s life is in danger. This is in a lot of states constitutions as well. Well, what if the mother is pro-life and wants to sacrifice her life for her baby’s? Is that so hard to believe? It’s not so different than a mother pushing her child out of the way in front of a speeding car when she doesn’t have time to save herself. Just like people have a DNR legal order maybe potential mothers could have a Save-My-Baby legal order.

Iran claims it's sending elite fighters to infiltrate US, Europe

From Fox News. com (Nov. 2):

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the country’s elite military force, is sending assets to infiltrate the United States and Europe at the direction of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to recent Farsi-language comments from an Iranian military leader.

The IRGC “will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” according to the Iranian military commander, who said that these forces would operate with the goal of bolstering Iran’s hardline regime and thwarting potential plots against the Islamic Republic.

“The whole world should know that the IRGC will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” Salar Abnoush, deputy coordinator of Iran’s Khatam-al-Anbia Garrison, an IRGC command front, was quoted as saying in an Iranian state-controlled publication closely tied to the IRGC. [read more]

Interesting. Is Iranian officials going to lobby the Congress? They already got Obama on board, and if Hillary wins she’ll be favorable to the Iranian gov’t. That’s what it sounds like.

There should be a law that says countries (even our allies) can’t lobby Congress because that usually helps the other country. The law should include foreign companies too not just gov’ts.

The Management of Savagery

Al-Zarqawi’s sinister strategy for fomenting a complete societal breakdown in Iraq hewed closely to a text titled Idarat al-Tawahhush, or The Management of Savagery. Published online in 2004 as a combined field manual and manifesto for the establishment of the caliphate, it is the jihadist answer to The Art of War and Leviathan. Its author, Abu Bakr Naji, conceived of a battle plan for weakening enemy states through what he called “power of vexation and exhaustion.” Drawing the United States into open as opposed to “proxy” warfare in the Middle East was the whole point, because Naji believed that once American soldiers were killed by mujahidin on the battlefield, the “media halo” surrounding their presumed invincibility would vanish. Muslims would then be “dazzled” at the harm they could inflict on a weak and morally corrupted superpower as well as incensed at the occupation of their holy lands, thus driving them to jihad. He urged that they should then focus on attacking the economic and cultural institutions (such as the hydrocarbon industries) of the “apostate” regimes aligned with the United States. “The public will see how the troops flee,” Naji wrote, “heeding nothing. At this point, savagery and chaos begin and these regions will start to suffer from the absence of security. This is in addition to the exhaustion and draining [that results from] attacking the remaining targets and opposing the authorities.” He used the time-honored example of Egypt, but he was also implicitly referring to Iraq, where he urged the fast consolidation of jihadist victory in order to “take over the surrounding countries.”

There are four “primary objectives” to the power of vexation and exhaustion, according to Naji. The first is to tire out the enemy and those regimes collaborating with it so that they cannot catch their breath. The second is to attract young jihadists to the cause through “qualitative operations,” or terror attacks, which need not rise to the level of a 9/11, but could be small and frequent. The third objective is to dislodge regions from the control of the “apostate” regimes entirely: the conquest of land, to be followed by the governance or administration of savagery by the jihadists. The fourth and final goal is the “advancement of groups of vexation through drilling and operational practice so that they will be prepared psychologically and practically for the stage of the management of savagery.”

As Naji defines it, this stage is really nothing more than the application of a rudimentary jihadist political economy, the rescue of Muslims from the Hobbesian chaos that was to be brought about by the toppling of the aforementioned regimes. The actual “management” consists of twelve basic needs that must be satisfied:

1. The establishment of internal security such that the local population would be protected from violence other than that meted by the Islamic authority;
2. The provision of food and medicine;
3. The securing of the borders from foreign invaders;
4. The installing of a system of Sharia jurisprudence to govern those ruled;
5. The creation of a pious and “combat-efficient” youth movement;
6. The spread of Islamic jurisprudence as well as “worldly science”;
7. The “dissemination of spies” and the creation of an intelligence service;
8. Buying the fealty of the local population through bribery and financial inducements;
9. “Deterring hypocrites,” by which Naji meant dissuading any internal resistance to challenges to the ruling Islamic authority;
10. Laying the groundwork for the expansion of this fief and a greater offensive against the enemy, whose money should be plundered and who should be put in a “constant state of apprehension and desire for reconciliation”;
11. Building “coalitions” with other groups, including those who have not pledged full allegiance to the Islamic authority (elsewhere in the text, Naji gives a separate disquisition on the role of “affiliates”);
12. The advancement of “managerial groups”—bureaucracies, in effect—who would work toward the future establishment of a bona fide Islamic state. This was the end goal of jihad, after all, and the stage of the management of savagery was to be the “bridge” to such a state, “which has been awaited since the fall of the caliphate.” This stage was also the most “critical” through which the global Islamic community would now have to pass, as Naji states in the subtitle to his tract.

