Good news: Justice Ginsburg to move to New Zealand if Trump wins

No wonder they call her Notorious RBG. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has just declared war against Donald Trump, announcing that if he is elected president, she’d consider moving to New Zealand.

It would be a good place for her. I haven’t done a double-blind study, but it’s hard to recall — or find on the web — an instance of another Supreme Court justice diving into politics quite the way Ginsburg has just done.

Ginsburg’s comment came in an interview with the New York Times’ Supreme Court scribe, Adam Liptak. He was so astounded that he warned his readers before he reported her comments that normally justices “diligently avoid political topics.”

Ginsburg, Liptak notes, “takes a different approach.” Then he quotes her as saying in her Supreme Court chambers: “I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president.”

SOURCE

******************************

Obama's Divisive Double Standards

President Obama’s knee-jerk reaction to the Dallas shootings brings into clear relief his biases and double standards on racially or religiously motivated violence. Have we ever had a president as blinded by his ideology and as oblivious or dismissive about his own biases and the double standards he invokes?

If blacks or Muslims commit acts of violence, Obama calls for unity and demands we not rush to judgment. He bends over backward to deny the racial or religious motives of the actors. In countless acts of Islamic terrorism, before he has even expressed outrage or sorrow over the victims' deaths, Obama lectures us on the immorality of blaming actors of a single religion, tells us how wonderful and peaceful the religion is, and admonishes us against drawing inferences based on indisputable facts.

If, on the other hand, blacks or Muslims are even arguably the victims of racial or religious violence, he immediately rushes to judgment and attributes racial or religious motives to the actors.

In Warsaw, Poland, during a news conference, one journalist asked Obama to address the motives of Micah Johnson, the shooter who massacred police officers in Dallas. She said: “Help us understand how you describe his motives. Do you consider this an act of domestic terrorism? Was this a hate crime? Was this a mentally ill man with a gun?”

Obama replied, “First of all, I think it’s very hard to untangle the motives of this shooter.”

No, it’s not hard to untangle the motives of the killer, because they weren’t tangled. He made them quite clear both on Facebook and in his exchanges with cops during the standoff. Troubled or not, he appeared to hate white people and was livid at cops. Indeed, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Micah Johnson “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

Obama simply ignored the question of whether the Dallas shootings were a hate crime, yet he had no difficulty in so characterizing the recent police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota. Nor in these cases did he call for unity and restraint. Instead, he reflexively detailed the evidence that allegedly demonstrates law enforcement discrimination against minorities, though the evidence of such bias is hotly disputed, as shown by Heather Mac Donald’s thorough examination of the data in her new book, “The War on Cops.”

Obama’s flagrant double standard has been on display throughout his tenure in office.

When Nidal Hasan, with known ties to radical Islam, fatally shot 13 people and injured more than 30 others while screaming “Allahu akbar,” Obama said, “We don’t know all the answers yet, and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.”

When police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home, Obama sprinted to judgment, wholly without benefit of all the facts, and condemned the police, who he said “acted stupidly.”

After George Zimmerman was acquitted for the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Obama couldn’t resist the urge to identify with Martin, saying, “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.” He couldn’t pass up a chance to lecture us on the “history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws,” even though Zimmerman is Hispanic.

When the Tsarnaev brothers planted bombs at the Boston Marathon and killed three people and injured hundreds more, Obama said: “In this age of instant reporting … there’s a temptation to latch on to any bit of information, sometimes to jump to conclusions. But … it’s important that we do this right. … That’s why we take care not to rush to judgment — not about the motivations of these individuals, certainly not about entire groups of people.”

When white police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed African-American Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, after his robbery of a convenience store, his resisting arrest and his storming of the officer, Obama didn’t calm activists who were wrongly claiming that Wilson had shot Brown in the back without provocation. He deliberately exploited the incident as an example of the “gulf of mistrust (that) exists between local residents and law enforcement.” He said, “Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement — guilty of walking while black or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness.” Maybe so, but it was highly inappropriate for Obama to mention those matters in connection with the Brown shooting, which had nothing to do with race. And it was reckless for Obama to fan the flames of racial animosity in that way. He expressed no similar indignation when riots ensued, and the havoc resulted in injured people and millions of dollars of property damage.

Obama didn’t demand restraint when Muslims were shot in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He said the FBI was taking steps to determine whether federal laws were violated. “No one in the United States of America,” he said, “should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like or how they worship.”

When African-American Freddie Gray died one week after riding without restraints in a police van after his arrest, Obama, again rushing to judgment while pretending not to, said: “We have some soul-searching to do. This is not new. It’s been going on for decades.”

Immediately after Dylann Roof allegedly shot black Christians in Charleston, South Carolina, Obama said: “The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history. … We know that hatred across races and faiths (poses) a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals.”