One Isis-affiliated cleric told us that The Management of Savagery is today widely circulated among provincial Isis commanders and some rank-and-file fighters as a way to justify beheadings as not only religiously permissible but recommended by God and his prophet. For ISIS, the manifesto’s greatest contribution lies in its differentiation between the meaning of jihad and other religious matters.

Source: ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (2015) by Michael Weiss.

Interesting book.

Slavery and the Founders Part II: George Washington

It was the British who stopped the original abolition movement in America. In 1773 and 1774, states like Rhode Island and Connecticut and Massachusetts and Pennsylvania passed anti-slavery laws. But in 1774, King George III vetoed every anti-slavery law in America. That’s what caused Thomas Jefferson to write a clause in the Declaration which favored ending slavery (three southern states demanded it be removed). When America separated from Great Britain in 1776, those states were the first ones to end slavery. Once America was free from the British empire, the ending of slavery began. By 1800, every northern colony had abolished slavery in America.

George Washington and the other Founders who favored abolition knew they could not immediately end slavery in the United States and still have a United States. They would have instantly lost all of the Southern colonies, weakened the union and wound up without a nation. That’s why Washington favored a gradual or, shall we say, “progressive” end to slavery.

Despite having inherited his first ten slaves when he was 11 years old, Washington grew to despise the practice. Upon his marriage to Martha Custis, Washington took possession of many more slaves. Martha was a widow when she married her second husband, George, and she brought to the marriage close to 100 dowry slaves. Washington argued and fought from the very beginning to end slavery, with no success in the legislature. When his and Martha’s slaves began marrying and forming families, his hands were further tied, as he refused to sell slaves and break up families. He waited until his death and Martha’s to free his slaves saying, “You can’t free the slaves till after I die and till after she dies. Because once we’re both dead, then you can keep the families together.”

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Phyllis Wheatley, a 22-year-old slave and poet was so impressed with the respect and kindness Washington had shown her that she wrote a poem — His Excellency General Washington — to honor the man she so greatly admired when he was made commander in the Continental Army in 1775. Washington responded by inviting Ms. Wheatley to his headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he received her as if she were a visiting dignitary.  [read more]

Slavery and the Founders Part I: Thomas Jefferson

Fifty-six Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. Of those 56, we know that 15 owned slaves and did not release them, nor did they want to. This minority of Founders is what we would call, in effect, racist. So what about the other Founders, those who did not own slaves or those who did but wanted to free them? Thomas Jefferson, in particular, has been singled out as a hypocrite who spoke against slavery, but didn’t free his own slaves upon his death. Why?

Let’s begin with the obvious: America’s Founding Fathers grew up in colonial America under English tradition and English rule. The colonies were an extension of Great Britain. It was the British, not our Founders, who brought slaves to this continent, and they did so for about 140 years. Thomas Jefferson, who grew up in 1700s Virginia where landowners owned slaves, began inheriting slaves at 14 years old. Even so, as he matured and considered the issue, Thomas Jefferson became decidedly anti-slavery.

So why didn’t Jefferson end slavery in his own home? State law in Virginia was very clear, and Jefferson wrote about it, saying the laws would not permit him to “turn them loose.” One law regarding slavery stated that if there was debt, slaves could not be freed and must be held to pay off that debt. Jefferson was, in today’s dollars, $2.5 million in debt. So by state law, he could not free his slaves.

Black civil rights leaders from multiple eras — Benjamin Beneker who personally knew Jefferson, Henry Highland Garnet, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. — praised Jefferson for his relentless efforts to end slavery. [read more]

Keep in mind slavery wouldn’t have existed if the State wouldn’t have allowed it at all.

Dear Socialists of America: Let’s Chat About Venezuela

Commentary by Mary Ramirez on The Blaze.com (Jan. 4):

Comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s signature “You Might Be a Redneck” routine was running through my head these last few days as I thought about Venezuela and socialism.

No really, I promise there’s a connection.