About the terrorist shootings in San Bernardino, California, Obama insisted we go along with his patronizing charade that the slaughter may have been the handiwork of disgruntled office workers. He said: “It is possible that this was terrorist-related, but we don’t know. It’s also possible that this was workplace-related.”

Concerning the recent jihadi murder of 49 people in Orlando, Florida, Obama said: “We are still learning all the facts. This is an open investigation. We’ve reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer.” Never mind that the killer clearly expressed his motives.

If Obama were to apply a consistent standard to these incidents and not reveal his own biases, he might have some credibility in those cases where he calls for unity. Instead, he has been a catalyst for racial and religious division in his words, actions and policies.

SOURCE

*****************************

These 3 Conservative Policies Have Allowed Indiana’s Economy to Flourish

Last month, America’s economy added just 38,000 jobs, the weakest growth in five years.

We should expect more than the lackluster 2 percent growth we’ve grown accustomed to under President Barack Obama. Luckily, there is already a successful working model in my home state of Indiana to accomplish this.

The recession hit Indiana harder than most states. While then-Gov. Mitch Daniels’ prudent fiscal policies helped the state absorb much of the impact, the recession and its aftermath took its toll. For example, unemployment peaked at 10.9 percent at the beginning of 2010.

However, today, Indiana’s economy is quite different. Employers are investing in the state and in our workers. More Hoosiers are working than ever before, and over 150,000 jobs have been added in the last four years alone. The Tax Foundation now rates the state’s business climate in the nation’s top 10.

What caused Indiana’s transformation? Daniels, and later, Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican, saw the consequences of overregulating, overtaxing, and overspending. They did not like the direction the state was headed and set about to reverse course.

Here are three policies that are working in Indiana:

1. Reduce Bureaucratic Red Tape

Republican leaders made it easier to do business in Indiana. They reduced bureaucratic red tape and eliminated many unnecessary regulations. Rather than burdening employers and trying to micromanage how businesses operate, Republicans put in place policies that have allowed our state to grow.

2. Balance the Budget

The state put its fiscal house in order. Statehouse leaders cut government spending, balanced the budget, created a surplus, and built a near record reserve fund.

Indiana earned a triple-A credit rating in 2010 and has maintained it ever since. These strategies help put the state in a better position to weather a future financial downturn.

3. Largest Tax Cut in Indiana History

Finally, and most recently, Indiana enacted the largest tax cut in state history. Lawmakers cut taxes for corporations, small business owners, and individuals. They eliminated personal property taxes for half of filers and simplified the tax code.

These sound policies played an important role in encouraging private sector growth. Earlier this year, Chief Executive magazine named Indiana one of the top five states in the nation for business. Executives cited the state’s low costs, low taxes and limited regulations for making it easier to grow their businesses.

Compare Indiana’s model to the Obama model.

Compare Indiana’s model to the Obama model. Since Obama took office, the amount of new regulations tying the hands of employers has skyrocketed, taxes have increased, and our deficit has nearly doubled. These policies limit opportunity and stunt growth.

We can replicate Indiana’s success at the national level. I’ll continue to work to enact pro-growth policies during my time left in office, but we need a president willing to recognize that failed policies of overregulating, overspending, and overtaxing are major obstacles to economic growth.

Limited opportunity and stunted economic growth cannot be our new normal. Americans deserve better.

SOURCE

******************************

Rep. Jim Jordan: Hillary Clinton Lied to Congress Under Oath



Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said Wednesday afternoon that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had misled Congress, under oath, when testifying to the House Select Committee on Benghazi in October 2015. Jordan was speaking to Washington Watch with Tony Perkins on American Family Radio, guest-hosted by Breitbart News legal editor Ken Klukowski.

The Ohio congressman referred to the statements of FBI director James Comey, who had announced Tuesday that he would not recommend prosecuting Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information, but whose findings prove that much of what Clinton told the Benghazi committee about her emails was false.

Specifically, Clinton told the Benghazi committee that she had turned over “all my work related emails” from her private email server to the government; that there was “nothing marked classified on my e-mails”; and that her attorneys “went through every single e-mail.”

According to Comey, all of those statements were false.

Jordan said that while he would leave the decision as to whether Clinton should be prosecuted for perjury to others, “what I do know is the questions I asked and the answers she gave didn’t square with what Mr. Comey said yesterday.”

He added: “And that should not happen in a country as great as ours, where people under oath in positions of real leadership and real importance in our government aren’t giving it to us straight. And again, it’s not my words — that’s what Director Comey said yesterday about Secretary Clinton, and the responses she gave to some of the questions that we asked her back in October.”

SOURCE

****************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************