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Let’s borrow Foxworthy’s line of logic here for a minute and apply it to the socialist-laced collapse of a country that should otherwise be one of the richest nations in the world:

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If an order of McDonald’s fries costs you the USD equivalent of $126 (oh and by the way, that’s 9 percent of your monthly wages), youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If your local state-run grocery store shelves are stocked with the same couple of items (when they’re stocked at all), youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If your president ordered a 30 percent minimum wage increase (the 33rd hike in 17 years) and yet “minimum wage is now only about 20 percent of the cost of feeding a family of five,” youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If what it once cost you to buy breakfast, lunch and dinner now barely gets you breakfast, youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.

If you wait in line for hours for “a couple of little bags of flour or some butter,” youuuuuu might be living in a socialist country.  [read more]

Yea, Cuba and N. Korea could fit these descriptions too. And America if it’s not careful.

The Left thinks socialism is cool but the Commoners who live under it know otherwise. The Ruling class don’t mind it all. They aren’t the ones who are suffering.

Seven Things the Government Requires IDs For

From The Daily Signal.com (Aug. 26):

As federal courts wrestle with voter ID laws in several states just months before a national election, there is considerably less attention being brought to other constitutional rights that require ID.

Proponents of voter ID have argued that retailers require ID to buy liquor, M-rated video games, prescriptions, or even nail polish.

But these arguments aren’t really applicable to voter ID, said J. Christian Adams, general counsel for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and a former Justice Department attorney, who supports voter ID and other election integrity laws.

“Tell me where in the Constitution does it talk about the right to buy liquor or rent a car?” Adams told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “The Constitution does guarantee the right to use firearms, and ID is always required to purchase a firearm. If you talk about buying liquor, the left will shred that argument. If you talk about ID when buying a gun, it boxes them in.”

Here are seven common situations that require an ID.

1. Welfare Benefits.
2. Registration for Buying Guns.
3. Petition Your Government.
4. Right of Assembly. Further, many municipalities require permits to hold protests or rallies in a public space under certain circumstances. This process varies based on the city, but requires some paperwork by the organizers.
5. Right to Marry.
6. Freedom of Movement. While the right to board an airplane isn’t spelled out in the Constitution, von Spakovsky said the right to travel could be broadly considered a basic public accommodation and a freedom of movement issue, even though the Transportation Security Administration requires photo ID for everyone boarding a plane.
7. Public Accommodations. Many local governments require hotels and motels to collect information from the ID of lodgers and maintain it to be available for police review.

[read more]

So, you shouldn’t have to show your id to vote but when you petition your government, or to board an airplane, or even when you buy a gun when both are rights under the Constitution you have to show some kind of id? Interesting. Then again the Left don’t care about those other rights.

The History of Policing in the United States, Part 1

The development of policing in the United States closely followed the development of policing in England. In the early colonies policing took two forms. It was both informal and communal, which is referred to as the "Watch," or private-for-profit policing, which is called "The Big Stick” (Spitzer, 1979).

The watch system was composed of community volunteers whose primary duty was to warn of impending danger. Boston created a night watch in 1636, New York in 1658 and Philadelphia in 1700. The night watch was not a particularly effective crime control device. Watchmen often slept or drank on duty. While the watch was theoretically voluntary, many "volunteers" were simply attempting to evade military service, were conscript forced into service by their town, or were performing watch duties as a form of punishment. Philadelphia created the first day watch in 1833 and New York instituted a day watch in 1844 as a supplement to its new municipal police force (Gaines, Kappeler, and Vaughn 1999).

Augmenting the watch system was a system of constables, official law enforcement officers, usually paid by the fee system for warrants they served. Constables had a variety of non-law enforcement functions to perform as well, including serving as land surveyors and verifying the accuracy of weights and measures. In many cities constables were given the responsibility of supervising the activities of the night watch.

These informal modalities of policing continued well after the American Revolution. It was not until the 1830s that the idea of a centralized municipal police department first emerged in the United States. In 1838, the city of Boston established the first American police force, followed by New York City in 1845, Albany, NY and Chicago in 1851, New Orleans and Cincinnati in 1853, Philadelphia in 1855, and Newark, NJ and Baltimore in 1857 (Harring 1983, Lundman 1980; Lynch 1984). By the 1880s all major U.S. cities had municipal police forces in place.

These "modern police" organizations shared similar characteristics: (1) they were publicly supported and bureaucratic in form; (2) police officers were full-time employees, not community volunteers or case-by-case fee retainers; (3) departments had permanent and fixed rules and procedures, and employment as a police officers was continuous; (4) police departments were accountable to a central governmental authority (Lundman 1980). [read more]

Source: “The History of Policing in the United States, Part 1.” by Dr. Gary Potter.

Interesting and informative article.  There are five other parts to the piece.

Other Progressive Donors: Labor Unions

Unions top the list of organizations donating to political causes — and large corporations are behind them. Fourteen of the top 25 political donors are unions, and virtually all donate exclusively to Democratic candidates.

Democrats also have the largest single donor source of any kind over the past 25 years: a PAC called ActBlue. Launched in 2004, ActBlue has amassed an incredible fortune of $1.1 billion, with only $100 million spent thus far.

Massive labor unions like SEIU wield enormous power and spend vast amounts electing candidates that further their agenda. And if going through legals channels doesn’t suit their purposes, they’re more than willing to use other means. Former SEIU president Andy Stern has said, “We’ve been trying to use the power of persuasion, and if that doesn’t work, we use the persuasion of power, because there are governments and there are opportunities to change laws…”

Stern and SEIU have unabashedly put up tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars, for government healthcare and amnesty. Stern, the president of an international union, was the top visitor at the White House during Obama’s first year in office, with a record 22 visits. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka visited the White House two to three times weekly and talked daily to someone in the White House. No one else has had that kind of to President Obama, including most members of Obama’s cabinet, some of whom have had zero contact with him.

SEIU tops the list of labor union donors at $232 million, with 99 percent going to Democrats. The National Education Association is second, followed by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. Then the Farr Group, an executive search consulting firm. The Carpenters Union and the American Federation of Teachers round out the top six groups for political contributors, all of which gave nearly every dime to Democrats. In fact, eight of the top ten, and 18 out of the top 25 are Democratic donors.

Believe it or not, the NRA has also donated to Democrats. Of the $22 million donated since 2002, 17 precent has gone to Democrats.

Source: Evil Progressive Donors Part IV: Labor Unions.

The Left says Big Business donates the most money so Big Labor has to keep up with the evil Big Business in donations. Well, corruption affects all social systems including labor unions. And where the Big Labor donates to might not be where the individual members want it to go—then again the Elites know better.

As part of this serial there is also “Evil Progressive Donors Part III: Hollywood.”

Other Progressive Donors: The Steyer Brothers

It’s likely you’ve never heard of the Steyer brothers. However, Jim Steyer and his billionaire brother Tom have donated millions — if not hundreds of millions of dollars — to their favorite Democratic causes.

Tom Steyer, formerly an “evil” hedge fund manager and “villainous” executive at Goldman Sachs, donated $5 million in 2014 to the Senate majority super PAC run by Harry Reid’s former aides — a drop in the bucket to his pledge of $100 million to influence elections and kill the Keystone pipeline. He wound up donating about $75 million and was, by far, the largest single individual spender in the midterm elections. Liberal Michael Bloomberg was a distant second at $40 million.

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Tom Steyer’s biggest crusade has been climate change, despite the fact his vast fortune was made primarily from huge investments in oil and coal. One major investment was a pipeline rivaling the Keystone pipeline. When his heavy investments in oil, coal and competing pipelines came to the attention of the media, he instructed brokers to divest from all fossil fuels. Doubt still remains as to whether the divestment ever took place.

It has been estimated that Steyer funded over the years CO₂ production equivalent to about 28% of the total amount of CO₂ produced in the United States by coal burned for electricity generation. Additionally, his personal “footprint” matches the size of his bank account.

Steyer’s primary home overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco — on each of its three stories. With an estimated value of $11.7 million, the home sits on a cliff with beautiful vistas, wrecking the area for all wildlife. He also has a second home in San Francisco for a total combined 11,000 square feet in the city. Add to that his humble, $8.5 million beach home in Marin County, his $2.6 million Sugar Bowl ski resort home in California and two homes at a Lake Tahoe ski resort, respectively valued at $15 million and a more modest $1.1 million. And last, but not least, Steyer owns a 2,000-acre California ranch — worth an estimated $23 to $50 million — where his wife keeps her show horses.

No honest capitalist would begrudge a billionaire of his luxuries. But when said billionaire makes a massive carbon footprint while preaching about catastrophic climate change and spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to influence elections and climate legislation, that sounds more like a man living in a glass house, casting around some mighty big stones. [read more]

This donor feels since he is special, an “elite” if you will, then he can increase his carbon footprint—but non-elites shouldn’t.

He also supports Hillary Clinton for president. Duh.